Hi everyone, in my life for whatever reasons I haven’t been able to work full time. In my 20s and 40s I spent substantial amounts of time in inpatient for an eating disorder and didn’t have a normal youth. I was also diagnosed late with autism and several needs are moderate and I have marked sensory needs. I also live alone and do not have children.
Anyway, what has given me joy is the self projects in my life and the voluntary work I can do. I thought by discussing these it could give some one the idea to do their own self project and also to inspire others to pick up something new. Self projects I think can help people to keep going. I am training to do a voluntary job right now and that will give me joy to, but am here to discuss that in this thread.
Me-
The first project I did was for eating disorders awareness week in 2021. I lost a dear friend and was motivated to release an article to coincide with eating disorders awareness week in the UK. I also took the time to tell my own story and discuss some key things I felt were of concern. This got good feedback and led to me working with the NHS voluntary on a project and I ended as a co author in the Lancet which was great. They also did a filming of an event and that was good as well.
I also had a waterfall project to film and visit all the artificial waterfalls in London parks and Gardens and upload them to Youtube and have a separate channel for that. To finish that of I treated myself to a day trip to Zurich to see the largest waterfall the Rhinefalls. It was a blast.
I also did one for my faith. This was great for my spirit and soul and for me the best thing I have done. I created a blog and shared my story and was trying to reach people in a similar situation to me. I shared the link on Facebook and friends and family. I got some cards printed and gave the link out to the blog in church and in left them in a neighbouring church to be read. I liked to put the cards to in our local supermarket which has their own noticeboard for people to take if they wanted. I gave a few cards to people in the street who I felt may relate very rarely or who I knew. I posted the cards in blocks in lower deprived areas and returned to where I used to live which was great to do so. I also made some made some covering videos. I have extended this now the posts on my blog and even used some from my studies days to blog about so it is not in waste. I enjoy making small videos for my faith. I also created a forum to archive my posts on my faith in the last year that I made online. It was such a good thing for me. I have posted the link to my story of my faith here which you can find by searching my past posts so there is no need to do so here again.
I have done other things in my life earlier like a like mental health support forum for eating disorders, but will just discuss this three here and look forward to learning about your self projects. I think they are more than just being interests.