Introducing The Autistic Guide to Not Being Available Today — out now. One hundred and four illustrated truths about small talk, soft socks, and politely declining to attend.
You have removed a shoe in public because of a sock seam. You have written down what you were going to say before a phone call, rehearsed it twice, held the paper like a hostage negotiator — and then they answered with “hello?” in a slightly different tone than expected and the entire document became useless. You have read all forty-seven messages in the group chat and reacted to none of them, and as far as the group is concerned, you have died.
If any of that landed, this book already knows.
The problem with being explained
There is no shortage of books about autism. There is a real shortage of books that are funny about it, written from the inside, for adults.
Look at the shelf and you’ll find memoirs, clinical guides, and a great many books for or about children. What you won’t find much of is the thing you’d actually want to hand a friend: something small and sharp that makes an autistic person laugh in recognition rather than feel studied. Most books about autism are written about autistic people. They explain. They assess. They gently suggest you try harder at eye contact.
This one doesn’t do any of that. Not to explain you, not to fix you — just to hand you a hundred small moments and watch you go “…oh, that’s ME.”
What this book actually is
The Autistic Guide to Not Being Available Today is a browsable gift book: 104 entries, one per page, each with its own simple line drawing, grouped into seven themed sections. You open it anywhere. You read one page. You hand it across the room to someone and say “this. This is what I meant.”
It is not a diagnosis, a symptom list, or a lecture. It’s a field guide to one specific way of moving through the world — the kind that finds the exact wrong sock unbearable and the exact right subject glorious.
What’s inside
- Social Situations (The Great Outdoors of Other People) — the pre-call script, the exact reason “we should get coffee sometime” ruined four years, and why the kitchen is the only good part of any party
- Sensory Life (The Texture of Everything) — sock seams, the fridge that was humming the whole time, the tag that had to go, and the specific betrayal of a scratchy towel
- Special Interests (Please, I Have Prepared Remarks) — the info-dump, the six words that precede your entire personality, and the rare and glorious occasion when the train is actually invited
- Masking & Energy (Battery Not Included) — the social hangover, the work voice on a timer, and what “you don’t seem autistic” actually costs to earn
- Routines & Plans (I Had a System) — the grief of a plan being changed, the pure joy of a cancelled one, and the correct way to load a dishwasher
- Communication & Language (I Meant Exactly What I Said) — literalism, the second secret question underneath the first one, and why a text is civilization and a phone call is an ambush with a ringtone
- Signing Off (Do Not Disturb) — the relief of meeting someone you don’t have to translate yourself for, and permission to simply not be available today
Not every page is a punchline. Scattered through the jokes are the quiet ones — the pages about the person you don’t have to translate yourself for, about caring so much about one thing that it becomes the best feature you came with. The book laughs with, and every so often it stops and means something.
Who it’s for
Autistic adults with a sense of humour about their own wiring. People who suspect they might be autistic and haven’t said it out loud yet. And anyone buying for an autistic friend, partner, sibling or grown-up child who would rather be laughed with than explained to.
No diagnosis required, and none assumed. If you’re not autistic and someone who loves an autistic person handed you this — welcome, too. Think of it as a window, not a manual.
Not being available today
Not because I don’t like you. Not because anything is wrong. Simply because there are a finite number of “outside voice, outside face” hours in a day, and today’s are already spent.
You are not a problem to be solved, a puzzle to be cracked, or a series of symptoms in a trench coat. That’s not a bug list. That’s just you.
The Autistic Guide to Not Being Available Today by Jamie Shaw is available now on Amazon. Leave it on a friend’s desk. Text a photo of the one page that is unmistakably them. That’s how the good in-jokes travel.
This is a humor book written from lived and researched experience. It is not medical advice or a diagnostic tool.