Pages

Popular Posts

Sunday 5 January 2014

New year: the inscrutable future

Its a time when traditionally people do the who "new me" thing. Me? I don't think you can decide to change yourself based on a date. That's not a plan which will work in the long term. You need more incentive.

I feel I have been moving in a different direction for some months now, and when I look at january 2013 compared with now, I notice a few differences.

1 - I am now diagnosed (obviously)
2 - I am not on a knife edge in my marriage
3 - I have a new job
4 - I am substantially fatter (and i was never small)
5 - My right arm is in a cast (and trying to type is a proper bugger's muddle!)

While some of those things were fairly predictable (increase in girth) not all were, and all of them have come with different effects on my life: my diagnosis has drawn me into the AS community (including another irregular blog here, my happier marriage has reduced my worry, as has my new job, although it is less stimulating that the old one, my weight gain has made me unhappy with my size and appearance, and resolve that I must do something to fix it, and my arm in a cast - really surprising, overall - is
making everything more difficult, including blogging

So my decisions for this year are informed by last year but also by my attempt at long term planning. To be clear, I am not good at this.  I don't know if its an aspie thing or just a me-thing, but I can't visualise further than about 6 months in the future, which means I am generally good at short-term and annual planning, but not long term. Whatever the basis for it, I need to work at making long term plans rather than undertaking actions which will have long-term consequences.

As a result, here is my list of thinks I need to do this year, and feel I have or can gather the motivation to


  • try to buy a house: long-term plan
  • go on holiday: annual plan, but secondary to house buying, if something has to give way
  • lose weight: a classic, but i think my health is suffering. I look and feel terrible and need to change that
  • get more involved in the AS community online
  • volunteer in real life, perhaps undertaking fundraising
  • find a social activity to get involved with.
For me, this is a tall order, but i have 350-odd days to manage to make progress on each of these.

overall, i am feeling optimistic about 2014: financially I am in a better position, I feel more comfortable in my marriage and we are looking to buy a house for the first time. Knowing i have AS has really freed up my mind to stop worrying about those things which are "wrong" with me and accept them. no longer am I the self-hating geek I have been forever but a guy who finally knows why he is different, and that its no bad thing. I hope everyone else can view 2014 with a similar level of optimism.

No comments:

Post a Comment