Protect your Schedule
I need to schedule all my errands and all my tasks.. I schedule time to focus on writing or research, streams on Twitch, and soon I’ll add YouTube and TikTok. Once I get through the very long process of adding something to my schedule, and I’ve gone through the new routine a few times, it becomes my new normal.
What I don’t do well with is things that interrupt that schedule. For my past few streams, I’ve had 0 viewers for the entire two hours. I still do it, because once I have viewers, they will appreciate that I have a schedule and stick to it. I recent learned that the very act of streaming is a type of stimming for me as it is kind of akin to talking to oneself. I’ve always talked to myself as a way to mitigate anxiety and work through stressful situations or feelings. And my family called me crazy. That’s ok—it’s not their fault.
The problem is—and this is something I’m actively working on—when someone close to me is the source of frequent interruptions. Setting clear boundaries is new for me, and for people I’ve known for ten or more years, is new for them. Some of these boundaries are in clear opposition to established norms between us, but for the past ten years, I didn’t realize that these were the sources of some of my issues.
This is unnecessarily vague—the easiest example I have is phone calls. Don’t call me. Text me and if we need to talk on the phone, we can schedule a call. If someone I know calls me, I always answer because what if it’s an emergency? My anxiety shoots through the roof, and then when they aren’t dying on the street somewhere and I’m the only one who can save them, it takes a stupid amount of time for that anxiety to level off and come back down. When that call comes 30 minutes before I’m supposed to stream, it can disrupt the quality—or completely cancel—the stream. Replace stream with any task—cleaning, cooking, working. It all gets disrupted and I end up with another week of cafeteria food while my bag of potatoes at home grows those weird little vines.
At first, I was led to believe that I was the asshole for setting boundaries that interfere with other people. How can I say don’t call me, when we’ve called back-and-forth for 10 years? But nobody knows everything all the time, and wouldn’t you stop eating a food if you developed an allergy to it? Putting myself at higher risk of autistic meltdowns is like eating peanuts in one hand while holding an EpiPen in the other.
Ohh, quick one today!
