Reply To: Prioritize, Verbalize, and Get it done, but Failing.

[Evelyn]

@seabassd, Damon,

I know how you feel, forgive me for not replying after your post. I also get spooked that I might have said something a little to harsh too.

Sometimes I do…

But in this case it was an important point that I wasn’t looking at properly. I was not offended, I took your words to heart and began peeling off the layers of analytical sludge that I buried myself under. –You should see my journals. — I just “moved” at first, I bounced around from project to project, throwing up my hands at each one. Then I finally landed on something I could do.

I took the clothes that I was trying to sell in the yard sale, folded them up, put them in a bag and carried it to the truck opened the truck door shoved the bag in and closed the door. One bag done, I could stop there if I wanted to but I took out another bag, folded the clothes… Then another. Each time completing the string of steps to the end with closing the door. I stopped with all four bags in the back of the truck (Tahoe actually) all I had to do now was drop them off at the Salvation Army… Just so happened the next day, a friend needed a ride, he offered to unload them for me, (funny how things seem easier when there is another person involved) so I just pulled behind Salvation Army. Done.

Lucky too, just a half hour after I put the fourth bag in the truck the sky opened up and we had a torrential downpour. Lightning flashed like spiderwebs in the sky. All three of my cats came running in the house. That hardly ever happens, I’m usually waiting on at least one of them.

I started that self discovery path when I was 16 years old. A simple question to a hard-boiled old codger named Bob Todd. Which was, “Why don’t people like me?” Then he tilted his big head slightly, looked me straight in the eyes and said, “You’re mean to people, Evelyn” He said it so uncharacteristically gentle, that I couldn’t help but believe him and ponder his point. He had been the only person in my life up to that point and quite some time after, that told me the truth without malice, or worse brushing it off like it’s nothing.

Damon, I know that analyzing thing too well. My English and Art teachers always give me very challenging assignments because I’d get board and analyze a lesser project into an insurmountable problem. And I did/do the same thing with my own little problems.

Now I have some of the missing pieces that have been making my analyses wrong before I even started thinking, so my mind has been going back over every thing I thought I understood about myself and literally rewriting my history.

With all this going on I’m finding life even more confusing, but I at least understand why. Now I have to find ways to work with what I have going for me, those are the things I’m still trying to figure out. What structure I can put in place myself and what structure I need help with. I did at least figure out that I light up when someone asks me for help with something, I start firing on all cylinders ready to win. also when I want to know something I get the same revved up feeling. Oh and argue, I get that one from my father, but where he says black is white, I might say it’s just a little lighter than black or it’s a brown black instead of a blue black, deeply analytical to the precision of my own perception. which may not be theirs.

And yes I do a lot of that “…on the other hand”  stuff. but I’ve never counted how many hands I actually have. There were at least 8 in that sludge I peeled away.

Now, like you said I have to build in the external motivations, every day. Set timers, every day…

I did find a pattern that is working, for now anyway. 30/10, 30 minutes of work to 10 minutes of break time. I know that won’t be practical in the real world of time-clock punching, but it’s working here at home. I don’t know what I’m going to do in that world, I can only hope I find a job that offers diversity, especially between learning and teaching, those two activities seem to keep me focused and creatively sharp, for longer periods than just the mundane stuff. Unless they want me to plan a complicated course outline, –for that I need the help of a neuro-typical. One who can organize steps.

No off putin taken. You actually shed some light on something I was to close to to see. Especially framing it in the “in your head” format. I live in my head so much of the time that I too forget there is a real world in real time out here. That the instantaneous results I get in my head don’t apply out here. I still have to trudge through the slow actions of body space and time, weather I like it or not.

Man I’m gonna have to read through this later, try to remember some of it.

Oh yeah, frozen by decisions, and mistakes of the past. A very big issue with me too. When everything has the same priority mark it’s hard to tell what is really more important. Like having 5 bills due on the same day, and only enough money to pay three of them …I don’t watch TV any more, well cable TV. I don’t receive the newspaper any more. I chose to keep my avenues of two way communication, over one way communication. Maybe that one was a little too easy. the tougher one is lights, gas, mortgage, water, and cat food.

That’s what I was working on over the last week, I nearly lost the privileged of keeping my home by sacrificing one of, what I thought was, a non-essential, my auto club membership. I did not realize that it was tied to my homeowners insurance the same way as it was to my auto insurance. Wake-up call; The choices went from what do I pay now, to what can I sell now, to get it paid.

I had paperwork for two organizations that are trying to help me, to finish and turn in. Shut off notices to deal with, insurance policy to straighten out or (lose my home). Mortgage payment to secure, Stuff still in the back yard to decide if I going to try another sale or get rid of. A job to find. A trailer to sell (no nibbles there). I am being swallowed in decisions and a pile of crises that I haven’t been able to handle. Oh, and the summer taxes are coming due in July. And the cats still need food. I’m now inviting the fly’s in, so the cats have something to nibble on while I sort this mess out. I could go on but you got the gist of it.

I think, I might even be to the point that a neuro-typical would freeze.

I do have an Angel though. My Michigan Rehabilitation worker gave me the number to a Realtor who helped me, even so far as to three-way call my insurance company to help me out of this mess. We did it by the skin of out teeth.

I read someplace, that the deepest wellspring of human endurance and strength, is Hope! Our last line of defense. Where there is hope there is a path no matter how hidden it is there! I have to say I really believe that now.

Well Damon now that your eyes are red from reading I want to thank you again for helping me see the truth of my stuck-ness, so I could pick myself up by the heel of my tenny-runners and get on with what I needed to do.

Good night, friend.

Evelyn

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