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vividgroovy
Deinonychus
Deinonychus

Joined: 20 Dec 2018
Gender: Male
Posts: 330
Location: Santa Maria, CA

07 May 2019, 11:52 pm

The majority of my life seems to be devoted to my retail job. This June will make my 10th anniversary of working for this company. Prior to that, I spent years unemployed. (For reasons I still don't know, local prospective employers acted as if they were repulsed by me.)

I've had worse jobs -- some while working at this company -- and I have nice co-workers. However, the only reason I work this job is because not doing so means I'll be out on the street. If I were to somehow become financially independent, I would quit this job the same millisecond the money was in my account.

On my days off, I want to draw. After an especially long work week, my desire to draw is intense. Despite arranging most of my life around removing impediments to spending my time drawing, somehow, something always seems to come up anyway. Tonight, I had to order food for my family, which under normal circumstances would be nothing. However, because I hadn't gotten to draw in such a long time, I felt an intense, overwhelming frustration at having to stop and do anything else. Every fiber of my being was fighting against doing it. Now it's done, and it seems a bit silly to get upset over that, but the feeling was very strong while it was happening.

Part of this is leftover anxiety from earlier times. At one point, I lived with a girlfriend who wanted to control every aspect of my life. Once, she scheduled at time and day for us to draw. Then, when the time she chose arrived, she found an excuse to insist we do something else instead.

Later, I was living in a hotel room with my parents, whose house had been foreclosed upon. I wanted to sit quietly in the corner and draw with a small desk lamp, but my stepfather insisted that all the lights be turned out when he went to sleep. He would tell me how selfish I was, claiming if he became sleep deprived and got into a car accident and died, it would be my fault, because I was sitting there drawing with my small desk lamp on.

I posted a bit about this in the greeting forum a few months ago. I don't have anywhere else to talk about this stuff, so I thought I'd try here again.



Last edited by vividgroovy on 08 May 2019, 2:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

Pepe
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Location: Australia

08 May 2019, 12:17 am

Executive functioning disorder makes life difficult and causes a lot of frustration...<sympathy>



jimmy m
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08 May 2019, 10:17 am

Most Aspies are introverts. I suspect you are one too. An introvert recharges their body by being alone. An extrovert recharges their body by being with other people. They converse with one person and receive a little charge and then bounce to another person and steal a little charge their until their bodies are charged up and ready to go.

So after an intense day, it is very natural for an introvert to seek some form of peace and quiet. For some it is reading a book, or playing video games. In your case it is drawing. It is your way of recharging your batteries.


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vividgroovy
Deinonychus
Deinonychus

Joined: 20 Dec 2018
Gender: Male
Posts: 330
Location: Santa Maria, CA

18 May 2019, 5:29 am

Pepe wrote:
Executive functioning disorder makes life difficult and causes a lot of frustration...<sympathy>


Thanks :). I hadn't heard that term before. Looking it up, some of it does sound like what I experience, especially the time management. Time often seems to move very fast to me.



vividgroovy
Deinonychus
Deinonychus

Joined: 20 Dec 2018
Gender: Male
Posts: 330
Location: Santa Maria, CA

18 May 2019, 5:48 am

jimmy m wrote:
...
So after an intense day, it is very natural for an introvert to seek some form of peace and quiet. For some it is reading a book, or playing video games. In your case it is drawing. It is your way of recharging your batteries.


Work is my main source of socialization and physical activity outside home. I'm generally bored by "hanging out," going to bars, parties, etc., so I guess I do have some introvert tendencies. I do enjoy company while I draw. I used to have a desktop computer that was in a corner. Now I have a laptop and I can sit at the table with my parents while I draw (digitally), and I prefer that. It's just the situations where I'm finally sitting down to draw after a long work week, and then some minor household crisis happens at that exact moment, and suddenly I'm being asked about three urgent questions per second. That I find frustrating.

Part of that is probably due to my experience at work, too. We are chronically understaffed and interrupted very frequently by customers needing help or managers trying to pull us to another department.