Ha ha! I’m going to quit, anyway! :D :D :D

I’ve been wrestling with the odious task of putting together a PowerPoint presentation for my boss – who’s covering for me at a workshop next week, while I’m at a family reunion. Personally, I think I’d rather go to the dreary slog of daylong meetings of people droning on, rather than dealing with my family for four days straight… but that’s now how things turned out, this time.

I guess, instead of sitting at a table, surreptitiously checking my social media 😉  while I feign “engagement”, I’ll have to pay attention to real live people with whom I (ever so reluctantly) grew up.

That whole reunion thing is a hot mess I just can’t even get into, right now.

But back to the PPT (as we so fondly call those instruments of corporate torture)…

I’ve been sweating over it for days, because it’s going to be presented at some Highly Momentous Planning Session that you’d think was swaying the future of the known-and-mapped world, the way people are going on about it. Basically, the workshop is pretty important. But that’s only because it’s the only way they can get all the chronically distracted people to pay attention to the same thing at the same time, so they can audibly commit to doing the jobs they’re supposed to do, anyway.

For this, I need to fly halfway across the country?! If people would just do their jobs, we’d be that much better off.

But I’m being unrealistic. For them, anyway.

And this Momentous Occasion will depend on me delivering Just The Right Amount Of Information, orienting everyone to the present and future state of the technology we’re in the process of delivering (late). Pressure, pressure. Meetings with my boss. And my boss’es boss. And reviews by the boss’es boss’es VP boss. High drama, indeed. So, it has to be right. And I’ve been sweating it.

But every now and then, I have to deliberately remind myself — I’m leaving this job at my first opportunity, so the pressure is off. When I go, the waters will close behind me, like the Red Sea enveloping the Egyptians behind the fleeing Israelites. And I shall be free to move about the desert as I choose. 🙂

Yeah, I can’t wear myself out with worry over things like Getting Everything Right. It’s in my autistic nature to fret over details like that. But honestly, all I need to do in the neurotypical world is come up with something halfway passable, and then act the part of someone who is extremely self-possessed and commanding. NT people love that. They really do. It doesn’t matter – at all – if there’s any substance to it. All that matters is the feeling of confidence and surety I give them, when I talk. It’s taken me years and years and years to get that substance usually takes a back seat to form with non-autistic people. And it’s taken me even longer to come to terms with it.

But hey, that’s how they roll, and as long as I can hack their behavior and simulate something that works for them, that’s cool. We’re cool. And that’s how I get ahead. I am often (by definition) an impostor in the process, but then, so are they. And if they don’t care, I can’t get worked up over it.

Whatever works.

Plus… ha ha! Even if my PPT is a dismal failure (which it won’t be, because I know how to REPRESENT!!! when I present to those folks)… I’m still leaving at my first opportunity.

And no, the proverbial door will not hit me on the way out. They’ll be eating my dust.