As this blog is meant to describe me, as an autistic person, and I did post in the past about some of my difficult emotions I think it’s only fair to also post when I feel better. So basically, I feel incredibly excited since yesterday afternoon. I have no idea what I am excited about: my shop cleaning job finished two days ago and my DBS is still not back. I received a letter from mum’s bank and they’re not going to refund her any of the stolen money that we have no evidence for, so what she’s going to get is like 10 percent of what was stolen and the bank is having difficulties to even admit their employee was stealing – they don’t even use the word fraud but instead call it ‘this situation’. Fantastic.

Home Group did not even contact me regarding the email I sent two weeks ago – this is, I guess, them saying they don’t really care about what happened to me, as long as their business is intact. It’s really strange that all those big companies create procedures for similar situations, and then, as things happen, the employees never follow them because they don’t want to disturb the internal politics. Would someone working in a customer service department stand up against their CEO – as I already contacted him and he ignored me? As much as I understand that in hindsight, having procedures that state a different behaviour is expected is only clouding my, autistic, judgment – if there was no procedures at all I’d be much better at predicting other people behaviour, or at least that’s what I think. I wonder what Professor Simon Baron-Cohen would say about that.

Ok, moving on from Home Group – I decided to complain to University of Cambridge about Professor Simon Baron-Cohen and his extreme inability to communicate with me. As I stated in one of my previous posts, I felt at some point that it’s getting a bit better but then suddenly Professor sent me an email to say he feels sorry for me, which just totally didn’t make any sense. I do not feel sorry for myself at all. In general it is said that autistics tent to have misunderstandings with people, but I’d expect it will be a bit better when you talk to world famous autism researcher, and instead it’s much worse. Professor Simon Baron-Cohen has an incredible ability to misinterpret absolutely everything that I am saying, therefore what value his research has? I only contacted University of Cambridge yesterday afternoon (Friday) about it so it’s too early to say anything. As much as I am curious about what will happen, I doubt my excitement comes from that.

I managed to secure another temporary job, in a warehouse this time – in a food distribution centre, I will be starting a training on Monday (it’s Saturday today) and it will include… driving pallet truck! I wonder how I’ll get on with that. Please keep your fingers crossed for me. Is it possible that my excitement comes from that? Possibly my subconscious mind already knows that I’ll be ok there, will get noticed for my ability to follow procedures and understanding systems and will keep getting promotion after promotion until I get to the very top? Oh well, probably not, but I’m very curious about how I will cope. I never tried this kind of job before so it will be interesting to see how it will work out.

I was also thinking that possibly I should have two part time jobs instead of one. I used to do that in the past and I quite liked it: the transition from one job to the other helped me to release any tension; while being in one job only makes me feel trapped. I suppose there should be more understanding in the society for having two jobs – it seems like it’s often being seen as a sign of failure, inability to commit or possibly not being wanted anywhere full time. But the question is: do we need to commit? Obviously if you want to progress commitment is needed but plenty of us don’t want that, we just want to pay the bills and have some money left for fun things, so what is the commitment for?

It’s snowing at the moment, and it’s extremely windy. I’m unlikely to leave my flat today. I decided, however, I shouldn’t be spending all day in bed so I moved to the living room and I’m on the sofa… such fun! I don’t suppose I’m excited for that either. As I stay in I may do some updates on the blog: I decided symbols (as a form of communication) will get their own tag, as so Redecor. Redecor is a very important part of my life now, hard to understand how I coped without it, and I’ve only been playing for around 10 months. The more patterns I have available to use, the more fun it is, although again, I don’t suppose my excitement is caused by the game.

Did I mention I baked another lot of beetroot muffins? I used better quality beetroots this time and added some almond essence – they’re much better this time, no beetroot flavour, so this is, I think, the way to go with my baking. However, again, I don’t suppose that is what I’m excited about.

I also realised a little while ago how much better my mental health is now, when I don’t work in a care home any more. Possibly I should never go back to this kind of job? And not because I’m not a caring person. One thing that I found extremely difficult was the need to constantly switch between tasks: I could not do one thing for long enough before a different resident needed an urgent assistance. On top of that all that bitchiness you get there… God help me, seriously! And the problem is I tend to oversimplify everything where people are involved. I can think, for example, that everyone who works in a care home is caring so they will be nice people. And believe me, some staff really are not! And I don’t talk here about scandals like Winterbourne at all; the staff may be actually caring towards residents but bitchy towards themselves – not fun.

Ok, end of post. What am I excited about though? I still don’t know, but it’s a nice change at last.