It’s been good couple of days since I last posted. It’s not like me to take a few days off from blogging, but then, I am a beginner blogger and my habits may change, especially after I state everything about my life history (you know, all the Home Group stuff and such) but this time the reason for not posting was that I sensed change coming in my circumstances and I didn’t want to bore my very few readers with every little details while at the same time agonising over what is and what is not appropriate to be discussed on a public blog and what consequences it can bring if I decide to include something.

I guess the biggest change is that I managed to finally find some common ground with Professor Simon Baron-Cohen. As you may know I emailed Professor a few times and was quite upset every time. It does look like what happened before between the two of us, that I moaned about in here at least twice, was a miscommunication. It’s not good, obviously, when an autism researcher is unable to communicate with an autistic individual, but the truth is, he’s not the only one who has difficulties with that and if he wasn’t famous, I wouldn’t blame him for that at all.

So finally, after we both managed to see the other person’s perspective, we agreed to move on and leave things where they are.

But does that mean I forgot? When I first started blogging I started a petition and asked Professor to share it. He said he’d do it but he never did and then two weeks later his assistant emailed me to say he’s busy. Professor should have known that is not the right thing to do to anyone really but especially to an autistic person.

Was it naive to ask prominent autism researcher to share a petition started but a beginner blogger? Yes, of course, but being naive is part of my coping skills. Some people, when they see that, try to explain things to me; others try to take an advantage of me or treat me in a condescending manner. Yet, for the purpose of maintaining my mental health I’m deciding to give Professor the benefit of the doubt.

The other thing is that last week I spoke with the lady who was my advocate a while ago. I initially asked her to speak with Home Group on my behalf but at the end I realised I’m better off to do that myself. If she reached out to them, she’d probably get better results, but then I’d end up agonising over the fact that Home Group only tries to be nice to me because my advocate works for a an organisation and they’re worried about their image only and not my wellbeing. So, last week I emailed Home Group on their general email address. I briefly described the situation, I stated that I post about it on my blog and that every time I do, I send an email to their CEO, but never got any reply. I asked if they have any comments regarding that.

It’s only been a few days and technically they could still reply but so far they didn’t. It’s a good exercise on trying to predict neurotypicals behaviour I suppose. What I would do if it was me who was working there and read similar email? I’d pass it on to my manager, that’s for sure. And then, what the manager would do? This is what I am not getting because on one hand they have all those procedures that state how to behave in similar situations, on the other, they would have to challenge their CEO, and what for, if I’m just a beginner blogger.

Big organisations always have loads of procedures for everything but then, when push comes to shove, they hardly ever follow them, so the procedures only make it more confusing for me.

I guess we can safely assume there will be no response to that email, even if I email the link to this post to the CEO again. But then, that makes me wonder, what does he really think? Is he actually reading my posts? I find it impossible to work that out from my statistics.

Ok, moving on from Home Group drama to ordinary life: I started using SAD therapy lamp within the last couple of days (SAD is a type of seasonal depression caused by lack of sunlight). I don’t think I have SAD but my energy levels are extremely low in between November to March. At times I can spend the entire day in bed, doing absolutely nothing and I’m not even bored. I started thinking lately that it maybe due to lack of light, especially that I find artificial light irritating and try to avoid it as much as possible. I have a couple of salt lamps at home and so far I mostly used those if I needed light on, but yes, they’re not very bright.

Apparently spending time in the dark is what causes the body to produce melatonin, that as a result makes us groggy. Why no one told me that before?! I thought spending time in the dark causes us to relax and when we had enough rest the enery will come back naturally!

So last week I bought that lamp online and I’d say it works. It is hard to say 100 percent how big the improvement is as on the weekend I had two jabs: flu and covid busters, and I felt quite unwell the next day, including having a fever, now I seem to have my monthly migraine, but yet I do get to do things without the feeling I have to force myself to get them done, my kitchen is tidy, washing up is done and I even started doing deep cleaning, so fingers crossed things will stay like that.

Apart from that, I also spoke with my mum’s care home manager and she wasn’t scary at all. Possibly ‘act normal’ is really best advice that can be given at some situations.

I also started temporary job as a cleaner in a popular clothes retailer, the contract is for just over two weeks, 3h a day, 5 times a week. Half of that time it takes me to hoover. It is slightly demanding physically, but then 3h a day is not much and I enjoy the fact that I don’t need to talk to anyone. I mean, I obviously answer questions if customer approaches me, but apart from that I just clean.

The only problem is I am slightly frightened of all those shop staff. They seem like a different species to me as they must obviously be interested in fashion.

My DBS (criminal record checks) is not back yet and I sometimes wonder whether I’d be able to start a job before Christmas. I’m ok for money for now but would not want to dive into my savings just to buy food, that feels pretty depressing.