Recently, I discovered that a potential cause of my fatigue and excessive sleepiness may be because of not having a steady routine by keeping somewhat engaged throughout the day. I have found that in the past five years of being sporadic in caring for myself that I have now finally settled down so I can carve out my own personal routine for the days that lie ahead.

Through the last several days, I have seen that more and more. The holiday of Thanksgiving did not help this effort as I slept greatly over the last few days, but I am now finding things to work on as time goes on. It’s amazing if you allow yourself to find the little things that you can work on if you really allow yourself to do good enough. It’s not that I am not short of things to work on, it’s just that they are all over the place and I start things without finishing. It may be a susceptible part of ADHD that has yet to be diagnosed when there has been so much emphasis on Autism and other diagnoses piece.

I have ruled out the fact that the medication is a factor of making me consistently sleep. The reality is that I do need a decent amount of sleep and the medication helps me in getting that as it has been proven over the past few days. I do feel more refreshed, but when I do not have something to keep engaged with is when I ruminate or start to fall out of pattern by wanting to sleep out of boredom or frustration.

The fact that I do recognize that I do need a regular amount of sleep (as many humans do) is a big step within itself over the years along with the need to have a dedicated time to go to sleep. It is part of what is having a routine. When I do this, I wake up still at an early hour, therefore the sleep is not long and draining as what has been believed to be. I just needed to give things a chance and allow myself to understand the fact that the medication in question is to help me and not hurt me as I had once believed.

Now the other piece of that is working towards having a standard routine and keeping somewhat engaged throughout the day to not have the willingness to want to fall asleep. The reality of the situation is that I am not so certain that I have autistic burnout to the degree that I previously thought I did. In fact, since the pandemic, I have greatly lessened my workload and therefore it is less demanding than it once was.

Are things outside my ability to be controlled more challenging? At times they are. But in fact, many of the things that have changed over the last few months have indeed gotten better because of caring for myself better than I once was and I need to realize that I cannot use burnout as an excuse, rather I need to care for the other things that I have missed out on over the past few years.

 The fact that I do need to find a balance between what is routine and what is too much to handle. The fact that I have always been able to understand my limitations rather than being able to know that I am caring for myself more than I have been in the past. I need to work on bettering myself more and developing a better routine for myself rather than continuing to make excuses as to whether I can do simple things like time with family or just doing things that I enjoy or have had interest in the past with.

It is the fact that I have been so much all over the place the last five years that I am finally grounded and need to find my niche in this world for once and will slowly work towards finding what I need to do to get to a place where I am indeed content with my life and not so much bored and out of sorts. It will come within time, and I cannot beat myself up over not doing something right at one moment or another. I will find my way on this planet as time comes, but I must give myself grace in doing so.