Published on 12, July, 2020
I’ve noticed as a single adult (27) in a flat share, I stay in my room all weekend sometimes after working full-time all week. For example this weekend I work up at 9am on Saturday and lay in bed watching Once Upon A Time and cleaning my (very cluttered and messy) room and doing a house cleaning task once an hour, and today I lay I bed all day watching Tik Toks and watching Once Upon A Time. I also ordered take out five times. I do not do this every weekend, but do any autistic adults find they feel so flat sometimes once every fortnight or month that they get really lazy and tired; because it feels like their energy has been drained by the stress of being around strangers? I even avoid my flat mates because if feel like living with strangers drains me almost. I meant to work on projects all weekend, cook my own meals, and get out for a picnic and did not.
I suspect that Covid has changed a lot of this for most of us - having been made redundant from my last supermarket job of 17 years in Sept 2019, I was unemployed for 3 years before my current hotel job just over a year ago and it involves much earlier starts at 7am - I tried to have the self-discipline of going to bed early and getting up early before this “new” job despite living alone here in the U.K. and missing family in Ireland, connecting online with them as much as possible, especially during U.K. and Irish lockdown restrictions (Ireland’s lockdowns and travel restrictions being far stricter and much longer lasting than the U.K.) when I am off, I still get up early to do stuff that requires concentration as it gets too noisy later on