Punctuality

There's a big issue in life with being on time for things; as a species we are more dominated by time constraints than any of our fellow earth-inhabitants (Alice's White Rabbit aside!)

I would always prefer to sit around having arrived somewhere ridiculously early than to be caught in a situation where time is slipping away from me and I run the risk of being late. This doesn't always go to plan and I have friends who will happily speak of many times I have dashed into a restaurant/bar/party a lot later than I was supposed to arrive - inevitably with words spilling out my lips trying to explain the latest round of Helen vs the world. Truthfully I am just very bad at judging how long things will take; I can massively overestimate how long a journey may take me yet think drying my hair will take just a few minutes despite years of experience telling me it takes at least 10!

The understanding of the passage of time is something that can be linked to executive functioning - something that research tells us Autistic people can struggle with. I find my problems are not so much with the planning part of the process, as a former scientist I still have the numerical brain that makes all plans into Gantt charts and plots the most efficient path to completion of tasks. The trouble arises when the time I assign to each subtask is incorrect wildly knocking my plan out of sync! Even though this happens more often than I would like I still struggle to compensate and can't quite make myself change the next stage of plans quickly enough to gain back the time lost, although this is often because I have trimmed the plans to the point of not being able to loose anything - even if I'm running late for work I can't skip brushing my teeth or putting my shoes on! The few times I have tried to hasten my leaving the house I will find on my return that I have left lights on or my lunch is still sat in the fridge.

As we are forced into tighter and tighter schedules it's not surprising that more and more of my generation are eschewing 'going out' for nights in on out own terms. I feel I spend half my life trying to meet time constraints set for me: work deadlines, train departures, match KOs, assignment hand ins, even trying to remember to return phone calls at appropriate times for other people schedules!

Maybe as a society we need to slow down a bit and realise that not everyone can always keep up with the manic pace that is being demanded. Maybe we need to realise that each and every one of us is a human being who operates on their own processing speed and allow people just a bit of breathing space sometimes. Maybe one day we'll realise that we've made this world just a bit too hard for some people and have lost our way as a progressive society.

Maybe.

Maybe next time I come into London I won't be sat around in a reception for over an hour because I'm ridiculously early for an appointment!

Taking time out to relax

Sometimes its easy to get so caught up in life and all the pressures unfolding around you that you stop taking care of yourself and listening to what your mind and body need.
I've spent the past 5 weeks living life at (for me) a fairly non-stop pace; trips to visit family, rugby games (home and away), postgraduate assignments and exams, autism research and advocacy work. All of this on top of my full-time job. No wonder I've been so damn tired recently!




So I decided this weekend I was going to take some time to myself, not the whole weekend as I'm going to the Diamond Wedding Anniversary of close family friends for some of tomorrow but for the most part this weekend has been about looking after me and getting some much needed rest.
Rest doesn't just mean sleep however, though I will admit it does play a large part for me (14 hours last night!), its about not having any social demands put on me. I watched the Saracens game on TV from my own living room rather than making the trip to Allianz Park to watch it with all the other fans who couldn't make the trip to Lyon. This was a choice I made very definitively earlier in the week when I realised just how exhausted I was getting and how close to breaking point I'd unintentionally let myself get. The fact of the matter is that as an Autistic person I have to be realistic about what I can manage and no matter how much I may want to do something I still have to consider all the ramifications and consequences before committing to a course of action. This is particularly true when I'm asked to take on/do something with little notice - I need to think through the ripple effect before giving a response; often saying 'no' is incredibly difficult for me.


I don't regret anything I've done recently and I know that certain parts of the stress I'm under are completely out of my control but I just wish that people could be a little bit more understanding of the concept of 'Autism Fatigue' and realise the implications that can have on me and my sociability - if I'm having a tough week please don't criticize me for not conforming to the social norm and saying 'good morning' to every Tom, Dick and Harry that I see first thing in the morning at work!!




I can already feel the change in my mental state just from a single day away from people and their subconscious pressures, hopefully the feel-good factor from todays win and the general relaxed approach to this weekend will be enough to see me through to half-term now!

Its a generation thing

I am so goddamn lucky to be the age I am - I grew up watching Will Carling, the Underwood boys and Jerry Guscott on my TV as a child, got to witness history in the making as a teenager watching Johnno, Wilkinson and the boys in Aus do the impossible thanks to ITV, and now as an adult venturing into actually being at the games in person I get to see the marvellous talent that is Itoje, Kruis, Farrell and co go from strength to strength.


Musically I wish I'd been born 20 years earlier, technologically I cant help feeling the next 50 years are going to be the place to live in, but sport wise I'm definitely in the exact generation I want to belong to!

Running on Empty

I can often predict when tough days are coming but even then the level to which they affect me still surprises me each time. Sat in a filling up stadium miles from home I can feel the affects starting to take hold; the vice grip headache tightening, the tiredness and poor concentration, the tightness in the neck, the need for sunglasses even though it's cloudy because it's still too bright for me.

I'll do what I always do and push through it because I want to be here doing what I'm doing and it's important to me that I don't let my Autism 'win'. But boy am I going to pay for this tomorrow

Inescapable difficult situations

A large problem I face regularly with being autistic is that people can tell when I'm not happy with something I've been asked to do. Currently I'm faced with a challenge about how to cope with the way my university has decided to do 'revision sessions' for my Masters course - I don't like doing group work and I certainly don't like to do 'talk and share'. I don't want to be here, I am not coping well with this situation and am finding it really hard just to keep myself in the room when all I want to do is bolt and hide.
I hate the way people feel the need to force others into their way of learning / revising / coping. I have my way, it works well for me, doesn't always give the best results in terms of academic achievements but it allows me to survive the process.
Coping with stressful environments is always difficult when you have anxiety issues but when it's an environment that you're trapped in, and particularly if you're in the spotlight, it's so hard to know how to cope. My standard coping method is to blend in, to survive, to stay in control. In an inescapable spotlight environment however blending in is a bit harder and thus surviving can become a real challenge. Hopefully I'll be okay with this soon, it's a classic example of me not knowing in advance what would be expected of me and so not coping with a scenario well.