Desire and Ability

So, it's been about two and a half weeks since I started going to the gym.  During that time, I have not failed to go there on a day that I planned to go even once.  When I go, I ride my bike so I'm not getting any help getting there or back.  And even though I have a personal trainer, I've arranged to meet with her only very rarely since it can get pretty expensive.  So I'm pretty much doing all of that without much hand-holding or prodding by other people.

Now, as anyone who works out knows, getting yourself to go do it is the really hard part.  Once you get started on a workout it actually feels good, and especially afterward there's that glorious sense of accomplishment, but actually getting started is what kills you.  One advantage I have is that my schedule is so flexible - I'm not getting up at 5:30am so I can get there before work.  If I find myself lingering in bed much of the morning, that does not prevent me from getting to the gym that day.  Given how hot it's been getting in the middle of the day lately that does make the idea of saying 'can't go: it'll be too hot on the ride home if I do' rather tempting, but given how short it is I know that's just an excuse.  But then, there's always going to be excuses for not working out, no matter what your situation is.  So how am I doing it?

When I first signed up for personal training, I met a man named Mike who I gather is in charge of all the personal training at the gym.  He's the one who paired me with Melanie, which seems to be a very good match since she seems to understand my fitness needs.  Mike himself, however, definitely does not understand me.  To help him figure out who to pair me with, he asked me what kind of personality would be best for me to work with.  The best answer I could give him is 'the opposite of a drill sergeant'.  Because there are two types of people: those who respond to pressure by working harder, and those who respond to pressure by becoming stressed - and the latter usually end up working slower because they're trying to relax themselves.

I'm very extremely the second type, and Melanie is a good match for me because rather than ordering me around she simply provides direction and encouragement.  I get the feeling that if I showed up to a meeting with her and said that I hadn't done a thing since the last one, she would go 'Oh, well what do we need to change?' or something like that instead of getting angry.  If I'd been paired off with someone who applied a lot of pressure, on the other hand, I'd probably quit and never go back to the gym again due to the stress.  In fact, my mom commented on that point while I was talking to Mike.

But Mike, like I said, does not seem to understand.  The day I applied for a personal trainer, I remember that when we talked about what personal trainers do for you he mentioned that one of their jobs is to motivate you.  My immediate thought was 'people do not motivate me'.  Which isn't fully true: the thought of disappointing Melanie, my mom, and everyone else rooting for me if I fail does help motivate me, but at best that motivation accounts for approximately 10% of the reason why I drag myself to the gym, combined.  Definitely nowhere near enough to get me there.  I am also not really that afraid of wasting all the money I spent on this.  So motivation is not really to be found in anything external to myself.

No, the reason why I get to the gym is because I want to.  If I didn't, it would not happen.  And that's the case with pretty much anything hard that I've done for quite a while now.  I do recall that there was a time when I would do hard things that other people wanted me to do if they prodded me along hard enough, especially my mom.  At the time I knew that they wanted what was best for me and therefore I wanted to please them.  However, though I think this is how I accomplished a few good things like making it through high school, I also found that it made me extremely dissatisfied with my life.  The thing about trying to please other people is that it's impossible, except in the extremely temporary sense.

So I learned to stop caring about what other people want me to do, in a way.  When someone tells me they want me to do something, I listen but I also decide if it's something that I want to do too.  If I don't, I don't do it.  That's not to say that I don't do things for other people anymore - in fact, sometimes simply knowing that someone wants me to do something is enough to make me want to do it - but that means that I often refuse to do things outright if what someone else wants does not match what I want.  And since I started following that rule, my personal happiness skyrocketed.  Now that I'm doing everything for myself, even if I'm doing it for someone else too, I don't feel miserable if I fail to please someone because at least I'll please me.  I feel a much greater sense of pride and accomplishment since, even if I was inspired by someone else, I'm the one who made the decision to actually do it and I'm the one who got it done.  I own what I do now - it's wonderful!

And one of the best rewards of this is that all of the hard things that I've been tackling are made easier by the fact that I'm extremely self-motivated.  I want to go to the gym because I know it's good for me, I enjoy pushing myself, I love that feeling of accomplishment after every workout, I enjoy the extra energy I seem to have to do other things, I like the comments people make about it, I know that it's incredibly good for me to be getting out of my apartment on my own most days a week, it improves my mood, and does many other awesome things for me.  And knowing all this, not just in an academic sense but through experience, means that keeping motivated to continue doing it is not a problem.

Of course, I've known all of this for many years and yet have not gone to the gym before.  That's because having the desire to do something is only a piece to getting something done.  The other piece that fell into place more recently is that the combination of moving somewhere that was a bit closer to the gym and my recent growth as a person made the whole idea a lot less daunting.  There came a point when I looked at a map and saw how far away the gym was and said to myself 'this is something I can do'.  Similarly, when I had the opportunity in both high school and college to attend a weight-lifting class I did so, since it was easy enough to take a PE class alongside other courses.

You can have all the desire in the world, but if the other logistics of the situation are more than you can handle then you won't get it done.  Before I moved, my mom would often comment that she could give me rides to places where I could work out, but it was too much for me to handle the idea of having to coordinate things with her.  I also had the option of a longer bike ride, riding the bus somewhere, or even working out at home doing calisthenics or using the treadmill.  However, all of those options seemed too hard to me for one reason or another, especially since I'm very aware of how regular you have to be with exercise in order to get good results.  We might have possibly worked out a solution if we'd tried to problem-solve the situation, but that's why it didn't happen.

Now, I don't know how much of any of the above is pretty standard for everyone on the planet, how much of it is my Asperger's traits, how much of it is anxiety, and how much of it is my own personality, but that's how and why I'm personally motivated to do what I've been doing lately and why if I'm not doing something it's often not a matter of motivation.  But I do think that the real essence of it applies to everyone: accomplishing anything is a matter of desire and ability.  Where I'm different is that, largely due to the Asperger's part of me, I can be a lot more clueless than a neurotypical person about why I should want to do something sometimes.  In those cases I benefit most from someone sitting me down and explaining in detail to me why I should want it, though in cases where I understand but simply disagree there's just no hope for it.  On the other hand, the anxiety can make my ability to do something I want to do appear to be too difficult even when your average person would think that it's doable.  In those cases the best thing is to carefully analyze why it seems so difficult and try to fix or work around the problems until it's cut down to size, perhaps starting with taking a small step in that direction rather than going all the way, though in some cases it can simply be that I'm not ready to do that thing yet.

However, using the wrong method to help someone who isn't doing something is intensely frustrating to the other person, and so is continuing to use what would be the right method in situations where what you want is just not going to happen.  If the problem is that I don't want to do what someone wants me to do, whether the problem is that they haven't convinced me yet or I'm not going to be convinced, it's the same feeling anyone gets when a salesman comes to the door offering something you don't want to buy: not interested, leave me alone.  If the problem is that I want it but it seems too hard, someone trying to explain why I should want it or trying to help me do something I'm not ready for merely makes me that much more saddened by the fact that it seems too hard to get.  And sometimes the problem is that I'm lacking both the desire and the ability at the same time.

Fortunately for me, I'm generally self-aware enough to figure out which of these problems is present for any given thing that I'm not doing, whether or not I'm possibly close to doing it, and even the specific details of what's standing in my way when I don't already know but do a little pondering on the question.  But even though it's not usually the case, I sometimes do have mental blind-spots when it comes to a particular problem so I still have to figure it all out the hard way every once in awhile.  But if it's important, the reward of doing so is usually well worth the effort.

Fear of Success

The fear of failure is something that every human being on the planet can relate to.  Without exception we all try, we all fail, and hopefully we pick ourselves up and try again even though we fear a repeat experience.  Sometimes we even fear failing the first time we try something because of failures in the past in completely unrelated things.  And I'm certainly not immune to that - I've had to stare that fear in the face a lot lately in order to make a lot of the recent changes I've made to my life.  But I can go on and on about the fear of failure, but then again so could pretty much anyone else.  About all I can say on that topic is that what makes it easier for me is to consciously have a solid 'Plan B' in place just in case I happen to fail so that I know it won't be too terrible if I do.

But now that I'm in a place where I'm not really making any new changes to my life but simply trying to keep up with the ones that I've recently made, I'm facing a different fear: the fear of success.  Given how many jokes I've heard about it, I can only assume that people are less familiar with this one.  And I can see why - if you're successful then you should be happily victorious rather then worrying about it, right?  Oh, but there's so many things about success that can be scary!  I don't think I have a problem with one of them even though some people do; I'm not afraid that I'm undeserving of success.  I've largely conquered many of the self-esteem issues I struggled with throughout my teens, and while I try not to make the mistake of arrogance, I do feel like I deserve success as much as anyone else making an honest effort to get it.

On the other hand, the other reasons are currently plaguing me like you wouldn't believe right now.  The hardest one is probably my fear that success will be temporary.  I know on a very logical level that life has it's ups and downs.  Currently I'm on an 'up' since I've been making lots of rapid progress over the past few weeks, but it's been going on for long enough that there's a very strong part of me that seems to just be waiting for what seems to be the inevitable crash.  It's probably all linked to the many times I've tried to do something that was perhaps a bit too much yet was able to stick with for quite awhile even though I eventually had to stop.  A perfect example was my last job as a custodian: I knew pretty much from the beginning that I wouldn't be able to hang onto it permanently, even though I eventually lasted there an entire year before the strain got bad enough that I needed to quit.  And that's happened to me in one form or another often enough that I begin to anticipate it - a part of me is suspecting that something is bound to happen that will reduce my recent success to nothing.

However, though I have that feeling I know that I shouldn't put much stock in it this time.  Unlike most of the times I've had that sort of crash in my life, this didn't really happen suddenly.  I've been slowly growing for awhile now, especially over the past couple of years, and changing as a person.  I think that I've been close to doing these things I've been doing lately for awhile now without quite realizing it.  The only reason why I've been able to take all these good steps lately is because moving out seems to have given me that last push I needed.  I haven't been suddenly thrust into a new situation but have taken a few steps forward that looked manageable.  More likely this 'up' in my life is more a matter of moving the regular pattern of ups and downs to a higher level where the average is better than it was, or at least that's the hope.

Of course, like any of my more negative emotions, my fear of success doesn't listen to my logic very well.  I can sit here and tell myself how extremely unlikely it is that I'll just suddenly lose all of this progress all I want, but that won't make me feel any differently.  Though I hope that if I'm able to maintain all of this for awhile then it will seem more solid, especially if I don't feel any stress build-up.  I'm actually hoping that things will level off into a nice, smooth plateau for awhile instead of adding in more big steps for awhile - that would make me feel more secure about taking more big steps in the future.

But that's actually another aspect of the fear of success - the fear that because I'm having success other people will then expect more from me than I'm ready to do.  Seems like every time I hit a new high, someone always comes along and notices that I'm just a step away from something else and tries to hurry me along to it.  This doesn't work very well because I usually have a good sense as to when I'm at my limit and have gotten good at not being pushed - but it's still stressful not meeting other people's well-intentioned expectations.  Especially people you care about, like you're family.  Seems like they always start to push me right when I'm ready to sit back and enjoy my victory for a bit - but it's one of those 'they do it because they love me' things.

My Forum And Its Place

While I believe that I've mentioned my forum in this blog before, it's a big enough part of my life that neglecting to explain its place in my life more thoroughly would probably give anyone an incomplete picture of what I'm doing with myself.  But though its effects can be somewhat subtle, I think that it's played a major role in a lot of the more obvious recent growth I've been experiencing lately and is helping me prepare for even more.

But let me start by explaining exactly what the forum is: it's a Batman-themed roleplaying forum.  And if that has you scratching your head, don't worry - I'll explain it more simply.  Usually I compare it to writing a book.  Except that this book has a very large number of authors, so each author is put in charge of one or more characters that they are solely responsible for.  The authors, called players, take turns adding to each scene by writing the actions, thoughts, and perspective of their character.  And while sometimes the players will get together and plan ahead portions of what will happen next, more often each player will only determine what their character's future plans are rather than deciding a firm storyline.  What actually happens is determined by each player describing what their character does, receiving replies from other players describing what their characters do, and back and forth until the entire scene is complete.

For example, in one scene I'm currently in the middle of the character I play, Poison Ivy (a major villainess), has stolen something from the Wayne Botanical Garden and is attempting to escape with it.  However, Nightwing (a vigilante trained by Batman), who is played by someone else, is attempting to capture her or at least not let her get away with what she stole.  So his player keeps on writing things about Nightwing dodging Poison Ivy's attacks, throwing various gadgets at her, and his determination not to let her get away.  And I keep on writing replies about Poison Ivy trying to keep Nightwing busy so that he can't attack her very effectively, attempting to deal with all the hurdles he's already put in her way, and how displeased she is by the fact that he's doing a much better job trying to stop her than he did the last time they ran into each other.

Now there's a lot of rules and customs we follow, especially when fighting is involved, making sure that we try to be fair to each other.  Especially since we haven't preplanned the ending: I'd like for Poison Ivy to get away with the loot, but I also wouldn't mind it if she was caught and sent to Arkham Asylum because I could have a lot of fun with that.  On the other hand, I'm not about to make her take a dive to Nightwing, so the ending is up in the air.  Which of them succeeds will depend on which of them manages to outmaneuver the other first as we write back and forth about what our characters are doing.  And this is a lot of fun - imagine reading a book or watching a TV show where you are able to tell one of the characters what to do rather than watching it all passively.

I first began to roleplay like this about 13 years ago, and have continued to do it off and on since.  Often I'd be an administrator as I really hate sites that are poorly run and it's difficult enough to find a good one with a theme I like that it's often easier for me to just make my own.  And I hear people say that I do a really good job of it, as I try very hard to both be nice but firm about enforcing the rules.  This particular site was not actually made by me, however.  I met Nat at a different place a few years ago.  She is an awesome player, but seems to have a hard time doing the same thing for more than a few months before something else catches her interest.  But she started the forum I now own just over a year and a half ago, but then she lost interest about a year ago as is her habit, so she offered the site to me since I was the only member of the staff left that was both able and willing to take it over.  And I've been running it ever since, with a few other players helping me with some of the details.

But pretty much everything I do on this site is helpful to me in some way.  Because, first of all, I'm not just a player on this site but the head administrator.  My duties include reviewing the applications of people wanting to join the site and accepting or rejecting them, enforcing the rules and altering them if I need to, maintaining the forum by clearing old accounts and archiving old threads, helping players come up with plot ideas if they're having trouble, and overall just making sure that everyone has a fun environment to roleplay in.  The number of individual players tends to hover around 20-30, with the number of characters usually in the area of 30-50.  And by being in charge of this site, I've learned and continue to learn a lot of leadership skills.  I know how to tell someone that their application is absolutely terrible without insulting them, for example.  I know how to tell the difference between someone whose complaints should be addressed and someone whose complaints should be ignored.  I know how to manage when two of my players decide that they hate each other and both refuse to change their minds.  Those and many other things I couldn't currently learn otherwise since I so rarely end up in any other situations where I'm in charge - though if I did then I'd have a much easier time of it from what I learned in my forum.

Secondly, while I interact with people a lot on my forum, my interactions because of my forum are definitely not limited to my forum.  Many of the people on my forum also use AIM, which is an instant messenger service, to chat with each other.  And while we do talk about my forum a lot, we often branch off into topics including life, the universe, and everything.  Or in other words, we socialize.  And I've gotten to know a lot of people this way.  While it would perhaps be even better if I could get to know more people in person, I find using AIM to be a lot less stressful than face to face interactions.  And some of these players I know well enough that I'd consider them to be my friends, never mind that I've never met them in person.  Even though I usually don't know their real names and faces, and for all I know that they're lying about details like their gender or age (even though it really isn't that difficult to tell after you get to know them for awhile...) does any of that really matter in a friendship?  Nope.  And I wouldn't have met any of them if it weren't for my forum.

Thirdly, the actual process of interacting with other players as a player myself (as opposed to my administrative duties) can require a lot of interaction that goes beyond idle conversation.  Sometimes I want one thing for my characters, someone else want something for theirs, and while sometimes those things are compatible there are times when they aren't.  Working with other players can require a lot of negotiation, compromise, standing your ground when you need to, or putting the needs of the group over your own.  All of these skills are absolutely vital when working with people in any situation, but are a lot easier for me to practice in my forum than they would be in person.

Fourthly, each and every one of my characters has taught me and continues to teach me things about people and life that I wouldn't have been able to learn so easily otherwise.  Of course, I probably knew all of these things logically already, but they helped to sort of cement these ideas as facts and helped me learn it on an emotional level too:

• Poison Ivy has taught me what I don't want to be.  She's selfish, cruel, and has given up on people.  And though the other players tell me that I play her extremely well and it's fun to write for her, I know that I wouldn't want to be like her.  But she's also taught me that caring deeply about something can make a person more powerful.  And she's also taught me a lot about how to flirt - even if I don't think that I ever want to be as obnoxious about it as she can be.
• Nina has taught me a lot about relationships - she was in a rather twisted one for a very long time and thus I learned a lot about what a healthy one isn't.  But she also taught me to be a lot more comfortable with the idea of being attracted to guys and have guys be attracted to me (haven't had a lot of real world experience with that one yet...), and about how to be a good person in very bad situations.  And she's also taught me a lot about remaining calm and stopping myself from becoming over-dramatic.
• Hawkgirl has taught me a lot about what it is to be strong and bold, and that just because one is afraid or uncertain doesn't mean that you should let that stop you.  This touches right to the core of what my main struggles are so playing her didn't make more than a dent in that problem, but every little dent helps.
• Force has helped me relearn innocence, but also that having certainty and security is not a matter of being able to control everything outside of you - it's in the inside.  She's also taught me the importance of being aware of all the gray areas in life and that black and white thinking can be extremely hazardous.  She's also taught me the difference between how a child and an adult think - which is a very important point given that most of the trauma that I've experienced happened when I was a child.
• Heather has taught me that it's possible to be weak and vulnerable in even the worst situations and still be okay.  She's also taught me the power of words, the power of fun, and just how terrible Nina's relationship was.  And she's also taught me a lot about the role that fear and anxiety play in a person's life - how the emotion can be both harmful and helpful.
• Iris hasn't taught me much yet since I haven't been able to use her very much yet.  But thus far she's been teaching me that you can learn an awful lot about a person if you simply pay close enough attention.

And that isn't anywhere near everything I've learned from my characters.  Yet I doubt I could have learned anywhere near that much from other things that I could be doing with all my free time.

Of course, even though I feel like my forum is hugely beneficial to me, I'm not explaining all of this because I think that everyone with Asperger's and anxiety should be in one like mine (even if the number of people I've met in such places is far higher than the number I've met elsewhere).  Actually, I have a completely different point to make with this post entirely.  Because though I've been roleplaying for quite a large portion of my life, it was never with the encouragement of my mom.  And this in spite of the fact that she wants nothing more than for me to grow and do better in my life, and has usually been the first one to encourage me to do anything that might help me.  To be fair, she has several good reasons to be extremely wary of the idea of roleplaying, but it's only been more recently that I've become braver about talking to her about why her fears aren't necessary in my case - especially given how extremely helpful roleplaying has been to me.  In fact, given that she has a link to this blog, this post is another big step in that direction.  But this whole roleplaying thing has always been my idea.

And it wasn't until I met my new therapist that I really started to realize just how important my forum is to me.  I've always kind of known that by writing about a character interacting another character I was practicing being social, but she was the one that helped me understand the full scope of it.  Before I started working with her I perhaps listened too much to what my mom had been saying: I had the idea that what I was doing was all fake, that the people I was interacting with weren't real friends but at best 'practice friends', and that in general it was nice but didn't really 'count' for anything in the 'real world'.  I did it somewhat apologetically, with disclaimers, feeling as if I ought to be doing something 'better' with my time.  It was my therapist that showed me that I was wrong to think so.  The internet is simply a buffer of sorts, making all the things I do online feel safer, and all I really need to do in order to translate all these skills I've developed online into my daily life is to learn that it's safe to do all those things without that buffer.  If I hadn't done all this roleplaying and other related interacting with other people, then I would not only have to learn that it's safe to do them, but also how to do them in the first place.  And that would have been a lot harder!  But since I don't need to take that extra step, that probably explains why I can make such rapid surges in progress sometimes.

But the point I want people reading this to get is that if someone has any sort of a problem that puts them outside of the norm and they find something that seems to help, then both they and anyone else around them should be very, very slow to argue with that idea.  Of course, there's some things that help some problems that are still probably bad ideas, but you want to be sure of that before you say so.  Because if my mom had ever succeeded in talking me out of roleplaying, I would be minus one very good tool for dealing with my problems.  And roleplaying being helpful seems far less of a stretch than Temple Grandin's squeeze machine, at least to me.

Acceptance

I've been trying for most of a week to figure out another blog post, but inspiration just hasn't been striking very much.  Though that should largely be seen as a good thing, as it's when things get extra difficult that I start thinking about things that are likely to snowball into an idea for a full post.  And by way of update, I'm still keeping up with going to the gym - met with my personal trainer again today, in fact - and yesterday I went to the grocery store for another few things, mostly some fresh produce.  And my forum is being pleasantly active recently too, so I've got nothing to complain about.  But I've noticed a bit of a theme going on in my thought patterns lately: the idea of acceptance, both in the broad sense and the narrow sense.

I've been very slowly reading through a book for the past few months that my mom gave me, wanting to know my opinion of it.  I've not been reading it very fast though because I very rarely remember that it exists when it's a good time for me to read something.  But it's a book meant for high-functioning people on the autism spectrum and explains how the strengths of being on the spectrum can be used to overcome the particular challenges of it.  I'm not far enough into it to be sure what I think of the whole book yet, but the chapter I just finished was on emotions.  The part that stuck out to me most is that there's a tendency for people on the spectrum to have 'all or nothing' emotional states and a difficulty in regulating them.  This can obviously be problematic, but I loved that the book also pointed out that there's the advantage that if the intense emotion happens to be a good one then it's actually a positive thing - someone on the spectrum who is feeling happy is probably feeling a lot happier than someone who isn't.

But unregulated, intense emotions are more trouble than they're worth.  And there's two things that solve that problem.  The first is to simply learn a lot about emotions: this is what 'angry' feels like, this is what causes it, and this is what you should do when you're angry.  But I think that the second thing is to learn acceptance.  While learning about emotions helped me to regulate them, acceptance has been key to curing most of my emotional states that become problematic due to other people.

For example, like many people on the spectrum I can have the problem of wanting to talk about the same subject for extended periods of time - long past the attention span of any poor neurotypical I come across.  Fortunately, I'm very aware of this problem and try really hard not to do that.  The unregulated, intense emotion in these situations is enthusiasm.  And talking about whatever it is that you're enthusiastic about seems to only increase the emotion; it's like a hydra from Greek legend - if you share one thought about it, two more take its place.  And even though enthusiasm is a largely pleasant emotion, it's also somewhat uncomfortable - like you might explode if you don't get it out somehow.  Which is why it was so hard when it got to the point that the person I was talking to verbally told me that they didn't want to talk about it anymore - probably for their own sanity.  It made me want to scream in frustration every time!

But once I learned to accept the fact that other people just aren't as enthusiastic about whatever my current obsession is as I am, and that no matter how much I try to explain just how awesome it is that won't change, I learned to cope with that problem a lot better.  Accepting that people are just that way was the first step to learning that in order to carry on a pleasant conversation with someone I also needed to accept talking about subjects that I'm less enthusiastic about since that leads to conversations that are more fulfilling to both people involved.  To this day I find myself extremely disappointed when the person I'm talking to changes the subject off of something I really like, but since I accept that people do that I keep that feeling to myself, allow the change of topic to happen, resist the temptation to swing the conversation back to the old topic, and even make sure that I give the other person opportunities to change the topic or do that myself when I think that they might be getting bored.  As a result, I'm able to hold a conversation just like any neurotypical person would.  When I'm remembering to pay attention, anyway...

And that's just one example of the key role that acceptance plays - it helps me with a lot of other emotional reactions with others.  Once you accept what you can't change, you see more clearly what you can and changing other people is usually on the 'can't do' list.  Only sometimes can I use my influence on someone else that way, and generally speaking the more I want someone to change the less likely it is that it will happen.  So instead I have to accept the reality that other people are outside of my control and figure out what changes I need to make in myself to compensate for that - usually a matter of tailoring my expectations to what I can actually expect of them.  Each of my friends and family members all have their own quirks and personality traits that I just have to deal with, but as soon as I accept that each of them will be themselves (whether I like it or not) they all become a lot less frustrating and a lot more loveable.

Of course, it's not enough to accept other people, I've also had to learn to accept myself.  No matter how well I learn to mask and manage the symptoms of Asperger's syndrome, I will still have it.  Accepting that is hard because it means that my life will differ, sometimes significantly, from the ideal I had in my head.  And though I refuse to accept that my anxiety problems will get in the way of me having a happy life, that's only because I can do something about that.  But I can't do anything about the fact that anxiety will probably always be a part of my life at some level, or the fact that it stopped me from doing several things today, so I accept that.  When I first started accepting these things about myself it was agonizingly difficult - I had to let go of the dreams of becoming the person that I'd like to be but never will.  But when I let go of that fantasy, I became a much happier person - pleased with who I am now even though I've still got a long way to go to reach my new dream of being the person that I'm not yet but could be.

Now I know that a lot of things I just said apply to people both on and off of the autism spectrum - learning to accept other people and yourself is a universal.  But I think that it's even more important for people on the spectrum to make that a very conscious thing because it comes a lot less easily to us.  And the day I started to really accept that I can't 'fix' anyone (and they're probably not that broken to begin with) was the day I started to learn how to fit myself into this world instead of uselessly complaining about it not fitting itself to me.  It's still an ongoing process - I can't say that I'm not butting heads with anyone or anything that I just need to learn to accept, but I'm a lot further down that road than I used to be and a lot happier as a result.

New Rules

So today has been a pretty big day already, and it's only about 2:15 PM when I sat down to start writing this.

The first thing I did today (after psyching myself up) was go to the gym.  A week ago on Wednesday my mom went with me, mostly for moral support, while I signed up for a membership - this place is only a few blocks away from my new apartment so I've been thinking of signing up there for awhile now.  While I was at it, I also signed up for several sessions with a personal trainer because, while I've taken gym and weight lifting classes in high school and college, I've not really done any self-directed working out before and wouldn't know where to begin.  Especially since I'm totally out of shape - I haven't worked out on purpose for about five years now and the last time I did anything more physically demanding than a very occasional bike ride was when I had that custodial job a couple years ago.  Most of my day everyday is spent sitting.  So, yeah, out of shape.

Anyway, I didn't do anything with it until yesterday since that was the time I set up with my new physical trainer, Melanie.  I was a bit nervous about going to meet her by myself, but she was really, really nice and helped me figure out a part of a good weight lifting and cardio routine - we're going to meet again next week to cover the rest.  Today I worked out by myself, did the 'pull' workout she told me to do with the weights and 25 minutes on the elliptical machine.  It was brutal, but I made it through, and I'm taking tomorrow off, so I feel very accomplished.  I'm actually surprised that I made it through all 25 minutes on the elliptical, but I did it.

After my workout, I made a hard choice:  See, I pass the grocery store whenever I go to or from the gym, and I'd brought the saddlebags on my bike in case I decided that I should go.  Of course I was exhausted at that point, kept telling myself that I could always go tomorrow when I'm having a day off from exercising, but I convinced myself that if I went today then I could have a completely lazy day tomorrow.  Here's the results:

Yep, all of that fit on my bike!  Now, this is a lot of food - it'll take me weeks to eat through all this.  But I tend to alternate through soup, pasta-roni, and rice-a-roni for dinner and they work well for me because it can be hard for me, or any person who cooks for one, to keep a lot of fresh ingredients for things on hand when one person can only eat so much of something before it goes bad.  That, and I'm still a very wimpy cook - these are all ridiculously easy.  But I'm gradually getting sick of the limited variety, so I'm also slowly branching out - today I focused on what are my staples, though.  I also got some laundry stuff and toothpaste, and that can in the back on the left is pizza flavored Pringles - I thought that I'd reward myself for the good work.

Now I learned some things on this grocery run (which I believe is the first time I've ever gone to a grocery store completely by myself):  First of all, I have inherited my father's ability to pack a lot of stuff into a small space.  (And my mom was wrong to look at me funny when I bought the really big saddlebags for my bike, way back when - they were just barely big enough, and I had to push it a bit.)  Secondly, it wasn't that hard - I had a list of what I wanted and it was simply a matter of finding it in the store, which wasn't that hard either since the way the aisles were organized mostly made sense to me and it seemed like I ran into an employee every time I got a confused look on my face.  I think I might have had a harder time if I was looking for anything that I'm not extremely used to, but at least now I know that when I know what I want it's easy.

But this is all very encouraging for me, given that it was so simple for me to go to the gym and the grocery store in one trip - as I plan on getting to the former regularly, the latter could probably fall into place pretty easily.  Now, if you've read back on how big of a problem my anxiety is, the fact that I'm suddenly just going to the gym and grocery shopping might sound like major sudden progress.  And it is!  But the reason why I'm not easing my way into this more slowly is because my rules can help me with this sort of thing if I do it that way.

When I want to do something new, it's important for me to do it the way that I want the rule to be from the beginning.  Because if, for example, I decided to ease myself into going to the gym by going one day a week and then gradually increasing the number, each time I increased the number I'd have the stress of doing something new.  If I went to the grocery store and made the rule be that I only had to buy up to a certain number of things, each time I pass whatever the old limit was, more stress.  Think of it like wheel ruts - I make them very quickly, and wedging myself out of a rut I've already made is hard work.  Better to make sure that the ruts are in a good spot to begin with so that I don't have to do that so much.

On the other hand, if I intentionally make a new rule about something very stressful, like going to the gym or buying groceries, the rule can actually help me with my anxiety.  My new rule with the gym is that I am now officially someone who goes there so regularly that I plan the days I skip and not the days I go - not going is the exception.  And I'm still trying to decide what my grocery store rule is because it had been my intention today to 'go, and see how it feels', but it felt so good and I know how good doing that was for me that I think the new rule will be that if I want something and that store has it then I go get it myself rather than getting help - at least until I've done it enough that it doesn't seem like a big deal, at which point I'll accept help depending on what's most convenient for me and the potential helper.

Now, I'm definitely not saying that setting a new rule is like flipping a magic switch that makes it so that the anxiety disappears - definitely not!  In fact, if anything it bunches up most of the stress into one big, scary plunge I have to take all at once - the first few times I follow a new rule is very, very, very hard!  And I have to really, really want it!  This is why it can take me such a long time to do something that I know would be really good for me to do sometimes - I'm familiar enough with the sheer amount of stress involved that I'll outright refuse to do something if I know I don't want it badly enough.  I've heard my mom explain this to other people as 'You can't make her do anything.  But if she wants to do something, she does it.' and that's why.  Because once I've followed a rule those first few times, it actually becomes more stressful for me to not follow the rule, because the rule has been set by then and breaking it bothers me.  A few times more, and then I'll have gained enough confidence in the new rule to believe that following it is 'safe', and my anxiety drops like a stone.

I keep hearing people say that it takes a certain number of days to make a habit, but that's just not true for me - it's significantly faster when I actually want it that badly.  The reason why I had to buy toothpaste (and floss, which didn't make the picture) was because a couple weeks ago I had a dental checkup, and while they were shaking their heads about my inflamed gums (my teeth, like those of my father and siblings, don't know the meaning of the word 'cavity' almost regardless of what I do), I decided that it was about time did something about that.  So I took the little kit they gave me and went from... well, you don't want to know... to instantly brushing twice and flossing once every single day - I've only missed once (and it really bothered me!).  But they only gave me a sample size of toothpaste and floss, so I need more now.  And this is why being on the autism spectrum can sometimes be an advantage for me.

What Have I Been 'Up To'?

Like anyone, if I run into someone I haven't seen for awhile, they naturally want to know what I've been up to.  However, when they start to ask about that, things usually end up getting awkward at some point.  It all starts off with them saying some variant of "So what have you been up to lately?" or "So are you still in school, or are you working, or what?"  The problem with these questions is that, at least as far as surface things that people tend to bring up when asked that question, I generally don't do much.  I don't have a job and I'm not looking for one.  I'm not in school and have no plans to do that in the near future.

Most of my day beyond the basics of living is spent on the computer.  That time is spent doing things on my forum, chatting with the people from my forum on AIM, surfing the internet, playing computer games, checking on Facebook, and now writing in this blog.  When I actually get out and do something it's usually a big event for me, but sounds completely normal to anyone else - like going to Subway, or a church activity.  While I'm trying to expand my life, at the same time I'm quite pleased with the life that I have.  But I just don't have much in it that's convenient to bring up when someone wants to know what I've been 'up to'.

I suppose the best honest answer would be: "Well, I've been concentrating on my lingering anxiety issues for the past couple of years, and I've been slowly improving with that.  Lately I've been able to make it out of the house on my own much more frequently, and that's been nice."  However, that's not necessarily the best answer to give to most people - especially if I barely know them, they don't know about any of my struggles, and I don't know that I want them to know.  One thing that has helped is that I moved out of my parent's house for the first time in the beginning of April, that's a fairly normal thing to mention about what you've been 'up to', and so I've been milking my ability to say "Oh, did you hear that I moved?" for all that it's worth lately.  That easily transitions into a benign conversation about how I'm getting along with my roommates and the pros and cons of not being in the same house as my parents.  It's nice having good small talk fodder!

A part of me wishes that I could also bring up things like my recent trip to Subway while everyone else talks about their recent accomplishments, but you kind of have to know just how abnormal that is for me to appreciate that story and sometimes I just want to be normal.  But when I then force myself to stay quiet about that sort of thing, I find myself having to remind myself that I'm not mentioning it for that reason and not because it wasn't a major accomplishment.  It's very easy for me to fall for the idea that just because it wouldn't be a big deal for other people doesn't mean that it wasn't a big deal for me.

And it's terrible when I do that because if I don't recognize my accomplishments for what they are I start feeling like I'm not doing anything important, and that I'm somehow less of a person than the people around me.  Which is just not fair for me to think because for one thing most of those people haven't had to go through anything near what I had to go through to get where we are today, and if I'm being honest I'm probably improving as a person a lot faster than a lot of them are - if lives were measured by just how often and severely people go outside of their comfort zone, taking into account the fact that everyone's comfort zone is different, I think I'd be giving most people a run for their money.  My list of things that I did even though it really bothered me for today:

• I used a flavor of toothpaste I've never tried before this morning.
• I ate the 'wrong' type of taquitos for lunch.  (Yummy, but still wrong.)
• I ate pie in front of one of my roommates.  (It was hers - she said I could have some, but it still bothered me for whatever reason.)
• I let a new mod on my forum help a new member without stepping in and taking over today without letting on that it bothered me at all.  (Until now, since said mod reads this blog - note that the bother was because I'm a control freak and not because you didn't do a great job!)
• I mentioned the fact that I was eating pie here even though my mom now has a link to this blog.

And all this before dinner!  (Tonight I'm making pasta-roni!)

Getting My Own Food

So it took me a couple of days to decide what I wanted to write this time.  But this is my blog, and I can write in it when I want to!  But I thought that it would be good for me to write about what happened on Thursday evening.

On Thursday evening I was doing what I normally do - checking to see if anyone's posted to my forum, surf the internet at random, checking my forum, playing a little Sims 3 or Spore, and checking my forum.  And then I noticed that it was getting later in the day and I was hungry.  But I also realized that I really, really didn't feel like cooking anything.  So I went to Subway instead and got a sandwich.  It was delicious!  Then I hurried back home so that I could check my forum.

...Wait a minute?  Why don't I hear cheers ringing across the internet?  Ah, is it because all of that (aside from my excessive forum checks, depending on how internet addicted you are) sounds totally normal, right?  Well, perhaps I ought to explain the significance of that story so that all of you will understand just how big of a deal that was:

• The first thing that you need to know is that I can't drive.  Instead I get rides, ride the bus, ride my bike, or walk if I need to get somewhere.  Subway is just far enough away to make walking a hassle, so I rode my bike.  The problem with a bike is that many businesses don't have a bike rack or other convenient place to lock up a bike, and Subway was one of them.  Figuring out where to lock up my bike when there isn't an obvious place is pretty stressful for me, but I found a post behind the business next door to them and used that.
• The second thing you need to know is that I'm not used to getting out much.  It's not so much that I'm afraid of going out, but it just doesn't happen as often as it probably should so it's just more comfortable being at home.  After all, at home I'm much less likely to run into any 'new' things.
• The third thing you need to know is that I'm even less used to buying anything for myself.  That really hasn't happened much - in fact I didn't even own a checkbook until a few years ago because I just didn't need one.  Buying anything from anywhere by myself is still a 'new' thing.  If you read my last post, perhaps you can understand why new things are stressful - I don't have a solid set of rules for new things, so instead of using a tried and true method I know will work I feel like I'm making it up as I go along and I can't be sure that I'm doing it right or that I'll get the result that I want, even when I know logically that only so much can go wrong while ordering a sandwich.
• The fourth thing you need to know is that, on top of the simple fact of buying anything, it causes me a lot of stress when I have to interact with someone in order to pay.  I'm a huge fan of self-checkout things as a result.  It's probably because I'm already dealing with the 'not used to buying things' stress, and then on top of it I need to complete a series of interactions with another person before I can finish.  People are complex, unpredictable things, and people who work registers are especially fond of asking me questions I don't know the answer to, like whether or not I want a Subway card.

So, the reason why you should be cheering for me is because not only did I do it in spite of all the above, I did it on a whim.  Which means that I didn't spend a few days trying to psych myself up to it, nobody told me that I should, and I otherwise had no reason to do it aside from the fact that I was hungry and didn't want to cook.  Granted, I really don't like cooking - I'm a pretty new, timid, and reluctant cook who only does it now because I wouldn't be able to talk my mom into coming here to make me dinner every night.  But the fact that I decided that braving a trip to Subway was a more appealing idea than heating up a can of soup is pretty spectacular.  I'm proud of myself!

One thing that wasn't that stressful to me was the ordering process, because it in that aspect at least I do have a set of rules.  I credit that to the fact that I have a large family so the moment we were all old enough my mom's method for getting us fast food was to just let each of us tell them what we wanted ourselves instead of trying to write up a list or something.  I've also been to Subway enough times that I know exactly what kind of sandwich to order when I'm not feeling adventurous at all and just want something I know will be delicious.  For similar reason, I'm much more comfortable going to Wendy's than I am going to Arby's - my family still goes to the former quite often, while it's been years since I was last at an Arby's so I don't know their menu.

Of course, I'm always trying to improve.  One thing that I've made a private goal is to deviate from my old ordering habits when I'm eating out at unfamiliar places.  It's been my 'rule' for a very long time to pick the safest thing on the menu when that happens - usually something involving pasta, chicken, and/or cheese.  I've been trying to change it to ordering the most daring thing that I'm still pretty sure that I'll like.  I've done this perhaps five times recently with all positive results!  I've also been working on eating all the foods that I've been avoiding my entire life even though I know that I can tolerate them - peppers, for example - so that it's not such a big deal if something I want has just one ingredient in it that I don't care as much for.  It just makes eating easier.

And this upcoming week should be interesting - for the past several weeks I've been trying to convince myself that going to the grocery store is not too big for me to handle, and I'm running out of some of the basic staples of my normal dinner menus (at the moment, I'm most proficient at soup, pasta-roni, rice-a-roni, and frozen microwave meals).  My parents have been buying it for me, but this time I'm thinking that I probably should go get it myself.  I have enough for this week, but we're getting down to the back of the cupboard...  Grocery shopping is so scary because whereas ordering a custom-made sandwich involves perhaps 10 choices, the number of choices in a grocery store is...  I don't want to think about it!  I'll probably narrow it down by making a list and promising myself that I don't need to buy anything not on it.  But that may happen this week.  Or... next week?  Can it be next week?  No, wait, that's just procrastinating for no good reason...  But I don't need to do it this week...  Well, we'll see if it happens!