Know Limits.

Had a really busy few weeks so far, between traveling to 'the London', drawy/scribbly stuff, reviewing Glas-GLOW and preparing to attend the 2019 Scottish Autism Conference I've found myself utterly knackered, both physically and mentally which meant that something had to give.

And that something was not being able to attend the Cine_Excess festival in Birmingham this weekend.

"I made this!" - and am currently available for hire. Just saying.

It's rare for this to happen but when it does it kinda throws into sharp focus the mindset of, whilst it's really useful (and healthy) to know my limitations and look after myself it's also bloody frustrating when you have to miss something that you were so looking forward to - and was actually quite important from a work perspective - because of the way that your autie-ness affects you.

I always used to use the Jenga analogy when explaining how absolutely draining all the daily pushing, explaining and interacting can be (other folk use spoons but hey I'm a pedant) but earlier this year after Mrs Ash had taken our twin podlings on their yearly pilgrimage to Liverpool in order to celebrate all things Fab Four we were chatting and it was revealed that they found it easier to equate this to being like a phone battery.

Modern tech' kids eh?

A visual representation earlier today.

The way they explain it is that if you get up in the morning and you've charged your phone then you know you have 100% battery to see you thru' the day, sometimes you'll use more charge than others depending on what you've been up to but you always know that when it starts to bleep and flash 'low battery' that it's time to pop it on the table and recharge it.

If the girls were/are getting grumpy or tired or overwhelmed now we just ask them what their battery charge is at and can kinda judge how they'll be.

I found this so simple yet brilliant that I soon adopted it for my own but obviously had to over complicate it by adding a bit extra.

You see, being one of those 'adult types' sometimes I get so involved or concerned by what I'm doing I sometimes forget to plug the phone in or look at it and think "Hmmm....60%? that'll do for just today". then decide to carry on regardless before at some point wondering why I'm sitting on the floor in a quivering heap as Ro (Mrs Ash) points at the one red bar flashing with a "I told you so" look on her face before offering me a hot cup of tea and a hug.

As I said - and have been told - it's pretty good to know your limitations and to be honest, had I actually thrown caution to the wind and just gone for it I'd probably be stuck in Digbeth coach station right now rocking back and forth whilst shouting at pigeons, but it doesn't stop you feeling a wee bit disappointed and fairly pissed off with yourself.

I think it's not the the actually knowing you can't do something that's annoying and more as to the knowing why you can't do it - and the fact that there's nowt you can do to change that - that is really annoying.

It's not all bad tho' as I did instead get to veg out on the sofa with a bottle of wine, a crap movie and very good company.

Silver linings and all that.

 As an aside whilst searching online for pictures to break up the text I did a cheeky search for autism stock photos to see how this situation is visualised by media types.....

I found this:

And the caption for it?

"Autistic wrapped in crime-scene tape on the field"

Because this is something that happens all the time obviously.

Well it cheered me up because no matter how stressed/tired/meltdowny I'll ever get I'll never be Autistic wrapped in crime-scene tape on the field stressed.

Phew.