working it out as I go along

Remember, during Advent, I mentioned getting an odd inspiration at 4:00am to write about asexuality, and said I might post it sometime after Advent. Well, here is it (and be warned, it is incredibly long!) …

It’s 4:00am, and I’m not tired. Having spent the last few days exhausted, unwell and in pain, today I was delighted to discover I felt better. With it came a renewed feeling of cheerfulness and good humour and renewed energy. Also renewed concentration – I could sit and read for longer. So I sat and read Ghosts by Adrian Plass. I’d bought it cheap from amazon, as I’d always quite enjoyed reading his books years ago, and felt like reading another one.

I was reminded, as I read it, that as well as being quite amusing and interesting to read, his books also invoke a kind of frusration and illogical sense of inadequacy in me. See, his books all tend to have the same running themes in them. One such theme is the importance of being real – not being some fake whitewashed thing, but to be yourself freely, with your real feelings, your real struggles, etc. With which I wholeheartedly agree, and in fact that part makes me feel quite happy, because being real is something I’m jolly good at. But then comes the next bit. Real single women have real, strong, passionate sexual feelings and fantasies. Being single and refraining from sex is a struggle. Real Christian single women are not some fake feelingless imaginary super-spiritual beings who are above sexual feelings. And if they claim they are, they are not being real.

Of course, my logic and common sense tell me that Adrian Plass probably hasn’t even heard of asexuality, and if he met me and I told him what it was, he probably would exempt me from this terrible judgement of not being real! But of course, back in my younger days, when I’d never heard of asexuality, and I assumed I must simply be repressed, I used to come away from his books with the vague feeling that I was somehow sinning for not having sexual thoughts! That I wasn’t yet good enough to be a proper ‘real’ Christian. It amuses me to look back, but still I find myself frustrated with Adrian Plass’s books. They always neatly include the single woman dealing with her sexual feelings, the gay man struggling with his feelings, and there is always a bit of a tone that suggests such topics are rather daring – but never do they include an asexual woman who wonders what a sexual feeling is and why she doesn’t have one. Never do they include a character on the autistic spectrum who, unlike the rest of Plass’s lovely ‘real’ characters. really doesn’t know all the right things to say at the right time, or when to be flippant and when to be serious, in order to prevent or rectify difficult moments.

I remember as a child I was seen as a bit of a rude ingrate with the makings of a naughty heathen at church because I never wanted the Christian children’s novels that I won as prizes for memorising scripture and attending Sunday School. I would hand them back saying ‘No thanks – I’ve read it and I don’t like it’ or ‘No, I don’t like books like this’. The reason being that then, as now, there were never any characters that I could identify with in the slightest, and the simplistic morals irritated me beyond belief. Adrian Plass does try to get beyond the simplistic morals, which is why I like his books in general, but still, I do find the list of issues he deals with to be rather narrow.

So anyway, being wide awake at what is now 4:30am, I have decided to write about what it is like to be an asexual Christian. Because I doubt anyone knows, unless they are asexual themselves, because, well, there simply aren’t any asexual Christian characters in Christian literature.

Ever since I was a tiny child, I would make up stories in my head. I would invent characters and make up stories about what happened to them.  At four years old, I would tell the stories out loud to the many imaginary friends who lived in my bedroom (everything in my bedroom was my friend – I would say ‘Hi lightswitch’ and ‘Hi wallpaper’ and give them a kiss, truly believing they were my friends). As I grew older, I started to tell the stories in my head.

Now, it always irked me that my younger sisters didn’t make up such stories. I assumed they would as they grew older, but whenever I asked them about their stories, they said they didn’t have any. I would tell them to start making up stories, because it was the most wonderful thing ever, but they tried it and didn’t like it, which I couldn’t understand at all.

However, when we were teenagers, one of my sisters mentioned to me that she’d started making up stories. I was delighted for her, and asked to know what they were about. She told me they were about her and a boy, at which I told her that she was doing it all wrong, and that they should not be about her, but about imaginary characters! But she told me how great it was to think of a story about yourself and a boy, and that I should try it. I asked what sort of things she did with this boy in her stories, and I was most disappointed to find out that it was boring stuff like kissing and getting into bed together and feeling each other, etc. No real plot at all! Our other sister joined the conversation at some point and rather embarrassedly admitted that she had started making up such stories at night too.

So I tried it. I made up an elaborate story in my head about me meeting a boy and we went to the theatre to watch Les Miserables, because that was a musical I really wanted to see, and we went to a restaurant and ate macaroni cheese, because that was my favourite meal, and meringue and cream for dessert. But… well… I really didn’t want to kiss him. I wanted him to go away so that I could sit in peace and read a book! And then I decided it was a boring pointless story because I could sit and read a book in real life, and I could listen to the tape of Les Miserables on my stereo, and I could eat macaroni cheese at home, and it was much more fun to make up stories about characters who are not me.

So… er… the point of sexual fantasies completely eluded me! In fact, I had never even heard of the concept of a sexual fantasy, and I thought it was just a different sort of story that people could make up in their heads, and a bit of a stupid pointless sort for people who weren’t very good at making up proper stories.

Well, maybe that sets the scene a little for the way my mind works. At school, other girls dated boys and talked about what actors and singers they fancied. I assumed the reason I wasn’t dating because I was weird and shy (which of course would have played a part – but I didn’t seem to realise the significance of the fact that I didn’t want to date anyone. I didn’t get crushes at all. It didn’t even occur to me that dating was something most people wanted to do. I assumed it was another pointless ritual in life that people do at some point, and that one day I would do it when my acne went away and I gained a few social skills!

Now, at age 17, I went to Bible School for a year (by some administration mistake, I was put into the wrong year at the school I moved to when I was 13, and so I finished my A levels a year younger than everyone else). I remember one day at Bible School, George Verwer came to speak to us – and I was so excited, because I’d been on Love Europe and heard him speak powerfully and inspiringly about all kinds of things. I wondered if he would talk about grace – that was his big topic at Love Europe. I remember really looking forward to him speaking at Bible School, especially when he told us he was going to talk about a topic that isn’t normally talked about, but which is vital for young people and their relationship with God. Then he announed the topic was sex, and sexual feelings, and I felt myself deflate in disappointment. What an utterly boring and irrelevant topic. I had been hoping for something relevant to my life, to help me in my relationship with God, to help me get to know God better. I assumed everyone else would be as disappointed in such a silly topic as I was, but as I looked round the room I realised that actually this probably was an important topic to a lot of people in the room. And I felt like I was different from everyone else – but then I’d always felt that in many ways, so it wasn’t something I dwelt much on. I confess, I didn’t pay attention to his talk. I tried, but it really just didn’t interest me at all. And I was bitterly disappointed as I’d really been looking forward to an inspiring, life-changing talk!

I remember then having a similar experience a few years later when I was in Canada. I had joined the inter-varsity Christian fellowship there, and we had a weekend retreat at a convent. Again, I was looking forward to it so much – I really do love hearing inspiring Christian speakers who can help me understand God in new ways. It was the Saturday afternoon, I believe, that we had a speaker who told us that he was going to talk about a subject that he knew was very important to all of us, and a very difficult and emotional subject. The subject, again, was sex. He assured us that he knew that as young people we thought about this subject a lot and it meant a lot to us. Because all young people think about sex. And he wanted us to go to our rooms and spend an hour alone with God … honestly, I can’t renmember the exact details, but that is because I never quite understood them. I’m sure he didn’t actually tell us to go to our rooms and spend an hour thinking about God and sex, but that is how I interpreted it. I’m sure there were finer subtleties – like being real with God about sexual feelings, confessing sexual sins, etc. But I had no sexual sins to confess, no sexual feelings to talk to God about, so I remember sitting on my bed feeling terribly guilty that I wasn’t doing the exercise properly because I had no idea how to think about sex. I also felt rather guilty/confused (I wasn’t quite sure which emotion was appropriate) that all young people think about sex, and I was a young person, so by law of logic I must therefore think about sex – but I wasn’t aware of having done so, so somehow I must have done it without noticing it. I should have been paying attention to these sexual thoughts that I must have had because I was a young person. They had clearly come and I hadn’t noticed and now I wasn’t able to do this exercise of thinking about sex, and so I was missing this opportunity to be close to God. I remember sitting there quite desolately with this long hour gaping ahead of me, having to carry out an exercise that I didn’t understand, and on which no doubt I would have to report back to the group. What on earth would I say when the speaker asked us about my sexual feelings, and everyone else could talk about them and I couldn’t? (Imagine my relief when, funnily enough, he didn’t ask anyone for any feedback as to their sexual musings!).

The odd thing is that it never occurred to me to question why I didn’t have any sexual feelings. I simply assumed I had them, because we were told that all young people had them. I realised that lots of church people were repressed about sex, so I assumed I was too. I assumed that I must have sexual feelings that were repressed inside of me, and that this is why I didn’t notice them. I assumed they’d come out at some point, and I wondered whether they’d be straight or gay. I remember a couple of well-meaning friends of mine in Canada wanted to help me get a partner. Most of my Canadian friends saw being single as a sad state, and those that were single were sad about it, and those that weren’t tried to relieve me of my sad single state by finding potential boyfriends for me. It had never occurred to me before that I was supposed to be sad about my single state, and I was not very pleased to discover that something I was quite happy with was actually supposed to be a cause for misery. My well-meaning Canadian friends told me that I simply didn’t come across as a sexual being and I had to discover my sexual side by masturbating and watching porn, and then I’d discover a whole new dimension to life. I could think of nothing more dull. I always got bored during sex scenes in movies – why interrupt a perfectly good plot with two people grunting in bed? You might as well interrupt it to show them being constipated on the toilet. So I certainly didn’t want to watch a movie which was just one big long sex scene. And I didn’t want to try masturbation because I didn’t see the point of it and I didn’t want to get smelly hands. They told me to do it in the bath. But why spoil a perfectly lovely relaxing hot bath trying to fiddle with finding my G spot? It would be like trying to solve a difficult mathematical equation in the bath – no chance to relax at all!

I had boyfriends in Canada, thanks to my well-meaning friends, who wanted to save me from a life of miserable singlehood. Most didn’t last long. I broke up with them not because of lack of sexual feelings (I was patient and assumed I had those feelings and I would find them in time) but because I didn’t like the feeling of being attached to someone else. My sense of self got confused and it felt like a confusing burden. One lasted 8 months, as I was very determined that clearly God wanted me to get married (because this is what all Christians do when they grow up, isn’t it?) and here was a nice Christian boy who was as quirky as I was, and it really seemed perfect. I never had sex – I never had any inclination – but I decided I was developing some sexual feelings because I would ask my boyfriend to tickle my hair and my back, and I enjoyed that. However, then I remembered that in primary school I would ask the girl who sat next to me to do the same. It was purely a sensual feeling that I enjoyed, and would make no difference whether it was being carried out by a boyfriend or a machine. This idea quite jolted me – surely, surely, there had to be something different here. I remember saying to my female flatmate ‘I want to try an experiment. Will you sit on the sofa and let me lie with my head on your knee, so I can see if it feels any different with your than it does with my boyfriend.’ She naturally thought it was rather an odd request but was used to my eccentricities, so complied. I tried it, and then declared there was no difference at all, and that clearly the feelings I was getting were no different from feelings of being cosy with a friend.

I remember too in the pharmacies there were these machines that measured your pulse and blood pressure. My pulse is always a bit higher than normal, so I wanted to try an experiment with my boyfriend. ‘I’ll measure my pulse and then do it again with you tickling my back, to see if the relaxation makes it go down’. I tried it, and it did, to my great satisfaction (I like it when my experiments work!). Then I asked my boyfriend to try it. He measured his pulse, and then again with me tickling his back. But rather than making his pulse go down, it made it shoot up. I was most confused at this unexpected disproval of my theory? ‘Why did that happen?’ I demanded. My flat mate, who was with us too, started giggling and said ‘Uh – why do you think?’ And I realised that it was his sexual feelings and I was supposed to have them too, and my pulse should have gone up, not down – and I felt suddenly rather embarrassed that I’d displayed evidence of my lack of sexual feelings to my boyfriend!

Eventually, I broke up with him. I felt bad, because I really enjoyed his friendship, but I realised it was no different from my friendships with anyone else. But I actually didn’t think then that sexual feelings were simply something that I didn’t get. I thought he was simply the wrong man, and that when the right person came, my feelings would emerge from the repressed nooks of my soul.

When I returned to England I set about finding my sexual feelings with more determination. I remember texting my sister asking her to give me ‘masturbation instructions’, which she did with part amusement, part reluctance (of the ‘I can’t believe you’re my sister and we’re talking about such things’ kind). My other sister, being the more prudish type, flat out refused. Well, I followed all the instructions, but nothing happened. I simply found it boring.

I then joined a Christian dating site and went on dates with a variety of men. It started out as a ‘Since unfortunately God wants me to get married, I suppose I’d better go about finding someone’ venture, but soon turned into a ‘Gosh, what a strange man – I’m really curious to see what he’s like and whether he elicits any sexual feelings in me’ thing. No sexual feelings were elicited. Many very strange dates – which I wrote about in entertaining fashion in the online diary I had at the time. I soon collected quite a readership. In particular, one woman who was very scathing about Christians, and loved to mock them. She wanted to talk to me on MSN – she normally never spoke to Christians but she was fascinated to find someone who mocked their own kind.

So we chatted on MSN. I found the conversations fascinating. She asked me lots of direct questions which I answered- I like conversations which involve questions, because then I know what is expected of me. One day she confessed that she’d sometimes been trying to embarrass my Christian sensibilities by asking personal questions about sex. I replied simply that I was never embarrassed, but I was aware that I don’t have anything very interesting to say about it since I don’t get sexual feelings due to being a repressed Christian. The conversation that ensued was very interesting. She told me with amusement that I wasn’t repressed. I told her that, no, really, repression is very common in Christians and I no doubt have it. She told me that I wouldn’t be chatting so openly about sexual things and my lack of sexual feelings if I were repressed, and that I was simply asexual. I had never heard of such a thing, and thought she’d made it up. But upon googling, I discovered that there really are people who don’t get sexual feelngs, and they are called asexuals. And their self-descriptions sounded very like me.

But I wanted to be sure. I would try again with the sexual fantasy thing. I lay on my bed and imagined very hard the feeling of being in bed with a man and having sex. I had no feelings, other than the feeling of being crowded and not wanting to share my bed. Then, to make it equal, and to check in case I was a lesbian, I imagined very hard the feeling of being in bed with a woman and having sex. Again – no sexual feelings. Only the feeling of being crowded and wanting my bed all to myself.

I then researched about asexuality and discovered it’s more common in people on the autistic spectrum, and also in people who are underweight and who get a late menarche (all of which were true for me, although I am no longer underweight). So I decided I could safely say that I was asexual, and surely if there were any sexual feelings inside me I would have at least got a hint of them by now.

As for what it’s like in day-to-day life to be asexual… well, girly chitchat often tends to centre around one’s love life or one’s longing for a love life, and which men are sexy. For someone who finds chitchat difficult anyway, knowing what to say in such conversations is impossible. See, girls tend to assume that other girls fancy boys. If you don’t show any evidence of doing so, they might think you are a lesbian. But asexuality simply isn’t something that occurs to people. And blurting out ‘By the way, I’m asexual, so I don’t relate to any of this’ would be a bit of a conversation killer. It’s not one of those things that it’s easy to slip into the conversation – and even if it was, most people haven’t heard of such a thing and are not really inclined to believe it. And gosh, I can’t tell you how tiresome the old ‘You just haven’t met the right person yet’ line gets! Hmm… yes, I’m 34 years old and I’ve never had a crush or a sexual fantasy or any interest in sexual intimacy at all simply because I ‘haven’t met the right person’. At some point in my life, maybe when I’m 60, the right person will magically materialise and suddenly sexual feelings will appear as by magic inside my body. I don’t think so, somehow.

It would be good if Christian novels included a few characters like me. Or even general novels, come to think of it – I’m not sure when I last read a novel with an asexual character in it. Are we really as rare as all that, or will more of us identify ourselves when it becomes publicly recognised?

Just as 1st January is a new beginning, so the first Monday of the year is a new beginning. I like new beginnings – I have extra motivation to make further changes. So for Monday I decided that as I haven’t been very successful at limiting my time on the internet as much as I’d like, I’d make a new index card saying ‘Spend max 40 mins on internet’. It worked. Because I wanted to have another card to put into today’s pile, I made sure I was no longer than 40 minutes online. And consequently got a lot more done.

Something I’m realising more and more is that the very act of writing organises me. It organises my thoughts and helps me focus and prioritise and decide things to do. If I don’t write my daily thoughts first thing, my day is not organised until I write them. Even though I get things done, I don’t feel in control. Once I’ve written my thoughts out, I feel much more structured. I’ve realised too the importance of writing out my thoughts at the end of the day too – to summarise the day and work out what worked and what didn’t and reflect on my achievements and how I can improve.  I’ve also realised that sometimes writing my thoughts throughout the day can help, when I get to a point where it’s difficult to make the transition from one activity to another and I feel confused and out of control. Writing my thoughts also makes me more self aware – I realise more how I am feeling. Whether I’m feeling relaxed or bothered. And it can help me feel calm when I’m upset.

Today I have realised how even if I’m feeling crap, I can make the day better and focus myself and calm myself. I woke up feeling crap and then I had my bath and massaged myself all over and then went to my living room and lit candles and turned on soothing music, and I felt better. This is now becoming a ritual for every day – to light the candles and play the music, and it helps me to be centred and focused.

I became aware of how easily I can get bothered. This evening my electricity kept going off for a couple of seconds and coming back on. So I would suddenly be in darkness and the music would stop playing, and then the light would come on again, but the music wouldn’t because it had stopped the CD and I had to press ‘play’ again. This really upset me – even though, logically, it’s not something particularly terrible. But I felt like my house had gone out of control and it frightened me a lot. I think normally when things frighten me like this, I just get upset and my emotions become more and more confused, but today, because I am feeling a bit more self-aware lately, I decided to try writing about it to see if it helped. And it did. Strange how something so simple is so effective.

Interestingly, I have lately been reading research on facilitated communication. This is used for people who are severely autistic and can’t communicate. Apparently, when a facilitator holds their wrist or puts a hand on their shoulder or some such physical thing, it spurs something in the autistic person’s brain and enables them to access things in their brain that they couldn’t access before and thus to communicate through writing/typing. It is very controversial, because there is no scientific proof for it working, and it can be abused, and people don’t understand how or why it would work. But somehow it makes sense to me – the idea of needing some sort of external prompt to help you access what is there in your brain but in a confused mess. It helps un-confuse it. And I think, in an odd sort of way, that it is similar to me being able to access organisation when I write. I don’t need anyone touching me, but the very physical act of typing/writing spurs something in my brain and puts all the confused thoughts into order. I think this is why I am so good at exams too. I go into exams thinking I know nothing – with no clear idea in my head of what the subject is about. But once I read the questions and start writing, I access all sorts of things in my brain that I didn’t know were there. Donna Williams also writes about this sort of thing in her book – she says that she can’t make the information come out spontaneously, but when prompted by questions, it all comes out.

So I am realising that, for me, organisation is about finding these sorts of prompts. Particularly writing. Even if I must write my thoughts out several times a day, if it helps me process and access stuff, and organise myself, it is worth it.

My card index system, although it has a lot of flaws, is working quite well. I have about 70 cards. Some have chores on, like ‘wash dishes’, ‘clean kitchen floor’, etc. Some have ‘10 things’ on – like ‘10 things – bedroom’ (which means I have to put away ten things in my bedroom). Some have something health related, like ‘drink barleygrass’ or ‘eat yogurt’, to make sure I don’t forget to eat healthily. Some have relaxation things, like ‘do yoga’ or ‘body brush’ or ‘light aromatherapy candles’. Some have study things, like ‘read one chapter of a study book’. Some have activities to help me understand myself better, such as ‘journalling’ and ‘fiction writing’. And some have spiritual activities to help me get to know God better, such as ‘pray’. Each of these types of activity are written with a different colour pen, with a different pattern around the instruction, to make the categories clear and help me make sure I do things from each category each day.

Well, I have about 70 cards (I haven’t counted them and I keep adding new ones as I think of them) and I don’t do all of them each day. I do about half of them. Some aren’t intended to be done every day, and others are, but even so, I don’t always do the ones intended to be done every day either. I’d like to build up to that though. But the main thing is that I do about half of them each day, and make sure I do at least one from each category.

I have decided that I must do all of them, at least once, in a week though. So here is how I organise my cards. I have some dividers, which on the first day are all behind the stack of cards. On the first day, whenever I complete an activity on a card, I move it behind the first divider. By the end of the first day, I had about half the cards behind the first divider, and the other half in front of it. On the second day, whenever I did an activity (either from the first pile or the second pile) I moved it to behind the second divider. So, at the end of the second day, I had three piles. At the front were the ones that I hadn’t done at all. Behind the first divider were those I had done on the first day, but not since. And behind the second divider were those I’d done on the second day (regardless of whether I’d also done them on the first day). And so it continues like that. By the seventh day, the first pile must be all gone. I must have done everything at least once. And then I will either put them all together again at the front and start from scratch for the second week, or I will keep going, making sure the pile that is now at the front gets done by the following day. I haven’t decided yet. I realise this is probably hard to follow. Index card systems are hard to explain, which is why I got confused with that described in Sidetracked Home Executives, and why I decided to make my own different one.

It is a very good system though, because I am motivated by wanting to make the first pile disappear as soon as possible, and to have as many cards as I can in the most recent pile. This motivates me far more than the actual thought of, say, having a clean house. I like the numbers – counting how many I have done. I have done all kinds of things that I would never be motivated to do normally, such as cleaning my windows and my fridge. I even do things more often than I need to, if I see that they can be done quickly and conveniently and will thus add extra cards to my present pile. So today I cleaned my bathroom floor even though I already did it two days ago, just because I could do it really quickly.

I am now going to make a list of what I’ve learnt so far. Hopefully it might be useful to some people who read this.

• Once I have washed my dishes (if the soapy water is quite clean because I rinsed the dishes beforehand) I can then pour that water into my mop bucket and really quickly mop my kitchen floor, and then my bathroom floor, and then I can pour the water down my toilet and warm, soapy water is very good for unblocking a toilet that is prone to get blocked.
• If I start the day with brushing your body with a body brush, then have a bath, then massage myself all over with olive oil with a few drops of aromatherapy oil added, it helps me feel centred, relaxed and motivated.
• If I heat a lavendar wheat bag in my microwave for two minutes, I can then put it around my neck and I am warm and cosy and I don’t need to put on my central heating, and thus I save money.
• Starting the day with writing my thoughts helps me organise my thoughts and make sense of what works for me and what doesn’t, and helps me have a sense of self. In fact, the very act of writing is what seems to organise me, and stops me feeling fragmented and confused, so really I should write more.
• Doing a job imperfectly is a lot better than not doing it at all. For instance, I never do dusting because it seems like an impossible task – there is no way I can get every single speck of dust! But even to get a few specks of dust is better than getting none. And each time I do a job imperfectly, it makes it a little easier for next time I do it imperfectly.
• A lot can be achieved in 40 minutes.

Well, having spend the Advent period thinking of and experimenting with organisational strategies, and then from Christmas to New Year reverting back to disorganisation (albeit interspersed with the ten things strategy, which seems to work even amidst chaos) and spending far too much time on the internet, I have decided that in the year 2009 I shall put my strategies to work seriously to actually achieve things. I will therefore continue this blog, to keep a record of my strategies and to keep me accountable, and also to write random things I think of along the way.

For New Year’s Day, I decided upon a new strategy. I finished reading the book Sidetracked Home Executives on New Year’s Eve, and decided I like the idea of index cards in a box. Now, the trouble with so many books that claim to have the solution to something is that they say you must do it exactly as they say or it won’t work. What they mean is that their way, exactly as it is, is what works for them. But of course each person is different, and surely a strategy is most effective when you’ve individualised it for yourself, rather than following someone else’s strategy to the letter. And I always find it very off-putting to have to follow someone else’s plan so exactly, because I get worried I’ll misunderstand it and do it wrong and it will fall apart. So, I decided to take the basic idea of index cards and adapt it in the way I want, rather than following the exact pattern in the book.

I wrote different things on each index card. Some had housework, some had a ‘ten things’ job specific to a certain room, some had study tasks, some were relaxation/exercise/health related, some were about journalling and reading for pleasure. I made about 70 cards, which did feel rather overwhelming, and I decided I really need to try dividing my day into 40 minute segments again, to avoid spending too long on any one thing. So, in my 2009 diary, I divided the day up. And then I made sure I rotated the various categories, so that I did things from each category, and didn’t spend longer than 40 minutes at a time doing on category.

This was actually really effective. It made me get housework done a lot quicker, and it stopped me from going overboard and spending too long on housework. In fact, I only spent about 2 hours altogether in the day doing housework, but managed to hoover my whole house, to clean my bathroom and my toilet and their floors and the kitchen counters and the kitchen floor, as well as clearing away ten things from each room, and doing a load of laundry. In retrospect, it doesn’t seem so remarkable to get all this done in two hours, but normally these tasks seem so overwhelming to me that they seem to stretch interminably.

I have decided that as well as having a plan for the whole year, I shall divide the year into months and have smaller goals for each month. I think I work better in smaller chunks of time. For January, my goal is to study neurology in depth. That shall be my focus. I suppose I need more goals than just a study one, but that is the goal I’ve thought of so far.

I am also going to be doing an OU course, to make sure I stay on focus and don’t neglect my studies in this year out. It is a brain related course – a mix of psychology and biology of the brain. They will send my course materials some time in January, so I look forward to that.

Oh yes, I did have another goal for January. By February, I would like to be going to bed at 11:00pm and getting up at 7:00am. I have got in a bad habit of staying up very late. Right now, in fact, as I write this, it is 3:30am. I tried going to bed earlier but I couldn’t sleep – my mind was wide awake. This is because I had got up at midday, because I’d gone to bed very late the night before (and not even with the excuse of having been to a New Year’s Eve party – being the kind who prefers to stay at home alone, I’d simply spend the night on the internet).

Ah – and there is another goal I have, related to the internet. I am reverting back to my ‘No internet until after 9:00pm’ rule, and also I am not letting myself go online until I’ve written a blog entry. (So I am writing this on my laptop while disconnected from the internet). And I really only want to spend a maximum of an hour a day online, although for some reason that hasn’t become a definite goal in my head, because I’m not sure how realistic it is, and I don’t want to set myself up to fail.

Anyway, these are my tentative plans for 2009. And I plan to write regularly in here, to keep track of my progress, and my thoughts.

On the twenty-fourth day of Advent, Christmas Eve, I decided to start re-reading Autism: An Inside Out Approach by Donna Williams. I realised that it said at the back of the book that she gives strategies to help people deal with ASD related difficulties. I hadn’t noticed that the first time I read it – it was more a ‘Gosh, she is describing what it is like to be me’ experience. So I decided to reread it to find strategies, and hopefully find something to help me be organised. There was one paragraph in the first chapter that I liked:

My ‘autism’-related difficulties took me on a journey where my physical health fell apart from a combination of inherited faults, bad management and the chronic stress of dealing with an incomprehending world which taught this camel to walk straight instead of taking the lorry-load of straws off its back for the thirty years before it realised there was a choice.

This is where I am at right now – why this year off has become necessary. So if I can learn some ways where it can be different, I will be very happy.

Then I decided in the evening to be a bit Christmassy. Even though in general I find Christmas pretty pointless, I do like Christmas carols. I like them because I learnt lots of them by heart when I was a kid. Every Christmas I would learn a different Christmas carol. For me, as a child who found Christmas confusing, this gave some meaning and consistency to Christmas. Once I’d learnt a carol, it was like I possessed it – I could sing it whenever I liked. I had no idea what they meant, in general – I remember learning ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ when I was seven, and being fascinated at the idea of Jesus being our childhood’s pattern. To me, a pattern was the kind of thing I saw on the wallpaper, or on the kitchen lino – lots of shapes repeating themselves. I liked them, and so I liked the idea of Jesus being one! I remember wondering what exactly was the difference between ’shareth in’ and ‘feeleth for’, and why the first went with gladness and the second went with sadness. Maybe Jesus was only allowed to share in gladness, not sadness, because gladness is good and sadness is bad. But I liked how they rhymed.

So, because I like carols, on Christmas Eve I decided to turn on my TV (which I very rarely do, as I don’t find it interesting) to see if there were any carol services. I then got distracted by a documentary about Paul Scofield. I normally have no interest in the lives of actors, but this captivated me. First because they played a bit from King Lear, and I’d seen that film when I was 15 and felt the connection of recognition. I remembered what a good film it had been (even though I’d been disappointed at the time because they changed it quite a bit from the original play, and made it a lot shorter). I thought I would change channel after they stopped playing the King Lear scene, but then I became fascinated by what they were saying about Paul Scofield. I felt I could relate to it. He sounded like me. People found him enigmatic and naive. He hated socialising and refused to go to parties. He had no interest in promoting himself. He had no interest in going to Hollywood. He just wanted to act, and act well – that was what he devoted his life to. And he couldn’t analyse it – he could just do it at the moment. And he would accept and reject parts on instinct, having to work out afterwards the reasons why. I found it very inspiring – it is so rare to hear about a famous person who makes sense to me and who I can relate to. It occurred to me that if I could find a something – one thing – to devote myself to doing, then I would be fulfilled. I would have no interest in promoting  myself either – just in doing what I did well. It’s interesting – I also decide things on instinct, and then have to work out afterwards why. This is because it is an autistic thing not to consciously process something right away, but you subconsciously process it. This is also how people are called savants. It is why when I was a child, I could work out mathematical problems and have no idea how I did it – which was very frustrating for my maths teachers, and also very frustrating for me when they insisted I wrote my ‘working’ – I had no idea what ‘working’ was.

Then, after I’d watched that programme, I watched a carol service that was at a children’s hospital. The singing wasn’t particuarly good – well, it wasn’t a choir, I don’t think, just a group of people, like you get in a church congregation. But I liked it, because they talked about the hospital and the people were real people who had a real connection with the hospital, and some of them had children who had died there, and it was moving that they had all come together to do a carol service. And I liked the Liverpool accents when they spoke and read things. And I also liked how the camera sometimes focused on people who weren’t singing. I liked that people didn’t feel they had to sing, but they could still be part of it.

And then I saw there was a eucharist service on another channel,  so I switched to look at that one. And that was a proper choir, all in harmony. I like the sound of such things – it feels like it envelops my body in softness – so I watched that one. I don’t know why I like songs that are in harmony so much. I remember the first time I heard a harmony. I was ten years old, and my school was doing a musical. It was a silly musical, but there was one song which was a duet in harmony. While the two girls sang it, I remember being utterly tranfixed, and wanting to cry, but in a good way. Then some kids started laughing at me because I had a funny expression on my face, and my mouth was hanging open, so I got embarrassed. I didn’t understand why the song had had such an effect on me. I still don’t – I just know that this is what songs in harmony do to me. When I was a teenager, The Marriage of Figaro (which I’d never heard of back then) was on TV, and my sisters and I were flicking channels, and suddenly there was this song (the one called Sull’aria, but it was in English) and I just had to listen to it. My sisters wanted to change channel and we had a huge argument about it, because I really wanted to listen, and they said it was boring. But later I got the tape from the library and I listened to the whole thing to find that song, and I listened to it over and over.

Incidentally, it also occurred to me yesterday that maybe the reason I don’t watch TV is because when I was growing up I rarely got to watch things I was interested in, because they were so different from what my sisters liked to wath. They liked the normal things that kids like to watch. I liked things that they declared were boring. So it is quite nice to realise that I have full control to watch whatever ‘boring’ thing I like now.

Today it is Christmas day and I am watching ‘Carols from Kings’, because my cable TV has a thing where you can watch things that were on TV in the past week, as well as what is on TV right now. So I am feeling very content listening to it and typing on my little Asus Eee laptop, and eating Belgian chocolate malt balls that I got from Asda, which are like maltesers but nicer. It’s odd – there is part of me that feels a bit naughty for spending Christmas alone. People are not supposed to spend Christmas alone – it either means you’re a bah humbug, or that you are a pitiable, lonely person to be prayed for in church. But it is so nice to be by myself. It is so very quiet outside – well, it’s always pretty quiet anyway, but even quieter today. I went in my garden and hung up my washing, and was aware that I’m probably the only person in my neighbourhood doing laundry on Christmas day, and it was a nice peaceful feeling.

Christmas does not have a religious significance to me. I like the carols purely for familiarity and because I like the sound. The words are silly, and they don’t help me worship God. I like my relationship with God to be constant. I don’t like it to have to be different on Christmas day, and I don’t think it has to be, because there is a bit in the Bible about how some people like to have certain days as special and set apart and other people like all days to be the same, and whatever you do, do for God. So I am the latter type of person.

I have a random question. Why do bishops wear those funny hats? I am really not used to such hats because I have never attended a church where anyone wore one. Yesterday when i was watching the eucharist carol service on TV, I saw this bishop was wearing a funny hat, and for a moment, when I wasn’t properly paying attention, I thought to myself that he was wearing a Christmas party hat that he had got out of a cracker. I thought it was part of the festive season. But then I paid attention and remembered they wear hats like that all the time, because I see the photos on the internet, so I am curious what it signifies.

On the twenty-third day of Advent, I felt I wasn’t sure what organisational strategy to use, or what I was supposed to be doing. I started off by writing my daily thoughts. I didn’t finish them though. I left them half way through to go to the loo, then got distracted and went on the internet. However, I made myself do several lots of ‘ten things’. That is a good strategy. It is so small, that it doesn’t feel like a big deal, and once I’ve done one lot of ten things, it’s very easy to do another lot. So I went through different rooms in my house, tidying away ten things. I found too that once I’m in the kitchen making food, then it’s easy to wash up and do landry and stuff, because it’s all to hand. I need to see things to be reminded to do them. Out of sight, out of mind. Unless I have a list, I guess, but today I didn’t make a list. I was going to maybe make one, but I went on the internet and then stayed there. I think I must reinstate the ‘no internet until after 9:00pm’ rule, even if I’m not using time, because even when I have days where I don’t use time, I do sometimes sneak a look at the clock out of curiosity. And of course, once I go on the internet, then I see the time, because it’s there in the bottom right hand corner.

I am finding it quite overwhelming, the whole strategy thing. I think each day really only needs one focus. I suppose once my house is properly tidy, the ten things will take up less time. On Friday and Saturday, they took over, and became the focus of my day.

I noticed that today, the reason I kept going back to the internet was because I hadn’t decided upon something to do, so I had nothing else to return to. I wonder if it will work to decide in the morning, whilst writing my daily thoughts, what I want the main focus of the day to be. The daily thoughts are important to focus me onto the day.

I must also take my health into allowance, which is annoying, but better in the long run, I guess. I do feel very unwell for two weeks every month and get very bad pains (for which I’ve had lots of tests at the hospital and no cause has been found). I thought I was healed from it two years ago, because I went to a healing service and then later I prayed and suddenly the pain was gone – miraculously, it seemed to me. For that time I could eat anything and not get pain, which was very unusual. But then it returned.

However, when journalling the other day, I tried the technique where you write a dialogue with a part of your body which is causing you pain. Again, I know this sounds kooky, but I think it is about getting in touch with your subconscious, and often pains in the body are related to emotional things too. So I wrote a dialogue with my abdomen to see what it (or my subconscious) had to say. And it was strange – it kept saying I need to accept. Accept what, I asked. And the answer was ‘just accept’. The past. Myself. Don’t fight. Just accept. So now when I get the pains, I do concentrate on accepting myself and not fighting anything, and it helps a lot. I’ve had a lot less pain this month. But I still get the unwell, dizzy, shaky, tired feeling. But maybe that is to be fixed by spending more time in my inner world, as that seemed to work yesterday.

So, in finding organisational strategies, I must also find strategies to manage my health. And I know it’s important to realise too that I do get easily overwhelmed by sensory stimuli, and I spend a lot of energy trying to figure things out that are obvious to other people, and thus I use up a lot more energy than ‘normal’ people and so get very quickly tired. So I know I have limitations on how much I can do. I don’t like this. I want to be able to work as many hours as I choose, and get lots done, but that is not practical or healthy, so I try to accept my limitations. It’s odd – our culture is not about accepting limitations. It’s more about how wrong it is to limit oneself, and how to find ways to achieve more, and push yourself past the limits. So many books I’ve read have that message, and I realise I have become indoctrinated by it. So now I am relearning.

Tomorrow is the last day of Advent (I presume, at least. Or does one count Christmas day as well?) and I feel like I should have achieved some super plan by now, and be ready for some great epiphany tomorrow. Of course, I know that’s silly, but still it is what I feel would be nice and satisfying. But now, so that I don’t feel a sense of let-down, I think I will try to see this Advent organisational plan as a start, rather than an end. It’s been a time for me to experiment with different strategies, and get to know myself better, so I can see what works for me. I haven’t yet implemented some great plan, and I am still confused, but I feel better equipped for figuring out a plan, and starting to become organised. And after all, I have the whole year until September. This is the point of having a year out – to work out an organisational plan and start applying it to my studies.

On the twenty-second day of Advent, I didn’t feel well. I felt all shaky and dizzy and physically overwhelmed (I think the pinhole glasses made me dizzy, because I also wore them to do yoga, and you’re not supposed to wear them when you’re moving around), so I stayed in bed, and slept for a bit longer. Then I thought and visualised and prayed, and found myself soon feeling deeply peaceful and no longer unwell. Then I read in bed, and then I realised that it was very rejuvenating to live in one’s inner world for a while – to completely ignore the outer world. And then I wondered if this is my problem – that I can’t simultaneously experience my inner world and the outer world, due to the ‘mono thinking’ thing. And that surviving in the world as an adult requires being in the outer world a lot of the time, so my inner world gets lost.

When I felt better, I got up and ate. I went to Asda, and it was so very crowded that it was a horrible experience. I think perhaps having spent the earlier part of the day living in my head, my self-awareness was increased, so I was more aware of the effect the crowds and noise and busy-ness was having on me. It was so crowded that I was constantly looking for ways of squeezing past the people and finding the aisles I wanted. At several points, I became aware that I was clutching my shopping basket to my stomach and making my way through the shop with a look of sheer panic on my face, so then I consciously made myself not look like that, because obviously it’s just a supermarket and not anything to panic about!

As well as buying food, I bought sweets and crisps. I have been eating so much healthy food that I felt that since it is the Christmas season (even though I don’t celebrate it!) I would like to buy some treats for myself. I bought sweets and crisps with no artificial colour or artificial flavours, but still, they contained wheat and sugar and I knew they wouldn’t have a good effect on me, and it is silly really to buy such things, but I bought them anyway. And then when I got home, I ate some of them, and went on the internet, and had fun interacting with online friends, and felt a bit decadant (yeah, I know it’s a silly thing to feel decandant about) and again stayed up late on the internet.

And then, when I went to bed, I wondered what is becoming of my organisation plan. And I thought about how I don’t like to do the same thing every day, because then I feel bored and trapped. So I wondered how my organisation plans can incorporate different ways of doing things. Maybe the 40-minute segments are sometimes appropriate, and the chronological lists are important for different days, and sometimes a day of staying inside my head is the best thing to do. But I don’t know how to make all these different things into one big master plan and know when to use each one.  And how do I incorporate the inner and outer worlds? And paying attention to time and ignoring time? Day 22 brought more questions than answers. And Advent is nearly over. I am not sure if am any closer to finding an organisation strategy that will work long term, and which I can apply to various situations. But at least my house is a lot tidier.

On the twenty-first day of Advent, I didn’t want to repeat the pattern of the day before, so I decided that it would be a completely different sort of day (I decided that since it was Sunday, I could use the excuse of a ‘day of rest’). I decided I wouldn’t do chores. I decided to try speed-reading some of my study books, so fast that I don’t actually take them in (because if I try to take them in, I find I worry about not absorbing the whole lot, and that is distracting) but simply to get a very broad overview – of headings and key words. And also I’m always curious how much it is possible to take in just by skimming through a book.

I decided to try using my ‘pinhole glasses‘ that I bought a while ago from ebay. I hate reading with normal glasses. I have to because I am so very short-sighted that if I take my glasses off, the page has to be about an inch from my nose for me to see what it says, which is not comfortable, and means I can’t see the whole page. But somehow my glasses act as a barrier and stop me getting fully absorbed with a book, because they make my eyes focus differently from how they otherwise would. This has always been the case. I’ve had glasses since I was seven, and as a child I would always read with my glasses off. So the optician thought there must be something wrong with me, and prescribed bifocals, but I hated those just as much and also took them off to read. Then, somewhere in my teenage years I realised I could no longer comfortably read without my glasses.

But I randomly discovered pinhole glasses on the internet and thought I would give them a try. And they are more restful on my eyes. I can see better than with no glasses if I wear them, but I can’t see anywhere near as clearly as with my glasses. I can see how they would work brilliantly for someone a lot less short-sighted than I, but I think for my eyes the holes would have to be a lot tinier and more frequent. But still, they are restful to wear. So I tried to read with them on. Now, it turned out that I couldn’t read with them on either, but I could read the headings, and I could get a sense of the shape of the text on the page, and that made me familiar with the books. And there was something oddly soothing about just turning the pages and not knowing what they were saying. My common sense did tell me this was kind of pointless, but I felt I was getting some familiarity with the books and thus hopefully removing any mental blocks I have about studying for my course.

Since I couldn’t actually read what was on the pages, I then decided I might as well take off the pinhole glasses and read with no glasses at all. I read one book like this, but it turned out to be such an interesting book that I put it right next to my nose and read what it actually said!

So, on day 21, I looked at study books. I then went on the internet for ages and regretted spending so long online.

On the twentieth day of Advent, I barely recognised my house when I came downstairs for breakfast. It seemed rather empty without the stairs being and hallway being covered in clutter. I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not, but decided on the whole it was a good thing.

Now I wasn’t sure whether to make my list starting with the things I hadn’t one on Day 19, or to make a similar list again and leave those things till last again. I opted for the latter – because the things I’d omitted were more leisurely stuff like journalling and studying. I wanted to keep up the habit of doing small daily things like my ‘ten things’ routines and yoga and leave more leisurely things to the end. So I made a detailed list to complete in order, and I did all kinds of things, and extra things that I thought of, like washing the kitchen floor. But by the time I’d done all those chores, I simply didn’t feel motivated to do more leisurely things. They seemed like simply reward stuff rather than necessary stuff, and I’d rather go on the internet. So I went on the internet, planning to spend only half an hour there, but ended up spending all evening, and the early hours of the morning there. And I went on the internet before 9:00pm, because I told myself that since I’m not keeping track of time when I make chronological lists, the ‘no internet before 9:00pm’ can’t apply.

I analysed this pattern. I like the internet, but there gets to a point where I am not gaining anything from being on there. I’m simply finding it hard to motivate myself to switch from the internet to something else. And some tasks seem rather big, and it’s harder to switch to a big task than it is to switch to doing something small like picking up ten things.

One the nineteenth day of Advent, which was today, I felt very positive in the morning. After my dad had left, I wrote my daily thoughts, and I reflected on how it was a good, positive visit and how I feel energised from it. And then I had an idea. I decided that today I didn’t want to keep track of time. I don’t like time.  I just wanted to do things – all the organisational things I usually do (well, apart from the 40-minute segment thing, because you need time for that) – without looking at the clock. Part of me thought this was a very bad idea, because it is a weakness of mine that I am not very aware of time, and surely I should be encouraging myself to keep track of it, not avoiding it. But then I thought, well, if that is the way my brain works, and if I don’t actually have to keep track of time today, since I have no appointments, why not just have one day where I ignore time.

Then I started thinking about how I would do it. I thought of different things I wanted to do, and then found myself confused because I didn’t know which to do first. So I toyed with the idea of writing down things to do in the order I should do them. My first reaction was that this would never work, because I hate lists and timetables, and they scare me. But then I reasoned this was not the same as a list, because it was in order and I had to stick to the order. And that it was not the same as a timetable, because a timetable has times on it, and that is the main thing I hate about timetables, because I find it too constricting. And I also decided I had nothing to lose by trying this idea.

So. I wrote all the things I wanted to do in the order I wanted to do them. And then I got started. And it worked really well. I didn’t feel overwhelmed, because they were in order, so I had to do one thing at a time, in order. And the lack of time-awareness was so freeing. Thinking about time really distracts me. I got so much done today. I didn’t do everything on my list, but it was a huge long list, and I added extra things along the way that I hadn’t thought of. I went to the sauna and steam room, for instance, as a treat, to relax me, and to make me get out of the house. But even though I didn’t do everything on my list, I still did loads. I vacuumed the whole house. I put away lots of ten things, and threw away lots of ten things. I did yoga, and had a quiet time, and read, as well as doing lots of tidying and cleaning. I like this idea of deciding what to do in order and having no times by them. I will do it again tomorrow, I think. It works. I’ve achieved more today than any other day that I’ve been doing this organisation plan.