Published on 12, July, 2020
I don't know if other people ever feel like this (or feel this as often and as much as me), but I really struggle to know when what I am doing is enough. How much effort should I put into things? How long and how hard should I work? How should I be spending my time? I've seen other autistic people discussing how they have taken the phrase 'do your best' too literally and I worry that I do the same, or the opposite - that I'm not doing nearly enough.
It doesn't help that this year I've been learning to accept that I simply don't have as much energy as my peers. I see everyone going out and doing all of this stuff and I just know that I could keep that kind of lifestyle up for about a week before feeling so drained I can't do anything for the next month. It's paralysing to watch everyone doing and being so much more than me. I want to do so much, but when it comes down to it, I feel so lost and afraid. I often joke with my friends that I wish I had a little assistant who could tell me what I need to be doing and when.
Getting motivation is difficult because even if I commit myself to doing something, my brain starts telling me all the other things I could be doing, and that perhaps I'm not using my time correctly. I don't know. I suppose I just want to know if this is common for other autistic adults, and how I could begin to navigate this. I'm 20 at the moment; is this something I'll simply 'grow' out of, or is this forever? Is it pointing to some ultimate feeling of purposeless that I won't be able to be rid of until I find said purpose?
I also used struggle with feeling like I'm not doing enough compared to my peers whether that be socially, with work, or academically. I'm still at university finishing my first degree. Whereas the people I went to school with are either married/getting married, have a family, finishing their post-graduate degrees, working their way up the career ladder or travelling a lot. But these people aren't neurodivergent, I think a few have ADHD but they seem to be doing okay, my judgement is they're doing better than what I'm doing. But this is all from social media, where people make their lives look a lot better than what it could be by just showing the good bits. We only get a snapshot into the lives we are comparing our owns with.
I think as I got older I started to not care what others were doing, especially after my diagnosis. I'm 25 now, and I remember when I was 20/21 comparing myself to others really bothered me. I think at that time of my life I felt out of control, I had just started my university degree then and I had to leave at the end of the first semester for some time out. I was burnt out. Didn't know if I wanted to continue with the degree or switch. I had no idea what I wanted to do in the future. There was a lot of unknowns, and comparing myself to the people I grew up with at that time they were in their final year at university or half-way through it already.
The thing I have issues with now is trying to work out how much time to work on something, like an assignment, because I spend way too long on one thing trying to get it perfect. So when I have multiple things to do at once, I often have to extend my deadlines because I tend to do one thing and forget about the rest until it's done. I also wish I had a personal assistant that helped me efficiently plan my time, decide how much time to dedicate to a task (for example I'll spend a week doing something that should have just been a days worth of work).
I think we tend to forget that doing "normal" stuff takes a lot more energy than it may with NT people. Such as dating, parties and travelling (anything else similar) it takes a lot out of us, there's the social aspect but also with travelling (regardless of journey time) it's so stressful and it can take us longer to recover from this than others. I find that when I'm burnt out, I struggle to even spend time doing things I like, such as playing video games or reading. In fact I haven't read a book for over 6 months now due to it. The time it takes to recover from burnout can be from days to years.
I'll stop here as I've written quite the essay, and I'm not entirely sure it's relevant but hopefully brings comfort to you. Just know that there is no correct way to spend your time. Take life at the pace you're most comfortable at, not the pace you feel pressured to take.