I’m flying on the 18th. I check news several times a day and I’m prepared to change my plans if needed. But I don’t really think Putin would attack Poland. Poland is part of NATO so, I assume, he would be concerned of repercussions. I also believe he’s a narcissist and, as he’s playing a victim now, it would be difficult for him to continue this tactic if he attacks another country. But I also don’t believe he will stop the war even if he gets what he says he wants. Narcissists want to be admired and he knows he won’t be, not after what he did. He won’t even be respected. I mean here, by leaders of other countries. Possibly he is admired by people in his own country, or at least some of them? At least those who are close to him. Or at least they pretend that they admire and respect him. And they must be good at it, otherwise Putin would get rid of them.

What I think Putin will do, and I’m talking here from the perspective of how I see narcissistic behaviour (I’m not interested in politics too much), I think he will just keep military forces occupating Ukraine for as long as he can, this way putting himself in the position where leaders of other countries will want to negotiate. He will be having loads of attention and will be in control. He’ll love it. For the war to really stop someone needs to get rid of Putin, that’s the only way.

So although I’m not really worried about my safety during my trip to Poland, I’m aware this won’t be a fun time. Once again, since the pandemic started. I wish to be able to go there and just enjoy my time, without worrying about all the things I worried so far (pandemic restrictions, my mum being in need of care, my brother’s drinking and self neglect, family home being in need of repair and now war). I really feel like I deserve having relaxing time. And then, again, what I’m thinking is, if I deserve it, how come this is not happening? That’s what life coaches tell us: nice things don’t happen to us because we don’t believe we deserve them. And some neurotypical people believe this. I guess I believed that too for a long time, before I realised I’m autistic.

On Friday I had a meeting with my job coach from IPS. I’m a bit confused about her as she emails me from Richmond Fellowship email. Possibly those two organisations are linked somehow, but then why not use the same name and email? Really strange.

Our meeting was in the job centre as her organisation lost their office space recently. We met in Asda cafe once before and this week she told me she has her desk in job centre. I assumed she’s based there permanently now and, as I was thinking about where I can give my presentation about the need to see other people perspective, I had the idea to try and pitch it to job centre staff, although I assumed that could be difficult due to bureaucracy. So when my job coach said she’s based in job centre I thought, maybe I’ll spoke with her about it. When I came for my appointment I asked if she’s there permanently and she said, no, she and her colleagues share desks on Friday only, getting half a day each. And I thought, there’s so many free desks there, surely there would be enough space for them to be there whenever they need to, but this wasn’t happening, so possibly they don’t have much influence over job centre staff? So I decided it’s better if I don’t try to pitch my presentation to them at this moment.

The funny thing is, that when I left, I realised that my job coach seemed really disappointed when she was talking about only having half a day there but then she moved on to being cheerful and saying ‘at least it’s warm here, so I have nothing to complain about’, like if she was trying to be positive about a situation that she has very little control over. I didn’t get that straight away, as I was at the time contemplating the number of free desks there.

So I guess I got the situation right (no point trying to pitch my presentation to job centre staff through my job coach) but I used different hints to get there (loads of free chairs, yet, those are not being offered freely to my job coach and her colleagues) while neurotypical person would probably use my job coach disappointment to come to the same conclusion.

As an autistic person I love symbols, and I now want to extend that situation to mean: this is how working with government agencies looks like. They have resources but they won’t give them to you.

Oh well…