Lively Lately #76: Slowing down to live in the moment

Slow living has been my strawberry chia seed jam since autistic burnout hit me so hard I couldn’t deal with any sensory input this time around 2021.

Since losing what felt like the best-fitting job ever due to an asthma attack, I’ve been keeping to myself. I kept myself busy all last week because I didn’t want to feel it yet.

I don’t know if other people are able to postpone their feelings or how it works for them. I know I’m able to because of dissociative identity disorder (DID); my brain compartmentalizes experiences, emotions and needs.

Emotional intelligence also helps; I’ve been learning how to regulate my emotions since 2022.

Sensory overload

I hit sensory overload whilst working for the LEGO brick sellers — the LED lights, the ceiling lights, the temperature, the social environment, the LEGO pieces moving about, the masking, the driving to/from, the sun…

I grew more and more sensitive to sensory stimuli all around me so much that…well, I felt autistic burnout creeping back in.

Once autistic burnout hits you so hard that you can’t do anything, you have to reconstruct your life. After deconstructing the social constructs of my life, I haven’t been able to “just do” any of them…and I butt heads with people who continue to follow and perpetuate the constructs.

So even if someone else in my situation would continue the go-go-go pace, I can’t. My brain can’t. My body can’t.

Muted notifications

I muted my notifications Friday and have been dismissing all of them. It’s helped me to be in the moment, enjoy other things and stress less.

Instead of looking at my phone every single notification, I’m unaware and don’t care.

Ignorance is bliss. 😅

Weekend boundaries

The most stressful caveat to working from home/for oneself is not taking any time off/to oneself…so I end up working 24/7 until I fall ill and need to stop.

This past weekend, I played The Sims 4, read three graphic novels, watched Netflix and cuddled with Galaxy. I barely posted on any social media, too.

I’m tempted to do this every weekend as long as I have the agency over my schedule to do so. 🤔

Less social media

With all the panic, I’m leaning towards engaging less social media as a whole.

I don’t enjoy playing on other people’s (companies’) playgrounds quite as much as I enjoy my own. I find having my own subscribers and blog traffic more rewarding than engagement on social media.

Barely anything comes of social media engagement beyond…what? Instant gratification?

I think social media engagement methods have trained my brain to want all of those things even if I didn’t. If not social media on its own, the peer pressure from social media users.

Falling into it is easy. You get hooked. It easily becomes an addiction. I don’t care about it as much as I care about my blog.

Now

I am chilling. Using my phone less. My carpal tunnel syndrome flared up from parting out LEGO sets, so even the minimal movement it takes to type this post out hurts.

The fastest way through a carpal tunnel flare-up is resting my hands. The timing is a horrible inconvenience because I wanted to finish a blog guide series I planned to publish before the end of this month. 😅

I’m channeling my energy and what solace I have from wrist pain towards completing the blog series. I think it’s going to be “epic”. I’m considering putting it on a separate blog/site, because of the pressure to be one niche…I don’t want to do more work, though. 😂