7:43pm. After reading yesterdays diary I can understand why Rachel didn’t reply. There was nothing to reply to! So here’s what happened. After my run I had a shower and something to eat. I didn’t feel well at all, in fact I felt worse than before my run which doesn’t happen often. After dinner I had a choice to make, I could go to bed and feel sorry for myself and possibly make things worse or I could go to the club, have a few beers and play dominoes and see if that helped me at all. I decided to go to the club after all my mum used to say ‘kill or cure’ so it would do one or the other!
All the usual lot were at the club and after watching some snooker we settled down to play dominoes. Mick and me won the first 2 games and then lost the next one 5-0 a dry rubbing and we had to pay double for losing to Phil and Dan as are the rules for a dry rubbing. We sat out the next game and then we were back on and we won the next 3 games and were duly crowned domino champions for this week. We then sat back down and had a few beers to round off the afternoon. I don’t what it was though, maybe I had a bug and was feeling under the weather but the beer was affecting me more than usual yesterday. I felt drunk, very drunk and far more drunk than I usually am on lager. I went to the Co-op on my way home and got a pizza as usual, went home, ate it, went on the laptop and woke up late in front of it confused as to where I was. I had fallen asleep in front of the laptop something I haven’t done for a long time.
I woke this morning feeling fine. It was as if I had reset myself yesterday like a robot resetting itself to clear a virus. Maybe the lagers did me some good in the long run and my mums theory of ‘kill or cure’ worked and I cured myself of whatever it was that was making me feel crap.
So I got up and had breakfast and went through my morning routine before starting my literature review. Literature reviews terrify me I feel I have always struggled with them putting someone else’s words into mine and adding my own thoughts to them. I have a really bad mental block with them but I also know that if I’m to do my PhD I have to do them and I’m sure there’s someone at uni who will be able to help me with it if I need them. So I started my lit review and spent the rest of the morning and the first part of the afternoon doing it and I enjoyed it. I really surprised myself by enjoying it and reading about my subject only reinforced what I believed that there is a massive gap in knowledge about my subject and there is a dearth of research on it. Aging and autism has so much potential especially from the viewpoint of how aging autistics experience change as they grow older and how government policies and support structures either enable or disable them during the life course. Dare I say it I’m quite excited by this as long as my supervisors understand where I want to go with my PhD and not turn it into a trip through history which is what I suspect they do want to do. Of course there will be an historical element in it to put things into context but I’m focusing on important issues for autistic people of all genders and races that are happening now not how we have got to this point in time so far. Steve Silberman has already done that.
In-between doing my review I looked at the news and an article by Ed Sheeran: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-53553951, got me thinking about my own issues. I too have a very addictive personality and it is truly horrible. It absolutely destroys you. As Ed says one glass of wine is never enough it’s always one more then one more and more until you pass out. It was the same yesterday at the club I had a couple of pints too many if I’m honest but I was enjoying myself and the thought of going back to an empty house filled me with dread knowing that there’s no-one there to share your thoughts with, chat to, sit with and watch TV, just you, four walls and a screen. So hat do you do you turn to alcohol to get you through the evenings except it makes things worse and although deep down you know it does it’s difficult to stop this behaviour especially when you’re on your own. I guess that’s one of the reasons why I run too to suppress my addictive personality or to replace it with something less destructive than alcohol. Either way I got what Ed was saying and completely understood his position.
Back to my review and I almost finished it before I could feel my eyes getting tired so I went to Tesco’s to get some bits before coming home and watching some TV before bed. I also picked up my Altras from the cobblers. He’s reinforced some of the eyelets for me as I could tell that by pulling the laces tight it was going to rip the material apart so I decided to fix the problem before it happened.
I’ve had my usual headache but not too bad today and nothing I couldn’t cope with.
Tomorrow is a trip to the big Tesco’s to get some cherries as my local one doesn’t have any and then finish off my lit review before my first CVFR club run since lockdown. I’m having a couple of wines tonight and then bed. It doesn’t matter if I don’t sleep as I’m my own boss and I know what I need to do tomorrow. Today’s been good and I feel good too so maybe I’ll get a good nights sleep tonight after all.
The Autistic FellRunner 