I’m hearing Alice Otterloop’s dismissal from Cul de Sac applied to my life today (see the title comment).  It’s not so bad really.  Shabbat (Sabbath) dinner yesterday was fine, but late.  I then ended up spending an hour or more on Torah study, mostly trying to get back into Talmud Berachot to keep up with the resumed shiur (religious class) at shul (synagogue), even though I can’t go to it because we’re shielding Mum.  I didn’t understand much of it and 10pm is probably too late for Talmud.  I read a bit and went to sleep around 1.30am.

Today I went for walk after lunch, which I hoped would stop me napping in the afternoon, as it seemed to do last week, but it didn’t help and I still slept for a couple of hours (not sure how long exactly as I forgot to look at the clock when I went to bed).  Hence, it’s just gone midnight and I’m quite awake, although listless and vaguely bad tempered.  I’m not sure why I feel like this.  It may connect to bursts of depression that I had on and off during the day.  I only managed forty-five minutes of Torah study today, much of it going over that Talmud passage again.  I spent some more time reading a novel.  Then we had seudah shlishit (the third Sabbath meal) and played two games of Rummikub.  Dad won both.  He usually does as he has a mathematical brain and it’s a numbers game.  Despite being autistic, I don’t really have a numbers brain.  It’s things like this that make me worry that I’m not actually autistic, just rubbish at living life.  Huh.

I’ve nearly finished the novel I’m re-reading (Doctor Who: The New Adventures: Bad Therapy).  I don’t think I enjoyed the Doctor Who spin-off novels enough for me to enjoy re-reading them too often.  I find a book I don’t think I remember much about, but once I start reading, it comes back to me.  With Doctor Who TV episodes, I enjoy them so much I can watch them umpteen times even knowing the plot (and dialogue, cliff-hangers, and more interesting shot compositions).  Ditto for some of the Doctor Who Magazine comic strips, but apparently not for the novels.

I’m back in a depressed mood, and too awake to sleep…  Not sure what to do.  I might break my “No screens after 11pm” rule (honoured much more in the breach than the observance) and watch TV.  Maybe The Avengers or something.  Something silly, to try to unwind and switch off the depressed thoughts.

6 thoughts on ““Boy, does that sound like a boring person’s idea of fun!””

  1. Whenever I’m feeling down or my older daughter is, I suggest a silly TV show, movie or book. Something light and funny. It sounds like a heavy day for you–depression, a difficult Torah study, and then feeling off kilter and awake when you don’t want to be. I hope you’ll find something distracting and engaging. As you know, I like the Avengers!

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  2. It made me smile to see you questioning whether you are on the autistic spectrum simply because you “don’t have a numbers brain”, and straight after that you describe how you re-watch your Dr Who episodes umpteen times — which is very typical of people on the spectrum! I’m sure you appreciate that to confirm a diagnosis of almost any condition not all the possible signs or symptoms need to be present. You might find this view interesting https://theconversation.com/not-all-autistic-people-are-good-at-maths-and-science-despite-the-stereotypes-114128. Also this link (though I do think women with high functioning autism do perhaps cope better socially than men) https://researchautism.org/ten-things-autism-isnt/

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    1. Thanks for this. It’s not that I don’t have this symptom per se, and more that there are lots of symptoms I don’t have. I have already been assessed twice and told that I don’t have enough symptoms, or the right symptoms, so going back again is scary, even though I think I have more understanding of my symptoms now. I just worry I will be told again that I “Have lots of symptoms, but not enough/the right symptoms.”

      Thanks for the links, very interesting.

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  3. Diagnoses are problematic so many times. You know you have traits of an autistic person whether or not you fall into a particular doctor’s opinion of having it. I went for years, feeling like I had OCD, flat out asking psychologists if I had it, and so on, until years later, being told it sounds like I have it. Frankly, it seems to me that the brain is not well understood by most of our professionals. I’m thinking much of the advances in healthcare in the next hundred years are going to be toward mental illness and disorders that affect the mind. I mean, we know when we have an issue. You know you have *something* without requiring the label to help validate it, though I know that it does give some kind of relief. After a lifetime of mental illness and disorders and seeing lots of professionals, I feel that there’s a lot of fogginess around what diagnoses they actually give a person.

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