working it out as I go along

The seventh day of Advent was frustrating for me because I felt like my ear was getting a bit better (it was popping sometimes, like on an aeroplane), but I knew I was still feeling ill and sometimes I find it hard to tell how unwell I am. I started the day according to how I’d planned to do it the previous day: I divided my day into 40-minute segments, and then I wrote down my thoughts and feelings. And as I was writing, I noticed I was feeling less tired and more positive than the day before, even though I’d not had much sleep. So then I felt happy and wrote about how good it was that I was feeling better.

I am very impatient with being sick – I think I should get better straight away, and I don’t fully accept the concept of having to wait. Even though the doctor told me it would be four days before my ear starts feeling better, and three weeks before I am fully better, I don’t really believe him, which logically I know is silly of me, but still I think that way. But because I am aware of this, I then wrote in my daily thoughts about how I shouldn’t go overboard and tire myself out from doing lots of things because I’m all happy at feeling better, and that I should be careful. But then throughout the day, I didn’t think about this. I did lots and lots of ‘ten things’ (I think stopping at five lots of ten things is a very good idea, and maybe it would be good if I enforced it on myself after all – or maybe if I make it a maximum of ten lots of ten things.).

And then I went on the internet to try to find a place to order a grey tinted overlay for reading. I got one from the optician in August, but I have lost it, and I don’t like the other colours, and it takes an hour to walk to the optician, and I don’t like taking the bus and I don’t feel like walking when I’m feeling ill, so I decided to search the internet. The site I found last time did not have any grey ones. But I searched for ages and then finally found a site, and made an order. Part of me felt very happy, but part of me realised how much time I’d spent on the internet just trying to find that tinted overlay and I was annoyed at the waste of time.

But then, after I ate my dinner, I went back to the internet again and spent hours on there, just chatting to various people and posting things on forums and blogs, totally disregarding my 40-minute segment plan. I think I get so tired and then it’s more of an effort to make myself get off the internet. But in general, I do waste a lot of time online, and it is a big obstacle in the way of being organised.

Later I was in a chat room, and some people upset me because they read things into what I was saying that weren’t there. This is the thing that upsets me most, when people do that – it is very frustrating for me when I say something and people decide I meant something other than what I said, or that I had subtle bad motives for saying it. I know why it happens though. It is because in life most people say things with subtle motives, and  they mean a lot more than the words of what they said, so they assume that everyone else does too, and they never believe that you ask a question purely because you want to know, out of simple scientific curiosity, which is the reason most people on the autistic spectrum ask questions. And it is worse on a Christian site because people have all these assumptions about what a ‘typical Christian’ is thinking (such as weighing up whether the person you’re talking to or about is a Christian) so they attribute those to you – which is very frustrating when you are not thinking in those terms.

So, what happened was that I was upset. I get very confused and distressed when people  assume there are things in my head which are not there. And even more so when they are indirect about it, so I can’t actually discuss it openly with them. I know this is the way people are, and I can’t change it, and I am the one who is expected to change because I am in the minority, etc., so then I decided I should not go back to that site for a while, and that I should never go into any chat rooms ever again, because I find them too confusing to deal with. I think my personality is not the kind that can go in chat rooms.

But then I decided that actually maybe this is a good thing, because clearly it is important that I stop spending so much time on the internet if I am to find a serious organisation plan, and maybe being upset and getting negative associations is the most effective way of keeping me away. So I made a new strategy for this week. I will not go on the internet apart from to check my emails and to renew my library books, and also to post my Advent organisation plan here. It is important that I keep writing up and posting my Advent organisation plan, so that I don’t give up on it.

So my seventh strategy, like my sixth one, was not one that I employed on the day of discovering it, but more one that I learnt from my mistakes. I am realising that is also a valid way of coming upon a strategy. Not just finding strengths and capitalising on them, but also finding weaknesses and avoiding them.

So I realise more and more that it’s important that I turn my focus away from the internet, and on finding a solid, workable organisation plan. Today, as I write this, it is the eighth day of Advent, and it is 4:30pm, and I have only been on the internet for ten minutes today, to check my email. Consequently, I’ve been able to do a lot more reading. So it seems a good strategy so far.