Into My Autistic Mind 6 + Special Announcement

Hello everybody, this George Harvey (aka The Autistic Blogger). Sorry I haven’t posted anything for a while. Maybe this look into my thoughts will let you know why.

Have you ever been obsessed with something? Have you ever felt so devoted to doing it that you do it for days, weeks or months without stopping. I’ve made a few typing errors, my phone just went off and I clicked off a pop-up that appeared on my laptop. But I’m trying to avoid my usual distractions, because I’m trying to talk about something important. Even My Little Pony won’t distract me…although I will mention it later. Some of you may know this, but I like to write reviews in my spare time. And for several weeks now I’ve been trying to finish a review of Skating Sensation – the fifth instalment of the Dork Diaries series. I really have to remember I can use italics instead of these: ”. Anyway, it’s been very hard trying to write this review. I don’t have as much spare time as I used to, I don’t always have a quite – sorry quiet – place to work in … and every time I try to write, I end up spending more time changing what I’ve written. It’s a problem I have with being a perfectionist. Even now, I’ve just deleted what I was going to say for my next sentence and typed a different one instead. Sometimes when I’m writing I think too hard about things. It also doesn’t help that I’ve got a lot of things on my mind. In fact, one minute … Okay, I’m back. I’ve brought something down from my room. I call it my Priority List. It’s broken into four categories: Top Priorities, Spare Time, Free Time and Can’t Change. Top Priorities are the things I should be focusing on the most with my time (e.g. job searching and volunteer work); Spare Time lists the things I need to do, but are slightly less important (e.g. ironing, walking the dog and going to the gym); Free Time lists the things I like to do when I have time to myself (e.g. watching videos, reading and gaming); and Can’t Change are the things I absolutely need to take time for every week (e.g. my part-time job at ASDA). The thing is, I get my priorities mixed up sometimes. I know how important it is to be job searching and planning other professional work, but my obsessions run so deep I often can’t focus on what I need to. That’s why I think the best option is to get my obsessions out of the way ASAP. I try not to focus on writing reviews and things all the time, but if I leave them unfinished … sorry I’m taking a pause to think … if I leave them unfinished it really bothers me and I feel like I won’t ever complete them. I have bad memories of not seeing projects through until the end. Unfortunately, working on them non-stop sometimes makes you sloppy. Okay, I need to mention this now or it’s going to keep nagging my mind. I saw the latest episode of My Little Pony on YouTube the other day and it was all about doing too much to complete small tasks. Sometimes you’re so used to doing things a certain way, you don’t realise there’s an easier way. Usually it takes someone else to point it out to you. I definitely feel I can relate to this, because I do all my proofreading/editing myself I don’t realise everything I’m doing isn’t necessary. When I WRITE – oops, the caps lock was on – when I write something, it’s usually perfect the first time around. But I spend too long trying to write different variations, until eventually I go back to what I had before. If someone else read through my writing things could be different. I feel like I’m going a bit off track here. When I watched that My Little Pony episode, one of the comments said the message was not to work HARDER, but to work SMARTER. And I couldn’t agree more. By the way I wrote harder and smarter in caps on purpose this time. I really need to get myself into more of a routine like I did in college. That way I’ll know when best to work on something and when best to refresh myself. I also need to do more planning with my writing, so I don’t keep hitting brick walls and constantly revise my ideas. As for the writing itself, I’ve started taking steps that will help me finish it a little easier. I already plan out my paragraphs in advance and now I’m doing things with the sentences that will … how should I put it … keep me from giving in to temptation. Try this if you’re a perfectionist writer, proofreader or editor. When you think something sounds just right, colour the text in green so you know not to change it later. When something sounds good, but you think it could be written better, colour the text in red so you know you’ve got the option to change or delete it. When you’re not sure about a piece of text, leave it black, work on it as best you can and, if it’s still black by the end of the day, delete it. Sometimes no matter how hard you try you can’t make certain sentences work. If you try too much to fix something that can’t be fixed you’ll just waste time. Plus, staring at unnecessary text for hours will make you tired and loose focus. Sometimes the best option is to delete it and come up with something better. I realise I’ve been going on for a long time now. I’ve just edited some of what I’ve written, my laptop says it’s almost 14:50 and my word-count is almost 1000. I could go on for ages about the 30+ things that distract me from writing and all the problems I run into whilst doing it. I could even write a book called ‘How to Write when you’re Autistic’. But I hope now you understand a little bit about why I don’t post things regularly. I’m a very capable writer and I’ve never missed a deadline. I just have a lot of new things going on in my life like drama and youth centre work. It’s difficult for anybody with Autism to adjust to change, but once I work out a new routine and set my own deadlines I’ll be able to get more done. I think I might post my Skating Sensation review on this site when it’s finished, just to give myself a sense of achievement.

I hope you enjoyed yet another trip into my Autistic thoughts. This one probably isn’t as good as my previous instalments (1-5), but it’s always nice to speak to others about what’s on my mind.

Before I go I have a special announcement. Tomorrow will be the be 1 year anniversary of this blog. And to celebrate, I’ve decided to post something that’s very near and dear to me. As you know, the reason I started this blog was to help make a positive difference in the lives of other people with Autism. But my advocacy isn’t just limited to writing. I like to raise awareness through charity, volunteering and public speaking. One of my earliest pieces of advocacy work was a presentation I gave at the end of my second year of college. Tomorrow I will post a video of this presentation in it’s entirety, so you can see and hear just how passionate I am about what I do. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

If you liked this post then please take a look at some of the other content I’ve written for this site and Autistic Blogger Reviews (https://autisticbloggerreviews.wordpress.com/) . If you have any questions leave me a comment – I’ll be happy to answer them. And as always, keep an eye out for the next post. Stay tuned.