It really is a new year

The Christmas and New Year period was pretty much everything I thought it'd be. It's a major break in routine and when you have Asperger's Syndrome (AS) routines tend to be important to you. I spent most days not really knowing what to do with myself. Feeling anxious and nervous, just waiting for each day to end only for it to start again the day after. Sometimes you even forget what day it is. I'd drink most nights, but it got to the stage where even that was a chore.

Then work slowly starts again but it takes a while for things to get fully back to normal. It was about the second week after getting back to work that everything just clicked into place. I was back to work Monday to Friday, 9 to five and I was going back to the gym.

Things are back to normal in some ways, but not all. I'm not long single now so that is taking some getting used to. In some ways it's good because I get to indulge in some new, selfish routines. I get to do as I please at the weekend so I've taken to visiting a nearby pub that plays rock music, so it's bearable. It's also filled with I guess the only urban clique that I can even partly identify with. There is no dress code, everyone isn't all wearing the same thing with the same haircut. And, of course, it has a pool table. That's what I do on Friday and then the rest of the weekend I do whatever. Sometimes take in a live gig, or just watch a DVD.

The downside is that life barely seems to have much purpose as routine is now all I have. Work, gym, work, gym, work, gym, rock pub, Saturday, Sunday and repeat. As I try and carve a new life for myself I'm finding myself looking to the past as well. I mentioned in a previous blog about living hundreds of miles away from home while at university…well I feel like that again - exploring the more anti-social side of myself. I'm even listening to the same music. I spent almost the whole of that six months away listening to Blind Melon on my Sony Walkman tape player. I'd listen to the same album over and over and they really seemed to be speaking to me and my situation. Their songs have a wonderful freedom and easy living message about them. They paint pictures of a nomadic life not tied down to possessions or emotional shackles. It's over a decade later and I'm still listening to their music and it's still evoking the same feelings in me.

Only now I'm not listening on a Walkman :) And back then I knew that my time away would come to an end, I knew it was a temporary environment; but now I seem to be right back there but this time with no end in sight.

Messy minds and messy lives

One of the more annoying aspects of Asperger's Syndrome (AS) is my bad life organisation. I'm quite a messy person and left to my own devices I can be very messy indeed, and it's true what they say about mess detracting from your overall quality of life.

A lot of it is just my major procrastination where I always put things off until they have to be done. So I'll maybe one day not do the dishes and then that turns into three days. I won't tidy up after a night on the pop and then that turns into a week of not tidying up. It's one thing I'd really like to change about myself as it has a slight impact elsewhere. For a start I need about two days notice before anyone wants to come in, and if I meet someone outside as they pick me up/drop me off I always dread them asking if they can just pop in to use the toilet. What I'd do in an emergency like my boiler braking or something I just don't know.

It's also related a little to routines. I just don't have a routine for cleaning or tidying up. I have routines for some things…shower, laundry and stuff, but not for dishes, recycling, vacuuming and stuff like that. If only I could somehow get into a routine it would be good, and I'd be fine. I often tell myself I'll have a tidy up at the weekend, and sometimes I'll do a little, but never much. The only time I have a major clean up is when the landlord is coming over. Every time I do that I always like it and tell myself I should just make an effort to keep it that way…but over time I always slip.