This is Legwork and Life, where I track the legwork and opportunities in my career as an autistic advocate, and also describe parts of my adult autistic life, including my perspectives on everyday problems and situations.
In brief: last week had a sudden frantic spurt of work activity which exhausted me for a couple days thereafter. You'll see the results of that frantic work this Friday. But I also maybe discovered something to help boost my relaxation, possibly by overdosing on it. I have also possibly hopefully gotten a buffer restarted, which is excellent because it's very helpful to my overall anxiety level.
The work intensive thing spanned roughly 28 hours, and began with an email that I read upon waking up. Essentially, it was a call for comment from various qualified-to-comment people, asking how to make my local Walmart-competition store more sensory-friendly. The public face (and only paid employee) of Autism Support of Kent County was being invited to speak to someone at the corporate office. She wanted ideas from everyone so as to present as many good ones as possible. The meeting was scheduled for the next morning.
This is the sort of meeting I think firsthand experience is essential for, so I politely requested to be invited along. Fortunately, she tends to agree on the value of firsthand experience and wasn't put off by my forwardness. But even before hearing back from her, I made plans to go off to my local store and essentially audit it. Which I did, though it took over an hour to traipse the whole store and investigate various things.
I also sent out a message to the local autistic adults I'm in contact with, asking their opinions on the subject. The thing with autism is that at present, it's a very individualized experience. I have over-sensitivities in the sensory department. Some autistic people have undersensitivities, a combination of both, or their senses are normal.
I came back from the trip with six pages of notes and the desire to have a presentation ready on what I'd found. Which I managed, but it took basically the rest of the day and well into the wee hours, and the result was, um... let's say "functional." A good presentation is pleasant on the eyes and includes more than simply organizing the information. This was more "it's organized into headers, here you go." I made the meeting and did some of my presentation, anyway.
After all that rush and time spent all at once, I was exhausted. I spent most of the next day doing no work at all, because I was brain-burned and just wanted to lie around. My life is not so luxurious that doing so was an option, but I did take a bit of time for myself in the evening. I took a bath.
I have various good quality bath bombs from a nice Etsy shop, as well as presents from other people. I often use these, and they smell nice and make me happy. However, I'd also heard of good results from using Epsom salts in baths, and so I'd sometimes stir in a cup of those in addition to my bath bomb. Epsom salts, you see, are magnesium salts. Magnesium is sometimes deficient in autistic people, which can lead to anxiety and other detrimental effects. So some autism parents swear by Epsom salt baths, saying they're massively helpful for calming down their children. This time, I eschewed the usual bath bomb and began dumping Epsom salts into my tub like there was no tomorrow.
I wasn't thinking super-clearly, but I think the closest approximation for my frame of mind was, "I'm going to prove these stories right or wrong, one way or the other, or so help me God." I'm not actually sure how many cups of Epsom salts went into the tub, because I wasn't measuring. It's a big tub, so more than the single cup is probably necessary to get the appropriate effect. At any rate, I dumped probably 3 times that, maybe more, into the tub, including some directly onto my submerged legs.
It's a little weird to have salt in your bath, but it does eventually mix with the water. As long as you're not drinking it, it's basically fine. Just be sure to buy the unscented if you have sensory issues. I had a very relaxed bath, which I mostly noticed because I didn't start getting super antsy to get out when the bath started to cool.
After I got out was when I really started to notice the difference. My muscles were hyper-relaxed. My brain was very very quiet. I mostly just wanted to lie around in bed and do nothing. Fortunately, it was my spouse's turn to cook, so I did just that while I waited for dinner to be ready. I think I dozed off a couple times. This alarmed me a little, so I looked up magnesium overdoses the next time I was properly awake, and I miiiiight have overdone it just a little. Lethargy is a symptom of magnesium overdose. I didn't have any of the other symptoms, though.
So I dunno if this is a universal thing, but I'm probably going to buy Epsom salts in bulk now, and make regular use of them. I will definitely need to see about a better dosage than, "1 cup, plus a bit more, and a bit more, and screw it a lot more, and maybe a bit more..."
In the meantime, I have a bit of buffer again! There's not a whole lot to say on this, it's just me stockpiling Reading the Researches and Friday posts for rainy days. Some weeks there really aren't good research articles for this blog, while others come with several. It's wise to have backups, but I haven't done that a lot of this year, I guess because there's been a lot of rainy days and not a lot of success in rebuilding the buffer until now. Here's hoping I can keep up the good trend.
In brief: last week had a sudden frantic spurt of work activity which exhausted me for a couple days thereafter. You'll see the results of that frantic work this Friday. But I also maybe discovered something to help boost my relaxation, possibly by overdosing on it. I have also possibly hopefully gotten a buffer restarted, which is excellent because it's very helpful to my overall anxiety level.
The work intensive thing spanned roughly 28 hours, and began with an email that I read upon waking up. Essentially, it was a call for comment from various qualified-to-comment people, asking how to make my local Walmart-competition store more sensory-friendly. The public face (and only paid employee) of Autism Support of Kent County was being invited to speak to someone at the corporate office. She wanted ideas from everyone so as to present as many good ones as possible. The meeting was scheduled for the next morning.
This is the sort of meeting I think firsthand experience is essential for, so I politely requested to be invited along. Fortunately, she tends to agree on the value of firsthand experience and wasn't put off by my forwardness. But even before hearing back from her, I made plans to go off to my local store and essentially audit it. Which I did, though it took over an hour to traipse the whole store and investigate various things.
I also sent out a message to the local autistic adults I'm in contact with, asking their opinions on the subject. The thing with autism is that at present, it's a very individualized experience. I have over-sensitivities in the sensory department. Some autistic people have undersensitivities, a combination of both, or their senses are normal.
I came back from the trip with six pages of notes and the desire to have a presentation ready on what I'd found. Which I managed, but it took basically the rest of the day and well into the wee hours, and the result was, um... let's say "functional." A good presentation is pleasant on the eyes and includes more than simply organizing the information. This was more "it's organized into headers, here you go." I made the meeting and did some of my presentation, anyway.
After all that rush and time spent all at once, I was exhausted. I spent most of the next day doing no work at all, because I was brain-burned and just wanted to lie around. My life is not so luxurious that doing so was an option, but I did take a bit of time for myself in the evening. I took a bath.
I have various good quality bath bombs from a nice Etsy shop, as well as presents from other people. I often use these, and they smell nice and make me happy. However, I'd also heard of good results from using Epsom salts in baths, and so I'd sometimes stir in a cup of those in addition to my bath bomb. Epsom salts, you see, are magnesium salts. Magnesium is sometimes deficient in autistic people, which can lead to anxiety and other detrimental effects. So some autism parents swear by Epsom salt baths, saying they're massively helpful for calming down their children. This time, I eschewed the usual bath bomb and began dumping Epsom salts into my tub like there was no tomorrow.
I wasn't thinking super-clearly, but I think the closest approximation for my frame of mind was, "I'm going to prove these stories right or wrong, one way or the other, or so help me God." I'm not actually sure how many cups of Epsom salts went into the tub, because I wasn't measuring. It's a big tub, so more than the single cup is probably necessary to get the appropriate effect. At any rate, I dumped probably 3 times that, maybe more, into the tub, including some directly onto my submerged legs.
It's a little weird to have salt in your bath, but it does eventually mix with the water. As long as you're not drinking it, it's basically fine. Just be sure to buy the unscented if you have sensory issues. I had a very relaxed bath, which I mostly noticed because I didn't start getting super antsy to get out when the bath started to cool.
After I got out was when I really started to notice the difference. My muscles were hyper-relaxed. My brain was very very quiet. I mostly just wanted to lie around in bed and do nothing. Fortunately, it was my spouse's turn to cook, so I did just that while I waited for dinner to be ready. I think I dozed off a couple times. This alarmed me a little, so I looked up magnesium overdoses the next time I was properly awake, and I miiiiight have overdone it just a little. Lethargy is a symptom of magnesium overdose. I didn't have any of the other symptoms, though.
So I dunno if this is a universal thing, but I'm probably going to buy Epsom salts in bulk now, and make regular use of them. I will definitely need to see about a better dosage than, "1 cup, plus a bit more, and a bit more, and screw it a lot more, and maybe a bit more..."
In the meantime, I have a bit of buffer again! There's not a whole lot to say on this, it's just me stockpiling Reading the Researches and Friday posts for rainy days. Some weeks there really aren't good research articles for this blog, while others come with several. It's wise to have backups, but I haven't done that a lot of this year, I guess because there's been a lot of rainy days and not a lot of success in rebuilding the buffer until now. Here's hoping I can keep up the good trend.
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