Now we’re getting somewhere
More updates, 2 insights, 1 entertainment suggestion, and 1 quote to wrap the week. (Literally? Not possible. Bad joke. I'm leaving it.)
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It’s hard to believe we’re moving in a week.
It’s been a slow process. Brian was at the office for most of the week for a team event, and one of my kids was home all week in his place.
I was looking forward to having the house to myself—I work best around the house (under all circumstances) when everyone is gone.
Sometimes it’s just nice to be in your own home, alone, too. Especially when you’re used to people being around constantly. I was really looking forward to that.
Extroverts may not understand—I get that. And people who know me in real life might read that and think, Whaaaat? You love people. What are you talking about?
I do love people. And I especially love being around and engaging with great people. But, I’m also one of the stereotypical Autistic people who need alone time often. I rarely if ever get it, though, so I end up spending an extensive amount of time in the bathroom on purpose. It’s my break from external stimuli. Although, my three AFAB children have it in their heads that it’s okay to just unlock my bathroom door with their superhuman-strength fingernails and enter without knocking to talk or ask for something. (When they typically had to pass their father to reach my closed and/or locked door.)
I’ve joked to the family that, when they do that, it just resets my “alone-time clock,” and I then need to spend even more time in there to recuperate from the interruption.
Nobody finds that “joke” funny but me, of course.
With some help this weekend, I forecast that this will be the most efficient move we’ve had yet. Even with the last four moves being shifts within the same building (including our move-hiatus at the beginning of 2023 after swallowing our pride and just paying the rent increase), I’m surprisingly not rusty at this.
I took time after we put in the applications for the new place to create moving templates for my Supernote e-ink device specifically for moving. They’re fairly generic, but I need them for those times when my brain gets lost or bogged down in the next steps.
The tighter deadline than previous moves turned out to be incredibly helpful, actually. Of course, it was only tighter because I somewhat procrastinated….
I’d hauled out the kitchen, pantry, and kids’ room not long ago. And I did my closet a couple of months before that. But, things changed once I knew we were going to move. It gives me license to be more ruthless when I know all these items will cost us more money to move than toss or donate. The less stuff we have to move, the more we end up with in the end—more money and time, at least.
I get overwhelmed easily in the chaos of moving. Once items are no longer in their organized homes—hidden away in cabinets, closets, bins, and drawers—and bleed out into our living space, I struggle significantly more than usual. ADHD leaves me starting multiple projects at once amidst the disordered mess, trying desperately to control the disarray through multiple avenues over focusing on one area at a time and just completing that.
Then, Autism (probably exacerbated by the ADHD-driven “multi-tasking”) leaves me overstimulated and wanting to go hide in the bathroom.
By Friday, I was overloading, and took a break to start this message and meet up with a friend.
So, so needed.
I got these 12” x 12” x 12” clear, collapsible bins* to move our books with, and just fell in love. After throwing out multiple broken plastic storage tubs, these will replace those after the move. (Although most of the items in those broken storage bins are now gone.)
Now comes the stage where we still have to live and function in the space for another week. But, once we pack up all the don’t-need-them-for-the-week items, we’ll officially have cramped every free space in our home. Unlike with most houses, there’s no garage to dump things in to allow moving-about room inside. Plus, we’ll need to bring everything up from storage on move-day anyhow.
Things are still feeling good, though. There’s been lots of interpersonal progress in this timeframe, too, so I’m feel extra at-peace right now. We know that’ll change by Friday when we officially get the keys, then work all day on cleaning the new place and stringing up lights, all before 3:40PM—when it starts getting dark and the kids’ buses begin arriving for drop-off. Then, Saturday is plants and kitchen-moving day. Since our in-building shifts began, we discovered the extensive money-saving and move-day stress reduction of already having lighting set up, and the extent of our kitchen items moved over and placed in their new home in advance. That way, we don’t have to worry about unpacking in dark spaces, nor about food or rushing to get the kitchen set up if actual move-day moving takes longer than expected.
Even if we order pizza for the night because we’re all too beat to cook, still, plates are where they’re going to live for at least the next year. (Hopefully indefinitely. I don’t want to move anymore, dammit….)
I’m ready. Ready for it to be over, but ready all the same.
One.
“Revenge (bedtime) procrastination” is absolutely a thing. YouTube creator ADHD Vision is a licensed professional in Germany who covers lots of different content on ADHD. Seeing that this topic is becoming a new obsession since I ignored it while preoccupied with chronic illness and Autism information, these little break-time Shorts-watchings are giving me so much more insight into myself.
After watching the below-linked Short, it immediately made me think of when we had our teenage house guest over the summer.
Let’s put it this way: I can talk (e.g., ramble on and on). One of my kids is quite a chatterbox, too, and another one is just coming into her own in the Chattersphere. But, our guest—without her full array of entertainment items accessible, left behind in the comfort of her own home 2500 miles (4,023.36 km) away—required constant interpersonal engagement.
I could not handle it.
This is when I recognized that I binge TV shows to escape (when I’m not holed up in the bathroom, that is).
I felt terrible.
I tried my best and communicated with her that I often need to “recharge” by being alone, even when people are around. But with her friend—my oldest—also discovering that the constant stimulation of someone outside the family being in our home being too much for her, she fully retreated. So, I was left over-extending myself socially every day to try to keep her friend entertained, and, still, not cutting it for our guest’s needs.
This Short on ADHD’s dopamine-chasing, sense-of-freedom bingeing from @adhdvision helped me identify what felt like an unhealthy, addictive behavior for what it really is: A release. A sense of control. A gift of reprieve I can give myself.
Two.
Brian and I finished the second season of Loki earlier this week. I want to rewatch the first season now, but the second was absolutely fantastic.
I’ve enjoyed most all the Marvel “superhero” TV series (although we didn’t finish The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, but I can’t remember why at this time). The series are more focused on the world-shaping backstories and after-stories of the characters versus all the only-we-are-capable-of-saving-the-world-(again) superhero-y stuff. Still, unlike Jodi Foster’s view of the whole superhero genre, at least as a late-diagnosed neurodivergent woman who’s having to learn self-awareness as it’s not innate to me, I take something away from everything I watch. (I don’t finish what doesn’t serve me, so.)
I enjoy superhero movies for the camaraderie. I love observing different relationship dynamics. That’s what is really entertaining and informative to me.
Three.
Although self-awareness is seemingly a major struggle for neurodivergent people, it’s not uncommon with all neurotypes. From a study of 10 separate investigations with nearly 5,000 participants, organizational psychologist Dr. Tasha Eurich’s team of researchers “examined what self-awareness really is, why we need it, and how we can increase it.” They gathered that, “...though most people believe they are self-aware, only 10 to 15 percent of the people we studied actually fit the criteria,” as relayed in an article on Harvard Business Review.
YouTuber Fads added in a video that, with introspection and excessive introspection (guilty), there’s an innate human need to ask why things happen, and, “Why do I (even) care about self-awareness?” He said, “Explanations add sense and order to the things we do, and they make the world feel like a more comfortable and less messy place.”
“There’s just something really unsatisfying about having an explanation without a cause.” Adding that, “This human compulsion to find explanations is one of the things that can actually be holding us back.”
As I know well, and as Fads pointed out from Dr. Eurich’s research, often the most introspective people aren’t always the most self-aware.
Personally, introspection offers me self-understanding. As a late-diagnosed neurodivergent person, self-investigation offers me insight into how my neurology affects my day-to-day life, why I make the choices I do, etc. But, otherwise, I’m still a relative enigma to myself.
When I uncover something new, another puzzling action or choice surfaces, begging to be probed. But, as Fads beautifully points out in his video, “…the more time reflecting about their own thoughts and feelings… [and] spend too much time in our own heads, we end up creating these narratives about ourselves. We create a system of internal logic, and everything we experience and feel has to fit into that little model that we’ve made about ourselves, even if it doesn’t reflect reality. Excessive reflection basically lets your own biases take over, and it becomes the yardstick by which you interpret your reality.
“You can go from self-reflection to self-rumination.”
Well said. Although, I try not to approach self-reflection so rigidly. My brain was already rigid due to its wiring. I work against that now, and self-investigation helps keep that in check. For me.
There’s so much in his short video and in the article, but I’ll wrap this section with a quote from near the end of Fads’ video:
Self-awareness is useless if you’re not using it to ultimately reach a state of self-acceptance.
Agreed.
If you’re interested in going deeper, Dr. Eurich wrote the book on self-awareness, Insight.*
Four.
In preparation for the move, I’ll leave us with this quote:
“If you’re brave enough to say goodbye, life will reward you with a new hello.” —Paulo Coehlo
My best,
Sara
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P.S. I predominantly write from my personal experience as an Autistic person with ADHD, chronic illness, Anxiety, and more. Each of these factors can influence my individual experience overall, as well as my experience of each condition.
What I share is not a substitute for medical advice.
Self-identification of Autism (what many call “self-diagnosis”) is perfectly valid. If a personal Autistic experience I write about resonates deeply with you, consider these resources on Embrace Autism (starting with the Autism Quotient Test) as a first step. If professional assessment is important to you or your life has been impeded enough that you may need to qualify for Disability, you can print your results to bring to a diagnostician. (Having all those tests completed in advance saved me a lot of money!) Although there are many more diagnosticians available, here is a comprehensive list to get you started.
Lastly, some of my opinions may have changed since I first wrote the piece that lead you here.
Comment with any questions, and I’ll respond as soon as I can.
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