Story of my life… today, anyway

I started this pot of “Mexican style” rice and beans from a packet. When the contents poured into the pan, it was all white powder and rice grains. Not a sign of color anywhere (which worried me a little). But when it cooked up, the colors all came out.

That’s kind of how my life is, these days. Things start out looking one way, then when they get “cooking”, they turn out looking – feeling – very different from when i started.

I’m going on another business trip till Thursday. I fly out in less than 8 hours, and I’m trying to get my act together before I go. That includes cooking food for my partner for the next four days. She’s got really limited mobility, and she can’t stand for long in the kitchen, and we don’t have a microwave (hate those things) which means she needs nutritious food she can put together quickly while I’m away.

I do just about all the cooking in our household, so it’s always like this, when I go away. And that happens more often than I’d like — every 2-3 months, or so. And I’ve got even more travel coming up this spring/summer, with probable trips to Las Vegas and San Francisco in May and June. Long story short, the days leading up to my travels are pretty busy — especially the morning of, when I have to pull everything together.

It gets a little easier, each time I do it. But it has yet to feel like second nature.

Oh shit – I forgot the laundry in the dryer! Better check on that now.

…

{folding clothes}

…

OK, I’m back.

So, what does this have to do with menopause?

What doesn’t have to do with menopause with me, these days? Or for the past 10 years? I’ve been writing here as an Autistic woman, up till this point, and now it’s time to widen the perspective. Because menopause colors everything about me and my place in the world, how I relate to it, how I interpret it, not to mention how others relate to and interpret me. It affects every part of me, on so many levels, I don’t even know where to start.

And these business trips are great examples of that. They screw up the routines that I’ve developed for myself over years and years of trial-and-error, messing with my sleep schedule, my daily pace, my mealtimes and food choices, and doing it all in the context of high-stakes business trips, where the slightest slip-up can mean my reputation is damaged and my chances for advancement are reduced. It’s not just chances for advancement, actually — it’s also my relationships with my colleagues. We operate in a real pressure-cooker environment, where we all need to know we can depend on each other 100% (I won’t say 110%, because there is no such thing), and if someone comes up short, it can undermine the confidence of everyone else and potentially jeopardize the prospects of any number of present and future projects.

That goes for my colleagues at HQ, where I’m visiting, as well as my immediate group members, several of whom are traveling with me, this time. My boss and one of my peers will be flying and driving with me (I’m driving this time, heaven help me). And another peer will be joining us at HQ. I’m the only woman in the group of them, which is fine with me. They’re good guys. They have their personality quirks, but sexual predation isn’t among them, which is fortunate. I’ve traveled with a #MeToo poster-boy of a boss, in the past, and trust me, it’s no fun at all.

The problem with being the only woman in the crowd — and a post-menopausal woman, at that — is that I’m not only un-matched in terms of interests and energy focus, but it’s also incumbent on me — as a trusted colleague and team player — to keep up with activities I really don’t care about and generally try to avoid.

To whit:

• Staying up late. My boss treats these business trips like mini-vacations away from his controlling wife, and he loves to stay up late, hanging out and doing nothing productive. At all. Not my idea of a great time. I need my sleep. I don’t get as much rest as I should when I travel, to begin with, and staying up late makes everything worse.
• Drinking. Yeah, no thanks. I haven’t touched the stuff in over 20 years, and my life is better for it. It’s expensive, and it leads to unfortunate choices, which I’d never want to make on business trip. I think my boss has a drinking problem, anyway, and he loves to pressure everyone around him into having a drink. On the bright side, since I’m driving, I don’t have to ride with a tipsy driver — like I have in the past, when he was driving and got behind the wheel after a few drinks. No animals were harmed in that experience, but the lesson is that I’d rather be behind the wheel, myself, than rely on him.
• Shopping. Again, with the role reversal. The guys I travel with love to shop. Me, not so much. I have a terrible time figuring out what to get people, and half the time, I get it wrong, anyway.
• Eating out. I hate eating in strange restaurants. I hate eating in most restaurants, period, since the ambient noise throws off my hearing, and I don’t pick up half of what’s said. Also, the variations in light are a problem, and having to be social with other people after a long day is even more exhausting. Since I’ll be driving, this trip, I’m not looking forward to extending my days even longer with meals out with “the crew”, but that’s probably going to happen at least once.

And those are just the tips of three icebergs in the whole field of floating obstacles.

Which isn’t made any easier by my post-menopausal state, which is a whole lot more stable and even-keeled than the drama queens I’m traveling with. They’re younger than I. They haven’t lived in as many different aspects of the world as I have. They think all this is exciting and invigorating, but all I can think is, “Meh”.

Hah! I’m going to start calling it “Meh-nopause”. Because that’s the general effect it’s had on me.

See, when hormones like estrogen and estradiol and progesterone fade away (I have the hormonal profile of a 72-year-old woman – haha), it really shuffles your perspective on things. There’s less biological drive to connect, to get whipped up into a frenzy, to get so personally involved in sh*t that never really mattered, to begin with.

Getting free of those hormonal cycles of all the extreme ups and downs also has made me super fond of equanimity, of sparing my energy for long-term activities, and keeping a level head through it all. So, the proverbial roller coasters of emotion that used to color my life — and in many ways propelled me through the world — don’t appeal to me anymore. Not in the least.

I’m past that. I’m not being all egotistical and look-at-how-evolved-I-am. It’s just how I feel. The kinds of controversial dramas that power endless spats on social media… not to mention the mainstream press… yeah, no thanks. Once upon a time, they were fuel for my engine.

No more.

Meh-nopause… yeah, that pretty much sums it up.

So, that being said, I’ve got to get going and finish up my preparation for this trip. I have another 3 hours before I need to leave. I need to give myself plenty of advance time, so I’m not rushed at the airport — no matter how often I go there, it still confuses me, and the activity and motion and loud noises are an incredible challenge (which I somehow manage to navigate satisfactorily). And I still need to pack my bags. I’m torn between taking a big-ass biographical tome by one of my favorite scientists, or sticking with the audiobooks on my phone. I always put a lot of thought into my choices, ahead of each trip, and oddly, things never seem to align with my intentions.

Well, anyway, I can’t worry about that. Gotta run…

Later, folks.

Let’s have some fun! #Autism and #Menopause :)

Women walking along a lake in front of a sand dune balancing pots on their heads

Okay, I’m pretty sure I know what you’re thinking: Autism and Menopause! Where’s the fun in that?!

But bear with me… If you’re a geeky-nerdy type like me, learning all about the inner workings of one of the most misunderstood situations on the planet and figuring out how to work effectively with it to make your life that much better is an appealing prospect.

The thing is, you’re not alone.

Every seven seconds, one of America’s 76 million baby boomers turns 50.

Every day, about 5,000 American women enter menopause.

Until 2020, approximately 2 million women will reach menopause each year. Half of all post-menopausal women will be in Asia.

That’s a lot of us — and since I’m a woman, and I’ve gone through menopause myself (10 years “ahead of schedule”, thank heavens!) — I’ve got a few things to say about this.

Especially since it really affected — and was affected by — my autistic temperament.

It really, truly did. And if I’d know certain things ahead of time, I might have handled things very differently. And my experience might not have been so awful.

The thing that always amazes me about the social conversations we do / don’t have about menopause, is that it’s incredibly common and perfectly natural. And yet, it’s treated like some dread condition that needs to be either ignored completely or eradicated with some combination of meds. Hm. Sounds a bit like autism, to me, actually. So, we autistic women get a “two-for-one deal” on our situation. We get double the excitement, but nowhere near twice the support.

We’re lucky if we get any support at all.

I know I didn’t. At least, not much. My partner went through menopause before me, so I had an up-close-and-personal chance to see how it affects others. Panic attacks. Wild mood swings. Intense anxiety. Explosions! Not much to look forward to, right? But I also have to consider that her situation was unique — she was going through major changes around her parents passing away, family dramas, work problems, and so forth. I didn’t have those, when I was going through the Change. I had my own set of issues — Autism being front-and-center.

So, for me, the experience was different. But equally intense.

Oh, if I’d known then what I know now… I can honestly and truly say that I would have handled things very differently.

What’s done is done, and I can’t change my own situation. But I can certainly speak up about my experience, in hopes of other Autistic women benefiting from my experience. Like Autism, every woman’s experience of menopause is different. That goes without saying. But the qualities of our experiences (outside the specific details) can be very similar, and that’s where I want to focus.

Because heaven knows we need support. It’s challenging enough dealing with the world when you’re Autistic or menopausal. But when you’re both… woo hoo!

Oddly (or perhaps predictably) the mainstream hasn’t devoted a whole lot of resources to exploring this intersection of issues. Older women — especially Autistic women — don’t seem to be high on anybody’s list of priorities. Much more interesting to study Autistic children, teenage boys, or grown men. There’s more money in that, quite frankly. But where the mainstream fails, we can step up and help ourselves. There’s this thing called the internet, and it’s chock full of all kinds of goodies that we can mix-n-match and augment ourselves, to serve our own needs.

‘Cause who knows our needs better than we? Not a soul.

So, here goes… I’ll be posting more in the coming days and weeks. I’ll also be publishing additional tools and information over at Auptima Press, especially in conjunction with menopause support resources we’re developing over there.

I can either curse the darkness surrounding women + Autism + menopause… or I can light a candle. I’d much rather do something about it.

 

---

Did you enjoy this? Please consider becoming a patron at Patreon.

Next up: Some time to sink into the Flow

Well, my duties have been discharged for the year, and now I’m free to do what I like with my time. Well, mostly free. I “clocked out” at 12:08 p.m., after answering a last-minute email from a colleague in Ireland. He was emailing me after his business hours, so I might as well be considerate. Then I turned on my email auto-reponder informing the world that I’ll be back in just under 2 weeks, and now I’m “free to move about the cabin”, as it were.

I love this time of year. I really do. I like the long nights. It feels warmly enveloping, even if it’s below freezing outside. I love the darkness and the short days. Sadly, the days will be lengthening after tomorrow. Oh, well… Maybe I’ll move to a Nordic country in my later years, so I can have a longer winter… Or not.

This year is an anomaly in my long career. Experts decry the low numbers of employment in the Autistic population, but it feels to me like I’ve been missing out. If only I were underemployed. Sheesh. 😉  I know, I know. I need to be careful what I ask for, but I’m seriously tired. I’ve been continuously employed since 1988 — nearly 30 years, now — and with just a few breaks in between — a week to regroup from a layoff in 1993, and another 10 days to move across the country in 1995 — I’ve been showing up to work religiously for three decades, now.

With just the all-too-short weekends to let me modestly recharge, till I had to go back at it on Monday mornings.

But this year is different. I’m now working for a company that has a free week off between Christmas and New Year’s each year. If that isn’t an antidote to all the corporate B.S., I don’t know what is. Plus, it’s free for everyone — it doesn’t tap into my vacation time or require a dock in pay. It’s just there to take. And everybody’s taking it.

Which means I’ll be free for nearly 2 weeks… and I can get into my Flow State. I can clean out my study and organize myself. Heck, I might even locate the copy of Flow that I bought a few months back. That would be nice. I could read it.

Or not.

I can do what I like. Think what I like. Read what I like. Lie down and nap whenever I like. Make the most of my time, doing and thinking things I typically don’t have the time to do or think.

I might even sew something. That would be a lot of fun. I’ve got some clothes-making projects I’ve been thinking about for months, now. I could do that, too.

I can write. With more than the standard 20 minutes to collect my thoughts and get them on paper. I can focus on projects I’ve had cookin’ for quite some time. I can even finish up the Autistic Woman’s Cycle Calendar (a monthly cycle tracker that’s especially for menopausal women on the autism spectrum) that I’ve been finalizing for Auptima Press. I can do anything I like — and that means I can finalize stuff I’ve been wanting to finalize.

I can actually get some stuff done.

And that’s good.

It’s very good, indeed.

Best cure for #autistic drama : Menopause!

See that peaceful massive rock in the distance? That’s me 🙂

I have to say, ever since I quit “cycling” every month, my autistic life has become So . Much . Easier.

Seriously.

I have gradually lost a ton of anxiety about “what other people will think”, whether or not I fit in, if I’m weird or not, as well as a whole host of other social phobias that used to plague me.

I felt like I was walking around, dragging a long string of tin cans that announced my awkward approach.

It was just wretched.

Since I got off the hormonal roller-coaster, though, everything has gotten so much more mellow. Manageable. Delightful, even. And my strengths are able to come out, versus my deficits.

AND I have a clearer view of what those strengths are.

Whoever’s doing research on the impact of autism on girls and women needs to look at our hormonal profiles. Ideally, they’d come up with some ideas about how we can better navigate the monthly cycle. Because it’s a big friggin’ deal, in so, so many ways.

Here’s hoping they get clued in on that and throw some money at that question, instead of chasing a “cure”.