6 months on, not exactly an update…

Well, it has been a ridiculous 6 months since my big event in March. I didn’t intend it to get anywhere near this long before posting anything here. And there are so many other things (related to this project and otherwise) I had been intending to do, and haven’t…

I don’t know if anyone is, or was ever, actually reading this. But in case anyone is, this is… well, maybe not exactly an update, but an attempt at an explanation for the absence of updates.

It probably seems like I/this project disappeared without trace. Nothing horrible or dramatic has happened – it has essentially just been limits on my time and executive function.

I started working for GMCDP on the Disabled People’s Archive project in the middle of doing my co-op research – initially part-time, which I *thought* I could combine with finishing the research… but, perhaps inevitably, I couldn’t. #actuallyautistic and #actuallyADHD = chronically incapable of realistically estimating my time and work capacity, and in my case at least, I seem to be unable to not be unrealistically optimistic about it. So from November 2022 to March 2023, I was trying to juggle:

– doing 21 hours a week on the GMCDP job

– trying to write up my research report (which, oddly, the ISRF apparently didn’t actually seem to require, but which to me still felt – and still does feel, really – essential to do, as without a publicly available report, doing the research was pretty pointless)

– organising the event that eventually did happen in March

– and sorting out lots of things relating to the unfurnished, undecorated flat in a large, multi-property social housing co-op, that I moved into in October 2022.

Something had to be dropped. In the end, I got it agreed that I could take a month off work with GMCDP to write up the research and organise the event, and start work again (now full-time) after the event. I still didn’t manage to fully write the research report. (I’ve written approximately half of it, and I still haven’t done anything on it since March.) I decided to concentrate on a shorter version that would be my presentation for the March event (which was still far too long… but that’s another executive dysfunction story).

Then I started work for GMCDP again, now full-time (35 hours a week), pretty much straight away after the event (I gave myself 2 days to recover). I had had the idea that I’d be working for GMCDP 5 days a week, which would still leave me 2 days a week to work on co-op stuff (including but not limited to finishing the research report, and various follow-up projects). But that didn’t happen – I soon found that if I have a 2-day “weekend”, it usually takes me until about midnight on the second day to even start thinking about non-main-job projects. (Also, there’s fitting in stuff that is in the category of basic emotional needs for me, such as seeing friends and going outside.)

So basically, I pretty much haven’t done anything on this research project since March, but not really because I didn’t want to. I really do want to finish the research report and try to make other impacts of the research happen, but sometimes wanting just isn’t enough.

I have now taken 2 weeks of annual leave from work, a big chunk of which is going to be spent seeing friends who I haven’t managed to see for ages, but I’m hoping that I can manage to at least plan a bit of stuff in the time. And I have agreed that after this 2 weeks off, I’m going to trial going down to 28 hours a week from 35. I’m hoping that basically having a third day off per week might enable me to actually commit some time to this and other important-to-me stuff – though I don’t want to pin too much hope on it before I’ve tried it…

In the longer term, I’m still considering trying again to apply for funding for a follow-up to this research project. My Disabled People’s Archive job is currently funded until October 2024 – though as is usual with DPO project work, we are looking for potential other sources of funding to extend it, so things beyond then are somewhat uncertain. So there isn’t really a conclusion here.

But I genuinely do want and intend to write up the “findings” of this research (both as a freely available report, and potentially some bits in greater depth as journal papers) – I’m just not sure when that will happen yet…