Some thoughts to share with whoever’s out there …
I’m fairly sure that one of my main problems is that I don’t (mentally) keep up with the list of stuff that I have to do within a given day. I have a system in place that has the potential to be adequate. However, I don’t ‘interrupt’ myself to give periodic checks to the day’s list. Things were much easier when I got to work on one thing at a time. The boss (or even my ex) helped to keep me on track by pointing out with item had the highest priority. I recall there were times when faced with two very hot items, I would have Tommy choose which was ‘hottest’. Even that many years back, before I knew the exact reason behind why I’m as I am, I knew that it was much easier to do one assignment, and get the others later. In the last few years, I have to keep that mental list of things myself, both at work and at home. Home is better now that Robert is keeping that list. Of course, I still don’t do well with the small list that I may get now, because I don’t interrupt myself to do those things. I even have set times, with alarms letting me know to stop and do the next thing. Still not working. I either don’t want to stop what I’m doing (hyperfocus) or I need to continue that particular item so that thing gets shoved down to later, except that later never happens.
If I don’t follow any pattern or habit that I have for a couple of days, I won’t pick up the pattern again very easily. The only habit that I have hardly ever broken is brushing my teeth after I get out of bed. If it wasn’t for the fact that I can’t stand that gross, yucky taste after I get up, I probably wouldn’t be keeping that habit very well, either. Too bad I still can’t form a consistent habit of taking my pills, even after all of these years. I know why I don’t on the weekends, that’s easy: not having the same morning routine during the week of immediately getting dressed and out the door. When I had classes of any kind on Saturday, or appointments, I came closer to keeping the morning routines. Unless, of course, I overslept and only had time to get dressed, which is what often happens in that situation. I may have to eventually go ahead and try to keep the same schedule weekday and weekend, however I really don’t want to get up that damned early on the weekends. This is one of those times that having had kids would have been a benefit. I’m sure that a Saturday or Sunday would not have gone by that they wouldn’t have had me out doing something. And I ‘know’ that I don’t have to do the same stuff on the weekends, so mentally I can’t talk myself into doing the same routines. I ‘know’ that I can turn on the TV and let it catch my attention, so I do. And once that happens, I’m in front of the TV for awhile. And anything that I had wanted to do that Saturday or Sunday will probably be forgotten. (big sigh) Oh well.
Hopefully, this new sunrise alarm clock I’m getting will help me with getting up. I had thought that this latest go-round with sleeping too long had to do with needing more sleep. But that’s not quite it. This week, I went to bed pretty early at least a couple of times, before 9pm. And with me not getting a ride from Kevin anymore, I set the alarm at 6am now. So, that’s 8-9 hours of sleep. Even then, I wanted to sleep more, staying in bed until 6:30, the absolute latest I can get up and still have time to do everything. But, only an hour is not enough to shower, get dressed and feed the cats and myself. If I weren’t taking my morning meds at work now, I’d really be in trouble. I find it interesting that I did it when I was catching the bus for a year, but then again, I wasn’t feeding cats in the morning, so that probably gave me just enough time. I know there were days that I put my meds in my pocket, took a coke out of the fridge and downed them all on the bus or on the train. The last couple of days, I tried out my other theory, setting a 2nd (and quieter) alarm clock a half hour earlier and hitting the snooze on it, so that I can awaken slowly instead of by my very loud alarm with the dismantled snooze (from another theory that I tried some years ago, but still rely on). The last two days I’ve been better. I’m trying to get up at 6:00 but have set the alarm forward again after I wake up, but only up to 6:15 instead of 6:30. Anyhoo, I think that my problem is tied to the thing I’ve read about every now and again, about humans functioning better during daylight hours instead of evening ones. When left to my own devices, sans an alarm clock, I wake up right about sunrise. The sun doesn’t even have to be completely out. It can even be very dark and cloudy. Shortly after the sun starts to rise, I start to wake up. (except for the last 3-4 months, when I’ve needed a couple of hours more sleep, awakening between 8:00-9:00am. Go figure. Probably has to do with the different meds I’m now taking.). I’ve looked at getting this sun alarm clock on and off for a few years. I need to go ahead and get it.
There is no point in me sending home stuff to read. I never get around to reading it at home. I didn't have time to read it at work. I wind up with stuff in my mailbox or moved over to a folder to read later, never to be read. I send stuff home to send out to others - so that I no longer spend time at work doing it - and it never gets sent out at home.
If I am going to learn to get stuff done, I have got to learn to break them up in logical pieces that fall in an order. I think that a major problem is that I (who knows, maybe all abstract thinkers have this problem) I only see the one thing, not the pieces that make up the thing. I take forever to get started, I take forever to finish. All I seem to see if the middle and want to go straight to the middle. It's the same with working a project at work, whether it's a reoccurring assignment or one that I know nothing about. It's the same with writing a routine or making a new costume. It's the same with just rearranging my workroom. It's hard for me to concentrate on parts that I either don't want to do, or unsure of how to start. All I'm thinking about is the creamy middle.
Surely, it’s not just me.
