Why I started 'Aligned Differently'

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A reflection on the years I spent chasing security, the perspective I gained when I finally stopped, and why I created Aligned Differently.

For most of my career, I was in a kind of survival mode, although I didn’t fully understand that at the time. That may sound dramatic, but when I think about the activities, the thoughts, and especially the constant inner dialogue, it feels accurate even if I still find it difficult to admit.

A lot of it happened in the background. It had become so normal that I barely noticed it. For years, I carried one overriding objective: get myself to a safe place. By safe, I meant knowing that I would be financially secure and able to build a good life with my wife and daughter.

The things I thought I needed in order to reach that place changed over the years, but the underlying goal never really did. My financial position improved. I had a nice home. I had many of the things I once looked at from a distance and hoped I might someday have, yet the finish line kept moving. I still felt that I had to make it through my working years.

Some mornings, I would get up wondering whether this would be the day everyone finally realized I didn’t belong. Other mornings, I would go to work wondering whether this would be the day they finally realized I wasn’t being used to my potential, that somehow the promotions, opportunities and recognition would suddenly arrive. Those are two very different beliefs, yet they existed side by side for years, arguing with each other in my head.

Then something interesting happened when I turned 53. The noise began to organize itself. Thoughts that had drifted around for years suddenly seemed to have structure. Ideas that had once felt abstract started to connect. It was almost as though someone had come into my mind, cleared away a pile of old boxes, and created room for something new.

Why 53? Two words: maximum severance.

As long as I didn’t do something spectacularly foolish and get myself fired for cause, I had reached the point where my pension was effectively safe. I had enough years of service and had reached the age where, even if the airline industry went through another round of downsizing and my employer decided it was time for us to part ways, I would be okay.

For me, that knowledge was enormous. It felt like crossing a finish line. For the first time, I could imagine losing my job without immediately imagining catastrophe. I would not have to scramble to reinvent myself, convince another employer to take a chance on me, or wonder whether I could recover financially.

I could exhale and once I did, something unexpected happened. Mental space appeared. The background frustration I had carried about certain experiences became easier to examine. Situations I had worked through over the years looked different when I was no longer viewing them through the constant pressure of survival.

I became curious. I started Aligned Differently because I became increasingly interested in the distance between what happens and how each of us experiences what happens.

I learned later in life that I am autistic. Even now, I sometimes find that sentence difficult to write. Not because I am ashamed of it, and not for the same reasons I struggled with the diagnosis when I first received it. Those are stories for another time.

What makes it difficult now is that neurodivergence has become part of a much larger public conversation, and sometimes that conversation can feel dismissive, fashionable or polarised.

I have no interest in spending my time arguing about any of that. It will not change the way my brain functions. What matters to me is learning how to live well in a world that I sometimes experience differently. Since learning that I am neurodivergent, I have learned a great deal about myself. But Aligned Differently is not intended to be a lecture about neurodiversity, nor is it meant to convince anyone of anything. I simply want to live, thrive, observe and understand.

The name came from my attempt to make sense of the idea that our brains do not all process the world in exactly the same way. I am not a medical professional, and I am not offering a scientific definition. The phrase is simply the way I came to understand my own experience: my brain is not broken, defective or incomplete. It is aligned differently and because I have never been neurotypical, I cannot truly explain what that experience feels like any more than someone else can fully explain mine to me.

I can describe the differences between Montreal and Toronto, or New York and Los Angeles, because I have spent time in all of them. I have points of comparison. I do not have that same comparison when it comes to how another person’s mind feels from the inside.

I can observe. I can ask questions. I can make assumptions. Sometimes I will be right and sometimes I will be very wrong and that, increasingly, is what interests me. How often do we assume someone else experienced a meeting, a relationship, a leader, a workplace, a memory or a conversation exactly the way we did? How often are we wrong?

Aligned Differently, for me, is simply an acknowledgement of that possibility. It is not a campaign, movement nor an instruction manual. It is a quiet expression of pride in seeing the world the way I see it, while remaining curious about how other people see it too.

So I created a website. I started writing. I designed a logo and put it on a hat and a shirt.

At first, those things were just for me. Then other people told me they liked the idea. Some said the phrase meant something to them too. A few even asked if I could make something for them.

Consider for a moment that it isn’t all that different from someone walking down the street wearing the jersey of their favourite NHL, NFL or NBA team. It is a quiet way of saying, this means something to me. This is simply mine and that made me wonder what else this could become.

I’m writing blogs. I’m working on a book built around observations I’ve made over decades of working, living, leading, following, succeeding, misunderstanding and trying again. There may be other things too. I don’t know yet and I think I like that.

I retired recently, and I needed something that could become a hobby, something I could care about, build slowly, and remain curious about.

This is it.

I happen to be neurodivergent. That inevitably shapes the way I see things but Aligned Differently isn’t meant only for people whose brains work like mine. In fact, the point may be exactly the opposite. It is about what becomes possible when we become curious about perspectives that are not our own.

If that interests you, come along for the journey.

I’m curious to see where it leads.