hey, what's up? part 1
A new blogpost for 2 months ago
Back at the beginning of November I had a blogpost planned - in fact all written out longhand in a notebook, and with the scope and intention to improvise some more detailed sections within that. Only it never happened.
Part of the reason was genuine busy-ness in the run-up to Christmas, but most of the problem was honestly laziness and lack of motivation. Having just read the prospective post everything in it is out of date, which means rewriting the whole thing.
Because I can't be bothered
So let's start with that laziness and lack of motivation. There are maybe three contributory factors: my general underlying laziness and lack of motivation; the amount and intensity of stuff that happened in the first 8 months of the year; and possibly my tendency to anxiety and depression.
Laziness and lack of motivation
The first of these I'm not sure I can do much about. Or at least I've never found a strategy that works consistently - probably because I've never tried to find one in a systematic or considered way.
Setting myself challenges and goals sometimes works, though normally as a short-term thing. I also tend to make my goals too big or vague, which means I often don't even start on them. Either that or they're tiny, easily achievable goals like cleaning the bathroom.
At other times new friends or situations fire me up with enthusiasm, and there are a lot of things I want to do. This can have various drawbacks. One of the main ones is that I WANT TO DO ALL THE THINGS! NOW! Which can lead to burnout. Also, ALL THE THINGS doesn't just mean going to gigs and events and houseparties and making lots of art and putting on events and making an effort to get to know people and starting a new course of study. No, it can also mean guzzling lots of things that make my GP and mental health team pull a disappointed face and hand me leaflets about WHY YOU SHOULDN'T DO THIS SORT OF THING.
Anyway, as it happens I haven't DONE THIS SORT OF THING in a couple of years. There are various reasons, which I might go into later if I remember. But I probably won't. But, at the beginning of the year I did kind of TRY TO DO ALL THE THINGS! Albeit some of it was out of my control, and some had been in hand for a while.
The amount and intensity of stuff that happened in the first 8 months of 2015
To keep it brief, my mother entered the last phase of her illness over Christmas and New Year of 2014/15, and died at the beginning of March last year. Around the same time my temp job at DfE ended at the end of January and I spent five weeks looking for work before getting my current (soon to end) temp job at Ofsted. While all this was going on I was finally offered a housing association place.
By way of an informative aside on Monday 2 March I was heading back to Manchester from Lancaster when I was offered and accepted the Ofsted job. The next day I went back to Lancaster to visit my mother in hospital, and the day after (Wednesday 4) returned to Manchester to sign for the new housing association flat and pick up the keys, then went straight back to Lancaster. On Thursday 5 I had a final meeting back in Manchester with the benefits team, returning to Lancaster straight afterwards.
Just after midnight on Saturday morning my mother died.
And on Monday 9 March I started my new job. That's 8 days in which I got a new flat, a new job, lost my mother, and travelled between Manchester and Lancaster around 7 times.
Now, although I had my keys and started to move my things across I didn't actually move into the new flat until the second week in April.
But now there was the task, along with my siblings - who did more than me, of sorting out my mother's estate and clearing the house before preparing it to hand back to the Church of England Pensions Board.
At the same time I was making preparatory walks for my planned near-80km walk around the outside of the M60 at the end of May.
May to at least August is sort of hazy. April and May I removed the tiles in my flat and got carpets fitted, got curtain poles put up and hung the curtains, filled the place with furniture and white goods from my mother's, and generally started to make it look like home.
I know from May to August I did a lot of walks, some very long. I completed the long walk round the M60 in just under 16 hours, all in one go. I did quite a bit of filming and audio recording, though most of it hasn't been turned into anything yet - I haven't even revisited it. I did a lot of writing. Work was busy. There was a lot of time visiting family. I started to go out a bit more, mostly to see films - though there were a few gigs.
I spent a few weeks preparing for a performance at The Other Room in August, and was very happy with how it went.
Then, except that it was actually more gradual than the word suggests, I crashed.
The rest of the year
I don't remember September; in October I had my birthday and a family holiday to Whitby during which everyone contracted something like norovirus and I shat my own bodyweight; in November, after more than two years trying to get back in shape I revived my exercise programme - more on this later - oh, and walked up Pen-y-ghent with family; and in December there was Christmas and all the preparations for that - plus continuing exercise and more illness which saw me in bed for around 38 hours.
Then there was my pursuit of a diagnosis for autism which started at the beginning of August and is still ongoing.
Somewhere in there were also urban exploration videos, and video reviews. These have somewhat ground to a halt for the time-being. See above for my laziness and lack of motivation. Also, more on both the videos and my laziness etc. to come.
Where the fuck was I? Oh yeah, my attempt to get an autism diagnosis.
My attempt to get an autism diagnosis
I may have covered some of this already, but I like to repeat myself.
Friends first mentioned autism spectrum disorder/Asperger syndrome as a possibility probably not much less than twenty years ago, and it certainly started to come up fairly frequently from around the turn of the millennium.
I've also, since around 2004, begun to suspect that something of the kind may be a contributory factor in the episodes of depression and anxiety experienced around 1999-2000, 2004-2006, and 2012-2013/14.
And during my sessions of CBT during each of these episodes, as well as in appointments with psychiatrists and clinical psychologists (where I've had them) I've been most concerned with my lack of friends, and my difficulties in forming and maintaining relationships of any kind.
With which background I spent much of August talking to some friends, chatting on forums, and spending time on the National Autistic Society website doing some research and pondering a diagnosis.
So on 3 August I had an appointment with my GP and was told that there are no diagnostic or support services for adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in Manchester. Which is true. I was also told it was unlikely the clinical commissioning group (CCG) would fund me to go out of area, so my GP wasn't going to try.
That was that apparently. I went home resigned to continuing not to know. But I carried on reading, and talking to people online. Even so it was around a month before I felt confident enough to go back for another GP appointment.
That appointment was on 10 September, and this time my GP agreed to write to the CCG to see if they would fund me to go out of area for diagnosis.
Eventually the CCG agreed they'd fund me if I met their criteria, and so I had an appointment with my GP on 3 November for a brief not-quite-diagnostic test to see if they thought I did meet their criteria.
Three weeks later on 24 November I got a letter from Trafford Mental Health services saying I'd been referred to them for diagnosis, and including their own not-quite-diagnostic test to complete and return to see if they'd proceed any further.
Following so far? Nah, me neither.
It took me around a week to get that not-quite-diagnostic test back to them, putting it in the post on 3 December.
And finally, on 12 December I got a letter from Trafford saying that as soon as an appointment becomes available they'll start the process of assessment for a possible ASD diagnosis.
I don't yet have a date, but I didn't expect one yet. The assessment will involve: an initial appointment to discuss my referral, talk through the assessment process, and look at the implications of getting a diagnosis; an autism diagnostic interview, possibly over several sessions, looking at my childhood development - though with both my parents dead, and all my siblings younger than me, this may be somewhat truncated; a structured 'Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule' assessment over 1-2 hours in Urmston; and finally a post-assessment meeting.
If I had to guess, at the earliest I'd imagine this won't be complete until the end of February. But it might easily be later.
My tendency to anxiety and depression - part 1
Although in a lot of ways, as I discussed earlier, losing motivation and focus wasn't all that surprising in the latter part of the year, at the same time I didn't want to risk sliding back into depression.
After coming back from China at the beginning of 2012 I went into a depression within a few months that I didn't really emerge from until late 2013/early 2014. Through this time my social circle and the amount I went out contracted massively, and it hasn't recovered, if anything it's continued to shrink. I'll probably talk about that, and the possible role of Facebook in the next part if I remember.
With all the changes at the beginning of this year, especially my mother dying, and with my reduced contact with friends I knew there was a real risk of going back into depression. My pursuit of an ASD diagnosis was part of my attempt to tackle that.
Another part has been reviving and stepping-up my exercise programme. I never actually stopped exercising, it's just that the booklets from the Guardian I was using to guide my daily exercise were around 8 years old. So it was increasingly difficult to motivate myself to do more than the minimum. And the programme was both too predictable and no longer challenging.
Additionally, since returning from China, and not helped by some of the depression meds, I started snacking more, and eating less healthily. Now back in 2013 I did start to improve my diet and try to be less sporadic with my exercise, but I'd put some fat on my stomach that was proving difficult to shift.
With all that, in October last year I realised I needed to do something about it. So I bought some running and exercise gear, downloaded a couch to 5k running app to my phone, as well as some other exercise apps: initially an abs trainer and a set of dumbbells exercises, the abs trainer now replaced with a set of strength, cardio, yoga, and stretching exercises in a pretty big app.
These apps have been a great motivator, and have seen me lose weight, lose fat from my stomach, and shrink my waist.
Well it's late, there's no way I'm going to finish this nonsense tonight, so I'll wrap up for now and post part 2 in about a week's time. Hopefully that'll be the last part. Comments etc. always welcome. See you soon.
Back at the beginning of November I had a blogpost planned - in fact all written out longhand in a notebook, and with the scope and intention to improvise some more detailed sections within that. Only it never happened.
Part of the reason was genuine busy-ness in the run-up to Christmas, but most of the problem was honestly laziness and lack of motivation. Having just read the prospective post everything in it is out of date, which means rewriting the whole thing.
Because I can't be bothered
So let's start with that laziness and lack of motivation. There are maybe three contributory factors: my general underlying laziness and lack of motivation; the amount and intensity of stuff that happened in the first 8 months of the year; and possibly my tendency to anxiety and depression.
Laziness and lack of motivation
The first of these I'm not sure I can do much about. Or at least I've never found a strategy that works consistently - probably because I've never tried to find one in a systematic or considered way.
Setting myself challenges and goals sometimes works, though normally as a short-term thing. I also tend to make my goals too big or vague, which means I often don't even start on them. Either that or they're tiny, easily achievable goals like cleaning the bathroom.
At other times new friends or situations fire me up with enthusiasm, and there are a lot of things I want to do. This can have various drawbacks. One of the main ones is that I WANT TO DO ALL THE THINGS! NOW! Which can lead to burnout. Also, ALL THE THINGS doesn't just mean going to gigs and events and houseparties and making lots of art and putting on events and making an effort to get to know people and starting a new course of study. No, it can also mean guzzling lots of things that make my GP and mental health team pull a disappointed face and hand me leaflets about WHY YOU SHOULDN'T DO THIS SORT OF THING.
Anyway, as it happens I haven't DONE THIS SORT OF THING in a couple of years. There are various reasons, which I might go into later if I remember. But I probably won't. But, at the beginning of the year I did kind of TRY TO DO ALL THE THINGS! Albeit some of it was out of my control, and some had been in hand for a while.
The amount and intensity of stuff that happened in the first 8 months of 2015
To keep it brief, my mother entered the last phase of her illness over Christmas and New Year of 2014/15, and died at the beginning of March last year. Around the same time my temp job at DfE ended at the end of January and I spent five weeks looking for work before getting my current (soon to end) temp job at Ofsted. While all this was going on I was finally offered a housing association place.
By way of an informative aside on Monday 2 March I was heading back to Manchester from Lancaster when I was offered and accepted the Ofsted job. The next day I went back to Lancaster to visit my mother in hospital, and the day after (Wednesday 4) returned to Manchester to sign for the new housing association flat and pick up the keys, then went straight back to Lancaster. On Thursday 5 I had a final meeting back in Manchester with the benefits team, returning to Lancaster straight afterwards.
Just after midnight on Saturday morning my mother died.
And on Monday 9 March I started my new job. That's 8 days in which I got a new flat, a new job, lost my mother, and travelled between Manchester and Lancaster around 7 times.
Now, although I had my keys and started to move my things across I didn't actually move into the new flat until the second week in April.
But now there was the task, along with my siblings - who did more than me, of sorting out my mother's estate and clearing the house before preparing it to hand back to the Church of England Pensions Board.
At the same time I was making preparatory walks for my planned near-80km walk around the outside of the M60 at the end of May.
May to at least August is sort of hazy. April and May I removed the tiles in my flat and got carpets fitted, got curtain poles put up and hung the curtains, filled the place with furniture and white goods from my mother's, and generally started to make it look like home.
I know from May to August I did a lot of walks, some very long. I completed the long walk round the M60 in just under 16 hours, all in one go. I did quite a bit of filming and audio recording, though most of it hasn't been turned into anything yet - I haven't even revisited it. I did a lot of writing. Work was busy. There was a lot of time visiting family. I started to go out a bit more, mostly to see films - though there were a few gigs.
I spent a few weeks preparing for a performance at The Other Room in August, and was very happy with how it went.
Then, except that it was actually more gradual than the word suggests, I crashed.
The rest of the year
I don't remember September; in October I had my birthday and a family holiday to Whitby during which everyone contracted something like norovirus and I shat my own bodyweight; in November, after more than two years trying to get back in shape I revived my exercise programme - more on this later - oh, and walked up Pen-y-ghent with family; and in December there was Christmas and all the preparations for that - plus continuing exercise and more illness which saw me in bed for around 38 hours.
Then there was my pursuit of a diagnosis for autism which started at the beginning of August and is still ongoing.
Somewhere in there were also urban exploration videos, and video reviews. These have somewhat ground to a halt for the time-being. See above for my laziness and lack of motivation. Also, more on both the videos and my laziness etc. to come.
Where the fuck was I? Oh yeah, my attempt to get an autism diagnosis.
My attempt to get an autism diagnosis
I may have covered some of this already, but I like to repeat myself.
Friends first mentioned autism spectrum disorder/Asperger syndrome as a possibility probably not much less than twenty years ago, and it certainly started to come up fairly frequently from around the turn of the millennium.
I've also, since around 2004, begun to suspect that something of the kind may be a contributory factor in the episodes of depression and anxiety experienced around 1999-2000, 2004-2006, and 2012-2013/14.
And during my sessions of CBT during each of these episodes, as well as in appointments with psychiatrists and clinical psychologists (where I've had them) I've been most concerned with my lack of friends, and my difficulties in forming and maintaining relationships of any kind.
With which background I spent much of August talking to some friends, chatting on forums, and spending time on the National Autistic Society website doing some research and pondering a diagnosis.
So on 3 August I had an appointment with my GP and was told that there are no diagnostic or support services for adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in Manchester. Which is true. I was also told it was unlikely the clinical commissioning group (CCG) would fund me to go out of area, so my GP wasn't going to try.
That was that apparently. I went home resigned to continuing not to know. But I carried on reading, and talking to people online. Even so it was around a month before I felt confident enough to go back for another GP appointment.
That appointment was on 10 September, and this time my GP agreed to write to the CCG to see if they would fund me to go out of area for diagnosis.
Eventually the CCG agreed they'd fund me if I met their criteria, and so I had an appointment with my GP on 3 November for a brief not-quite-diagnostic test to see if they thought I did meet their criteria.
Three weeks later on 24 November I got a letter from Trafford Mental Health services saying I'd been referred to them for diagnosis, and including their own not-quite-diagnostic test to complete and return to see if they'd proceed any further.
Following so far? Nah, me neither.
It took me around a week to get that not-quite-diagnostic test back to them, putting it in the post on 3 December.
And finally, on 12 December I got a letter from Trafford saying that as soon as an appointment becomes available they'll start the process of assessment for a possible ASD diagnosis.
I don't yet have a date, but I didn't expect one yet. The assessment will involve: an initial appointment to discuss my referral, talk through the assessment process, and look at the implications of getting a diagnosis; an autism diagnostic interview, possibly over several sessions, looking at my childhood development - though with both my parents dead, and all my siblings younger than me, this may be somewhat truncated; a structured 'Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule' assessment over 1-2 hours in Urmston; and finally a post-assessment meeting.
If I had to guess, at the earliest I'd imagine this won't be complete until the end of February. But it might easily be later.
My tendency to anxiety and depression - part 1
Although in a lot of ways, as I discussed earlier, losing motivation and focus wasn't all that surprising in the latter part of the year, at the same time I didn't want to risk sliding back into depression.
After coming back from China at the beginning of 2012 I went into a depression within a few months that I didn't really emerge from until late 2013/early 2014. Through this time my social circle and the amount I went out contracted massively, and it hasn't recovered, if anything it's continued to shrink. I'll probably talk about that, and the possible role of Facebook in the next part if I remember.
With all the changes at the beginning of this year, especially my mother dying, and with my reduced contact with friends I knew there was a real risk of going back into depression. My pursuit of an ASD diagnosis was part of my attempt to tackle that.
Another part has been reviving and stepping-up my exercise programme. I never actually stopped exercising, it's just that the booklets from the Guardian I was using to guide my daily exercise were around 8 years old. So it was increasingly difficult to motivate myself to do more than the minimum. And the programme was both too predictable and no longer challenging.
Additionally, since returning from China, and not helped by some of the depression meds, I started snacking more, and eating less healthily. Now back in 2013 I did start to improve my diet and try to be less sporadic with my exercise, but I'd put some fat on my stomach that was proving difficult to shift.
With all that, in October last year I realised I needed to do something about it. So I bought some running and exercise gear, downloaded a couch to 5k running app to my phone, as well as some other exercise apps: initially an abs trainer and a set of dumbbells exercises, the abs trainer now replaced with a set of strength, cardio, yoga, and stretching exercises in a pretty big app.
These apps have been a great motivator, and have seen me lose weight, lose fat from my stomach, and shrink my waist.
Well it's late, there's no way I'm going to finish this nonsense tonight, so I'll wrap up for now and post part 2 in about a week's time. Hopefully that'll be the last part. Comments etc. always welcome. See you soon.
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