Dear Rebels -
It's no secret that I struggle to stay on task. I can become so overwhelmed by what is right in front of me that I find myself in an endless cycle of half-finished projects only to stop what I am working on, remembering that something else needs to be done switching gears entirely. Sometimes this works in my favor, but more often than not, it leads me down a road where I begin to feel like a failure. Why can't I just be like everyone else?
But I am not like everyone else. I am autistic. My brain works differently.
So how do I stay on task and finish what I need to? It's called "junebugging" and if it weren't for all my friends on Hiki (an autistic social media app) I would have never found the solution.
Have you ever seen a Junebug get to grips with a window screen? It's remarkably persistent, but not very focused. All that matters to the little fellow is its location.
HOW TO JUNEBUG:
Choose a location or activity in which you feel you can probably get some shit done today. Be specific! If it's cleaning, don't choose, "the bathroom", be specific and choose "the bathroom sink". You are not choosing a range, you are choosing a center; you will move around, but your location is where you will keep coming back to. Mentally stick a pin in it and consider yourself tethered to that spot by a long mental bungee cord.
Now go to that location, or activity ( an example from my life would be, lay the base colors), look at stuff, move stuff around, get distracted...REMEMBER you're junebuggung the "bathroom sink" and go back there. Look at it some more, do a different thing, get distracted, get a sandwich, but never forget that you are junebugging, and go back to the "bathroom sink".
Others will go crazy watching you and they may even demand to know when you will be done. You may find that you will have to roll them in a carpet and stuff them up the chimney because you are done when you feel done, or you are too bored to live, or it's bedtime or any other number of markers, BUT YOU GET TO CHOOSE!
Not only will the "bathroom sink" almost certainly be clean, and probably the mirror, and the soap dish, you may have swapped in a fresh toothbrush, refilled the soap, you may have even unclogged the drain -- You may have also cleaned or fixed several things in the vicinity, or in the path between the sink and where you got a fresh toothbrush. Maybe you ended up grocery shopping because you were out of soap. Or maybe you couldn't find a clean hand towel so you ended up doing the laundry.
THIS IS GREAT! You got shit done! It wasn't the way Neurotypicals (or NTs, a term used to describe individuals of typical developmental, intellectual, and cognitive abilities) would have "cleaned the bathroom", but screw it and screw them. Things are better than they were!
Daring to be different means accepting yourself where you are. Don't compare yourself to others because that is a goal you will never reach. Do you, smile, and know that I love you.
Always,
Breanna aka chaosxanarchy