I woke up at 4am today, which was not extremely early as I went to sleep before 9am yesterday. I am, however, wondering, if I start doing my patterns that early in the morning, will I not teach my brain that waking me up early will bring a reward? I wonder if brain can plan this way, without me thinking about it consciously and when I’m asleep? I don’t know but I decided not to give in and do cleaning instead.

I can be a bit of a messy person but I like a clean kitchen and I realise that from the state of my kitchen one could easily recognise how I feel. So far I noticed my kitchen gets really messy when I’m very tired or depressed, now I can also say it gets messy when I’m obsessed about something. So today, after walking up and having my first coffee, I got up and started tidying. I decided I won’t be starting on patterns before 7am.

I worked out how to use some more tools in PicsArt and that improved the results so I really can’t wait to practice further, however, not before 7am. Oh, one good thing I noticed since I do my patterns: I eat significantly less. So possibly my overeating was caused, at least partly, by boredom? I know that sometimes happens but show me an article stating that playing with patterns is a good way of fighting boredom. No, it’s always watching a movie or calling a friend.

Anyway, my blog is supposed to be about all the things autism related, not just obsession with patterns, I do apologise. I was meant to write how I realised that working in a supermarket would eventually get me to run into the same problems that I had while working in a care home. It’s because things are not possible to be kept under total control. I have this image of a supermarket being a totally organised place where every item has it’s place and a label. But it’s not really like that – labels get missing from shelves sometimes, you know? If I worked there permanently I’d eventually demand an access to a printer and I’d be running around trying to keep everything in perfect order and possibly insisting on other staff to do the same.

More over, my idea of order is not the same as other people idea of order: why are candles organised by scent first and only then by size? If I’m working there temporarily only, it doesn’t bother me too much, I just do as I’m told, but if I was there permanently I’d expect them to be organised by size first. I don’t know why but it just makes more sense to me this way.

On my last shift I spent around two hours removing cardboard packaging from shelves and that gave me strange satisfaction: at least I knew that I was doing that correctly – there was no arguing about that and I knew by doing this I was keeping things in order. I thought for a bit that if I could do only that for every shift, I’d be happy there permanently, but quickly enough I realised there was a mistake in that thinking: after a while colleagues would start asking why I’m only doing that one thing and nothing else and the response would be: because I’m autistic, and it would imply that I’m not capable of doing anything else. But seriously, I have first class bachelor degree in computer science – I must be capable of things, surely? I’m just getting annoyed when I don’t have control over my environment, that’s it. But I’m also getting annoyed when other people think that I’m not capable.

I seriously think I’m not cut out for permanent job, that’s it. I will keep to check in with myself regarding that but it can quite possibly be true.

Anyway… I keep having problems today with putting my thoughts into writing. I guess this is because what I really want to do is to play with patterns… oh well. I do hope my blog will survive this obsession. I remember how much I liked writing here. Keep your fingers crossed for me.