The problem with moving.

Autism, Daily Life, Family, Musings, , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

As I think forward to the concept of moving again, I reflect upon the difficulties this will present. I also think about the difficulties it has presented in the past.

My wife and I do not enjoy moving, in fact we detest it. Even if our living arrangement is not ideal, the idea of packing everything to move is more frightful. We would rather repair, and disinfect a place ourselves than to move out of an unhealthy situation. We have done exactly that in the past.

While living in ChaoYang, I had some serious difficulty with a coworker at that time. We had a mold issue near the living-room window, the apartment only had 2 bedrooms and a large living room. When we moved in there was a broken kitchen counter, and the gas range fan was caked with an inch of grease.

We repaired the counter using my tools, fixed the toilet flush. And spent nearly a whole day scrubbing the grease off the kitchen exhaust fan.

We had our routines that we loved though. There was a wet market around the corner that we could get almost anything we needed. They had seamstresses for clothing repair. There was fruit and vegetables and fresh meat on the first floor. They sold basic furniture, electronics, blankets, curtains, and everything you needed for a home. They had a pet store, and seafood. There was gardening equipment, and home-repair tools. A whole floor of stationary and decorations for festivals. We loved going there all the time.

There was a supermarket across the street. That building had food booths, and restaurants. every Canadian Thanksgiving we used to go to a certain restaurant we called “The Red Restaurant” because of the sign. They had a Tailor, and pharmacies there. We knew exactly where everything was. Unfortunately the supermarket itself shrank twice while we were there. It began as a 2 floor market, then it shrank to just the first floor. Then our last year there, it shrank to half the first floor. Piano schools, dance schools, and science academies moved in upstairs.

There were two malls that were a short walk away, and we enjoyed walking there as a family. These malls, had movie theaters, and cat-cafe’s. You could sit with your drink and pet a cat. There was a lot of things to do there, including eating, board games, VR games, a couple large playgrounds for the kids and more.

Just around the corner was a great street food culture in the evenings. If we didn’t feel like cooking, we could just walk down the street and buy a large variety of food. All of these little food carts would appear in the early evening, and some of the foods were amazing, and cheap.

After moving to the ShunYi area, we have gone to visit the malls and the wet market in ChaoYang a couple of times. But we have tried to build new routines here. It has been hard, however. ShunYi, while more spread out and suburban, has less things like home repair and tools shops. It took us a while to find good green grocers, and there isn’t a large mall nearby. Instead there is a cosmopolitan shopping plaza.

This area is more expensive than ChaoYang, and it took us a while to get used to it. There is a lot more variety in restaurants and coffee shops. The plaza has more things for the children as well. They can buy birdseed and feed pigeons at “Pigeon Plaza”. There is an outside playground surrounded by a permanent farmer’s market. The plaza has 2 trains for families to ride around on.

Unfortunately some of the difficulties in our routines that arose is change. For the first couple of years we would find a coffee shop, grocery store or restaurant we liked, and it would disappear, or get down-sized and moved. For example there was a great restaurant / cafe next to a fountain plaza. They had an amazing bakery, and excellent fried chicken. after we had been patrons for about 7 months, (Bare minimum to make it a routine), it closed and moved practically next door. Now it is 1/4 the size, has no bakery, and no restaurant. They sell coffee, ice-cream, and sandwiches now.

Our second favorite cafe did the same a few months after that, and moved to the far side of the plaza, a good 20 minutes walk through the compound.

Now My wife and I consistently go to a cafe attached to a book store. It has survived.

But now, we have given notice to our school that we plan to move after this school year. My son has graduated, and we wish to get out of Beijing. While this is exciting, it has already begun to cause fear in my family. We don’t know where we are going yet. We don’t know what type of place it will be. We don’t know how long we will be needing to get acclimate to the new area.

My wife and I are both quite nervous about this, and I we still have 6 months left at this house and school. We have both lost sleep over this, but we made a promise to ourselves that we would leave Beijing.

I feel that even if we stayed, our family dynamic is changing as my son will be a legal adult. And this in itself is a very scary point for us. While he plans to have a gap year to focus on language learning, things are different.

Can we get him a visa to stay with us next year? Can we find a language school for him? Will he have to move out to another country? Is he ready to go out on his own? Have we taught him how to handle himself and his difficulties well enough? What support will he have if he’s out on his own?

If I’m still having trouble setting up and managing myself and my difficulties, how is he going to do?

And this all causes other issues. The more I worry about things, the more I get distracted, disorganized, and lost. I have been needing my personal space, and my huggables more often.

Most people don’t realize this, but it causes me to have more indigestion and heartburn. It also causes me to have more balance issues. (Both of these will be discusses in other articles.)

So as I look forward to the next school year, I need to sit down to put on my shoes more, and rely on my akla-seltzer tablets more. I also get lost in my classroom as I move from my desk at the back to the front of the room. I tend to head back to my desk 2 or 3 times now to get papers and material I prepared and forgot about. I need my alarms more to remind me when I have to finish class, or go get the children. And I need to sit down more when I am on duty watching the children outside.

At home I feel more sluggish in making decisions, and just want to find that next job so I have an idea of where we will be going to.

Wish me luck.

Crushing Emotions

Autism, Daily Life, Musings, Uncategorized, , , , One comment

Several times in the last 2 weeks, I have had the opportunity to explain how feelings around me affect me. Each time I have tried, though not successfully, to explain that the emotional baggage around me feels physical. This is not an easy thing for most people to understand. It is also one of the reasons I prefer not to be in large crowds.

Today’s discussion was with my students. We were having a good, detailed discussion on feelings, and what hurts us. One of my students wrote on their paper that they don’t like angry people near them. so we discussed it as a class. He told us his feelings, which I will not place here. But then I explained how I felt. Half the class seemed to empathize.

When people are angry, or fighting nearby, I feel it. My brain gets heavy, my whole body feels like it is being squished down. It’s like an invisible pressure is squeezing me. Depending on the amount of emotion the people nearby are showing, the more pressure I feel. If it’s bad enough, I have to leave, or I collapse into a rocking ball.

You can maybe guess why I don’t teach high-school.

I did not tell me students about the extreme end there, just the physical pressure.

On the flip side of this, the opposite is true, but to a lesser extent. If I am near people who are having a good time, or are in a good mood, I feel lighter.

The difficulty for me in these situations, is perception. I don’t always read people well. There have been times I felt crushed down. Where I felt the negativity, but the person I thought was upset was not. It did not change my reaction to it, however.

It can be exhausting. Add this to the many other difficulties I have, and I practically fall asleep from exhaustion when I get home. Today I zonked out 4 times while trying to help my daughter with her homework.

I am curious if anyone else has this difficulty. If so please let me know that I am not alone in this by leaving a comment.

Coloring: The Great Soother.

Autism, Daily Life, School, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , One comment

The act of coloring is one of my best tools. Each tool is used for different situations, and some can be hidden much easier than others. Tools can be used for focusing my attention, distracting me from over-stimulation, and calming my mind. Tools do not always work. There have been days that I used my tools, and were still overwhelmed.

Coloring is an amazing tool because I can do it under most circumstances. All I need is a piece of paper, and any writing implement. Ball point pens are the best.

Anyone who has seen my coloring, knows it is not for aesthetics. I draw a box or connect lines on a page of text, and then I divide that into triangles. Triangles are the best. Once I have a group of triangles on my page, even if it is just a small section, I start filling them in one by one. When I have run out of triangles, I add more.

One of my earliest memories is coloring. I was asked to draw something, I don’t know what, in kindergarten class. So I took the black crayon, and zoned out. My teacher cautiously shared my completely black piece of paper with my mother. I had wore that crayon completely out, and this apparently was not the right thing to do. Other children were mad at me for using it all. and the teacher just told them that maybe I just liked black.

I don’t. Black is ok, but my favorite colors are Navy Blue and Dark Forest Green.

Even now as an adult. There are meetings I get so lost in that I start filling my notepaper with black (or blue if that’s the pen I have) triangles. At the beginning of the year we had to present to the parents about our curriculum. I remember sitting down after I made my speech, and starting coloring. I filled that my speech paper, and just as I was finishing the last bits, my teammate passed me her paper to work on. She knew I needed it. She knew that if I didn’t, I would have to race out of that room. None of us wanted me to have a meltdown while parents where in the building.

I have mentioned I have some of the best teammates at work right now, haven’t I?

The thing is, Coloring ticks all the boxes. It moves my hand in just the right way that it registers as a type of stimming. But it is nearly invisible to those nearby. Coloring allows me to focus and create order out of what is around me. Triangles are the strongest of geometric shapes. These triangles allow me to focus on them, I can block out the other visual stimulus, and focus on the listening.

In many meetings, my only other option is to close my eyes to listen. Mostly frowned up, as the presenter thinks they put me to sleep. I know, and select few others do too, that If I try to follow what is being said, I will get lost because of lighting, or people nearby, or many other things. I just simply will not be able to follow what they are saying.

If the speaker has visuals, I can follow better, but still sometimes need my coloring.

This is an autistic solution to an AuDHD problem. You see, my lack of focus is mostly a problem due to ADHD, which many Autistics also have. Following conversations and fast speaking is very much an Autistic problem. This means that most meetings are extremely hard to follow for me. I have tried making notes to help, but the act of writing important things down, means I fall farther behind on understanding. I have tried recording meetings in the past, but this caused some at my old company to get very defensive and angry. So my best tool for the job is to color little triangles, and try to get what I can from the meeting, even if it is little to none.

My triangles help me beyond meetings though. Anytime I am feeling overwhelmed, and cannot get into a quiet place, or away from people I will sometimes revert to coloring my triangles.