Stop calling it a superpower

 Welcome to the amazing adventures of Autism Man. 

1pm Teaching children using Minecraft

3pm After School club

7pm Struggling to stay awake in front of the TV

8pm Feeling physically ill due to tiredness, stomach pain. 

9pm In Bed and 9:15 asleep. 

2pm Wide awake and worrying about things that happened yesterday and the work to do later today. 

(Feel free to skip this next paragraph to [continue] - it's just the thoughts in my head)

I'm stressing (*) about the teachers who I let sign in using their personal emails, because I was so rushed I simply had no time to configure them properly. What if they leave? What if they don't sign out? What if they are signed in to iCloud and more specifically 'find my'. What about my Hwb account, working in the other schools, I'm not an IT tech as seen by county, so I won't be able to log into Intune as my account is down as staff in one school only? How can I transfer it to the other two? They'll likely transfer it, if they do and that will mean I'll lose access to Intune for the first school? What about that second account that was made for me by mistake? Maybe that one account could be transferred? Maybe that's the answer? Maybe I could transfer that account to another school, and then make a third account for the new school? No that's not going to be the right way Hwb want it doing? Paul has one account and just manages all of the schools from his one account. But he is recognised by county as IT support, I'm not IT support, maybe I shouldn't be in this position, maybe county will find out that I'm doing IT support for multiple schools, they might block my account when they find out. I don't have a lesson for next week, I'll need to sort that before Wednesday, I've had an even amount of lessons with both groups though and only one week left with both groups, I'll have to do 45 minutes with each one, that's the answer, but what can I teach them in half an hour? Maybe I'll do my Sphero lesson, that's always fun, no 45 minutes isn't long enough and this class are pretty rowdy, what about the teacher iPads ..... return to * and repeat, and repeat. 

[continue]

Stuff it, I may as well get up, and here I am, it's 3am and I've eaten, I'm wide awake and Thursday has officially started. I'm still exhausted, I cannot turn it off and this is the start of my day. Poor Fliss has come down as she's concerned I'm not in bed and asked if everything is ok, but it is not ok, I need sleep (as does she), but I can't, these stresses, thoughts, worries, concerns and problems won't go away.

"But we all get stressed sometimes"; undermines the suffering of Autism sufferers, so if that's your first thought, please put it to bed. Our heads are like this constantly. That paragraph above might seem like jumbled up nonsense, but to me it's my working existence, it's the stuff that makes me good at what I do, it's how I recognise the things that will fail before they fail because when it comes to breaking point, I've usually run the scenario through a few times beforehand. Or when something is suggested my mind will run through all of the scenarios quickly, and I'll point out a logical reason why it should be done another way. Yes, that's useful. But this is a curse. A curse based on worry and stress. We can run a scenario through in our head checking for possible negative outcomes and avoid mistakes from happening. Because we cannot turn our thought processing off.

For most of us it is not a super power, it's a living nightmare we cannot escape from. Our executive functioning (ability to look after ourselves) is useless, we make poor decisions for ourselves in life, we can't work out what we should do to improve our lives or become successful. So please don't call it a superpower as it's misleading and borderline disrespectful. 

Why does Greta Thunberg call it a super power? Because she is surrounded by an incredibly supportive network, they tell her where she needs to go, what she needs to do and when she needs to do it. It's that simple, I could stand on a stage in front of dozens of people if I knew afterwards, I was going to be looked after and that I would not have to worry about my agenda for the rest of the day. I genuinely don't care what people think of me. 

I'm tired, I've been up an hour and a half in the middle of the night and I'm going to try and sleep again. 

Join us next time on the amazing adventures of Autism man, where Autism man cries for no apparent reason. 


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