Planning for the onslaught

I’m so excited! I’m so excited!

Time to gear up for the day. Woo hoo!

I’ve got a “busy sandwich” day today. Which is to say that I’m busy-busy in the morning (half of it painful stuff, half of it gloriously wonderful self-directed stuff), then a lull, then a flurry of busy-ness in the evening.

I’m meeting with a coach who’s helping me with a number of life challenges, right now — she’s really great, but she doesn’t get the whole autism / Asperger’s thing. And whenever I talk about the mitigating autistic factors of my life, she glosses over them and insists it’s my “attitude” that’s causing me issues. It sounds infuriating (and when I’m tired and in a bad space, it is). But now it’s just amusing to me. Diagnostic. She’s highly trained and very intelligent, and she can’t see the autism that’s sitting right across from her. Ha. OMG. It’s too classic.

I’m never going to press the issue with her, however, because — get this — HIPAA rules may be changing in the USA, which means that anything she writes down in her notes will be available to others. And many of the “others” she deals with are pill-happy … and I’m just not going there, for a whole bunch of reasons that have more to do with my sensory issues and not being able to accurately describe my symptoms, than the innate efficacy of the meds (for the right people in the right circumstances). I have to keep things pretty chilled out around her, so she doesn’t put “autism” in her notes. Good God Almighty, if that happens, the insurance companies will grab their pitchforks. ‘Cause you know, that’s how we roll in these United States of Amurica.

So, there’s some stress there.

And then I’m off to have dinner with the old gang — the troop of folks I worked with, back in the day, when the Web was young and we were building it from the ground up, for the first time, ever. These are the folks who welcomed me in, who made me feel at home, who were my tribe. They’re also the ones who pointed me towards that first Aspie Quiz and nodded in recognition when I told them my scores.

They kicked off this journey for me… which went from being an “Oh fine, I’ll take the danged quiz”… to “Oh, that’s interesting”… to “Holy crap – that IS me!”… to years and years of self-exploration, research (such as was possible in the late 1990s before people knew jack sh*t about this Aspergers / autism stuff), and the eventual realization — borne out by my excellent memory of early childhood events and experiences — that Yeah, I’m squarely on the spectrum.

These are the people — the kind, accepting, supportive people — who saw talents and abilities in me that I couldn’t see for myself. Who always made room for me. Who thought I was hilarious and who freely conceded that I always had the best stories of anyone in the room. Hands down. I live a daily adventure, and no doubt about it.

I’m so looking forward to dinner.

Of course, it’s going to take a lot out of me. And I’m going to be wiped out for days to come. But I really don’t care. It’s worth it to me. It’s worth every bit of exhaustion and shut-down I may experience in the coming days.

At least I’m prepared. That’s about the best thing I can do for myself — or expect from myself.

🙂