working it out as I go along

I wrote this earlier:

On Monday morning, the agency phoned to tell me my shift was cancelled. Which actually felt quite nice – it’s like unexpectedly being given a holiday. Sure, I don’t get the money, but I’d had so many shifts the week before, it didn’t matter so much.

However, there was then the dilemma of how to get in my regular habit of walking. While working a shift motivates me to walk, simply because I have to get to work, if I have nowhere to go, then it is hard to motivate myself to walk. But I really wanted to keep up the walking habit I’d started, so I decided to find somewhere to go. I would go to the city centre and hand in my time sheets, as I had to do that at some point anyway.

I initially decided I wouldn’t walk to the city centre, because it’s too far away. But I know that logically that is is not a real reason, because it’s only between five and six miles, so not much further than walking to various workplaces. But there were other reasons I didn’t want to walk – I find the walk to the city centre confusing. I’ve been a few times before with a friend from college, and every time I would try to memorise the way, and every time I would fail. I have absolutely no sense of direction. If I am looking on a map, I can find my way anywhere, but if I have no map I am not able to find my way from landmarks and things. I need to see the map first. I do have a map, but I wasn’t able to find the way to the city centre on it, because the direct way means walking by a very busy intersection with no pavement. So in my head, the only ‘correct’ way was the way I’d been with this college friend, and I had no idea which way this was on the map – I couldn’t remember whether we’d turned left or right at various points.

So, I decided to walk part of the way and then take the bus when I got stuck. But when I got to the part where I was stuck, I realised I didn’t want to take the bus. I hadn’t walked far enough. I was now on a roll and wanted to walk the whole way. So I decided to improvise, and go a way that seemed to make sense on the map, and if it turned out to be an impossible way, I would turn back.

I found a way to walk. I realised it was a bit different from the way I’d walked with my friend, but also at a certain point, I actually realised what the way was that I’d walked with her, because I met a certain road from one direction and then saw the bridge from which I’d walked with my friend meeting the road in the other direction. And then I realised how it was actually very easy and not at all scary to walk to the city centre, and I thought about why I’d thought it was so impossible and overwhelming.

This is what I realised. When other people teach me things, I get overwhelmed. I need to figure things out for myself. This friend, while she was showing me the landmarks and explaining that her way was better than the main road, had actually overwhelmed me because she was talking from some context that I didn’t share. It is the same with lectures at college – I don’t learn from being taught. I need to be told simply the target and then allowed to be free to find my own way to attain it. To be coached in the way is highly confusing for me. I simply need a clear target.

Well, this is quite discouraging in a way, because if I am to return to college or switch to another college, and finish my degree, I will need to attend lectures and continue to be confused. Unless, possibly, I were to attend a college that does problem-based learning, where they give you the problem and you have to go away and solve it. I like the idea of that. However, I believe that such courses also make you do it in groups, which I don’t like. I need to solve things all by myself.

Something else I’ve observed is that while I can walk five miles and not get exhausted from it, ten minutes under a fluorescent light will totally exhaust me. It seems silly, but that is how it is. Sensory overstimulation exhausts me.

Today it is Wednesday, and I realise that today I am exhausted. My first thought was that it must be from all that walking on Monday, but then I realised that actually that walk didn’t exhaust me at all. I’m exhausted because yesterday I went on ‘breakaway’ training. It is not a physically strenuous training, although it is physical. It involves learning how to break away from clients who attack you – if they grab your arm, for instance, or try to strangle you, or pull your hair. This is so that I can work in learning disabilities as well as with elderly. We did a few warm ups for the course, but it wasn’t tiring.

There were three things that were tiring about the course though.

One was the fluorescent lights. I didn’t realise they would have such an effect on me, because the natural light was so bright, but there came a point where I got really dizzy and I couldn’t think straight – I was aware I was zoning out. So I asked if I could turn off the fluorescent lights, and the guy said yes, and I did – and it actually made no difference to the brightness of the room, but made a huge difference to me.

The second thing that was tiring about the course was the physical coordination – trying to watch the moves that the instructor was making and then make them myself. I find such things very confusing – like learning to dance or doing step aerobics. I always do it wrong. My body doesn’t coordinate well, and it’s very hard to watch someone do something and then translate it to my own body.

The third thing that exhausted me about this course was the physical contact. It was too much. I don’t like my arm being grabbed, not even gently. I still can feel where people grabbed my arm, hours later. At work I don’t let the residents grab my arm or even hold my hand. I put one hand on their back and my other hand lightly holds their arm, and I’ll only do it that way. That is the safest way anyway, so I tell them that. Anyway, I don’t like having to be constantly paired up with another person and do physical stuff with them, like on this course, where they have to hold me or grab me and I have to hold them or grab them. I don’t like any of this stuff because it invades my space and I am too sensitive to it, and it makes me feel exhausted and boundary-less. I don’t mind someone occasionally touching me in a friendly way, but I don’t like all this physical pair-work.

And then I did an unwise thing after the training. I went to the sauna and steamroom, which normally I like, but yesterday it exhausted me even more, because that is more physical sensation and there comes a point where there is too much. For instance, I love massages, but right now I could not have a massage. It would be intrusive, because my body has had its fill of sensory stuff. I have to go to work in a minute because I have a shift today, and I am really not looking forward to it, because I am tired in this way. I do not feel like assisting anyone to the toilet or transferring them into their wheelchairs and lifting their legs and all that. I just feel like being all by myself. But anyway, then I don’t have a shift until Saturday, and I won’t take any more shifts this week, so I hope I will be rested by then.

Right now I am feeling a fragmentedness in my life. There is no sense of continuity, because I’ve been doing different things on different days, and I haven’t been doing my organisation strategies lately, because it’s hard to switch between work mode and strategy mode, and I don’t have the energy at the moment. But it is good that I’m aware of this, and it’s something I need to find a strategy to fix, because this is of course what life is like, and what it will be like if I return to college, so I need to find a way of dealing with it. I did have an idea of having a physical prompt – something to always have in my pocket to grasp regularly to give me a sense of continuity and remind me to work on strategies and to see the big picture. I will try this and see if it works.

(Am back from work now and very much looking forward to two days off!)