@actuallyautistic As an autistic person, I grew up a social outcast. When I was a kid, it was largely because of poor social skills, like my "conversations" were mostly just info dumps about my special interests. Later, in college and graduate school, I worked on my social skills, so social skills are no longer the problem. In fact, most autistic adults have better social skills than I do. Now I'm able to hold conversations. However, I still find developing deep relationships challenging. I think it's because of my unusual special interests and stubbornness/unusual way of thinking. You know that autistic people often have weird and socially inappropriate special interests.
For example, insisting to bike or take transit in LA has a lot of social ramifications. Most of my colleagues either don't have a bike or can't bike nearly as far as I can or are too scared to bike in LA. Colleagues are the easiest pool of friends, but it's difficult to hang out with them because I'm too obsessed with cycling. The corollary is that LA geography as I know it is very different from what most Angelinos know. I know way more about rivers (due to bike paths and scenery) and rails (because I take the train to cut unpleasant junk miles from my bike trips while MAMILs drive) and nooks and crannies (because I seek them out and because side roads are more pleasant to bike on) than freeways. I can draw LA and San Gabriel rivers and their main tributaries from memory. It's hard not to do infodump monologues when most colleagues don't know about the cool things I'm so fascinated with. As a result, when we talk, it's usually about work, which we have in common.
Meanwhile, I have a very unique way to think about cycling. Because I've never had a car, I think of cycling as a means of transport more than a sport, so the purpose of my bike trips is to check out cool places and philosophize about them rather than athletic performance. Cycling has become more a philosophy and an art than a sport to me. But meanwhile I can bike for a long time for a continuous DJ mix of adventure. I spend a lot of time looking up info about places and planning trips. Most MAMILs I know who can bike for a long time usually ride the same few routes and aren't so interested in checking out strange new places. So it's not so easy for me to find riding partners.
