Journeys with Autism

When I first began to understand my gifts and challenges, I began to see that I have some trouble sequencing tasks in time. I’d never before thought that I had this difficulty, because I’ve always done a very good job with goal setting, project management, scheduling, and similar tasks. But when I look at it, I realize that I’ve always created a lot of good strategies for getting those tasks done, and that when I let those strategies go, I see why I came up with them in the first place.

I used to work full-time and homeschool (yes, on the same days!), and I kept up with all of my commitments quite well. I never had a problem designing our curriculum or articulating our educational goals. I always got all of the materials to the school district early. We consistently finished our curriculum well in advance of the end of the school year, and I always got my daughter to her lessons on time. At work, I never missed a deadline, I was never late for a meeting, and I was always known as someone who kept all my tasks well planned and well organized. Through all the demands of working, schooling, and mothering, I was never late on a mortgage payment or any other bill.

Take any portion of my life, and it comes out looking much the same. Even when I was working minimum wage, and living in a state of extreme sensory overload, and spending much of my time dazed and confused, I always paid my rent on time, got to my appointments early, and made sure my bills were paid well in advance of their due dates. In my whole life, I’ve only bounced one check, and that happened about thirty years ago.

And yet, when I consider cooking a meal with more than one course, I feel paralyzed. I’m perfectly capable of making a main dish and boiling up some rice or quinoa to go with it, but I’ve never considered trying to make a multi-course meal in which everything has to come out of the oven and off the stove at the same time. Of course, I have no interest in cooking a multi-course meal, because it’s best for my health when I eat simply, but just thinking about it feels like a monumental task. Every time I do, I feel like I’m asking myself to move an object twice my weight up a steep hill. My immediate thought is, “Nah. Never mind that.” And then I think about something more pleasant.

For a while now, I’ve been wondering why I’ve always been able to sequence important tasks in time—like bill paying, and tax deadlines, and arriving at work in the morning—but I’m unable to sequence the tasks for something less important, like a multi-course meal. And then, finally, it came to me: I can sequence tasks in time when I make them visual. Then, they’re no longer just tasks in time. They’re actually objects in space, and I can organize objects in space like nobody’s business.

I have three main ways that I turn the things of time into the things of space:

1. Lists. Lists, lists, lists. Not too many lists, because that gets overwhelming, but enough lists so that I can keep my tasks separate and manageable. So, for example, at the moment, I have the following lists that I keep updated:

• The tasks I need to complete as the ASAN-VT chapter leader.
• The letters of recommendation and transcripts I need for the master’s program I’m applying to. (Yes! I’m applying to a master’s program! Don’t ask me too much about it yet. I’ll say more when I’ve actually gotten the decision letter.)
• The books I’ve sold.
• My sensory diet.
• Basic daily tasks. (Most of these tasks I do out of habit, instinct, muscle memory, what-have-you, but I keep a list just in case my routine gets thrown off, and I need to reassure myself that I haven’t forgotten anything.)
• The tasks I need to complete over the course of a week (household chores, bills, lessons, and so on). Most of these tasks are intuitive at this point, but I keep a list so that I have an anchor if something gets thrown off.
• Bills to be paid.
• Bank, credit card, and other accounts.
• Food we need to buy at the grocery store.
• The things I need to pack when I go to New York City.
• The art projects I want to do.
• Miscellaneous tasks that come to mind when I’m doing something else. I keep a “scribble list” for these kinds of tasks.

2. My appointment book.

Oh, sacred appointment book! Where would I be without you?

Excuse me for talking to my appointment book as though it were a god. I know that I shouldn’t be quite so in awe of it, but I am. I’m in awe of the fact that I can hold an entire year’s worth of time in my hands, and open up to the middle of it, whenever I want, without becoming disoriented. In my appointment book, I write down, well, appointments, but also soccer games, school events, tax payments, special errands, and any chores that don’t happen on a daily or weekly basis.

3. Leaving things where I can see them. My mantra is If my eyes can see it, I will remember it.

When a bill comes in the mail, I put it right at my place at the kitchen table, where I can’t miss it, and then I pay it within a day. If I have to hold a bill for more than a day, I put it in a basket that I use for the purpose, and then I write down in my appointment book exactly when I’m going to pay the bill.

If I have a book, or an item of clothing, or a DVD that I want to give to someone, I put it out where I can see it, and I write a reminder in my appointment book to give it to the person.

In order to remember to take my herbs and vitamins, I put them in a small pouch and leave it on my chair at the dinner table. That way, in order to sit down to eat, I have to pick up the pouch, and then I remember to take what’s in it. I do the same sort of thing with my nighttime herbs and medicine: I put them on a shelf where I’m sure to see them.

So how did I figure out all of this stuff? Well, I’m very fortunate in that I love to organize things, large and small. Organizing soothes me and gives me a sense of accomplishment, two things that I’ve needed from the time I was small.

And then, of course, I grew up before there was a diagnosis, and like many of us, found myself out on the open sea without a compass. So, I invented the best compass I could, and I wrote myself a guidebook, and I came up with a host of very good ideas about how to navigate. Many of us did. We’re the ones my fellow blogger Lili Marlene calls “The Last of the Wild Autistics.” It’s a title I wear with pride.

And finally, growing up in a virtual madhouse violent and dysfunctional family meant that I could either chart my own course or go down with the ship. Early on, I looked at my parents and thought, “These people are chaos. I’d better get myself organized.” And I did. Such are the blessings that one brings out of disaster.

So about that multi-course meal? Yeah, I could make one, but only if I sat back for awhile and wrote everything down, and figured out when I needed to start making each course, and what time I needed to put each course in the oven/on the boil/in the saucepan, and what time I needed to take each course out of the oven/off the stove/out of the saucepan, and which area of preparation I needed to interrupt in order to begin (or resume) another area of preparation, and so on, and so on, and so on, until everything was written down in five-minute intervals, and I had mapped out each and every step in detail.

But when it comes to actually doing it? Nah. Never mind that.

© 2010 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg