New strategies

I seem to have found an organisational strategy that works. However, it’s only been 2 days – I find various strategies often work for a couple of days, but then they are hard to maintain.

I decided to make organisation itself my main goal, rather than studying. This is because I found it confusing to have two separate goals – one goal was to be organised, and so I was doing various things to be organised, but the other goal was to study, and the organisation was supposed to lead to studying. I decided to see studying as just one of the many things I will do in order to become organised, rather than a goal that organisation is supposed to lead to. I guess I was confused because organisation was both an end in itself and a means to an end. So I’ve made it just the end, and studying has become one of the means, rather than another end.

I decided to make a list of things to do, in order, and to complete them in the order written. This is different from a random list where there is no order – it tells me where to start, what to move on to, etc. However, it’s also different from the timetabled lists, where everything has a time – I found those daunting and impossible because some things take longer or shorter than I planned, and if I can’t follow it exactly, I abandon it.

So, today and yesterday I have followed an ordered list, which I write in the morning, in my Asda notebook with squared paper. However, I do sometimes find myself grinding to a halt when I realise the next thing to do is study. I have something of a blind spot about studying. I think because I don’t know beforehand exactly how it will go and that I’ll be able to do it. So I haven’t done all the studying I planned.

I also found another strategy. I was trying to work my way around FlyLady (I have a feeling the FlyLady stragegies won’t work) and trying to find an alternative to wearing shoes indoors. I decided to wear a dress, to see if the fact that I was wearing something different might inspire me. I then put on long stripy socks, and was reminded that I like the feeling of pressure around my legs.  And it occurred to me that my decision to wear very loose soft clothes because of how I hate clothes that feel stiff or dig into me may not be the best decision. Maybe better to have soft clothes that are a little bit tight. Not digging into me, but which exert an equal pressure all over. These socks weren’t quite equal – they dug in at the very top, above my knees. So I decided to buy tights. I haven’t worn tights for years – I stopped when I realised I didn’t like the fact that they were so hard to pull all the way up, and that the crotch part was halfway down my thighs. I realise that I must have been wearing tights that were simply too small. I bought some today in Asda – large size, even though I’m not large, because there were no mediums in stock, and I didn’t want to get small and have them be hard to pull up. So I bought a pack of three pairs of tights. I like them. I like the feeling of being squeezed slightly – it makes me feel more centred, more aware of myself as an individual with boundaries. Now I would like to buy some tops that are also a bit tight.

Am wondering whether to continue this blog. I haven’t been writing every day like I’d planned. I have now decided to make 10:00pm my time to write my blog. But I’m not sure how helpful it’s going to be any more – my Asda notebook seems to be fulfilling my needs. I don’t know if the additional accountability of writing online will work as a motivator. After all I haven’t been. But I’ll try it for another month and see.

FlyLady

I got overwhelmed and stopped writing in here. That is what happens when my lack of organisation gets too much for me. I just stop doing thing.

Then I joined FlyLady. I joined it once before, a few years ago, but never got into it. But I thought I’d give it another try.

On day 1, you are supposed to clean your sink. So I did. But then I clicked on another FlyLady page that tells you exactly how to do it, and I realised I’d got it wrong. I had to fill the sink with hot water and bleach. So I did that.

Then the plug hole bothered me. It had dirty bits in it and around it. I realised the only way to clean it properly would be to unscrew it and pull it out. I vaguely remembered doing that at my old home when I first tried FlyLady.

I soon remembered exactly why I’d quit FlyLady the first time round. Once you unscrew your kitchen sink plug hole, you see all the gooeyness down the pipe, which is impossible to clean, and you feel overwhelmed. I use the generic ‘you’, but I mean me. I get all horrified and disheartened and realise what a cheap, crap sink I have and how I would really need to get a new one but can’t afford it. And then I realise that because I’ve removed the plug with it’s rubber seal thingy, then water is leaking out of the pipe, and then I panic and think my house is falling apart.

So I put my sink back together, as before, with the uneasy feeling that I never want to do that again. My sink is a cheap crap sink and it will never be totally sparkly shiny. But it’s clean enough. I am not going to use window cleaner or car wax. That’s just daft.

Tomorrow brings another challenge. The instructions are: ‘Today I want you get up and get dressed to lace up shoes when you first get up in the morning. This means fix your hair and face too.’ This is not going to happen. I will not wear my shoes inside the house. Whatever I sit on, I like to sit in a crouch position, so my feet are always on whatever I’m sitting on. I am not going to put shoes on my furniture. Or even on my carpet. Shoes are for outside.

I am also not going to fix my hair and face. They do not need fixing. They are fine as they are.  I will brush my hair and wash my face, and that will do.

Am not sure how successful this whole FlyLady thing is going to be…

Organisational update: 18th Sept 09

It’s now 1:00am, so 19th Sept, although this entry is for the 18th.

Evidently, I haven’t got organised as far as getting to bed on time. Nor with my studies – still avoiding them.

Healthwise, however, things are good. Well, other than the stress I must be experiencing from not studying and being aware of the deadline looming. Thing is, I don’t actually feel that stressed. I attribute this to healthy eating. Every day, I’m eating a healthy breakfast of oats, fruit and quark, sometimes with nuts and cacao too. I have a salad for lunch – a big salad, with all kinds of ingredients. Then a cooked meal for dinner – today rice and a lamb chop. The lack of junk food and processed food is having an amazing effect on my skin, and also on my clarity of mind. Feels good that there is one thing I’m organising.

Removed the full spectrum light. It really wasn’t like daylight. It was making me sweat, as fluorescent lights do, and making my vision strange and blotchy, and annoying me by making a high pitched noise. I bought a halogen light bulb – a new product. It’s great. Bright and yet comfortable.

Feeling good, but knowing I should be feeling bad, regarding studies not done, and various other things not done. An odd feeling.

Aspergers, self, identity

Despite the fact that no one reads this, I feel a rather random urge to introduce myself. I suppose to put the entries into some kind of context. I’m wishing for some kind of order. And possibly some coherent sense of self.

I don’t actually have one – a coherent sense of self, that is. I am given to believe this is an aspect of Aspergers. I see myself in terms of a timeline – all I’ve done and said and thought, all that’s happened to me. Each individual detail. I don’t have a sense of the whole. No sense of Gestalt – a simple ‘this is who I am’. Not sure if this is good or bad. I’ve never had a sense of self with which to compare. I’m sure it adds to the sense of confusion with which I live every day.

From that angle, a label like ‘Aspergers’ brings some sense of clarity and coherence. No wonder, perhaps, that a lot of people with Aspergers cling to their label, wear it with pride, use it in every conversation, as the ultimate definition of who they are. My relationship with my label is more ambivalent. It is useful, but it is not definitive, any more than ‘neurotypical’ is a definitive label. It’s a starting point. I am who I am, which is different from everyone else in the world. I have things in common with some people on the autistic spectrum, and also some neurotypicals. Well, I have things in common with everyone – I live, I breathe, I bleed, etc.

I feel rather ambivalent about this blog, as it defines me as someone with Aspergers (unlike a lot of aspies, I have no problem with calling myself someone ‘with Aspergers’. I also would have no problem with calling myself someone ‘with femaleness’. The someone part, to me, is the essential part – and the female part and the Asperger part are things that happen to be there). I do not think my identity is reduced to this aspect of myself. At the same time, I have no particular sense of identity anyway, and understanding the Asperger part of me may well help me to learn to be organised, to achieve the things I want to achieve… to discover what it is that I want to achieve.

Have I introduced myself yet? Is this sort of thing an introduction? Shall I talk about the fact that at present I’m a student – does my occupation define me? And if so, does that mean simply present occupation, or all occupations I’ve ever had – would a list of jobs help define me? Or hobbies – maybe they say what is in my soul, what I choose to do. The way I tend to define myself, often more as a realisation than a set identity, is that I am motivated by curiosity. One’s motivations, perhaps, say the most about a person. Then you could ask why – why am I motivated by curiosity? My answer is that I want to understand. Possibly because the world makes very little sense to me unless I analyse it. I don’t have the instinctive central coherence thing. Anyway, the reason I want to be organised is so that I can study effectively. Studying is a way to learn and understand. When I waste time, I am sabotaging myself and my goals. So the goal of this blog is ultimately to help me remove obstacles to satisfying my curiosity.

I assume there should be more to it than wanting to understand. After I understand, what then? What is the purpose of understanding? I think… I may be wrong, but I think it is an end in itself. I love the process of trying to understand and then of understanding. Of learning more and more.

Have I defined myself yet? I often wonder if others form a coherent sense of who I am, even though I don’t.

Today’s organisational update

Today I have still not done any study. I am not feeling so negative about it though. I am observing positive changes in general, regarding organisation. I am eating healthily. That may well be influenced more by my sore tongue than my organisational strategies, but I am still going shopping, buying healthy food, preparing it for myself, etc. I’ve been making sure I drink a barleygrass drink every day, for instance. This is all progress. The trampoline means I’m exercising more. Healthy diet and exercise are important building blocks, which need to be put into place first, so that other things can be built upon them.

Back to the full spectrum bulb. It helps if I wear a cap. There is actually something I quite like about it, although I realise it is now giving me a headache (after sitting in it for 30 minutes). I think there is something good about the light it emits. I assume the very fast flickering by which fluorescent lights work is what is causing the headache. Maybe a full spectrum LED light will solve this problem.

Full spectrum SAD light

I have bought a full spectrum SAD light bulb, which I have put in my bedroom, as that is the room I like to spend the most time in. I am in my bedroom right now, sitting on my bed, leaning on a bean bag. Very comfy.

I’m not sure about the light bulb. It apparently purifies the air and provides full spectrum light. It is a long life bulb – shaped like a spiral – which means it’s fluorescent. Supposedly the fact that it’s full spectrum makes it okay, and prevents it having the normal unpleasant effects of fluorescent lights. I can’t tell yet. It does feel a little like a fluorescent light – it creates the effect that my vision gets black spots constantly coming and going on it. I don’t think I feel dizzy – but then I’ve only sat under it for about twenty minutes so far. The light is bright. More white than normal light bulbs, which have a yellowy effect. It perks me up a little, I think. My eyes feel a little dry and stingy since I’ve been sitting here. I can put in eye drops and see how that helps.

I think it is possibly overstimulating me a little. I’d like to be able to make it less bright. I feel slightly shaky. Am thinking of getting a LED SAD light, the kind you plug in, to see whether that is better. They are pretty expensive though.

Food as a stim

I realise I’ve been using junk food as a kind of ’stim’.

Over the last couple of years I’ve eaten considerably more junk food than normal. However, the type of junk food I’ve been eating is the same as I’ve always enjoyed: bombay mix (the spicier, the better), hot and spicy flavoured Doritos, salt & vinegar flavour crisps, sour candy, prawn cocktail flavoured Skips.

I assumed I liked these for the flavour and the texture. That I was satisfying some oral need. I assumed that because I have been stressed for the last couple of years, these foods have been a comfort for me. Comfort eating.

I suppose in a sense, that is still true. But not quite in the way I imagined.

Last week I got an ulcer on the tip of my tongue. A tiny little lump, where one of the papillae things on my tongue was swollen. It felt like a crumb on my tongue – very very distracting and frustrating. So I bit the lump off. And then found myself gnawing at the end of my tongue a little. Soon my tongue was stinging all over the tip. And simultaneously I lost all cravings for the junk food I normally like. It seemed so odd, but when I tried to imagine eating a Dorito, I realised that what I like is the stimulating sensation of the spiciness and the friction of the texture against the tip of my tongue. My tongue didn’t need this now – it was already stimulated from the stinging. And I realised that I had somehow replaced the sensation of eating junk food by biting the ulcer on my tongue.

So, the ‘comfort’ I’ve been receiving from junk food is surely a type of pain. They do say that the experience of eating spicy food is actually a type of pain. I assume the same applies with sour candy. Why on earth would I be wanting to hurt my tongue, I wondered. And then reasoned that it’s a way of distracting from being overwhelmed in other areas of my life. It provides a focus. An intensity.

The ulcer and stinging is a lot better now. But my tongue still retains a slight rawness. And occasionally I gnaw at it a little, instinctively, without realising – I assume to increase the rawness. Probably not a good plan in the long run, as I imagine it would cause permanent damage. But interestingly, I’ve had no desire for junk food. Not really much hunger for any food. I’m quite happy to eat simple, natural healthy food – the kind that my body always craves, and seems to be in constant conflict about with my tongue. No more conflict. I’m eating less. I’m eating healthily. Simple. I no longer experience hunger, and I realise I probably never did – it was probably always a craving for the tongue stim thing. I have to make sure I eat enough.

I am hoping that now I am eating healthily, without conflict, then my mind will be clearer and less cluttered. Oddly, processed food always affects my mind – it becomes cluttered and overwhelmed, as if the food itself acts as an overstimulator. I went to Asda today and bought fruits and vegetables. Different from my normal Asda shop – I normally have the two extremes of fruits and vegetables on the one hand, and crisps and sweets on the other.

And now again, an update on how disorganised I’ve been. Perhaps after a while I’ll see a pattern which will help me discover the solution. Doubtful, but hey, there has to be some reason to continue with this.

Today, I had no desire to keep up any part of the routine. I actually just wanted to do nothing. Not even eat. Just to stay in bed and pretend today didn’t exist. Which sounds awfully weird and depressive, but I wasn’t depressed. Just liked the peacefulness of nothingness.

I didn’t actually stay in bed. Well, not all day. I got up. I ate. I bounced on my trampoline. I wrote in my journal. I didn’t study. I went online. I watched episodes of House. Felt overwhelmed by the thought of study, and so avoided it, to avoid being overwhelmed.

The point of this blog at present seems non-existent. But who knows, maybe it will prove useful.

Today

Trouble with these daily updates (and I’m a bit late with this one, as it’s now the early hours of the following day) is that when you’ve done a few of them about how you’ve failed to achieve what you planned, and you still haven’t found an organisational strategy that works, then discouragement sets in. Maybe a point will come where the discouragement will spur me into success. Or maybe it will start me in a negative thought pattern, where success seems impossible. Not sure. I’ll keep it up for at least a month, to see if it makes a difference.

I went to bed relatively early last night. 1:30am. Got up at 9:30am. So 8 hours sleep. Achieved the little organisational habits I’ve been trying to build into my life – healthy breakfast, jumping jacks, writing in my journal, etc.

I had a kind of epiphany – or a potential epiphany, as I’m not sure how useful or accurate it really is. It occurred to me that when I wake up I feel detached and miserable because it’s like life is an escalator and I have to step on. I’m not automatically on it. My natural state is in some weird limbo. I then extended the metaphor, and decided there were different escalators I could step onto – the internet one (bad idea), the study one (good idea). And I promptly stepped onto the internet one, after doing a bit of housework.

I did make myself get off and switch to doing study. I did a little bit of study – so better than previous days, I guess, but really not much study at all.

Then I watched 6 House episodes. I will soon have watched all of them. I suppose then I will watch them again. I like them.

My fitness levels should soon improve. I ordered a mini trampoline and it arrived today. I have been bouncing up and down on it quite a bit. It’s an exercise I enjoy – aware that I am thus fulfilling the stereotype that people on the autistic spectrum like trampolines. I suppose, as stereotypes go, it’s a pretty accurate one. I’m not sure as to the reasons, but hey, it’s ane exercise I enjoy, so I don’t really need reasons. Doesn’t stop me wanting them though. This is one reason I like House (in addition to the fascination of seeing Hugh Laurie with stubble, a limp and an American accent) – he always wants to understand things, and can’t understand when others aren’t curious. I can identify with this. Am kind of hoping it might help me become more organised – maybe the bouncing will shuffle stuff around in my brain or something.

It’s now 1:30am. I’d really like to watch more House episodes, but I think I will sleep instead. I’m tired.

Observations

I feel a new exhilarating freedom in this blog. Quite unexpected.

(This is not my regular daily update, but an extra entry where I observe with interest the experience of keeping this blog).

I’ve been an avid internet user for about 15 years. I’ve been a member of all kinds of different online communities, written dozens of blogs, contributed to many forums, and interacted with a variety of people, some of whom have become good friends.  What I note about all such sites is that my writing style adapts to those around me. I am communicating with them, and so write in a way that adapts to their expectations and needs. Sometimes I imitate popular styles of others – I am quite good at this, and can get myself very popular this way. Other times I am an exaggerated version of a certain side of myself – my eccentric side, or my logical side. I can entertain, I can give people what they expect, I can surprise people, annoy people, make people laugh, create drama, interact in a wide variety of ways.

Never have I written a blog which is, as it were, all alone, separate from community, and where I am not actually interacting. In fact, I’ve always thought that having a blog which no one knows about or comments is quite pointless. One might as well write in a paper journal. But now I am beginning to see the appeal of an unknown blog.

While adapting to interact with others is a normal and good part of human community, it is actually quite exhausting and confusing when you’re on the autistic spectrum. You lose a sense of separateness of self. The autistic mind doesn’t multitask – I can’t simultaneously hold in my mind a sense of myself as an individual and myself as a part of a group. So when in a group, I lose my sense of individuality. Not that it isn’t worth it. I need others. I need support. I enjoy the company of other people and their influence on my life. But it is also exhausting and confusing, and so I equally need to spend a lot of time separate from others. It never actually occurred to me that I could do this online.

The interesting thing about doing it online is that people can still see. It’s not a part of me hidden completely away. People may read this, and so this sense of separate self is somehow confirmed by an audience. When it’s just hidden away in a paper journal, I can doubt its existence. I somehow need the sense that I am still an individual amongst others.

And this, to my astonished realisation, is what this blog is doing. It didn’t occur to me at all. Mostly I was concerned about the dullness of this blog. But dullness only exists when I anticipate it being part of a community, in which I am an intrinsic part. Here I am part of no community. I am an individual, separate, just writing for myself what is helpful to me. So dullness doesn’t enter into the equation – it is something that only exists in relation to others.