I had a few days off blogging again. It is mostly because since I’m off Facebook I feel much better emotionally so there is no need for me to vent my feelings on the blog. Also even when the situation doesn’t involve venting it seems like making a blog post requires more effort now; maybe not actual effort to write but the decision to write seems more difficult to make. It would be good to go back to daily posting, possibly this is something I need to choose as a blogging goal, but I presume this may not happen straight away at it feels like loads of changes happening in my life. Change is something that is putting me off blogging as I don’t want to confuse my readers with writing one thing and then next day writig something totally opposite. Presumably for the time being I will be writing in form of the list. So:

1. I lost 2.5kg without dieting as such, just limiting my portion sizes and watching fat content. Mind you, those are 2.5kg out of those 5 I put on around Easter so it’s not like a real achievement, is it?

Just a few days ago I realised that when I have biscuits with tea or coffee, I always want to have 3, only because having one or two feels like I’m not allowed to enjoy food. I don’t know whether that works the same for neurotypicals but my brain doesn’t distinguish between small and larger biscuits when I eat them so I decided to trick myself and stick to buying Polish biscuits. I’m not actually aware if they have lower fat and sugar content but some of them are much thinner and 3 of those are only 70kcal, which is less than one digestive. I particularly like certain brand of cocoa biscuits. I may actually make a separate post about it.

2. Since yesterday I feel really stuffed even though, as I said, I eat less now. This is not an unusual experience for me when trying to loose weight, yet I never seen it discussed in dieting articles. Apparently when you’re diet you’re supposed to feel hungry. Well, for me the beginning is a bit difficult but when I stick to it a magic shift happens and I completely loose my appetite. Unfortunately, in the past I sometimes used to interpret it as a ‘punishment’ for being good, it felt like my mind still wanted to eat and my body wasn’t allowing for it. I do have to get rid of those limiting beliefs, don’t I? Otherwise I’d never be able to keep my weight off.

3. Last week I stopped using Redecor images to create patterns and instead I do them out of drawn shapes. It is much easier this way and I keep wondering what took me so long to make that shift? I presume that was my autistic brain try to avoid changes. Although using Redecor first allowed me to focus on colour – I don’t have instinctive understanding of colour that some people have and I needed to focus more on that for a bit to improve. I still like unexpected colour combinations (and there’s nothing wrong with that) but I do lot longer feel the need to use every colour of the rainbow in the same image.

4. I found out there’s a brand that creates fabrics with similar patterns I used to make when I was using Redecor designs, it’s called Paris Wakefield. And you know what? I’m not sure I like their designs. I liked mine, when I just did them. I presume making patterns was a stim and only after I satisfied this need and my brain understood that this will never be taken away from me, I was able to move on to actually creating.

5. My relationship with John seems to be going really well. I feel really supported and understood. It’s almost strange. I keep thinking recently that it would be nice if we could live together, although I can see that is going to be tricky to organise. However, just a few months ago I was thinking that we may never be able to live together because we’re autistic and we need loads of time to ourselves. Now I’d like to spend more time with him. It is so difficult to know what is autism and what is learned reaction to past relationship problems, you know?

6. Me and John started playing board games. He has loads of them and we were always saying how we’re going to play but we never did. We do now and it’s good fun. My favourite so far is called Dominion, which is actually a card game. I keep thinking that playing games could be a fun activity for autistic people that would help us to deal with real life – we transfer learned behaviour from one situation to another and playing games is exactly when we need to make decisions in situations that are not perfect. I mean the ‘I’d like to do A but I can’t so let me think what I can do instead’ instead of having a meltdown.

7. We just finished Jubilee weekend in the UK and I didn’t take part in any celebrations. Going to London would be too expensive for what it is, especially with all that noise and loads of people, but I was thinking about going to Oxford and seeing what’s happening there, however the weather was awful. On Saturday morning I actually had to put heating on! It’s also raining on and off.

8. I’m meeting my new employment coach today in the afternoon. I wonder what she’s going to be like.

9. It’s been 4 and half months since my mum died (I really do not like ‘passed away’ expression) and very recently I realised that I’m slowly coming to terms with it. It’s strange, isn’t it? She wasn’t able to support me in any way, yet her death seemed like a big change in my life.

10. Do you think painting the entire flat the same colour that is not white and not magnolia (possibly very pale, soft green) and getting the same plain curtains for every room would be a good idea? Would it provide me the feeling of continuity? I did read about a concept called full house colour scheme, where you supposed to choose 4 colours and decorate the entire space with those colours in varying degrees. It does look good on paper or a screen but I really don’t understand why, if I see, let’s say cups that I really like, I’m not allowed to use them if they don’t fit into my colour scheme. I believe that our houses (or flats) should contain collection of items that we love, whatever the colour and the colour scheme that we choose should allow for that. So possibly the same paint colour all over and the same curtains would provide me with a bit of harmony in the chaos I create around myself. I don’t think current decorating advice allows for that though.

11. I still didn’t make that post about Loop earplugs, but I can’t wear them. Don’t buy.

12. I bought wireless earbuds last week to use at the gym instead of headphones as headphones are not great with some exercises. I was a bit concerned that they won’t cancel the noise but I keep seeing loads of people using them at the gym so I thought I’d give them a go. And it turned out it far worse than I expected: I could hear the gym music, my own music and the general gym noise which is how I imagine being in hell must feel like.

I did hear about ‘noise cancelling earbuds’ but I don’t really believe in this concept. To reduce noise you need to provide physical barrier between the ear and the source of noise and earbuds are just not meant to do that. So I presume I’m stuck with my headphones. I guess I can take them off for those couple of minutes when I try to do yoga based exercises – for most other exercises they’re absolutely fine.