Add Moron

This is a fox I painted, whose nose is too broad, making him look like a Corgi dog.  Still, I like the colours.

Struggling with feeling overwhelmed?  Can’t make a decision?  Too many choices?  Too much on your plate?  Fret not, I have the solution.  Add more on.  Yes, that’s right - do what I do, and add more to your plate of ever-expanding options.  Never mind that the more you add the less you find yourself able to choose or, ultimately, do anything at all.  Instead you’ll become catatonic with chaos, paralysed by perplexity, incapacitated by information overload.  Embrace it!  After all, variety is the spice of life (so they say).  

And look what fun you’ll have, spending oodles of hours (not to mention money, probably) accumulating all of this wealth of ‘stuff’, which will ultimately leave you poverty-stricken - poorer in mind, spirit, body, and bank balance.  But go on, I say, throw caution to the wind.  You only live once, so you don’t want to miss out on the opportunity to drown in all the wealth of choices life has to offer.

And now I would like to make an interjection, in order to clarify that I am, of course, being ironic.  Please do NOT do what I’ve just suggested.  On the contrary, my advice would be to ignore it completely (if you can).  My point is that this is what I do, and a fat lot of good it does me.  It appears to be my default mode - something to do with a fault in the wiring which leads me to confuse the words “more” with “less”, and “complicated” with “simple”.  Beyond that, I cannot explain the bizarre and perplexing nature of this particular ‘quirk’.

As a consequence of the undesirable results of this behaviour, I am now trying to make a change by doing the opposite - whilst, simultaneously, attempting not to do the other thing I do, which is to go to the polar opposite i.e. rather than lessening my options, ending up removing them completely, and deciding to become a minimalist, or go and live as a yogi on the top of a Tibetan mountain.  Ah, the vagaries of being a person of extremes, with no middle ground to speak of (never mind live in).

So here, hopefully for your edification (and my own amusement), are a few examples of where I have tried applying my version of simplification.

ART SUPPLIES:

Compared to a lot of the artists I’ve seen on YouTube, I don’t have an excessive amount of stuff.  However, for me what I did have felt overwhelming as it was (all the choices left me with barely enough time or energy for the painting itself).  So I came up with the stonking good idea for how to lessen the overwhelm - I gave myself more options.  Yes, I added more, and now I have double the overwhelming choice I had before.  Marvellous.

ART SOURCES:

And still on the subject of art, which is an endless source of overwhelm… I find most of my ideas for my paintings on-line (Pixabay is a good site); but, as with everything, I can’t just have one photo at a time to use, I have to look at and download more (despite the fact I already have a collection of photos for this purpose on my computer), thus adding to my woes when it comes to trying to decide what to paint.

BOOKS:

I couldn’t decide where to start with re-reading the books I already owned, so I decided I should try the minimalist route (having recently become obsessed with reading about the idea on the internet), and get rid of any books which weren’t my favourites, and wouldn’t be re-read.  Strangely, there was a major fault in the way my brain translated this instruction because, rather than getting rid of any of my books, I ended up buying more instead, and dramatically increasing my library.  I’m still quite baffled as to how this happened.

YOGA:

Do you know how many yoga mantras, meditation techniques, mudras, gurus/teachers, and schools of thought there are?  No, neither do I, but I’ve tried incorporating many of them, and then wondered why I don’t feel particularly serene.  It’s because I was too busy worrying about all of the other options I thought I was missing out on, and how in the name of Shiva’s socks I was going to fit them in.  I am happy (and relieved) to say that here, at least, I have managed somewhat to simplify my practice, mostly by giving up wandering about on the internet looking at yoga sites.  As you may have noticed, that’s the third time the internet has been implicated.  It has a lot to answer for.  Speaking of which…

THE INTERNET:

Yes, the very thing which is the source of too much information and too many choices is the first thing to which I head when I feel confused and overwhelmed by too much information and too many choices - thus adding to my ever-expanding pile of options, and my ever-increasing confusion as to what to choose.  And yes, I know it’s obvious what to do when it’s written down, but not when you’re in it: and not when you have an addiction to excessive (and inappropriate) internet use. *sigh*

BLOGGING:

And finally, I have even managed to complicate the process of blogging.  Not content with simply writing things and then posting them, I decided that they needed to be categorised, and also embellished with photos, the way I’ve seen other people do on theirs: you know, “proper, professional-style” blogs - the kind I can get distracted by for hours.  Copying again. *sigh*  I also imagined that it would inspire me to write more consistently for my blog, but it’s simply overwhelmed me, and now I can barely remember all the categories that I’ve implemented.  Plus, the purpose of my blog has become rather obfuscated in amongst all these supposed ‘simplifications’.

And there you have it - but a small selection of all of the opportunities available to me for making my life more complicated and overwhelming, to which I run at the drop of a hat.  Now I just have to learn to recognise when it’s happening (which is relatively easy to spot - it’s when I’m thinking about things, unattended by the guidance of God/a Higher Power; or another, sensible, human being who knows me well enough to recognise the signs), and then run in the opposite direction.  Screaming.  

You Say You Want A Resolution...

Watercolour Horse - Nov 2018

“Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning, but a going on with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.”    Hal Borland

“To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.”    Mark Twain

Oh look, it’s that time of year again - the start of a new year (or  should that be New Year, just to denote its importance and significance?)  Yes, the time when my bonkers brain tries once more to get me to sneak into my life yet another plan, under the cunning disguise of new year’s resolutions.  Because, of course, a resolution is completely different to a plan (well actually, no, it’s not).  And of course, it being the New Year will make all the difference to my ability to be able to follow and stick to any plan  *ahem* resolution I mean (not at all the same as a plan) because, you know, it’s different.  I insist - this time it WILL be different!

Yes, yes, I know I’ve never yet, in all of my fifty-one years of living on this planet with this brain, been able to stick to any of the hundreds of resolutions I’ve ever made (strangely reminiscent of my inability to stick to any plans I’ve ever tried to implement, outside of the routine I have installed to keep me functioning on a daily basis).  But I live in hope (or a delusional state of magical thinking, and a stubborn resistance to accepting reality).  You never know, this might be the year I achieve the impossible improbable highly unlikely (and, while I’m at it, I might just stumble upon the land of Narnia in the back of a wardrobe - if I could only find the right wardrobe).

Let’s face it, I love a plan; I love the idea of following a plan; I’m OBSESSED with plans; I just don’t have the genetic disposition to be able to stick to one, without tweaking, complicating, or abandoning it five minutes after I’ve made it.  I’d have to have my brain genetically modified to get me to be the person I dream of being - super-efficient, rigidly structured, hyper-productive.  

You know, when I look at it like that, what I basically mean is that I want to be a robot.  Or someone else.  Or both - someone who is a spontaneous robot, but who doesn’t have all of those confusing and messy feelings that get in the way of me functioning efficiently.  Oh, isn’t that what the scientists working on Artificial Intelligence are trying to achieve?  Something that resembles a human being, but with which you can replace the inefficient, inconsistent, unpredictable human workforce?  And it’s not like they haven’t already made inroads, replacing them with automated services, thereby putting people out of work, and reducing the amount of jobs available.  And here am I, offering myself up on a plate.  What a dodo.  

To get back to the point, then, giving a plan another name (or ‘re-branding’ it, as they say), and re-packaging it in shiny new wrapping is not going to change the results one iota.  I still won’t be able to stick to it.  

One day I’ll fully accept this, and stop living in the future.  One day… (Oh, is that a plan I see before me, for how I plan to live in the day at some point in the future?  Well, golly gadzooks, how on earth did that sneak in?)  

Long story short, I have no plan to make any resolutions for this or any other year to come… but I’m sure that, if I contemplated that statement for long enough, I’d find that I’d somehow managed to sneak in a plan.  Oh bum.  *rolls eyes*

Iceberg Ahoy!

What I spent five hours doing with my paints instead of painting.  Plus a sample selection of my new paints.

It started with a discount voucher: which happened to be contained within a catalogue.  Two things I have a difficult time resisting.  Add in the fact that it was the biannual art supplies catalogue from Ken Bromley’s, promising a five pound discount IF I spent fifty-five pounds, and that it happened to coincide with my recent desire to extend the range of paints which I own, and I was basically sunk - Titanic, meet iceberg: Lisa, meet paint.

To elucidate further, this means that I have just spent at least two weeks, that’s TWO WHOLE WEEKS (even I cannot quite believe it), trying to decide which new watercolour paints to buy.  

How, in the name of Van Gogh, does a person take so long to make such a decision?  I mean, we’re talking paint here, not whether or not I should have a kidney transplant.  It defies belief; it defies logic; it defies the nature of time, space, and the laws of physics.  But defy all those things I have done, because that’s what I do.  Just don’t ask me how - I’m as baffled as you.

It wasn’t my intention to take so long - but then, as I am slowly learning, nothing I intend ever actually translates into action.  In fact, you can guarantee that the moment anything even vaguely resembling a desire or intention escapes my subconscious and manifests itself either as thought or word, it will sink without trace.  Like the Titanic (I think I see a theme here).

My actual ‘intention’ was to briefly (I obviously have no grasp on the meaning of the word brief) peruse a few art sites with which I’m familiar, in the misguided belief that they would aid me in simplifying and clarifying what to choose.  Already I begin to see the flaw in my argument.  Why would I need someone else to tell me how to choose paint?  It’s not like I’m a complete novice anymore: I know the kind of colours that I like; I know the kind of paintings that I prefer doing.  

But no, all of that knowledge goes out the window because, you see, it’s not about the paint colour - it’s about the pigment.  (Yes, that was just the tip of the iceberg.  No, I couldn’t see the rest of it, hidden beneath the sea of paint waiting to sink me).  And for that I needed an ‘expert’, which required more research: which translates as more time spent on the internet.  Hence two weeks of “research” - more commonly known around here as another obsession.

So, I may not have been doing a lot of painting (nothing new there then), but I now know an awful lot about paint and pigment.  Of course, I can barely recall most of the details, given that I’ve saturated my brain so much that most of it seems to have dribbled out of my ears.  

But I did eventually buy some paints, and then proceeded to avoid actually using them for their intended purpose.  Instead I spent two days ‘testing them out’, and boring myself into a near-catatonic stupor in the process - because, once again, I’d read a load of advice from a bunch of non-autistic artists, all saying the same things about how useful these exercises are to the improvement of one’s art: which translates in my mind as “it’s what ‘proper’ artists do”.  

Oh God, when will I learn that I come from a different ‘planet’, and what works for them doesn’t work for me in quite the same way!  Ah well, it’s done now.  Next I just need a few new brushes...  Oh lawks, I think I see another iceberg looming. *scrambles for lifeboat* 

Still Alive!!!!

This is just a quick note to say I am still here, I just haven't been doing any writing (well obviously).  I haven't abandoned my blog, I've just been caught up in doing art instead - every day for nearly the last three months.  Don't know what came over me!

Of course, this means that my writing has suffered because, as my best friend just pointed out, I cannot maintain focus on, and do, two things at the same time, much as I hate to admit it.  So I'm now going to have to let go of the idea that I can somehow fit both writing and art into every day, and instead do one or the other, as the inspiration flows between them.

And, in order to maintain this blog, I shall be trying to post both writing and my art in blog posts, instead of sticking to what has (inevitably) become a concretised idea that blogging requires me to always have to write stuff.

(I've just tried adding some of my recent artwork to this post, and there seems to be a problem, which I'm having trouble figuring out.  So I'll leave it for now, and hope that it isn't a permanent state of affairs. *the Voice of Doom, commonly known as Eeyore*).

My Imaginary Self

You know, I often feel as if there are two of me, and now I know why - there are.  I’d like you to meet my Imaginary Self.  She’s the one who convinces me that I am who I’m not, that I can do what I can’t, and, as a result, leads me off down rabbit holes which result in frustrating dead ends - not to mention time wasted on yet another distraction, of which my life seems to be one long series.

She’s been with me throughout most of my life, and has become so interchangeable with my true self that I often can’t tell which of us is real, and which the fantasy.  Even as I’m writing about ‘her’ now, I’m not quite sure whether I should be referring to her as being the one who has created, and believes, all of this false stuff about myself, and therefore convinces me of it; or whether it’s that I have created her, through the combination of ignorance, confusion, the influence of the neurotypical world, and (in recent times) resistance to accepting being an autistic with adhd, and what that really means.  As you can see, she has almost literally taken on a life of her own.  

However, this life she imagines is real doesn’t bear much resemblance to the one I inhabit, which is part of the problem - we are frequently in conflict because I cannot live up to her expectations, and she refuses to accept that I can’t do what she wants me to do, rather choosing to believe it’s because I’m refusing to try (that way she retains the illusion of being in control). 

I’ve been trying to write this post for weeks, now, and I’ve floundered around in the introduction, attempting to explain what I mean by her, instead of allowing the rest of the post to do that.  So I’m going to cut this (relatively) short, and try to be brief and succinct - though that, too, is an example of something my imaginary self can do, and I can’t.  Brevity is not my strong point: everything I write requires extensive editing.  You should see the draft notes for this post.

1  My Imaginary Self has both autistic and neurotypical wiring, which means that she thinks both autistically and neurotypically.  She isn’t clear on the exact details of how this works (details and logic not being her forté, unless it involves getting lost in the minutiae of the English language), just that she believes it does.  As such, she thinks she can suppress/control/manage some of her autistic/adhd symptoms by applying some of the neurotypical techniques she has learnt in her extensive research.  My real self has been trying to do this for fifty years (unconsciously for the most part): it hasn’t worked yet. 

2  As I mentioned above, details and logic are not my forté, but she harbours the illusion that she is a logical, linear, concise, analytical, academic thinker.  She’s not.  She couldn’t think in a straight line even if she had a ruler, and she cannot get from A to B without having to detour through the rest of the alphabet - usually more than once, and often encompassing the alphabets of any other random languages which might happen to be lying around to distract her (hello Sanskrit).

This illusion is compounded by the fact that she loves writing and everything about the English language, which she mistakenly believes means that she must be academic.  It doesn’t, and she’s not.  She’s a creative thinker - it’s just taking her a long time to figure this out, because she thinks in words not pictures (though she does paint pictures with words, which confuses her further).  Plus, she harboured a dream to go to Oxford University and be a scholar (like her hero, C S Lewis), even though she found school and college incompatible with her personality and mode of learning.  In her classically rigid autistic way, she thinks there’s only one way of learning in order to prove your intelligence, which requires the acquisition of a lot of information on a wide range of subjects, most of which actually bore the arse off her.

3  My Imaginary Self is a frustrated musical prodigy.  My real self has no musical talent whatsoever.  Based on this delusion, I spent one hundred and fifty pounds on a music keyboard to fulfil this supposed lifelong ambition to learn to play the piano, only to find it tedious beyond measure.  After hardly using it, I gave it away.

4  This same musical genius also believes that she’s a stifled seamstress waiting to burst forth and make her own clothes, because she thinks this would be easier than having to shop for them.  Unfortunately, the real me happens to be as interested in, and adept at, dressmaking as I am spot-welding, and my talent extends only as far as basic repairs, which I procrastinate over doing - a fact I should have taken notice of before I decided to fork out another hundred and fifty quid on a brand new sewing machine, which has now sat, hardly used, in a cupboard for about three years.  Another item to be donated.  

5  My Imaginary Self believes that putting off doing things will not only be temporary, but also make them easier to do later, when she feels better able to face them.  My real self is a chronic procrastinator who just defers action automatically, no reason required.  And it never makes it easier, but we always forget that.

6  My Imaginary Self thinks she’s tidy at heart, that being a minimalist would suit her, and this way she would get more writing and art done because this, she has read, is the way to combat clutter, and eliminate distractions.  My real self is chaotic, loves collecting and displaying things (like books), but also hoards things which she often doesn’t want to do, but can’t seem to let go of easily (paper, boxes, and containers in particular).  She’s attached to things more than people, and she’d panic if she had to live in a home with very little on display to stimulate her senses.  And it wouldn’t matter how clinically organised her environment was, something would still distract her - most probably the fact that her environment was too clinically organised.

7  My Imaginary Self thinks she’ll get bored if her choices are limited, so she needs lot of options to assuage my adhd; plus, she thinks this way she can overcome the narrow-focused obsessiveness of my autism, and become a more interesting, fully-rounded person.  My real self gets overwhelmed and in a flap if she’s faced with more than one alternative, and will often end up doing nothing at all because her brain has had a mini-meltdown and temporarily stopped functioning.  Or she won’t be able to focus on the thing she is doing, because she’ll be wondering whether she should have chosen one of the other options.

8  My Imaginary Self is erudite, and able to express this in a calm, relaxed, thoughtful, measured way when speaking in person to people.  My real self either clams up entirely because her mind goes blank when faced with another human being (or is reduced to repeating the few inane bits of small-talk she has learnt to express in such situations), or explodes into full-on twitter like a demented sparrow, where she just cannot shut up, and everything that comes into her head leaks out of her mouth.  This is often mistaken for garrulous sociability, when in fact it’s a sign of overstimulation and social anxiety.  Her erudition is confined to the written word, and she’s always relieved when she can escape back into blessed solitude.

9  My Imaginary Self chooses the ideas which are useful to her that she allows into her mind, and discards the rest.  She can distinguish between what’s meant to be taken literally (not to mention seriously, and personally), and what isn’t.  My real self is a sponge - a literal-minded, gullible, easily influenced, sheep-like sponge.  And, contrary to what my Imaginary Self believes, she hasn’t got a clue half the time what’s in her own mind, or why she does what she does - except that it’s usually as the result of something she read or heard somewhere… 

So, there she is - my Imaginary Self.  It took a while to wrangle her onto the page, but she’s there now - in the only place where she does exist, other than my own mind.  Now to try to leave her here… 

Namaste - I bow to the real you

FOOD FOR THOUGHT #3

"My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust.  But how had I got this idea of just and unjust?  A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.  What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?"     C S Lewis

I do love Lewis, despite not being a Christian myself.  

As to his quote, I do this all the time (mostly now in other areas of my life), and it always leaves me feeling frustrated, conflicted, and out of synch with myself and God.  And where do I get my ideas?  From other people: and not just non-autistic people (who are my default guides to how to live a 'better' life), but also from people who are as out of step with God (or even more so) as I am.  The blind leading the blind, indeed.

I compare my "universe" with other peoples', which only serves to confirm my beliefs about myself - that I'm not doing well enough; that I should try harder; that I'd be happy if I did it someone else's way, blah blah blah.

Take, for example, my obsession with the idea of the need for discipline, and more productivity.  My personality, my wiring, does not lend itself to consistency - I am, by nature, erratic.  I get enthusiastic about something, and want to do it all the time (right now I'm really into posting these quotes - it'll pass, unfortunately).  But then, after a while, I lose interest and move on to the next thing (told you it'll pass).  

But rather than accepting this about myself, going with the ebb and flow (no-one ever mentions the ebb), trusting that I'll always return to the things which really are my special interests (like writing, and art), and that this is God directing me, instead I compare myself to those people who propagate the idea of self-determination (some of them even talk about "setting an intention" to do something, which makes it sound quite spiritual, but which, on careful examination, often looks suspiciously like self-will to me); who elevate and seem almost to worship the ideas of daily discipline, productivity, and consistency.  

Yet I fail, every time, to live up to these expectations and ideas - ideas which seem to be universally accepted as being the blueprint for a happy, successful, and fulfilling life.  So, of course, for those of us who fail to follow these guidelines, the natural assumption is that our unhappiness, etc is because we aren't following them, and trying harder to walk this path is the only way to to achieve these goals, and get what we want.

And therein lies my other source of conflict - my relationship with God. As I understand it, I get a choice to either follow God's guidance, or my own; to ask Him/Her/It to direct my life and my thinking (this is where inspiration comes from), or to think for myself (which basically means following other people, because I'm relying on my limited stock of acquired information, nearly all of which originates from them; and which also incorporates my wobbly autistic interpretation of said ideas).  So what I want, or think I want (if I even have half an inkling, which I mostly don't), is not necessarily what I need, or what God wants for me. 

To me, therefore, if I'm following God, then me deciding what I want to do is in direct opposition to this.  The minute I decide I want to be more productive, or more organised, I fall back on my default, narrow-minded understanding of what this means (the one that I have picked up from other people, and which always involves a plan of some sort, even if it's just a mental decision to write or paint every day, for example), and therefore take back control of directing my own life again, rather than turning it over to God to guide me throughout the day.  

Being rigid in nature makes it impossible for me to shift focus between any plan for the day that I've made, and trying to let God direct me. Following the plan becomes my obsession.

Along with that, my black or white viewpoint also impedes my ability to see that there might be any alternative interpretations - that there isn't just one way to manifest organisation, productivity, consistency, etc. As my friend Dee frequently jokes, I am actually consistent - consistently inconsistent; I'm also reliably unreliable; and even chaotically organised.  

Yet I laugh these things off, and view them as qualities which need to be overcome, because the bar against which I am measuring them is one created by a society which is primarily obsessed with efficiency, productivity, and keeping people under control, and doesn't really allow for creative alternatives.  Things which God isn't interested in at all.  S/He doesn't want to control me; S/He doesn't want me to follow the crowd.  S/He wants me to be free.

So the assumption that the reason I can't find happiness, peace, and fulfilment is because I'm failing to try harder to follow the path laid out by other people, is wrong.  The reason I can't find those things is because their path is the wrong one for me: it's too narrow, and it literally leads to unhappiness. Yet I keep insisting on trying to walk down it.  And God won't walk down it with me.  So there goes my peace, happiness, freedom, and fulfilment, waving to me as I walk away from Him, once again.  

       

Blunting The Edge

My Lady Wren

Hi.  It’s been a little while since I’ve been able to sit and focus on something longer than a Literary Inspiration post (hence three in a row!).  Not that I’ve lacked ideas - just the ability to develop them beyond the initial draft.  Ironically, it wasn’t even as if I could claim that it was the internet that was distracting me, because it wasn’t.  

I’ve just had two weeks free from my compulsive internet trawling, using it only for essentials, like Sype.  But then I seem to remember the same thing occurring the last time I stayed abstinent - I gradually felt better, my brain calmed down, my mind got clearer, and my attention and focus improved, but I got very little or no writing done.  I did, however, do other things.

And it’s been the same this time.  I have actually managed to paint a picture (the first since July last year).  Whilst that in itself was great, the best thing about it was the fact that I enjoyed it, and there wasn’t the same amount of angst which usually accompanies it.

Whilst I have struggled to write any posts, I actually managed to write a bit of fiction, which I have done in the past, but have struggled with since.

And then there’s the fact that I have rediscovered the joy in my yoga practice, rather than it just being a necessity to my well-being, which is how I regard it (my alternative version to medication to help manage my anxiety and adhd, because I cannot take drugs due to being an alcoholic/addict).  Being obsessed with the computer means that my interest in everything else falls by the wayside - which includes my beloved yoga.

So, two weeks of freedom.  Again.  Two weeks appears to be my sticking point, at the moment.  It’s the longest I’m able to manage before I drift back to the internet.  I used to have the same thing occur when I was trying to become abstinent from overeating, which I used to find frustrating and disheartening.  

But I didn’t give up, and I got beyond that point when I was ready (which is usually not when you think you are), so I know that it’s just a part of the process, and not to listen to the Voice of Doom that tells me I’ll never be able to get completely free of this compulsion; or that I should accept it as part of the erratic nature of my adhd, and give up trying to manage it.  Accept that I need something to take the edge off of my anxiety, adhd, and all the other stuff about being me that makes everything I feel so acute, and that this is the lesser of the evils I have used (alcohol, medication, food, television). 

Except that it only works to take the edge of whilst I’m on there.  And then I’m left not only with the compulsion to keep going back, but also an increase in the symptoms that I was seeking to relieve.  My anxiety ramps up, I become more agitated, my focus and attention is shot to bits, and my brain feels like it’s melting.  Plus, I forget who I am, because I’m absorbing other peoples’ opinions again.

And here’s the other thing: I actually do have practical ways of taking the edge off, but without the negative consequences - with faith in a higher power, prayer/meditation, yoga, the change in my diet, and the barest bones of a daily routine to keep things ticking over and manageable - but no plans!!  They’re not instant, and they don’t render me unconscious (ie functioning, but not quite all here - like the walking dead, rather than someone in a coma), but they work to bring everything down to a manageable level.  

So, what happened to bring that ‘golden period’ to an end (other than me forgetting, yet again, the inevitable consequences of me web-trawling?)  Because there’s always a reason, as I learnt with alcohol, food, and any other addictive/compulsive behaviour - it doesn’t just happen that I find myself back trawling the internet, or with a drink in my hand, or bingeing on food. There’s a build-up which, if it isn’t being dealt with, turns into a mental and emotional tsunami.  

It may be the quietest tsunami you ever saw, because I am so poor at self-awareness, and so slow to process what’s happening to me, that it mostly doesn’t look like anything is wrong at all; but you’ll know it by the end result - me seeking ‘comfort’ and distraction on the internet from the feelings of restlessness, which I don’t recognise as being related to what’s happening in my life.  

Of course, this ‘comfort’ is only temporary, and not very comforting at all, given some of the stuff I sometimes inadvertently come across whilst trawling, and all that happens is that my life then becomes chaotic (more so than the manageable chaos which seems to be an intrinsic part of who I am - a trait which I have yet to accept as a fact, whilst I still strive to be Mrs Meticulously Tidy and Organised).

Here, then, are the events.

In November last year, I had to fill in an assessment form for the new disability benefit which is replacing the old one.  The DWP scares me to death, and I’m hopeless at filling in forms.

In January my friend Dee (who lives in Scotland, and I haven’t seen in person for about two years) visited on two separate occasions (staying overnight each time).  The second visit was in order to accompany me to the medical assessment I’d been called to attend for the new disability benefit.

Leaving aside the assessment, you’d assume that her visit would be a nice thing - and it is.  Except that I’m autistic - EXTREMELY autistic, and I don’t deal well with being around people, even in my own home, even when they are my closest friends.  It’s not relaxing, for either of us, as I have no idea how to behave, and I end up hovering around her.

As to the medical assessment, I haven’t had to go to one of these for quite a few years.  This ramped up my anxiety about the possibility of them taking away that money.

In February they informed me that, not only had I been awarded the new benefit, but that it had been increased substantially.  Yet again, you’d think this would be welcome: and it is.  But that doesn’t change the fact that, whether it’s good or bad news, I’m still clueless as to how to deal with it. 

Also as a consequence of both Dee’s visit and the assessment, she told me that I’m a lot further along on the autism spectrum than we thought - closer to the Temple Grandin autistic end, rather than the Asperger’s.  Whilst I know that I am extremely affected, it still comes as a bit of an unwelcome surprise to be told just how much so. 

Around the same time, I extended my circle of contacts from one (my friend Dee), to two.  And then, in the last week, I added another.  This is a big deal for me.  

I have been perfectly content to only engage with one person for a long time now (in this regard, I am classically autistic, preferring my own company to that of other people because of the stress engaging with them induces.  Plus, too many people offering too many differing viewpoints and opinions confuses me).  

But, as she said, she is coming up to her seventieth birthday this year, and, assuming she dies before me (jolly, I know!), I have no-one else with whom to share, or for support.  And whilst I may prefer my own company, and to have as few people in my life as possible, I do actually enjoy my limited interactions with her; and even I know that I need to have some people with whom to converse at a deeper level than simply to exchange polite greetings, the way I do with neighbours. 

It is also my fiftieth birthday coming up which, whilst I’m not consciously aware of it causing me any conflict (mostly because I just ignore it, the way I do every birthday - it’s just a number to me), no doubt there’s something going on.  

For one thing, I have found myself thinking more frequently about how I’ve got less time to do stuff, and how I wish I’d got my act together a lot sooner (particularly with regard to writing and art, but also with accepting and managing my autism/adhd).  I also sometimes find myself envying those who’ve been diagnosed earlier, which is not helpful, ‘cos it just leads to me feeling regret about my life. 

And then, in the last few days, I found out that one of my Aunts has died.  She is the last of my dad’s six brothers and sisters, and she was the oldest.  It wasn’t a shock (she was into her eighties), but, due to the distant and confusing nature of our relationship (of my relationship with the whole of my family), I have no idea how I feel, or what to do.

This culminated in me having the ridiculous idea (given that I cannot paint to order) that, rather than buy a card, I would like to paint one to send to her family (these are people I haven’t seen, or spoken to, for over twenty years).  And so I came on here to look for photos of appropriate flowers.  And got overwhelmed. And then got distracted.  And got lost for three days.  And now here I am, trying to drag myself back out of it.  Well it inspired me to write, anyway, which is the ultimate irony.

So there you have it - the anatomy of an autistic meltdown.

I hope that the only things melting in your life are food-related.

Śanti

Puppies In The Brain

Can you believe it?  I just spent nearly two hours this morning, composing what was meant to be a quick, simple blog post, which turned into a long, arduous, complicated, f*cking Greek odyssey.  And all because I had an idea - one that took no account of the fact that my brain can’t cope with what my mind thinks it can.  Talk about being out of synch with yourself.

I had decided that it’s like my brain is full of ants, and then I realised that no, it’s not.  Ants, whilst they may look like they’re running around without any clear idea of what they’re doing, actually do all have a specific purpose.  This is not what it looks like in my head.  

What my brain is full of is puppies - lots and lots of overexcited puppies on stimulants.  They can’t be still (even when they’re asleep, they still twitch and squirm about), they can’t decide what they want to do, and they don’t all do the same thing at the same time - so some of them want to sleep, some want to play, and some of them want to feed.  Sounds exactly like the state of my brain.  And there’s no-one in charge to tell them what to do, other than their mother, who they ignore anyway 'cos they're like that.

Here’s the irony - I managed to complete a drawing yesterday, which is now ready for me to paint; I half-finished another drawing, which simply requires completing; I also completed a draft copy of an actual post that just requires editing; and then there is another post that either needs tidying up or scrapping, along with about two other ideas for posts that I’ve had in the last couple of days; plus there’s my rekindling of my interest in food, and yoga (aka obsessions/special interests, which of course now requires more time trawling on the internet, whilst it begins to dawn on me that my brain and the internet are seemingly incompatible when it comes to searching for information).  

So, lots to keep me occupied, you’d think; plus, I was already starting to feel a bit overwhelmed by all of that, when my mind was erratically randomly ruminating on it this morning.  What better way to deal with it than to shove in another idea for something else to add to my burden.

Yes!!  That’s it!!  That’s the way to simplify all of this - add more!!!???  What is wrong with my mind?  I seriously wonder whether I was dropped on my head when I was a child.  

Either that, or it’s actually a cunning plan to avoid having to deal with any of those other things because my interest is now on the wane (thank you adhd); or because I’m now overwhelmed and overstimulated with all of that stuff, can’t focus on any of it, or make a decision about which to do first, and my mind is trying to save me from a meltdown by abandoning the whole lot; or it’s because I’ve found a reason to come on here (food obsession), and that’s actually what I really want to do.  Or perhaps it’s all of them.    

But, for some reason, we either don’t recognise any of that, or we just can’t say it, possibly because we still haven’t accepted that it’s true.  My brain can’t cope with what my mind insists on throwing at it.  

And the bright idea that I had?  I have a daily meditation book (which includes random quotes), along with pages of quotes I’ve copied from other sources, and I thought that it would be a nice idea to share one every day.  

Except that, of course, I had to write a bit about why I was doing it; and then I had to also take a photograph (do you know how long it takes for me to compose a photo?); and then I had to decide whether to write it up in Pages to save a copy on my computer, or simply compose it on my Blogger page; and then it wasn’t quite right; and then I worried about what I’d do when I ran out of quotes (‘cos my book only lasts for a year); and then…, and then…, and then…  

After all of that, I decided against it, because I finally realised that, once again, I was trying to force myself to do something that I can’t do - discipline myself to doing one creative thing every day.  But I’ll fail before I even begin - not because I don’t want to do it, but because my brain just will not function the way I keep on insisting it ‘should’.  In my mind it seems so bloody easy and simple: how hard can it be to just copy a few words out of a book, and stick them on a blog?  Let me count the ways…

Everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) takes me longer to do than I anticipate.  I have absolutely no sense of time, nor of the slowness with which I operate (and yet my thoughts race around my mind like Formula One racing cars).  

So the idea that this would be just a quick little thing I could do which would take up hardly any time at all, and wouldn’t encroach on any other writing or art I wanted to do, is frankly the workings of a seriously delusional mind, and a decidedly wonky brain.  You might as well just replace it with a lump of Swiss cheese, there are so many holes in it… to match the ones in my logic.

Well anyway, there we go.  I did finally get a post written, though not the one I’d planned (“the best laid plans of mice and men…”, as they say in Scotland.  Or something like that, before it’s translated into the English).  Enough!!

I think my puppies might be asleep now, thank Dog.  

Śanti - may your mind and your brain be as One.

Inconsistency, Thy Name Is Lisa

Hello.  It’s the end of October (which I’m sure you’ve probably noticed).  I haven’t posted since the beginning of the month (which you might also have noticed, if you follow my blog at all).  So, setting myself a weekly calendar ‘prompt’ went well, then, didn’t it?

Am I surprised that it hasn’t worked to help me be consistent?  Yes.  Kind of.  More disappointed, I guess.  I was hoping that this time I’d really found something that would work (given that it did seem to be doing so for about a month - which is longer than a lot of the ideas I’ve tried, most of which don’t get beyond the first day of conception.  Perhaps that’s because it wasn’t actually my idea at all this time).  

As readers of the AA Big Book might recognise the phrase, I was hoping that “this time it would be different”: the same way that, as an active alcoholic, I’d hope that, with each new attempt, I would be able to control my drinking.  Only to find that nothing I did to change the way I drank made any difference.  I still got drunk.  And I still persisted in believing that there was some way that I could alter the outcome, by sheer force of will.  

Of course, due to the obsession that had taken hold of my mind, it never occurred to me that I couldn’t; and, therefore, the only logical answer was to stop drinking entirely.  Too simple.  Too scary.  Too logical.  Too extreme.  Too rigidly black or white.  (I know.  How bloody ironic for one whose nature it is to bounce wildly from one extreme to the other, and views everything as a choice between either/or.  An opportunity for some of my autistic personality traits to come in useful, and I decide I’m going to wander in the world of grey. *rolls eyes*). 

So, here’s my dilemma - I keep trying to apply the same principles of the AA programme to things like my inconsistency, because that’s the language and the philosophy that is familiar to me, and with which I have been imbued for nearly thirty years now.  Except that it doesn’t quite work.  

Or, at least, due to the way my autism affects me, I am not able to adapt it and get it to work (and, by God, I’ve tried!)  All that keeps happening is that I confuse myself (even more than normal), and cement the feeling of failure I have about my inability to manage what I’ve come to view as my ‘failings’.  So, that’s a double whammy of failure to get in a pickle about.  Jolly good.

How do I accept that I am inconsistent, and give up trying to enforce it in myself?  

Don’t you sometimes feel as if the world is set up to defeat you, when it appears as if you come up short, or are outright deficient, in everything the world tells you that you need in order to be a thriving, successful, happy, healthy human being?  

Everything feels like such a bloody battle at times, like being in the trenches, never making any headway at all. *heavy sigh*  What would happen if I waved the metaphorical white flag, do you think?  Would someone shoot me?  (Yes, if I was lucky.  Put me out of my misery of having to listen to all of this tediously repetitious and woeful thinking.  Actually, I’d probably shoot myself.  Probably by mistake.)

So, just to maintain the ‘war’ metaphor, a full frontal attack doesn’t work.  Has to be a sneak attack.  So, back to the battle plan.  Or the non-battle plan.  Or the non-plan (given that plans don’t work for me either).  How to surrender, that’s my dilemma.  When I figure it out I’ll let you know.  (We could be waiting a long time, then.)

I hope you find peace with yourself.

Śanti

RECOVERY POST #1

“No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows.”  Big Book, page 30

You know what amazes me about the Big Book?  The fact that, if you break it right down to its individual, component sentences, you can see its relevance to the whole human experience.  You don’t have to be alcoholic (or have any of the other illnesses that traditionally share the 12 Step Programme) to find something of value or usefulness.  You just have to be open-minded - another way of saying not rigid in your thinking (which explains why I have a difficult time with this concept).

Obviously, the original application of this statement is meant to reference the difference between alcoholics and non-alcoholics; but for me, right now, its relevance is in regard to the difficulties I’m having with accepting that, as an autistic (with adhd thrown in as a bonus), I am differently-wired to other people.

First of all, I’d like to note the use of the word ‘different’.  There is no moral judgement in that word, no condemnation - which, as alcoholics, tends to be something we’re accustomed to either hearing from others, or applying to ourselves: that we’re somehow weak, bad, worthless, damaged, faulty, useless, abnormal, etc, and it’s essentially all because we can’t control our drinking.  When you really think about it, how daft is that?  

Well, a similar thing applies to being autistic, and having adhd.  Some of the judgements passed on us are that we are weird, difficult, faulty, useless, damaged, bad, worthless, etc.  It’s not generally something that anyone wants to be or have - which you can tell by the fact that people are worrying about the evidence that it seems to be on the rise; and that there are scientists out there trying to find a way to eradicate it.  It doesn’t make you feel warm and welcomed to the planet, I have to tell you, when the thing that is part of the very essence of who you are is judged to be some kind of undesirable abnormality.

And so we come to me.  It’s very difficult not to absorb all of this negativity (especially when you’ve kind of invited it in by going looking to see what other people have to say about autism and adhd), so it shouldn’t really be a surprise that, despite all of my positive speeches about how I’m merely different not faulty, and created by God, etc, I have yet to really accept my differences, and I frequently resort to judging certain aspects of myself harshly, mainly because I feel that they are getting in the way of me making any progress.  

Except that the progress I seem to be trying to make is in becoming less like myself, and more ‘normal’ ie non-autistic/adhd.  I choose to measure myself against non-autistics, and look to them for ideas about how to deal with life.  Is it any wonder I have a difficult time?  It’s like asking an oak tree to be a sunflower: it cannot do it, and to try to do so would leave it stunted and deformed.  And boy do I frequently feel stunted and deformed.

The page in the Big Book from where the quote is taken

I think the major aspect that I struggle with is the issue of having acute sensitivity, because it encompasses things not apparently obvious to me when I was first diagnosed.  I thought it was only about things like hearing (noise can distract me and drive me nutty, so I spend a large proportion of my time either wearing earplugs or headphones, and listening to brown noise - like white noise, only a different colour); taste (I am EXTREMELY sensitive to sugar, in any form - artificial or not - including fruit, and all the other ‘healthy’ variations); and touch (eg my sensitivity to the weather).  

What I didn’t count on was being sensitive to other peoples’ emotional energies, peoples’ opinions (which combines with me being literal, gullible, and serious-minded), and the electro-magnetic emissions emanating from some electrical devices: which, along with my distractability, causes me massive problems, particularly when using the internet.  Which I don’t want to admit, or accept, ‘cos I’m obsessed with it.  Like I once was with alcohol.  And sugar.  And television (another electronic device).  Bugger.

So I guess this possibly contributes, in part, to an explanation of why I experience such rapid sensory overload.  At least it sounds quite feasible, though I’m not quite certain.  As I said in the introduction to this series, I have no definitive answers: I’m just making this up as I go along.  But then neither, it seems, does anyone else know for sure.  So I guess it’s okay for me to shove in my twopenn’orth.  After all, it does affect me. 

I also have a thing about plans.  I want to be a person who can devise and follow a plan.  The amount of sites I’ve read about planning could sink a battleship.  I am obsessed with plans.  I’ve been obsessed with them since I was a kid.  And they’ve never worked for me.  Why would they work now??  (I need to make clear here that I am not referring to my daily routine, which includes the stuff necessary to keep my life ticking over - things like yoga, eating, bathing, and suchlike.)  

Fortunately for me, in AA we have something ultimately better, which is called living one day at a time, and following God’s guidance for us.  And, interestingly, God never informs me of what’s in store for the week ahead (never mind the month, year, or decade).  S/He/It doesn’t even let me know what They want me to do for the rest of the day.  I guess They know, and accept, better than I do that if there’s a plan to follow I’ll deviate from it: which is why They provided me with a solution that doesn’t force me to have to try to do something that I cannot do, ‘cos God isn’t interested in making my life difficult.  I do a good job of that myself. 

So, no, when it comes to certain things about being autistic and having adhd, I don’t want to be different.  But what I want, and what I need, are two separate issues, and I guess God had good reason for creating me this way.  And though it makes sense, I can’t say it makes it any easier to accept. *grumpy sigh*