Insane week of work

Well it’s here. I made it. Survived the week. Oh, what a week it’s been. Pure suffering.

Counting down to my week off next week. More and more responsibility and the pressure and demands that come with it.

Aside from an increase in the usual workload as we begin data cleansing for the transfer to new owners, meetings and tasks and queries and “can you talk me through this”.

Made my debut monitoring our calculations robot. That was utter fucking hell. Had to chat with IT to fix a database issue, the one man who knew how to fix it took a half day holiday. Good start to the week.

Oh and by the way, logging out of the robot  means it gets switched off and only the robotics team can turn it back on.

We only have limited connections so having too many windows open can cause it to freeze. Oh yeah and there’s been a bulk load of work raised so there were over 500 calcs in the queue at one point.

And I was asked to spend half the day helping one of our other teams with their backlog. Not too much on my plate at the time, until today.

And all the things I had to do this week because I’m off next week.

Oh and what was dropped on my lap yesterday? A meeting with our data protection team concerning data regulations. “Show me how yiu use this data, please?”

Only I had been neglecting that duty for months and had completely forgotten how. The online Teams meeting felt like a disaster but my team leader could sense I was struggling and helpfully suggested doing it in person today.

Which meant I had to come into the office. Did I mention I crashed my car a couple of weeks ago and have been walking to and from work.

Only a minor collision, I was unhurt but shaken up and the car took some damage. It’s driveable but injured. It will fail it’s MOT in it’s current state. I just haven’t driven it since, apart from one short drive to check it still works ok.

Just and on and on it goes, anxiety, stress, worry. But then I’ve been pondering if that is my true addiction. If I wasn’t anxious about something, I would be nothing.

I haven’t been out on the piss since my last blog which suggested I was having a lot of fun drinking but I’ve been avoiding it or just too damn tired. Throughout this difficult time I still find the time to occasionally reflect on all of my personal issues.

I don’t mind prolonged periods of all work and no play but I do need to blow off steam and take in an intense hit of fun.

This busy week at work culminated today in the hardest day I’ve ever worked. Went without my lunch break, worked late when I was supposed to finished early. Didn’t eat anything at work, which isn’t unusual to be fair.

Survived on caffeine, cigarette breaks and gritted teeth. What have I forgotten from my to-do list? The very last thing which was to set my work email to automatic out-of-office replies.

The real reason I come out tonight is to see if I can celebrate one other accomplishment. Finally finished my latest techno track which I’ve been working on for about 6 months.

To see if I’ve still got it in me to drunk-dance in the park, in the dark, to my new track. It’s definitely the best track I’ve made so far. Not quite perfect in places but damn-near perfect in others.

To borrow a line from Peep Show, the bassline is so damn good that I physically couldn’t turn it off!

Still on my first pint of the night so we’ll see. Oh go on then, I’ll share it here.

I love it and I don’t need anyone else to love it or even like it. It’s not meant for casual enjoyment.

With that being said, I do have aspirations to make music as good as possible, to dream of making tracks that sound proper professionally done. That I would proudly send to other techno makers and say “listen to how good this is”. I guess I do need people to think highly of my work, whatever form it takes.

It is with plenty of trepidation that I ever share my work, particularly when it represents something deep in my mind and soul.

The attitude I’m trying to take is not to give a shit and share anyway. Always easier said than done.

I’ll always think it’s not good enough and needs to better. But at some point the work needs to be done, completed.

Perusing some techno vids, I watched some attempts to explain the many sub-genres of techno music. The dream of mine is to nail the mix of hard and melodic, minimal and progressive, esoteric and dancefloor killer.

When I say melodic, I mean properly emotive, evoking the pure aching sadness and longing in my heart. That’s where I have succeeded the most, what I’ll always come back to and start from.

But damn I always crave the ability to nail a proper banger of a tune. Have not come anywhere near to mastering that yet.

“Yet” is a good word to use, I’m told. Growth mentality and all that.

As an autistic man I face the daily conundrum. What can I realistically aim to work on and improve versus what can I not do and should seek to avoid at all costs? What can I target for personal growth and what should I say no to?

Am I so deep that nothing within me will ever reach the surface and see the light of day? Am I so shallow that nothing within me will ever take root and develop?

Am I both?

Too much and not enough.

I’m perhaps preparing myself to rejoin the world of social media. What’s still stopping me is thought of family, work colleagues and any sort of friend thinking how crap I am at life.

I could redefine life and success so that I would score more highly in the judges eyes. So long as the only judge is me. Much easier to do that in isolation. But even then I would still fail.

I sat there a while back, at the early stages of personal hell. Thought to myself that I would never be able to look people in the eye until I’ve finally solved all my problems, vanquished all personal demons, become totally invulnerable and unafraid of judgement.

For other people to have no power of me whatsoever. Totally unrealistic twaddle. Other people make me happy. Make me feel something. Make me human.

No the enemy has always been the enemy within. Myself. My own personal prison. Easy to make autism the scapegoat here but it doesn’t matter. Autistic or not I’m still the one holding myself back.

An absolute, invincible demon that cannot be vanquished by will alone. I hope anyone reading can understand why I’ve become so ridiculously self-centred, because I am trapped in an eternal battle with myself. And I resolved to fight til the bitter end.

And by fight I mean lose perpetually and spend all my time licking my wounds and begrudging every loss.

This fucking monolith of terror. Where is the weakness? How can I strike a critical blow against it? If there’s no quick win how can I remain strong enough to whittle it down one cut at a time?

There has got to be some tactic I can use. Entertain it? Bribe it? Seduce it? I mean what the fuck does it actually want?

What it wants is not I want but then there is a lesson here to be learned about compromise, peaceful negotiation and conflict resolution.

When will be at peace? When will we work together towards a common goal?

(To clarify the poetic language I’m talking about me and my autism here, I think)

By Christ, I think I’m on to something here for the first time in a long time.

If it wants anything, it wants me to fucking respect myself and actually walk the walk. Actually give a shit about myself and show it.

Live up to the shit I demand. Because I literally can’t do shit without it.

My autism/inhibitions/prison/demons won’t let me do shit until I do what needs to be done.

Until I’ve earned it. Of course, if I don’t actually listen to them and compromise, then they will rule me forever.

Thanks for reading as ever. I hope you think highly of this blog but if not I’ll keep blogging anyway. No surrender xx