I had another travel thing with my class last weekend. It was to Beijing, for Thursday-Saturday, and it was tiring and also a break in my routine. BUT! It was a lot better than the one in November.
You can at least partially tell that it was better because I dropped off the face of blogging for less than a week straight over it, as opposed to missing a decent bit of a month and having NaNoWriMo fall apart. (NaPoWriMo, sadly, did get lost to the tired, but there's always next year.)
I know part of it was that this was a shorter routine break and I had fewer sensory overload issues on this trip. But there are also things that were different in how my teachers and I handled the transitions. Those are probably useful to talk about, considering that I figure most folks reading here have some sort of connection to autism. (Wasn't this supposed to be a personal blog? Oh yeah, it is, and then I went and perseverated on autism so like 2/3 of my posts or more are autism-related.)
Anyways, here's some stuff I did differently:
You can at least partially tell that it was better because I dropped off the face of blogging for less than a week straight over it, as opposed to missing a decent bit of a month and having NaNoWriMo fall apart. (NaPoWriMo, sadly, did get lost to the tired, but there's always next year.)
I know part of it was that this was a shorter routine break and I had fewer sensory overload issues on this trip. But there are also things that were different in how my teachers and I handled the transitions. Those are probably useful to talk about, considering that I figure most folks reading here have some sort of connection to autism. (Wasn't this supposed to be a personal blog? Oh yeah, it is, and then I went and perseverated on autism so like 2/3 of my posts or more are autism-related.)
Anyways, here's some stuff I did differently:
- In November, once I got back I didn't realize just how off-balance I was so I tried to keep working like everything was normal. This time I knew that I was going to be off-balance and didn't really even try to speak out loud in class beyond really basic stuff for the first couple days. I typed instead, and I sent what I typed to my teachers in an email after, which they accept as an alternative to my speaking in class when speaking is an issue.
- In November, I didn't take a rest day until I'd actually melted down... multiple times. This time, I took the day that was meant to be used for social survey stuff and made it a rest day instead.
- This time around, I just went straight to sitting on the floor in a corner in class as soon as the chair started being not-good.
Now here's some stuff my teachers did differently, both on the trip and after:
- In November, they also changed up teaching methods and tutors between leaving for travel and coming back. That meant I wasn't even coming back to the same routine I left. They made no such change this time.
- They planned a bit more down-time into the trip, in the form of "free" time that I spend recovering from people and routine breakage and people. Yes, I know I said people twice. In November, we were spending basically all waking hours with people and that was kind of terrible.
The sitting on the floor thing - that's Autism?!?! I never, ever sit on a chair (except at home) if I can stand or sit. How did you find these things out? Again, thank you!
ReplyDeleteI also prefer sitting on the floor to sitting on chairs sometimes, probably because the way I sit doesn't work well in some chairs. (I either kneel, sit with my knees up against my belly, or kneel on one leg with the other up against my belly. Sitting with my legs hanging down hurts, because I feel unsteady and tense up as a result.)
ReplyDeleteUnlike sweetcrusader, I always prefer sitting to standing, though. If I stand for more than a couple minutes, my hips and knees start aching. Just a few years ago I got the courage to start requesting a wheelchair when visiting a museum, and museum visits went from 'agonizing' to 'kind of enjoyable' as a result. All that starting & stopping really used to mess me up.