Work Keys, and Burning Out on Holiday

On the way into work, I got in a panic about not having completed a tax return, until my Mum pointed out that the return would be for the 2020-2021 financial year, where it’s unlikely I earnt enough (even including benefits) to pay tax, rather than the 2021-2022 financial year, where I probably will have to pay tax. However, I spent some time worrying about it before she pointed it out, and I do need to check the figures.

When I got into work, J told me I had made a mistake before going on holiday. Some people send in record books with their membership fees, which is supposed to be a way of recording how much they have paid. I am always worried that I will absent-mindedly send their cheques back with the books. It turns out that I did do that a few weeks ago. At least J wasn’t angry, but I feel embarrassed about these kind of executive function errors, even though I know they come with the autistic territory. We are not using the record books in the coming year, so I do at least have limited opportunities to make this mistake again.

J asked me to take a photo of some forms and send them to two contractors, which I did, but then realised I was charged by my phone company for sending media texts; I should have WhatsApped them (which I wasn’t sure I could do, but I now think I can).

Other than that there was a lot of basic admin work and a trip to the bank, which does break up the day. It was my last day as a contractor; tomorrow I become a permanent member of staff! Because of this, J gave me an electronic fob key for the front door, so I’ll be able to get in even if the security guard isn’t at his desk, although I need to get the key activated (or something technical) first.

I went to the shul (synagogue) in the building for Minchah and Ma’ariv (Afternoon and Evening services). No one wanted to lead the services. I sort of wanted to take the initiative, but held back because of social anxiety; fear that I would start shaking (which is a medication side-effect, but triggered by social anxiety and shortness of breath when masked); and fear that I would lead the prayers too slowly. I can not daven (pray) as fast as most people in this shul, and I would not daven that fast even if I could, as I think it’s insulting to God to speak to Him like that. I know most people at this minyan are taking time out from work and need to get back quickly, but I feel an extra two minutes would not hurt. But I worry what response I would get.

It is funny how some services seem to have ‘prestige’ and others don’t. People will fight for the right to lead some services (e.g. Kabbalat Shabbat (Friday evening), Mussaf (additional prayer service on Sabbaths and festivals), leining (Torah reading) and haftarah (reading from the prophets)), however those same people will fight not to have to lead weekday services, which seem to be seen as unimportant, probably because they are chanted rather than sung ‘properly’ and because relatively little skill is required to lead them compared with the more ‘prestigious’ services. You need to be able to read Hebrew reasonably well, but you don’t have to be able to sing, or memorise the vocalisation and musical notation of a passage.

***

Holiday: Thursday 20 January

E and I went to the Metropolitan Museum for a couple of hours, looking mainly at the Ancient Egyptian and Medieval Art galleries. It was fascinating and there was a lot to see, but we both got uncomfortable in our masks and I felt that I was tiring easily (which may have been due to masking, cold weather, autism and/or who knows what else). We ate lunch in Central Park (or I did; E doesn’t really eat lunch) and went for a bit of a walk around it, but it was uncomfortably cold and I was starting to get a headache (again), so we went back to E’s apartment so she could work and I read. It was nice just being in the same room, to be honest.

We had dinner at an Italian restaurant, in a COVID ‘outdoor’ seating area, a hut with a raised roof to let the air circulate, essentially a secular sukkah. I got them to turn the music down as it was giving me painful sensory overload. Sometimes I surprise myself (in this case regarding my confidence and ability to speak up for myself).

When we went out on this day, E noticed that the lockbox I was supposed to store the keys in at the end of my holiday had disappeared. It was fortunate that she noticed this, as I was able to get the landlord to buy a new one in time, otherwise my plans for my last day could have gone dramatically wrong. Sometimes it does feel like God is looking out for me (see also: having a free seat next to me on both plane journeys).

Friday 21 January

I felt pretty exhausted on this day. It led me to feel that, because of my autism, I can only do one thing per day, at most. This disappoints me, particularly after the packed holidays that my parents used to take me on as a child. I know E finds my lack of stamina hard to deal with too, but I don’t know what I can do to boost it.

Because of lack of stamina and exhaustion, I didn’t do much on this day, mostly just shopping for Shabbat, although Shabbat started so early I wouldn’t have managed much else anyway. My mood slumped at lunchtime and I’m not sure why.

E came over to my apartment for Shabbat dinner, although we didn’t get what we really wanted (sushi) and ended up making bad decisions about alternatives due to feeling stressed and overloaded (sensory overload and social overload).

Saturday 22 January

This was a chill out day, with E in my apartment for much of it. I had been enjoying being in an Airbnb, but from this point on, I began to find it a little creepy, like there was a ghost haunting the flat, by which I mean the presence of the landlord, who usually lived there when not abroad. I had amused myself making Sherlock Holmes-type deductions about her from her books and the newspaper clippings on the fridge, but I began to feel an impostor, like she wouldn’t want me to be there if she knew me (this was partly political, feeling that she wouldn’t agree with me politically and would think me a bad person). Things were made worse when we dripped some wax on a chair when making havdalah (ritual at end of the Sabbath involving a multi-wicked candle). She was OK about it, but I felt she ought to be angrier, even though the ‘house manual’ provided did not say anything about not lighting candles (contrary to what she said).

More practically, the bed was uncomfortable for me: the mattress too soft, the pillows too thin and the cushion I used to try to raise my head was the wrong shape and too hard, as it was a beanbag cushion. Perhaps as a result of this, I had weird dreams all week.

Some (Don’t) Like It Hot

Today was a fairly normal Sunday, with Torah study, novel research (I finished another book I was reading for research) and my first run for about six weeks (I got a headache again). I did quite a lot, but felt overwhelmed rather than pleased by the evening, overwhelmed at the thought of all the things I have to do in the coming weeks, not to mention work tomorrow, all made worse by my headache, which went and then returned before I could take medicine again.

Holiday: Wednesday 19 January

I woke at 8am, feeling ill. The heating in the apartment I was staying in, like that in many older apartment blocks in New York, is on for the whole building throughout the winter. You can’t turn it up or down, or off. Sleeping with the heating on tends to make me feel ill, so I woke up early, feeling ill, opened the window, and fell asleep for several more hours, then woke feeling somewhat better. After this, I slept every night with the window open, feeling slightly nervous that birds or small animals would come in (there was a gate to stop burglars, but a small creature might have got through).

Once I had finally got up, E and I went to Little Island, which as its name implies, is a large peninsula. Just kidding! It’s a little island, on the Hudson River. We’re not sure if it is natural or artificial. It’s a little park, very tranquil. There’s a small amphitheatre and we suspect it will host concerts or plays in the summer. It was a good way of destressing after the flight the previous day. After that we walked along the High Line, a raised walkway that used to be the elevated train lines. It was pleasant, but the views it once had over Manhattan have largely been blocked by tall apartment blocks (ironically the result of gentrification partially caused by the creation of the High Line walk, according to E). After this we bought drinks and a donut at a kosher Dunkin Donuts. This was a treat for me, as there are no kosher Dunkin Donuts in the UK, nor had I been to one in the US before.

Dinner was falafel at a kosher Middle Eastern restaurant, after which E went back to her apartment to catch up on work and I went back to mine to unpack and tidy up. I tried to study Torah and then to read, but I felt very tired and went to bed early.

After the Holiday; The Holiday Retrospect

I think the Talmud says it takes three days to recover from a journey (this had practical halakhic (legal) consequences in Talmudic times that don’t apply any more). A journey in Talmudic times was obviously likely to be longer, more difficult and more dangerous that the one I’ve got back from, but I still feel exhausted. To my surprise, I found the energy to go to shul (synagogue) on Friday night, albeit somewhat late. I sat at the back and didn’t talk to anyone after the service. I didn’t really want to socialise. I was probably exhausted at dinner and everything I said seemed to come out sounding more angry than I intended. I napped for an hour and a half after dinner and consequently couldn’t sleep at night. I might still be running on Eastern Standard Time instead of Greenwich Mean Time.

Today was mostly spent sleeping and doing Torah study again. I didn’t feel up to going to shul or shiur (religious class), which did not surprise me, as it’s such a struggle to go at the moment (post-COVID) even without jet lag and travel stress. After Shabbat, and helping to tidy up, I didn’t do much except plough through some emails and write this.

***

I argued with Dad about COVID restrictions. I said I might not wear a mask to shul in future, which he thought was risky. I said that I’m triple-vaxxed so COVID is unlikely to be like more than a bout of flu for me, and I accept the risk of catching flu every year. My sister currently has COVID and says it feels like a bad cold. To be honest, I vacillate on this. Sometimes I do feel that we have to accept COVID as being like flu and live with it; other times I worry about going to places with no masks. I think my father is similarly confused; he went to the theatre (masked) with Mum while I was away, which I am currently very reluctant to do, even though I travel on the Tube a couple of times a week. I find it hard to work out a consistent level of COVID safety that satisfies me, as so much depends on habit (I’m used to using the Tube in the pandemic by now; I’m not used to going to the theatre or cinema), media influence (if I’ve been reading articles for or against greater opening up) and peer pressure (including the negative peer pressure of masking to allow myself to look down on anti-maskers).

***

Over Shabbat I finished reading Talmudic Images, a series of short biographical essays on leading figures in the Talmud by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz that I bought and started reading in New York. I find it has given me more of a grasp of the chronology of the Talmud and how it fits together, particularly for the post-Mishnaic period. Perhaps strangely for someone on the spectrum, I find it easier to understand abstract arguments if I understand a little of the people proposing them. This approach was controversial with the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) world, though; one of the reasons why Rabbi Steinsaltz’s Talmud translation/commentary was rejected by that community was the (much shorter) biographical sketches he provided there of leading Talmudic figures. Rabbi Steinsaltz’s willingness to state that great rabbis had human flaws, and his suggestion that their personalities and worldviews might have influenced their halakhic (legal) reasoning are seen as incorrect and even immoral in the Haredi world, which prefers to see great rabbis as perfect saints operating in a universe of pure logic and reason.

***

Holiday: Tuesday 18 January: Coming to America

I arrived at the airport only to feel rather overwhelmed by the number of people and the confusion about what I had to do. Airports are not the most autism-friendly places. I managed to check in at the automated check in point and then drop off my luggage and get my COVID vaccination and test details checked. A baby in a parallel queue started waving to me; I waved back at her, but felt sad that she couldn’t see me smile because of my mask. As humans are social beings, and communication is through body language as much as speech, mask-wearing is not a cost-free option.

I got through security OK and eventually onto the plane. I was lucky enough to have a free seat next to me on both the way out and the way back, despite both planes being nearly full. This made me feel more comfortable and less crammed in. One of the air stewardesses looked and sounded exactly like Jodie Whittaker (the current Doctor Who), at least as far as I could tell with her mask on.

I did get a headache on the flight which approached being a migraine. It probably kicked in about three-quarters of the way through the flight. I’m not sure if I was dehydrated, as the amount of liquid they give you on an eight hour flight is minimal and I forgot to buy a bottle of water after clearing security, or if it’s a form of travel sickness, as I got a migraine last time I travelled abroad too. A quick internet search shows that aeroplane headaches are apparently a thing lots of people suffer. I hope this isn’t going to be a regular feature of air travel for me. I took some painkillers, but they didn’t help much.

I passed the time with reading The Psychology of Time Travel (very good science fiction mystery novel), listening to the Intimate Judaism podcast and, listening to episodes of The Goon Show and Round the Horne. When the headache became too bad to read I tried watching a wildlife documentary on the in-flight entertainment console, but it had a rather more sadistic focus on the brutal death of young chicks than I felt able to deal with in my headache-weakened state, so I gave up and watched The Simpsons. From what I’ve seen, recent episodes are not as funny as the early episodes, but they are still amusing compared with most comedy on TV.

I met E at the airport without any trouble, but my headache was worsened by the long taxi journey to the apartment I was renting, and I was glad I didn’t throw up in the cab. E and I were both driven quietly crazy by the cab’s audio system, which seemed to be playing the same half-dozen adverts over and over and over. When we arrived, we found the lockbox that was supposed to contain the apartment keys open and the keys missing. We were about to find a cafe where we could try to message the landlord when I remembered she had a cleaner and thought that she might be in there. I buzzed the apartment to find that, yes, the cleaner was running late and still up there.

I was more intimidated than I thought I would be by the loft bed (a sort of bunkbed for grown-ups), but someone had made the bed on a mattress on the floor instead, so I didn’t have to climb up every evening. I was also intimidated by the copper kettle, to be boiled on the gas stove. I was terrified of breaking it somehow, so simply refused to drink hot drinks in my apartment. I also realised that American toilet paper is awful, far too thin and flimsy.

When my headache felt better, E and I ventured out for dinner. We went to a kosher pizza restaurant relatively close by and ordered one pizza to take away for the two of us. I was worried if this would be enough, but when it arrived, it was big enough for two. We ate in my apartment, after which E left me so I could have an earlyish night.

Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty

I am back in the UK! I had a really good time with E in New York. I hope to blog it soon, but probably over a number of days, alongside my usual posts. I hope this doesn’t make the narrative like one of those ‘difficult’ novels that start consecutive chapters at A (the beginning of the story) and B (the midpoint of the story) and then alternate between the the two plotlines so the odd-numbered chapters tell you how the characters got from A to B, while the even-numbered chapters tell you how they got from B to C (the end of the story). (There was a Doctor Who novel like this, Eye of Heaven. It was pretty good, but no one could work out why the author wrote it that way.)

My flight home was somewhat stressful, with problems getting my COVID passenger locator form displayed to staff on my phone and delays when another flight was cancelled and their passengers passed on to us. I had a night flight and didn’t sleep, as I can’t sleep on planes; I didn’t have a particularly good or healthy breakfast either.

When I got home, I had lunch and unpacked a bit. Then I had a nap, intending to sleep for an hour and a half, but actually sleeping for three hours. Since then I’ve been unpacking and dealing with the email backlog. I should probably go to bed soon.

I did a COVID test when I woke up and it was negative (I always feel a ‘negative’ result should mean a bad result, but negative as in no COVID), so that was good.

“And I would fly 3,400 miles…”

I passed my pre-flight COVID antigen test, so I’m officially able to fly to New York tomorrow! I’m largely packed, except for some things that have to go in at the last minute. Today was largely taken up with the antigen test, scanning COVID-related documents for travel, and checking in. Everything seems to take so long, doubly so with COVID.

Looking at American money is exciting, although the coins and notes seem less interesting than British ones. The coins are all circular, and almost all the pictures are of former Presidents (and Alexander Hamilton). We have writers, scientists and social reformers on ours, plus Winston Churchill. Although with American coins, you can at least speculate on who will be cancelled next (Andrew Jackson is my guess, although James Polk is a possibility too).

I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to blog over the next week and a bit. If I do, it will be on my phone, so I’ll probably have to keep it short and there will may be more typos.

***

I finished reading The Impossible Office? The History of the British Prime Minister, in time to read something lighter (in all senses of the term) on holiday. It was good, but sometimes awkwardly written, perhaps a result of being credited to “Anthony Seldon with Jonathan Meakin and Illias Thomas”, which made me wonder how it was written, if Seldon did the writing and Meakin and Thomas extra research. It did feel a bit ‘written by committee’ in places.

The book ends with a rather bleak assessment of Prime Ministerial job and life prospects after leaving power. In Britain, with no maximum term limits, Prime Ministers usually leave involuntarily, rejected by the electorate, deposed by their own party, or suffering from serious and sometimes fatal illness. The book states:

The job should carry a health warning. Seven have died in office, and five dead [sic] within a year of leaving, with a further three within three years. Within ten years, half were dead. Given how young many were, it’s not a great prospect. Remarkably few achieve what they hoped. Most leave involuntarily… Many experienced pain earlier in their lives: one study suggests two thirds in office between 1812 and 1940 lost a parent in childhood, and asks whether their quest for power and prestige was motivated by protection against emptiness and insignificance. (p. 335)

Seldon goes on to list Prime Ministers who lost children, particularly during the World Wars (Herbert Asquith lost his son in the First World War, a war he had taken the country into), but also to AIDS. Several had children who developed addiction or serious mental illness. Despite infant mortality being low these days, two twenty-first century Prime Ministers, Gordon Brown and David Cameron, lost children in infancy.

It’s sobering stuff. I’ve long thought that the way that terms like ‘privilege’ are bandied about these days ignores the myriad ways that people can suffer and endure pain, not all of which can easily be given politicised labels or filed away neatly.

Danse Macabre

I’ve packed for my New York trip. Well, really Mum packed. I was torn between wanting to be independent and knowing that she can pack much better than I can, and just wanting to remember how she does it so I can pack on the way home. I don’t have great ability to do things like packing that involve imagining how different objects would fit when stacked differently in a space. I’ve never seen it listed as an autism symptom, just like I’ve never seen a bad sense of direction as an autism symptom, but to me they fit logically with acknowledged autism deficits in body coordination and spatial awareness.

My mood has been up and down today. I’m really excited at the thought of seeing E, but also terrified of travelling: terrified of COVID disruptions (or simply being sent home from the airport with asymptomatic COVID), of cold weather (everyone has terrified me by saying New York is cold, but I’m not sure it’s that much colder than London right now), of problems travelling with a mask (I’m particularly worried that my usual anxiety at going through airport security combined with shallow breathing from wearing a mask will trigger some kind of panic attack), of having made some terrible mistake in booking my flights and apartment, of just being overwhelmed by EVERYTHING. At the moment, after a Skype call with E, the excitement is winning. I hope it stays that way for the next forty-eight hours!

***

On an autism forum I’ve joined, people have been discussing school days. Interestingly, a lot of people who responded had a very negative time at school, reporting poor academic achievement, friendlessness and bullying, too much noise and bustle and difficulties fitting in and following rules.

It does make a me feel a bit ‘not autistic enough’ that I did better at school than some. Some people did respond with similar experiences to me, namely good academic achievement, but social isolation and bullying. I went to a very big secondary school and I wonder how I managed to cope with it for seven years. Work wasn’t so bad, but lunch could be very busy. I used to find a quiet corner, with or without my friends. For much of my time there, I went to extra optional Jewish studies shiurim (religious classes) during lunch break, which got me away from the busy lunch halls and playgrounds. I don’t know how I came home after a long day followed by a long journey on buses and the Tube at rush hour and then did a couple of hours of homework. No wonder I was burnt out by sixteen! I was bullied too, although perhaps not severely; not as severely as some people are, anyway. And I had a couple of friends. I think the rules were a positive thing for me, they gave structure and boundaries, and protected me from other children. I couldn’t really understand why my peers wanted to break them so much. They couldn’t understand why they mattered to me.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m very glad I had what Tony Attwood calls a ‘mentor friend,’ a neurotypical friend who to some extent guided me and even sheltered me from some of the worst aspects of school for an autistic child. This is my oldest friend, who I’m still in contact with.

***

I watched The Old Man in the Cave, a post-apocalyptic episode of The Twilight Zone. A lot of episodes of The Twilight Zone revolve around fears of nuclear war, one way or another, as does a lot of science fiction of the fifties and sixties e.g. Philip K. Dick’s stories from the era are full of it. It’s unsurprising, given how real a threat nuclear war was (e.g. the Cuban Missile Crisis), but I wonder if it’s more reassuring to depict the end of the world when it’s humans who have destroyed it. At least we had some agency.

Stories that deal with catastrophe through man-made pollution and global warming are common, but I suspect that we won’t be seeing a bunch of plague stories post-COVID (cf. Survivors, the 1970s post-apocalyptic series created by Dalek creator Terry Nation, although that was a lab leak plague, so some human agency). I don’t think people want to be reminded how puny we are in comparison with nature.

In the wake of the Black Death, European art became distinctly morbid. There were depictions of the danse macabre, showing the Grim Reaper dancing with people in the fields. Rich people were buried in two-level transi tombs, with a human form depicted on the top and a decayed skeleton underneath, often accompanied by cheery messages like, “I was like you. You will be like me.” It would probably be a good thing if we were humbled in this way by COVID, but I don’t honestly see it happening.

Late/Early Post

I’m not sure if this is a late post for Saturday night or an early one for Sunday night.

My holiday seems to have taken over my life right now, and not in a good way.

Shabbat (the Sabbath) was quiet. I didn’t go to shul (synagogue) to minimise my risk of contracting COVID in the days before my flight.

After Shabbat I intended to do some trip-planning and printing of documents, as well as getting a birthday card for my sister. The planning and printing took hours, far longer than expected, and resulted in worries about whether I was getting the right COVID tests before and after the trip. I didn’t have time for getting a card. I think I was still doing holiday stuff midnight. I was stressed and tired, but not sleepy (too stressed). I watched The Simpsons for a bit and got to bed around 2am.

I woke up four hours later with a headache and feeling nauseous. I took some tablets, used a kool and soothe strip and sat up reading. I’m trying to finish The Impossible Office? The History of the British Prime Minister before my trip (or the end of Boris Johnson’s premiership, whichever is the sooner…). I’m not taking it with, as it’s a big, heavy hardback, and I’d rather not have to come back to it for the last twenty or thirty pages after a break. At 7am I tried going back to bed, but felt ill lying down, so I got up again. I did some more checking about the COVID test (see below)

***

My big worry is the COVID test before leaving. My Dad has asked in a local pharmacy and they say they do COVID antigen testing. I’ve been pushing my search engine skills to the limit, trying to check if they’re a government-approved COVID tester. It looks like the pharmacy rents part of the building to Medicspot, who are a government-approved COVID tester, but it’s not 100% clear and it’s panicking me. I have at least confirmed that I can get a self-test kit from Boots pharmacy chain for the return trip test.

The whole situation is difficult. The government’s list is not user-friendly, and it’s hard to be sure that other information online is up-to-date.

I’m still worried that a test will reveal asymptomatic COVID and keep me grounded in the UK, or I’ll catch COVID and get stranded in New York, but I just have to keep planning and getting ready on the assumption/hope that everything will go fine.

***

Since getting up early, as well as checking for COVID tests, I’ve bought my sister a card, so that’s something out of the way at least. My headache seems to be coming back though. I should start packing soon, but I ought to take some more painkillers first.

“The silence you hear is Mr Neddie Seagoon sitting and waiting”

Work was stressful as I spent nearly five hours inputting cheques for membership fees onto the system and then going to the bank to pay them all in, about fifty cheques in all plus some cash. J pointed out some mistakes in previous work, and I worry that working on this for so long with just one real break for lunch would lead to more errors. In addition, one of the cheques I took to the bank on Monday went missing. I think it was the bank’s error (I’m not sure how it could have been mine), but it worries me a bit, and I worry that today’s lot could easily have a mistake made by me as well by as the bank teller. One of the cheques had somehow got a bit sticky, and I worry that it will stick to another cheque and not be processed separately, which is probably what happened on Monday.

***

I went to shul (synagogue) for Minchah and Ma’ariv (Afternoon and Evening Services) at the shul in the building where I work. It was super-fast as usual. I suppose people davening (praying) in this shul during the week are mostly working and need to get back to work, but it’s far too fast for me and I’m still davening when the service is over. It’s hard to find a shul that davens at the right pace for me; sadly, I don’t think I’m going to find it in the United Synagogue.

***

I’m not going to shul this Shabbat (Sabbath) as I want to avoid COVID before my trip by isolating as much as possible, although my Dad will go to his shul. I had a close call today when I heard that the rabbi of the shul in the building where I work is isolating after getting COVID. I had seen him in shul (albeit from a distance) on Monday and don’t know if he was infected then. I did a test when I got home and it was negative, so hopefully I’ll be OK if I just avoid people between now and Tuesday (hence the title of this post, from The Goon Show: The Junk Affair, about sitting in silence and waiting).

I have some anxieties about travel, beyond getting asymptomatic COVID and being grounded, but I’m trying not to give in to catastrophisation. Wish me luck…

***

I admit I was too zonked after work to read this properly, but someone sent me to Temple Gradin’s article about good jobs for people on the autism spectrum. She did at least mention librarian (so I wasn’t in the wrong field entirely, I just went about it in completely the wrong way, albeit for reasons that were perhaps outside of my control). Many of the other jobs are IT/maths/technical jobs. Sometimes I feel like I got all the bad parts of autism and none of the good parts, skills with maths and computers. There are also some very low-grade jobs too. Gradin does say to opt for jobs where you have to sell your work, not your personality, which suggests I’m right to look at writing, copywriting and proof-reading, but I’ve never been able to build up the portfolio of work needed to get more work, and anything freelance requires a leap in the dark about how much to charge and how quickly I can promise to do things. I have no idea how long it should or would take me to proof-read a thesis, or how much to charge for doing so, or how to prove to someone I can do it when I’ve never done it before.

***

This article asks what holiness is. I’ve always struggled with this, perhaps surprisingly, given how religious I am. I’m not a mystic, so I’m not convinced it is a “metaphysical substance” that our souls can perceive. Although Judaism generally sees the holy as that which is ‘beyond’ or ‘set aside,’ with my religious existentialist leanings, I tend to see it as being ‘between’ — between human beings or between human beings and God. I think there was holiness at the food bank and the asylum seekers’ drop-in centre where I used to volunteer. In this regard I think of what Rabbi Sacks said about the holiest place in Judaism being the gap between the wings of the cherubs on the cover of the Ark of the Covenant, from where God’s voice emanated, to teach us that holiness is about between spaces, interactions, between people and God and between different people. Rabbi Sacks also used to talk about the importance of listening as a religious act. But if holiness is between human beings, then I’m very bad at accessing it, or being able to access it, given my autism and social anxiety, so I feel like I’ve defeated myself in a way. That said, I do feel something on Shabbat that I can’t describe, and that may be holiness; at least, I hope it is.

Still Drained

I slept through the morning again. Looking at my energy accounting record for yesterday, I was running a deficit again yesterday. I didn’t do a huge amount, but I didn’t do much relaxation either. I did a bit before bed, but that was probably too late at night, when I should really have been asleep. I do need to be online less and doing things that actually relax me.

I struggled through the day with low energy and mood, trying to do things. I went for a walk and wrote a devar Torah (Torah thought) that was nowhere near as good as I thought it would be when I had the idea for it a few weeks ago, and wrote some important emails. The other achievements were Mum cutting my hair and my checking which museums that I want to visit in New York are closed because of COVID. The Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace seems to be the only museum that is actually shut, perhaps because of the difficulty of socially distancing in an old house, but most of the other museums require, or at least recommend, advance ticket purchases, so E and I will have to plan which days we intend to go to which places. I feel a bit daunted, as I have no idea how my mood and energy levels will be, so planning days in advance seems like giving hostages to fortune, as if COVID hadn’t done enough of that already.

I didn’t do much else. My mood was brought down further by something family-related that happened that I don’t really want to go into here.

***

At the back of my mind all day was the ongoing Downing Street party scandal. I wrote two paragraphs about that yesterday and deleted them, telling myself it was too political for a blog that I try to keep apolitical. But I keep thinking about it and wondering if it would have happened whatever party was in power. There’s no way of telling, but I currently have a low opinion of all of them parties, and have done since about 2017. And weren’t there civil servants at this party as well as Conservatives? It’s all just sickening. The anarchist doctrine of “Don’t vote, it only encourages them” sometimes seems very true.

Paying Off the Deficit

I was completely drained when I woke up today, probably a result of doing so much yesterday. I’ve only been measuring my energy for “energy accounting” purposes for a week and a half, and already I’ve learnt that I run up massive energy deficits on work days that I spend non-work days paying off (hampering doing things like writing fiction on those days) and that not only does mindless internet procrastination not restore my energy levels, it actually drains them, particularly if I’m reading political or religious stuff — not even stuff that I necessarily disagree with, but seeing other people arguing drains me. I’m not sure how to stop that, as it’s a fairly compulsive bad habit that I’ve tried to stop in the past with things like setting myself limits regarding when I can be online or turning the computer off at a particular time in the evening. It doesn’t help that almost all my social life (blogging), and a lot of my interactions with E (WhatsApp, Skype) happen online or on my phone, which often leads to habitual internet usage. If my phone is on, it is very easy to open the internet, even if that was not my intention originally.

The energy deficits make me worry a bit about what might happen next week when I’m in New York. I already knew I would need downtime and some quieter days, but I worry about how much downtime I might need. It also makes me worry long-term about being able to run a home and have children, although it’s probably not healthy to think about that right now.

By coincidence/Providence, on my feed today I saw this post. I’m still looking for the perfect article on shutdowns, both for me and my family, but this was quite useful coming today. I do feel like I often have a shutdown after work, at least for an hour or so, but sometimes, like yesterday, for much of the evening and followed by an “emotional hangover” the next day (I was pleased to see that term in the post as I thought I was the only person who used it). I do wish there was an easy test to see if what I experience really is a shutdown, as it’s easy to blame myself for being weak or overreacting.

Because of this, I didn’t do much today, and most of what I did do was preparation for my New York trip. I went for a walk, read some information my airline provided about COVID tests and the like for the trip, and phoned my credit card company to tell them I would be making payments from the US and they shouldn’t worry that my card has been stolen. (Is this normal? My Dad gets me to do it every time I go abroad, but I’ve never seen anything on the website to suggest it’s something most people do.) I downloaded some radio comedy programmes to listen to on the flights as I have a feeling I will be too anxious, and too tired on the return flight, to read much, although I do not know why I think that. However, I’m having trouble getting my iPod to sync and am too tired to deal with it now (yes, I know most people use their phones. I’m very bad at upgrading stuff).

***

I did a little Torah study, about half an hour. As often happens after a shutdown or exhausted day, by the time I felt awake, it was too late to do anything, but I wanted to do some Torah study. I finished reading Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) from cover to cover, in order, in Hebrew (albeit struggling with the Aramaic chapters, of which I think there are nine). I had read Tanakh cover to cover before in English translation, and I had read each book of Tanakh in Hebrew, but not in the right order, but this was the first time I read through the whole of Tanakh in order in Hebrew. I’m not sure how long it took me, probably something like seven or eight years, as there were times when I stopped doing it for long periods when I was suffering depression or burnout, or when I was working a lot and it was not easy to read it on the train.

Traditionally, when finishing study of a Jewish religious book, you start the next volume straight away, so you’re always studying. I will be returning to Yehoshua (Joshua) at some point (I keep the Torah (Five Books of Moses) on a separate cycle, the annual Torah cycle), but after my trip to New York. This is because I ordered two of the Koren Maggid Studies in Tanakh books (Joshua and Judges) for me to collect from E’s apartment, as I haven’t been able to get hold of most of them in the UK lately, I assume because of COVID/supply chain issues. I could order them directly to the UK, but the shipping is prohibitive.

***

My diet (which wasn’t a big thing anyway, just trying to cut back a bit) has hit a bit of a block, as cutting back hasn’t shifted my weight, reinforcing my feeling that it’s all medication-related, which in turn makes it hard not to eat a bit of junk on days when I feel down or exhausted, like today.

“Only stupid Earth brains like yours would have been fooled.”

I struggled to sleep last night. I’m not sure why Sundays are becoming my night for insomnia. Work today was OK, quite busy, but not really anything worth reporting. I did some shopping on the way home.

I was wondering if I would be able to go to depression group on Zoom, but I didn’t make it. I was quite tired when I got home and then I had to cook dinner (macaroni cheese, one of my quick, emergency recipes) and by the time I’d done that, I was totally burnt out. Even eating dinner and watching The Twilight Zone didn’t help. I had to sit for a while in a dimly-lit, quiet bedroom until I got through the burnout/sensory overload/exhaustion (I’ve never been entirely sure if this counts as an autistic shutdown or not).

It was a shame to miss depression group, but I wasn’t 100% looking forward to it. I wasn’t sure how to tell people about my engagement. I get a bit overwhelmed when I share positive news like that and people want to congratulate me and ask questions. It also takes a lot of energy and will-power for E and I to run this relationship long-distance, and I’m not sure how people will react to that. It’s made harder by our respective issues, and the fact that we can unconsciously pick up each other’s anxieties, even if we don’t consciously share them. I spoke to my therapist a bit about this, and she stressed the need to make sure I’m only worrying about the things that worry me. In addition, E and I are really looking forward to spending more time together next week, COVID-permitting, but I’m still anxious about travelling with all the COVID-prevention requirements. So I was worried I would come across as negative, which is probably an occupational hazard in a depression group, but I still was nervous of seeming that way when I felt everyone would expect me to uncomplicatedly happy.

Even after all this, I was still feeling quite drained. I decided to eat ice cream (despite my half-hearted diet) watch some original series Doctor Who, as I needed something safe and familiar to vegetate in front of. I opted for The Moonbase, as it’s not very good, so I don’t feel bad about not watching with E, plus it’s a story with half its episodes missing and reconstructed with animation which means I definitely wouldn’t watch it with E, as I felt watching the reconstructed The Evil of the Daleks didn’t work out well (I might, however, suggest watching The Invasion at some point, two animated episodes out of eight notwithstanding).

The Moonbase is very silly, complete with sarcastic, gloating, supposedly-emotionless Cybermen, as in my title quote, and I’m enjoying it a lot. I watched two episodes, with two more to go. I’m not sure if I’ll watch tonight or tomorrow. I don’t know why I can find episodes of the original series silly and endearing, but episodes of the new series that are probably objectively the same or better just annoy me.

Ben and Polly are two of the great, overlooked companions in Doctor Who. I don’t agree with the argument that they worked with William Hartnell, their “Swinging Sixties” style contrasting with Hartnell’s Victorian amateur inventor vibe, but didn’t work with Patrick Troughton’s quiet anarchism. Jamie is also a great companion, but the production team’s fondness for him, and their desire to slimline the TARDIS crew, deprived us of something good. To be fair, three companions is too many, certainly after the slower and often more thoughtful stories of the first two seasons.

Emotional Authenticity

I overslept massively today. It turns out that it’s not enough to ‘balance the books’ in terms of energy accounting; I also have to go to bed at a reasonable time to get up earlier! I stayed up too late procrastinating online and reducing an iTunes playlist with 400+ “favourite” songs down to a round 100, which wasn’t really a priority. I do sometimes get focused on these trivial, but compulsive, tasks, saying I’ll do it for ten minutes, but end up being sucked in to doing it for much longer, until it’s completed. I think I finally went to bed around 2am; getting very hungry late at night and needing to eat didn’t help either.

Today I got up well after noon and felt very drained. Of course, it could be that it wasn’t so much a result of last night as much as running a big energy deficit over the week and not paying it off over Friday and Saturday. Perhaps, just as I feel the government shouldn’t run a massive fiscal deficit, I should be more careful about my own energy deficits. But it’s hard when I have a looming, unmovable event (my trip to New York) that I need to prepare for, alongside work and other regular chores.

The other annoying thing when I got up was weighing myself for the first time in a while and discovering that I hadn’t lost any weight, despite trying (not always successfully) to cut back. It’s not exactly surprising, as I have, if anything, been exercising less lately, as a result of poor weather and general busyness, and I’m pretty sure my weight gain is medication-driven anyway. Still, I had hoped to shift a bit of weight before my trip, and especially before my wedding (which still hasn’t got a date, so there’s time there I guess, but I’m unlikely to succeed if it’s completely medication-driven).

My main task today was to book holiday insurance, which I did, although it took a while. I also went for a walk and did an hour of Torah study and skyped E, so it was not a wasted day, but I still feel overwhelmed at the thought of my trip, and the busy work days I’m likely to have this week in addition to getting ready.

***

I haven’t had time to work on my novels recently, either researching/writing the new one or submitting the old one. I’ve been too focused on relationship and travel stuff, which is fine, the novels can wait. Something came up recently that reinforced my desire to write the type of novels I’m trying to write.

Sadly, there has recently been another Haredi (ultra-Orthodox Jewish) abuse scandal. I won’t go into the details, because it’s not really relevant and is all over the internet anyway. It has produced a lot of outrage and debate online. One blog post I read used the abuse to make a more general point about the lack of emotional honesty in the Haredi world. “People pretend to feel things they do not feel, exaggerate feelings, especially when connected with spiritual matters, or quite frankly—are completely emotionally dissociated, such that all their actions stem from a place of artificiality… Many emotions are taboo—like anger, doubt, and pride. Which leads people to feel uncomfortable admitting that they have them.” The writer goes on to say that people present themselves as doing the right things and ignore the confusion of their inner lives, resulting in secrecy and a tendency to defend the image of the community and not acknowledge its complex reality, including abuse and corruption.

The blog post resonated with me for various reasons, partly because I have a religious mentality of trying to get to the truth of my beliefs and actions and see if I’m really doing things for the right reasons or not (this is not always healthy and can lead to overthinking and religious OCD, but at least avoids just telling myself that I’m doing what is expected). But also because, in my writing, to some extent here and especially in fiction, I want to get at the truth of my religious experience and try to represent that.

I’m not sure if I really succeeded with that in my first novel. I know I felt kind of forced by the nature of fiction to add some kind of epiphany for the main character that I felt rang a bit false. However, I didn’t know how to end it without that. Only later did I read Dara Horn’s essay on Jewish fiction in People Love Dead Jews, where she speaks about the idea of epiphany, ending, closure etc. in fiction being essentially Christian in origin, and about Yiddish and modern Hebrew novels often not having that closure and just stopping abruptly without the protagonist really having grown or changed. As an approach, it intrigues me, but I’m not sure I could write it, or accept it if I read it, or sell it to an agent or publisher.

I think in particular, there’s a lot of confusion and inner conflict and hypocrisy in the Haredi world around sex, of which abuse scandals are just a part, albeit the most troubling part. And there’s also a lot of confusion and inner conflict and hypocrisy in the secular Western world around sex, and, again, abuse scandals are just a part of that. I’m interested in what those two worldviews say to each other and what happens to people caught between the two of them. I suspect writing about this will not make me popular with either side.

(Of course, I need to actually write which I haven’t been doing recently…)

More Anxieties

I’ve been so focused on holiday stuff lately that Shabbat (the Sabbath) felt like something of a pause. I went to shul on Friday night and had some COVID anxiety. I might have had it anyway, but the windows and doors, which had usually been left open since COVID started, were mostly shut because of the cold, and that made it worse. I didn’t go back today, which may be COVID anxiety-related or that may be a way of rationalising something I wouldn’t do anyway, as I haven’t been to shul on Saturday afternoon much since the clocks went back. But I am worried of catching COVID and not being able to fly to the USA next week. Perhaps strangely, my biggest fear is getting asymptomatic COVID and not being able to go despite feeling fine, which somehow seems worse that not being able to go because I’m too ill to get out of bed.

I’m also wary of going to shul in case people ask when my wedding will be (this has already happened to me once, from someone who I thought would not do it). I guess the norm in the frum (religious Jewish) world is for a gap of six weeks to three or four months or so from engagement to wedding, although I admit this is partly guesswork on my part, as I haven’t known anyone frum enough to watch the process play out for them. The reality is that E and I are hoping to get married sometime this year (as in 2022, not Jewish year), but probably later rather than sooner. E has some anxiety issues that we want to work on first, to make sure they really are anxiety in the psychological sense and not misgivings about us, so we’re dealing with that in various ways, including my forthcoming trip. We probably won’t start organising the wedding until the spring. But I don’t really want to say that to people

I had some slight anxiety myself today, probably because I forgot to take my morning meds. The anxiety focused on my trip, mostly about practical things about my trip, particularly getting mugged. My mind associates New York with muggers, although I think statistically it is about as crime-free/crime-ridden as London these days. Possibly I’ve read too much Batman. I did get mugged in London several years ago, on a quiet suburban street, in broad daylight, round the corner from where I lived at the time, which probably is a lesson that the things we worry about are not exactly the things that happen. But mostly I was OK today, which is a good sign, showing that I’m not as dependent on my antidepressants as in the past.

E and I both have some COVID anxieties about restaurants too, and that came up today too. I have eaten in restaurants in the UK since COVID started, but not often and generally preferring those establishments that were not full or that allowed outside eating (before winter set in). I think E and I may have to play our eating out by ear, or eat a lot of takeaway, which would be a shame, but this is going to be an unusual trip and a learning curve in so many ways. The important thing for me is to see (and hug) E and make her feel less anxious, rather than to have an amazing holiday in terms of food and sightseeing.

I drank a cup of coffee at seudah shlishit (the Third Sabbath meal, although really a snack at this time of year, when Shabbat finishes a little after 5pm) and that stopped me falling asleep in the afternoon as I have done too much lately. I did some Talmud study instead. That said, it is 11.30pm and I am not in the slightest bit tired, so I probably still slept too much.

I’m still recording energy intake and expenditure to do some energy allocating/budgeting. I want to do it for a while longer before I make any decisions, and allocating numerical values to show how much various activities drain or energise me is a bit arbitrary, but already I’ve noticed massive energy deficits on weekdays, particularly on workdays, but even to some extent on other weekdays. No wonder I always feel tired. I feel I ‘balance the books’ more over Shabbat, but at a cost of limited shul attendance and perhaps less Torah study than I would have liked.

Brief Update

I didn’t blog again yesterday as I didn’t have much to say. I don’t have much to say today either, but as I doubt I will have time to blog tomorrow, and may not have much to say after Shabbat, I thought I would post something so I didn’t suddenly go silent for several days and worry people.

Today I got a permanent contract at work, which means I get National Insurance (social security) payments made on my behalf and am eligible for pension contributions, which is all good, plus I have more job security now. It also shows that J has confidence in me. I think this is the first time I’ve had a permanent contract at work since 2017 or even earlier, so it’s very positive.

I’m feeling a bit less anxious about my trip to New York, especially as the testing requirements for the return trip have been eased. I am trying to look forward to it without feeling that doing so will somehow jinx it and lead to a COVID-influenced disruption.

That’s really all I have to say for now. I think it’s a case of “No news is good news,” to use a favourite phrase of my Mum’s.

More On Energy Allocation

I didn’t blog yesterday as nothing much happened. I was off work as it was a bank holiday. I went in to the office today. I missed my stop on the Tube as I was engrossed in my reading. This was good, in a way, as I was reading Mishnah (the oldest stratum of the Talmud) and was surprised that I got so involved in it that I missed my stop.

Work itself was boring. I spent about three and a half hours stuffing invoices into envelopes and then putting stamps on them. I couldn’t listen to music, as I had forgotten to charge my iPod and wanted to leave what battery it had left for the journey home. For variety, I had to take a few credit card payments over the phone, which I still find awkward, but it is getting less scary with experience. I spent a little bit of time on the large statistics-collating task I started last week, which wasn’t as fearsome as it first seemed, although there is a lot to do, including the hardest bits.

There was some bad mask compliance on the Tube. Most people are actually wearing masks, but the few who aren’t are sometimes overly-conspicuous or downright stupid, like the woman today not wearing her mask so she could speak on the phone, but with her hand over her mouth, or the guy last week who not only was not wearing a mask, but was also picking his nose (gross!).

I was exhausted/burnt out/whatever it is by the time I got home. I’ve been trying to allocate values showing how much each activity drains or replenishes my energy and just from one working day I can see better how draining work is for me, even with the reduced hours I’m doing and even without taking into account commuting and going to the shul in the building for Minchah and Ma’ariv (Afternoon and Evening Prayers) after work. Interestingly, going online to catch up on emails and blogs as soon as I get in (well, after I’ve spoken to my parents, anyway) was definitely draining rather than replenishing today, which surprised me a bit. I’m not sure how to cut or reduce that without falling behind on things, but it does look like a seriously bad idea. Last summer I sometimes came home and sat in the garden and read a book for half an hour before going online, which might be a sensible habit to get back into, albeit indoors until the weather improves.

***

For the last few days I’ve been going through cycles of higher and lower anxiety. I get anxious about my trip to New York, then I do research on whatever it is I’m anxious about or move forward with booking things and I feel less anxious until the next thing comes up to worry about.

In terms of trip planning, I thought finding an Airbnb near E would be easier and cheaper than finding a kosher or Shabbat-compliant hotel. This may not have been true, I’m not sure. I tried looking on Airbnb, but struggled to get a sense of what was close to E. My sense of geography is not great regarding places I’ve been to, let alone places I’ve only seen on a map, plus Airbnb will only give the rough location until you confirm you are going. E helped me find somewhere that looked reasonable and I booked it. I’m very worried about COVID ruining this, but hopefully I’ll be in New York in two weeks!

It will be good to spend time with E and to be able to do couple things again. Dating long-distance is hard, and dating long-distance with mental health issues and neurodiversity to factor in is extra-hard, but I think ultimately it could make our relationship stronger in the long-term. Certainly we have an ability to talk to each other very honestly and openly about our feelings and come away feeling closer to each other, and I know that’s a massively important and powerful thing to have in a relationship, especially given that I’m autistic and not always good at emotional and interpersonal things. I’m excited about my holiday and seeing E, albeit also scared to acknowledge that excitement lest it somehow jinx things through C*V*D.

Exciting News and Energy Accounting

I got up before 10am (just)! I told myself I could have a doughnut if I got up by 10am twenty times in January. I guess the lure of a doughnut at the end of the month (despite my diet) is strong enough to break my usual desire to sleep in. (That’s not the exciting news, by the way.)

***

I booked tickets to New York to see E later this month! (That is the exciting news.) Because of the need to do pre-flight COVID tests; my inability to do said tests on Saturday (because of Shabbat) or Sunday (because the pharmacy I want to use is shut); my unwillingness to spend less than a week with E after travelling over 5,000km to see her; and the need to isolate on coming home until after another COVID test, my trip is going to require my taking two weeks off work, even though I’ll only be out of the country for nine and a bit days. This is rather a lot at our busy time of year. Fortunately, J is OK with it.

I did some research on COVID travel rules and restrictions. I feel more confident about them as they’ve become more familiar, although I still worry about going to get turned away at the airport for doing the wrong tests or having the wrong papers, or that I’ll get COVID and be stranded in New York for an extra fortnight. Getting COVID on the return flight doesn’t bother me so much, I’m less scared of COVID (I’m triple vaxxed) than I am of disruption to my plans and all that would entail, although it would be annoying to miss work just as my new contract starts.

***

I spoke to my rabbi mentor. He was happy that my life is going well (engagement to E, job made permanent, depression hasn’t come back despite it being winter, etc.). I did mention that I feel overwhelmed a lot of the time and that I’m struggling to get back in the shul (synagogue) habit post-COVID and that I am struggling to spend an hour a day in religious study as I was a few months ago. He felt that doing one hour of Torah study a day at my age was more than most people would manage (which made me feel vaguely bad that this was largely because I am unmarried, childless and only working part-time) and that doing less would be fine. He asked if there’s anything in my life that I could/would like to just drop and, aside from procrastinating, I said there wasn’t anything, which made me realise that most of the stuff in my life (work, prayer, Torah study, writing fiction, blogging, exercise) is important to me; I just have to work out how to balance it rather than cut anything out entirely.

On a related note, at the suggestion of someone from the National Autism Association forum, I watched a YouTube video on energy accounting by ‘Purple Ella’ (autistic content creator). To be honest, I’m still somewhat sceptical at my ability to get energy accounting to work, but she suggested just recording your activity and energy levels for a fortnight to work out what’s working well and what isn’t. This sounded like a good place to start.

Purple Ella also suggested energy accounting on a weekly basis as well as a daily one, in other words, not just making sure you balance your energy budget (intake vs. expenditure) over the course of a day, but also over the course of a week, taking extra relaxation time before or after a busy day. I do this a bit already, in terms of leaving recovery days after draining experiences, but it’s probably better to think in a weekly mindset as well as a daily one.

***

My revised article on religious OCD is up on the Jewish site. Which is good, but I need to figure out a way to get them to pay me for writing. It’s strange, I never really thought of myself as a confessional writer, but it’s definitely the way my writing has gone over the last decade. Confessional writing is different to novel writing, but I guess they both tap into the same level of emotions, or the novels I want to write do.

***

I’m watching The Twilight Zone episode The Incredible World of Horace Ford, about a man obsessed with his childhood. I could probably write a list of weirdo Twilight Zone characters who are probably on the autism spectrum. Just off the top of my head, there’s Ford, Mr Beavis (from the episode of the same name), the guy from the episode Miniature and probably several more if I thought about it properly. I’m not sure if it’s reassuring or not that they seem to avoid social conformity at the cost of living a ‘normal’ life.

Horace Ford clearly had a happier childhood than I did, as I’m not in much of a hurry to return to it. He has somehow managed to get himself married, which is strange as his wife is intelligent and attractive, yet appears to want to spend her life with a man who has a mental age of ten. His mother lives with them too, for added infantilisation. You can tell The Twilight Zone is pre-feminism, because apparently woman are falling over themselves to play housewife and mother to man-children. Although the guy from Miniature married an Edwardian doll, which probably is even less feminist.

Good Year for the Roses

As Elvis Costello so nearly sang, “It’s a good year for the Roses/Also the Cohens and the Goldbergs…” I don’t really do Gregorian New Years, I focus on Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) in the autumn, but I have been feeling a bit more introspective than usual the last few days. 2021 was, in many ways, and for many people, an awful year, but for me there were many positives (autism diagnosis, getting back with E, getting engaged, having my job made permanent, getting to a stage where I felt able to start submitting my novel manuscript to agents, having an idea for my second novel) in amidst the continuing COVID awfulness. I am ready for COVID to be over now, though.

Shabbat (the Sabbath) was unexciting. I got to shul (synagogue) on Friday night, but not on Saturday. COVID has made shul attendance so much harder than it was before, and social anxiety had already made it patchy before COVID. One person asked if I had set a date yet for the wedding. I said that COVID is making wedding planning hard, which is true, but E and I have agreed not to start planning at least until I’ve been out there. We just want to spend some more time doing couple stuff before we plan the wedding, given how little time we’ve been able to spend together in person, thanks to COVID.

I did some Torah study, and finished reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, largely due to a bout of insomnia on Friday night. It held my attention, and I can see why children like it so much, but I’m not quite sure why it was so popular with adults. I’m feel like I’m too old to believe ten year olds know better than adults what to do in a crisis, and the book is permeated by the ethos of all the main characters being the best in the school at something, as if we won’t empathise with normal people, a motif that was annoying in Star Trek too. I probably will read the other books in the series, but I’m not rushing out to get them all right now.

I am hoping to get to bed by midnight and up by 10am (on non-work days, obviously I get up earlier on those). This is not a New Year’s Resolution as such, just something I wanted to do and 1 January was a good time to start. I seem to have blown the midnight idea tonight though. If I can manage to get up and go to bed earlier, I will reward myself with doughnuts, despite my somewhat half-hearted diet.

***

Doctor Who today was not great. I think it was supposed to be a comedy thriller, but I didn’t find it funny. Repeatedly saying “Daleks are not [fill in the blank]” does not count as comedy. The premise was intriguing, but the story did not develop enough, nor the characters. I said I wouldn’t write any more negative reviews, but I don’t know what else to say. It wasn’t bad, just underwhelming, and the waste of a good idea.

And Yaz has fallen in love with the Doctor! Why do they keep doing this? In the original series, the companion never fell in love with the Doctor (even when the actress did and that bled through to the performances). And only once did he fall in love with someone or anyone else fell in love with him, and that was in the first season, before they really decided what the parameters of the programme were. Since the 1996 TV Movie, we’ve had Grace, Rose, Martha, Amy, River Song, Queen Elizabeth I, Clara (according to Madam Vastra), perhaps Bill (according to Twice Upon a Time) and now Yaz, plus Idris/the TARDIS. Why? It is really not why I’m watching. If I wanted to watch a romance, I would watch a romance. As far as I’m aware (Paula?) romance stories don’t generally feature random time-travellers or aliens just in case someone wants that (I’m not counting The Time-Traveller’s Wife), so why should Doctor Who feature numerous repetitive love stories? Love stories that we know won’t go anywhere, because the nature of the format is that the Doctor isn’t going to settle down somewhere. Or is it just me? Possibly. As I’ve said before, I don’t think modern Doctor Who is bad so much as totally out of sync with my taste, and the things I like from the original series.