But I love my rusty tools, dammit

Sometimes I’m worried I won’t have anything to write about, and then I realize AuDHD is not just a phase.

I think by and large I’ve worked my way out of the throes of My Big Autistic Burnout. Thank God.

I’m in the phase of post-burnout where I’m finessing my coping strategies (still working) and finding my safe people / situations (mostly there). It’s hard and I don’t like it. To be honest, I’m incredibly frustrated by the simple fact that I’m 39 and I have to do this work.

I skated by for so long, cobbling some semblance of foundation together with old rusty tools. I like my rusty tools. We have a history together – they’ve been passed down through the generations. They’re reliable. I know exactly where they are and what they can do.

I don’t want to learn about the new ones. I scoff at the shiny new things on the shelves. In my head, I know it’ll be better if I can at least try to use them, but damnit, I just don’t wanna.

Some recent frustrations:

That too much interruption in my meal schedule or composition of macronutrients will really throw me off. (This could also be me getting older and needing to support my internal systems better.) This becomes complicated when I’m traveling – either for work or not – or when I just don’t “feel dinner-y,” meaning that 1) my external systems set up for making meals aren’t currently online and 2) internally I just want to eat junk because that’s the only thing that sounds good. I feel like a petulant child who doesn’t want to eat her veggies.

That after typical corporate schedule changes (work travel) or events (social outings), I need more time than usual to rest and reset. Recently I had two work trips back-to-back, and instead of getting home, checking my email for any emergencies (rarely have those in this role) and just…. resting…. I fought with myself about whether it was “okay” if I take the afternoon / evening to reset. This internal struggle has been carried over from teaching for so many years where any minute of downtime needed to be used efficiently if I wasn’t going to bring much work home. I truly do mean that every minute counted. And having ADHD, who knows if I was going to forget to finish my preparations for a class, or forget to make copies, or forget to go to the bathroom, not because I needed to necessarily, but because it would be the only time I could for the next few hours.

That my executive functioning can vary widely week-to-week and even day-to-day. I’m still learning “warning signs” that I’m going to have a really “off” or “ADHD” day. The past couple weeks have been great, and then on some seemingly random beautiful Friday afternoon, the stars shift and all of a sudden I’m on the verge of a meltdown.

I think napping helps. Drinking water helps. Writing down my thoughts helps, therapy helps. There are so many strategies and tips and tricks and I think that’s part of the problem. I’ll get there eventually. (Stupid autistic optimism…)