Pause-Mode.

I can relate to how you've lived your life, I've always been purpose driven, down to most hours of the day. I'm not bored without anything to achieve, but instead feel lost.

I can let go when ill and decide to be unproductive and off the hook and find new habits like lolling in bed, reading, cooking, but keeping healthy habits. I can even slip into that and enjoy it whilst i'm off sick.I don't know how it'd work longterm.  I took 2 years off work once and somehow managed a nondoing lifestyle of reading, cooking, self improvement. I felt modelling a counter cultural life was a purpose! These days i'm back into hyperproductivity and self improvement. Ithink in your situation I'd personally turnarapting to this new way of being into a project and trying to optimise it. I guess I'll find out if that will actually work when I approach old age.

I hope you find a new contentedness.

The problem is I'm not going to get better and there are so many things that need to be done - and I would have been getting on with them but now I can't.

I feel obsolete and useless but frustrated by my body's failings.    The lack of progress is *my* fault and that's something that's never happened before.

I could understand it if I was unfit and in my 80s - but I'm not.    This is 30 years too early.

It's not self pity - it's self annoyance - a questioning of my programming..

I'm also having a brain crisis - I've spent my life being compelled to do the right thing at huge cost - but now I'm in this crunch, doing the right thing seems a bit strange - keeping myself alive to suffer more for the sake of others?       Making every day miserable for myself just so others have extended memories of me to soften the blow when I leave.     The eventual outcome is guaranteed - only the time is variable.

Although I'm not in your situation, so who knows what I'd think, I can relate to what you're expressing. I can imagine self annoyance is how I'd feel. Since my mid teens I've been investing in myself, my health, my knowledge of health etc to wring every last drop out of life. Not cos I wanna live forever, but as an optimisation project. And whilst I do have fun, most of my life seems to be externally focussed on doing the right thing, often at my expense too. So myself as a project , like Sat lie ins, is prob more to do with optimising myself ready for the external projects. So whete would I be without an external project. 

Seventeen years ago I was given a terminal diagnosis for a non operable brain tumour. 3-4 years of quality life, then a slow decline into 2-3 years of paralysis in hospital. I was fortunate in that it went into self remission with virtually no longterm damage. Classic AS I went into optimisation mode, inc finances, around carrying on with normal life for 2 years, 1 year off to enjoy seeing people esp the group of friends I'd known when young in S Italy, and then suicide before i got to the bad bit. I had it all planned. But over the years i realised it wouldn't have worked cos i would have wanted to keep going for as long as viable and optimise the day to end it. But come the point I'd want to I'd have lost the capacity to do it. It made me realise how little in control I actually am. And being in control and having a sense of control keeps me sane!

i hear a lot in your reply, that there's stuff to be done, that that's not viable, frustration with not being able to do stuff, frustration with yourself over that, and a more existential question about why live if it's only to satisfy others at your own cost. I suspect many of us, NTs included, grapple with that last one and resolve it by pushing it aside and away. We don't talk about the existential question of why live, it's a taboo, that's always frustrated me, but I'd be judged grimly if I talked about it with most.

I've appreciated your insights and thoughts in other threads on autism. How have you learnt all that? What have you read? I'm AS but the AS person in my life can be unfathomable to me around his shutdowns. They're triggered differently to mine, and he behaves very differently too (though that cd be lack of insight into my own stuff).

I've appreciated your insights and thoughts in other threads on autism. How have you learnt all that? What have you read? I'm AS but the AS person in my life can be unfathomable to me around his shutdowns. They're triggered differently to mine, and he behaves very differently too (though that cd be lack of insight into my own stuff).