my life, but everybody with Asperger’s learns by failing. Even things that were terrible at the time were helpful, because they became a priority and I had to make the time to figure out who I am, what makes me feel good, what I want, and why I don’t fit in anywhere.”
which he wasn’t aware of until he was around 30. He speeds through the events of his life in a casual tone, and his deadpan humor—a difficult achievement in print—comes through strongest in the phrases he uses to describe himself, such as “eccentric old man in training.”
Biel’s honesty, his resolve, his tenacity, and his failures as much as his successes make the reader want to root for him, step in and give him a hand, or in some cases, shield him—although Biel never invites anything resembling pity. “As a society, we only focus on this idea of mitigating failure with Asperger’s,” says Biel. “What is more important to me is to change the conversation. Aspies can gain success. It does happen all the time. We eventually get to a place where we can carve out a life for ourselves. I feel like I would have inevitably found what I needed to be happy.”
“‘Good Trouble’ is what everybody always wanted from me,” says Biel. “I had to give up having a private life long ago. If I weren’t sharing things about my life in a 100,000 word personal book, people would try to connect the dots on their own and make weird assumptions and leaps in logic. Plus, when you have Asperger’s and they don’t know that part of the story, you come across as an insensitive jerk. By the time I wrote ‘Good Trouble,’ I very much knew who I was, how I felt about things and what my values were.”
.....
“When you have Asperger’s, you continue to evolve intellectually in a way that a neurotypical person doesn’t,” Biel explains. “I get smarter every year of
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