i hear the voices when I'm dreaming

I'm having a struggle between wanting to draw more -- easiest at night because I don't have to literally hold the tablet -- and the fact that I have too many games on my tablet.

Several are idle/tycoon style games, which mostly is just checking in once and upgrading things, but sometimes they have time-limited events that call for more frequent attention. Several are "do a few things daily" where there's a streak tracker so I don't want to miss a day. Many, including games in the previously listed categories, have occasional events that grab my attention.

Compounding this: sometimes games/apps get to a stage where if I'm not in their I don't really care, but once I open I get sucked in, either "well it's not much more effort to [do a quest | collect a thing | start production] so I might as well" and/or "oh this limited-availability thing is so cute I have to do the extra stuff to get it"... which means if I try to just do the minimum required effort to keep streaks going, I almost never keep to that.

I go to bed around 6:30 or 7, and 7-8 tends to be "check in briefly on most apps, do NYT crossword, start puzzle page or solitaire", 8-9 is mostly stuff around getting settled into bed for the night, 9-10 is "solitaire run [10 varieties] and puzzle page stuff", 10-11 is "Duolingo and one or two of the idle games", 11-12 is "remaining idle games, finch [mh app] checkin, more solitaire because I seem to be addicted", 12+ is "last check/collection for idle games, convince toddler brain it's time to go to sleep".

...there is no space in there for watching things on my tablet, for doing art, or for reading. Especially since it is easier (and more tempting) to just pop out a few more solitaire games than it is to struggle with my perfectionism and inner critic.

I know I could survive dropping several apps, especially the idle games. They're cute but not really ... I don't know if 'productive' is the right word because fuck productivity culture anyway, but ... having an extra virtual room with cute themed cats (or whatever) doesn't really add much to my life? Even if seeing them gives me a strong 'zomg need' feeling. But I have ridiculous FOMO (what if they do an event with the Best Prize Ever, and I miss it) plus a pathetic feeling that daily streaks are the only 'achievement' I'm really capable of any more.

An obvious answer is to do art during the day, but I really can't use the tablet easily sitting up. Obvious answer B is to spend daytime time in bed drawing, but as it is I'm only "up" for 8 hours as it is, and I find myself really not wanting to reduce that further.

And some of this is probably perfectionism self-sabotage -- "I don't have time to try" means I haven't failed yet, don't have anything for my inner critic to hate.

But. Meh. Don't know how to change ... *waves hand vaguely upwards* ... this

So I just realized (maybe re-realized idk) a serious flaw in my brain's Perpetual Ominous Warnings Of Doom (mostly to the tune of "I am going to fuck things up", with occasional sprinklings of "something bad will happen and you aren't prepared")

which is that something *will* eventually go wrong, and I *will* eventually fuck something up. Not because I suck, just ... that's the way the universe is. And while the endless anticipatory anxiety won't actually really have helped, the prediction itself technically came true -- meaning my brain will use it as proof that the anxiety itself is necessary.

Kind of like when a hoarder actually does find a use for a random hoarded item, just by chance, and uses that as justification for "I might need this someday" hoarding. Only the anxiety thing is worse because there isn't even the "accidentally helpful" moment; it's just feeling shitty in advance without actually changing anything.

I'm not quite sure what to do with this, or how to turn it from intellectual understanding to maybe calming anxiety down, or keeping it from backfiring on me, but ... huh.

random thing from therapy: I realized it's possible that what I label as "feeling guilty" might largely be just feeling *bad* from over-empathizing. Like, guilt should involve some element of fault -- me doing X led to Y, which is bad, therefore I feel guilty -- but my brain extrapolates that to someone else doing X leads to Y, which is bad, therefore I feel gui???+++ OUT OF CHEESE ERROR REDO FROM START +++

So I'm trying to disentangle, and wow is it hard. Logically I know that e.g. if a friend tells me their partner just broke up with them, since I am not responsible I can label my feeling-bad-ness as "empathy with suck", but it's harder when I maybe could have done something, e.g. my mom forgets to go to a concert, which is not directly my fault but I could have reminded her the day of.

How do y'all describe "feeling guilty"? How does it feel physically, and how do you separate guilt from just ... feeling bad?

Took the RAADS-R autism test, mostly for lulz.

I wish there were a "sometimes" option, not all-or-nothing, but.

( results )

I'm frustrated by ... so many things.

By my lack of spoons -- I rarely get anything done during the day and yet I'm utterly exhausted at the end of the day, which sounds normal except that by the time I'm up and dressed and everything it's like 11:30, and I go back to bed a whole 7 hours late. First bedtime is for comfort not sleep, but I utterly *crash*. Seven hours! I used to be on a 9am-9pm day!

By my sleep schedule -- if I actually go to sleep at 7 I'll be impossibly awake later on, so I don't, but by the time I'm ready to sleep through the night, my brain has gone into "too tired to sleep" cranky toddler mode. And it takes hours to get to sleep, and I never feel rested. I don't even remember what that feels like.

By my brain -- lack of executive function plus time blindness means I have so many things hopelessly backlogged, including just simple fucking emails. And I have so many ideas for things I'd like to train Phoebe on, but always I either don't have energy, or don't think of it when I have someone around to help, or I just can't fucking ask because it's not urgent (not in the same way as needing the bathroom) and I don't want to ~bother~ them.

By my hands -- I've lost so much dexterity and grip strength, I can barely do anything, plus they hurt all the time but especially at night.

By my perfectionism -- I haven't done art stuff in ages, because it always looks wrong and I give up on it way too fast. I can follow tutorials okay but even that is of course imperfect; things I do from scratch rarely work, or the different elements don't match up, or the proportions are wrong, or a small part is lovely and the rest is trash, or...

By my lack of aides -- I'm down to three, one who does the scheduling plus two shifts, the other two who split the remainder. I need more, but no one is applying, and the campus job-posting site has been changed to only corporation recruitment, and I don't know how else to get people. And this is a constant fucking thing. I was good for a while, with like six or more people, but a lot of them either graduated or got other jobs; I'm never permanently set on aides, and always have to be recruiting and searching (and if I find oeople, training them)


I wish I could just... not have issues

I keep feeling like Phoebe deserves better. Deserves someone who's out of bed more and able to go places and do things and just ... be more fun. I have a small apartment and a small life and I feel hopelessly ashamed that she's stuck here with me. She deserves more

and I can't even take care of her, can't brush her or check her ears or check her paws; even things like cleaning out her ears and clipping nails and picking up poop. it's what I have aides for but it's also unfair to my aides and to P to add more into the mix.

I just. Why is it all I can see is my deficiencies?

mood crash -- everything hurts (metaphorically not physically) and I am not ok

can't stop crying

can I just donate my body to science or something I'm fucking tired

[obligatory disclaimer: not at risk. if nothing else, I can't abandon Yahtzee.]

So, ok, I have this ... weird inhibition about playing music out loud. I'm fine listening with headphones, but since I can't do those myself, that means I only listen when I have headphones on already. That's mostly at night, when I'm in bed. Singing along doesn't happen much -- it's embarrassing if headphoned, and I'm never not. It's been years, maybe decades, since I've just blasted a fun playlist and let myself sing along.

I keep poking at this mental wall, because I'd love to be able to do that. As far as I can tell, it's a combination of at least two desires/needs.

One is I don't want to bother anyone (more than I have to), combined with an overly sensitive meter for what counts as bothersome (i.e. anything at all). It's like I can only do loud things when alone. Between aides and roommate, I'm rarely alone, and I often just don't think of it as an option in the times I do have. Even if I'm watching a video, I'll often turn it off when someone shows up, because Noise.

It's not a logical thing: my roommate has a room with a door (and also can use her words if she needs quiet) and my aides are paid to be here and none of them would be bothered by what I listen to. It's just ... I somehow just can't, unless I'm alone.

(Oddly, video chat is exempt. I'm fine doing those on my computer with no headphones.)

The other is fear of judgment / mockery. This is a long thing: I remember as a young teen getting my first stereo system (CDs and tapes) and my dad brought along the CDs of Phantom of the Opera, with which I was obsessed, to use the Overture to test the sound of different players, and part of me was vaguely humiliated because it would out me as a Weirdo Who Liked Phantom. (Many of my interests at the time, including POTO and Star Trek, I was convinced were inherently shameful.) My genres are nonstandard, so there's possible weakness there, but also I listen to the same thing over and over again. Usually a playlist/CD rather than a single song, but sometimes even that.

(This is also why I never really got into things like Pandora; if I wanted to listen to X, I wanted to listen to X and not to things similar to X, and I'd rather listen to known comfort music over and over.)

I realized tonight that right now, when my roommate is out of town for a few days, I have times of actual guaranteed aloneness. That I could put on whatever and sing along.

...and I still got slammed with an almost visceral memory of someone saying, incredulously, "you're listening to that AGAIN???" Of someone begging me to put on something different. I don't remember if this was my sister (who would have been an older teen at the time) or in college, but I'm terrified, I guess, of getting that again.

On one hand I don't care if my aides don't approve of how I listen to music, and anyway they're all too nice to say something -- except maybe for "didn't you already play that". On the other, the internalization of "this thing I do is Not Normal*" is too old and too deep. So ... I don't know.

* ... I would not be surprised to learn listening to something on repeat is an autism and/or ADHD thing...

So.

I know I do better when I "go to sleep" by midnight -- I can't force sleep, but turning off my tablet and lying quietly with eyes closed, rather than Just One More Level or watching videos or whatever.

Lately I've discovered my brain likes succumbing to sleepiness around 9 -- not really sleeping, more napping, and it lasts for an hour or so and then I can do more tablet stuff for a bit.

(It's even possible I'd do best just going to sleep then; I haven't tried because all my games have events going, but someday.)

Add to this the fact that tomorrow is going to be stressful-- medical video visit, plus meeting / interviewing potential new aide.

So ... why the fuck am I still awake at 1am, no "nap", no effective midnight curfew??

Sigh.

Can metformin fuck with mood? I asked someone on my med team and she said no, but I'm coping even less well than I had been. So either a) metformin is doing something ungood, b) I'm in less pain (because of upping pain meds) and therefore my brain can devote more awareness to emotional shit, or c) I'm more of a failure (just in general) than I used to be.

I hate being broken.