EMPATHY, AUTISM, & LEARNING HOW TO INTERACT AND SHARE APPROPRIATELY
This is an excerpt from Joe Biel’s seventh book, Good Trouble: Building a Successful Life & Business with Asperger’s. which details many mistakes that proved to be learning opportunities and the first 20 years of Microcosm Publishing.
I made a rule when I turned eighteen that I would get only one tattoo per year. I was afraid I would run out of real estate on my body before I had really good ideas later in life. For the first few years I would plan out the next four or five tattoos. Ideas rarely got scrapped but sometimes got refined. Most of the concepts were paper-thin and the executions weren’t much better. I took images that were meaningful to me and put them on my body — things my friends had drawn or artwork I found on albums that I liked or things to represent commitments to my politics — “One Less Car,” “Revolution Between The Lines,” or “Break Free From Gender Roles.”
After the better part of seven years of walking around with permanent ink, I started to feel a little on display, expecting to be judged, or maybe just a little tired of explaining what these things mean over and over. In the social circles that I was a part of and…