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The original was posted on /r/aspergers by /u/NaturalPermission on 2023-10-05 12:46:00.

I was helping out a guy paint parts of his house. I spent all day planning and painting a doorway, putting tape down, being meticulous but efficient (so I thought), and it took 3 hours plus another 40 minutes the next day for a second coat.

The guy comes back from vacation and says he’ll get the other unpainted doorway, and finishes it in literally 20 minutes and it looks way better than my job, didn’t use painters tape, just got it done. He’s not a painting wizard or anything too, just a regular dude. He also saw my work and appreciated it, but pointed out some spots where it wasn’t thick enough and did that for me.

I try so hard all the time to be focused on doing something, to really feel like I’m giving it my all to do a balanced, “solid job,” and I feel that way until I compare myself to anyone else and see that I’m slow as hell. How do people do things so fast? I tried to think back to the painting example, and I guess I was just doing aspie things: staring for too long at the paint, staring at the doorway and thinking of all the little things that could go wrong or right and contemplating that way too deeply, taking a lot of breaks that felt necessary — and likely were for someone like us — but are unnecessary for a NT, and all that.

In a vacuum having autism is fine. Having to compete and interact with others? That’s where our tribe gets screwed. I’ve never been able to get a decent job, and for huge swaths of time no job at all. That’s likely because I’m not a bad hire, but other people are clearly just better than me. And why hire me when someone else can do the work at 300% efficiency?

Who knew painting a doorway could send me into existential despair.