working it out as I go along

Well, my writing of my blog has been very sporadic, interspersed by me randomly deleting all entries out of my odd discomfort at the idea of my thoughts being on the internet forever.

I have kept returning to the Wibsite though, and reading blogs and thinking I’d like to write more of mine at some time. And then one day the blogs were all being moved, so I realised I couldn’t write even if I wanted to. Strange how not being able to write makes my want to write more immediately, despite the fact I hadn’t written anything for months. So I waited to get my blog back and finally got an email saying it had been deleted due to lack of use, but I could get it back if I asked.

Well, my first thought was ‘Ah, well, maybe that’s for the best, because I wasn’t writing in it, and it was a bit of a sporadic mess!’ But then I went to have a look at the new wibsite, and it was so different and nifty-looking I immediately thought ‘Gosh, I want a shiny new blog too!’

So I got a blog (thank you, Chris). It is not the same as my old one, because I am starting from scratch, but my name here is still ‘fineline’. I don’t know if anyone remembers me, but when I had a blog before I was always trying to work out a theme for my blog. I wanted it to have some kind of theme – some kind of focus. And I kept getting ideas and changing them – another reason for the sporadicness (is that a word? sporadicity sounds good, but I doubt that is a word somehow… aha, my dictionary tells me it’s ’sporadicalness’, although Firefox doesn’t agree and is underlining it in red) of my blog.

But now I have a theme. A good theme that I like. Well, it is sort of a theme of my life – a theme that never seems to get anywhere. It is the theme of trying to be organised. Somehow, organisational skills elude me. Well, I know a lot more why this is now, because I have Aspergers, and I’ve been reading lots of the research about it, and it’s about ‘weak central coherence’. And when researchers did scans on brains of people with Aspergers and high functioning autism they found that the links between ‘top down processing’ and ‘bottom up processing’ in the brain were disrupted. So my top down skills enable me to make a lovely colourful detailed timetable – but it is the link between making that timetable and the bottom up skills of carrying it out that are difficult. Similarly, I can do something in the ‘bottom up’ way – I can get right into a task and do it – but if a timetable or any such top down thing is thrown in, then I get confused.

So. I have to find a different way to be organised to suit me and the way that my brain works. And I have more chance to do so now, because I am taking a year out of college. And (this is where the God bit comes in, because of course I know this is a Christian blogsite, so it’s good if my blog has some connection with my faith) I have decided to spend the time of Advent devoted to finding a way of being organised. Because, as I think I’ve said before, I don’t find Easter/Lent/Christmas/Advent very helpful in terms of them being times to remember Jesus’ death/birth. I know lots of other Christians find them helpful, but I don’t. I already know that Jesus was born and died, and I don’t need to be reminded, and to have a set period each year to think more about these facts is confusing and unnatural for me. But I do like the idea of a set period of time where I focus on doing something specific that is directly relevant to my life – like establishing a routine of prayer and Bible reading, for instance. Well, organisation seems to underpin everything. I need it to continue to read my Bible and pray every day, so it is relevant to my faith. And it is relevant to my studies of course. Without organisation, I don’t get things done.

I don’t know if it will be boring or interesting. But I think it will be a good discipline for me to record my journey in here every day. Of course now is the third day of advent, so I am behind. But I will catch up. And then after advent I will try to apply what I have learnt to my life and write about that.

(Gosh – there is a word count. I have apparently written 789 words. Which has now increased to… 805.)