Maitta! Always - Daily Amazing Confusions -

Today by the afternoon the temperature outside rose to 32 degree Celsius. It was extremely hot in this time of this year, before the rainy season.

A few hours ago, I saw a news bulletin of an earthquake on TV. It wasn't so strong, but the jingle of the bulletin was a little bit scary. Some jingles of TV news bulletin is really scary. When I was in elementary school, I saw a news bulletin of a terrible airplane crash. The serious result of the crash and the scariness of the jingle of bulletin kept me from watching TV alone at night for several days. Even now, when I turn on my TV, I'm sometimes afraid that as soon as I turn on the TV, a news bulletin may begin with a scary jingle. This feeling is similar to one I feel when I'm back my room dark and I'm afraid if telephone begins to ring before I turn on the light.

Burnout? I almost fainted on the train home today. This week I have had to cope with recovery from sick feeling after my driver's license renewal, improvement of answering phone calls, tempers of co-workers (in which I gave a bad impression even a smallest shortage from perfect business manner), editing a lot of web pages, and paperwork of the end of the month. I've barely adapted to my workplace, but once I leave the office, I have to face run-out of my energy. Of course I'm going to work for next week, and I'll do after that. Now it's time I quit thinking of burnout and thought of rest and recovery of my energy.

Today I participated in the monthly meeting of adults with developmental disabilities. To be honest, I felt a gap between the viewpoint majority of participants and mine. I think one reason for this is because many of them managed to landed a job, without any idea that they could be with developmental disabilities, and after that they found themselves either different, incapable, or in communication troubles. Then they began to think that they may be with developmental disability. My case was much different. On job hunting I was regarded as incapable, because I was often mute when I had to say my name, or I tried to avoid contact overly with recruiters from businesses. My struggle has been how to show employers to show that I, who am apparently incapable, am somehow able and seeking help for show my ability, contrary to the majority's cases in which they struggled to make some people understand that they have problem with their perception or communication and ask them for app...

Recently, I've had my hands full with coping with tasks and communications at work, and I have less clear idea of what I'd like to advocate for adults on the autism spectrum like me in the past (and even now, even though I try to hide as much as possible). Through my working experience, I'm thinking of making presentations better for myself of the past, who greatly struggled with human relationships at school and activities looking for a job. Some codes at my workplace may go against my autistic nature, but thanks to them, I've begun to have this kind of perspective.

In spite of many events which drained and discouraged a lot, I managed to weather this day. This morning I thought of the worse, that I had to get out of the workplace, and the team would adopt all idea of the other colleague in the meeting, and prepared for it. The outcome has been far better than I imagined then, and now I feel much better, with little worry, although my tiredness is still serious even now.

I'm now too emotional to say anything online. I need cooling my head.

Today I went to renew my driver's license expiring in this July. I road train at 7 a.m. and arrived at the driver's license center at 8:30. I walked from the subway station instead of driving or taking a bus from there. There was already a waiting line up to the entrance, and I waited 30 minutes. I waited in line about 1 hour total, in payment, sight checkup, and taking the photo. Then I took the course. It took 30 minutes. I left the center 10:30. On the way back the subway station, I felt hungry, so I had lunch on the way. After I was home 1 p.m. I felt tired, especially my eyes were sore and I had upset stomach, so much that I threw up. Now I feel a little bit better, but I need a lot of sleep.

After I swam at a pool, I was dazed, and I've forgotten the ideas for a blog posts. I went to swim for the first time in three weeks. I walked the way of 5.6km to the pool there and back, and swam 1.2km. When I went to school (more than 25 years ago) swimming was an exercise far from relaxing. It took a lot of energy to keep myself floating on the water and moving forward. I was a slow swimmer, but I was able to swim a long distance even though my form was probably next to drown. I continued to go to swim after I entered university. Year by year, although my vitality has been on the decline, I've found myself swimming more relaxed way, sometimes even more relaxed than walking to work, and keeping on being able to swim a long distance.

In the first two years since I began my blogs, I posted articles every day. I wrote about my experience of childhood, when I was in university and when I was looking for and on the trainings for a job. During that period, the point I wanted to tell people the most was about panics I experienced in my daily life and small changes of daily events. After I began to work, I've been trained to press behind the nature easily to cause panic, and to seek alternative behaviors like silence or taking deep breathes. Panics have been the events which shows my characteristic the most, however they have limited the options of my life, especially in vocational aspect. Now I think that I've been too dependent on panics to describe what I am. I guess I have several good traits other people see in me but I haven't well described, which may be less sensational but more beneficial to readers, with and without developmental disabilities.

After I began to work as the requisition for my work steps up, I find myself walking away from hobbies which requires stepping a few steps out of my comfort zone. Last winter, I went skiing with skiing club members much fewer time than ever before. I preferred to go skiing alone riding bus. Also, I went to occasion to have conversations with adults with developmental disorders fewer times than the years before. It seemed at first like I walk fewer steps out of my comfort zone than before, but on second thought, but I noticed that at work I walk more steps walking out of my comfort zone by trying to acquire more demanding communication skills. After all the steps I can walk out of my comfort zone don't change easily, and if I try to push hard to go beyond, it may affect my mental state severely.

At work I use vending machine daily for a caned coffee daily. Recently I noticed that there are labels on these machines. On these labels written description of the machines. A description of a machine includes its model number, manufacture, and its power consumption. Home electric appliances usually have labels of information of these kinds, and you can even see a label of this kind on buses and electric cars of railroads, but I guess just few people turn their eyes on these descriptions. This small discovery of the descriptions gave me much excitement to my daily working life.

In my workplace team members set monthly goals to improve our working environment. We set goals in three points, greeting, smile, and cleaning . This month our goal in smile is doing things to other members which has made you smile . Until this month has passed half way through, I wasn't much conscious about this goal. When I work out mid-term review, I have to confront the fact that I haven't taken this goal much seriously. I haven't been aware of what action from colleagues has made me smile. After I knew this fact, I began to try hard to remember members' actions which made me happy. I remembered that I felt happy when my effort for better greetings and business manners were acknowledged and admired, and when members were interested in what I had wrote on the corporate blog, regardless of technical article or mental health article. This workout of remembering has made me more aware of many things by members that have made me happy, and help me think mor...

Every day at work, each team members including me either makes a brief speech or write a blog article for team members. The topic can be whatever the member speaking or writing is interested in. The topics I've took up for my speech or blog posts are my favorite promenade course, the difference between html and xhtml, review of coffees available at a price less than 200 yen, lab notebooks, regular expression enhancing data process productivity and so on. At first I stumbled lot and even was sometimes frozen or panicked, and now, although far from perfect, I usually can speak or write somehow smoothly. Before I started my current job, I could hardly speak at all, and I can't even imagine myself giving a presentation for a company, but now I at least can cope with small speeches and articles. At work, of course I do these things in Japanese, but as continuing this blog with daily posts, I know I can also somehow manage to write something in English. Unfortunately, rece...

It took more than two hours to go to the place of the job training, with two transfers, one from train to subway, and one from subway to bus. Riding on various transportation everyday gave me additional stress, so I sometimes got out train and walk a back road to "shortcut" subway, take a bus to the place by different route. This actually didn't save much time, but I liked this "shortcut" because I preferred walking enjoying change of scenes of back roads to sitting long time on subway and bus in a cramped posture, as well as the walk was a good chance to take a exercise to maintain my energy.

As we need refresh on weekends, so our gadgets like iPod or kindle. I recharge them on weekends while I myself take a rest.

This Saturday I made a clinic visit. There were so many visitors that I had to wait more than 30 minutes. While waiting I read books though my Kindle at first but before long I became sleepy, so I took a nap for a while at the waiting room. When I walk up, I had to wait a little more, so I began to read magazines on the racks of the clinic. There were several issues of the Newsweek Magazine (Japanese version). Although I doubt that I really understand the articles on them, I found the topics of the articles were very interesting. Topics I read was about leaders of countries, a brand-new video game hardware, and writers. When I was studying for the entrance exams to universities, I subscribed English version of Newsweek, and tried to read regularly and understand what was written. After I entered to university, I also subscribed for the Time Magazine, but I could only read at most 20% of the articles of the issues which were delivered. I have to admit I could hardly enjoy th...

Before I started my current job, I seldom took notes. At my current job I was intensively trained to take notes what my bosses had said. I was overconfident of my memory until then. It may be true that my long term memory is very strong, but my short term memory isn't so strong not to bother my bosses or customers by asking question repeatedly, without taking notes. Acquiring the skill of taking notes, other basic business communication skills like answering phone calls became less pressure to me. Practice makes perfect. I know my skills are far from perfect, so I'll repeat basic things at work daily.

On the job training I had taken since 2007, I had monthly allowance for the "work training" which was connected to real business. It was less than half the salary I had gotten when I worked the year before, but still it was still an incentive to improve my skills. Although shocked by how little the allowance was, it was much enough to buy iPod nano 3rd generation. Little had I been interested in music player of this kind before since I was left jobless after I left university because I didn't think I can afford them, but after receiving compensation for my toil, my motivation for language learning and enjoying life more had been recovered. To tell the truth, I have almost forgotten what I was listening initially when I bought the iPod. I remember I would lessen to Effortless English lessons in 2008, when I was preparing for the STEP test, or Eiken, one of the most popular English tests in Japan. I also remember I had been listening to the CBS weekend roundup since bef...

I opened my Japanese blog in August, 2009, but it took more than one month to post my first article after I opened the blog. I opened the blog accidentally, rather than intended. In that month before I write my first post, I even thought that I was going to delete the blog. On the other hand I was also thinking that opening a blog accidentally was quite a good opportunity to make some effort to fight with my shyness. My first several posts focused mainly on my shyness. I then really wanted to tell someone about my serious problem with communication especially in a speech, which I thought was a great stumbling block in the effort to find a job. I also wanted to tell my experience of my childhood which I thought had made me even more shy and have very low self esteem. At that time, although I didn't have any skill to create any cool drawing or video, I wanted to post ones anyway no matter how terrible they may be. The picture and videos I made in the beginning this blog and my...

I opened my blogs in 2009. I began two blogs in much the same period, the fall of this year. I had been thinking that I could have have some means to show my points of view, especially from the point of view from an adult in Japan on the autism spectrum and struggling with finding a job. The reason I had hesitated to begin a blog was simply because I'm extremely shy, I was so shy that it had taken as many as 15 minutes to say my name when my counselor asked when I first met with. When I was about to open my Japanese blog, I had already had Yahoo! account, and there was an icon showing you can begin your blog with one click away. I clicked it. I thought probably there was some confirmation procedures, so I didn't take it much seriously. Then, lo and behold, I saw a welcome message, "Congratulations! You've opened your blog successfully!" I was surprised. I hadn't been much prepared. Seeing the initial post by the blog system, saying "I've just b...

In the second year of the job training, I was absorbed in data entry tasks, and didn't make much progress in preparing for job hunting, making progressing with job finding, or taking concrete actions. Now I remember that there may have been a lot of hints of what employers wanted on us on the training, but I just turned a deaf year. This is a reason many trainees I had helped and taught a lot about data entry earlier than I and at last few people including me was left with finding any job.

I became too nervous at church today. This mad my muscle pain I had gotten yesterday even worse. I'm going to take a sleep a few hours longer than usual, to go to work with fine mental and physical state.

In 2009 I began Japanese and English blog. It was my first output on the Internet. Until then I only read information on the Internet although I had hoped to write something there. Encouraged by many articles written by adults on the autism spectrum, I had wished to write about my unique experience in my childhood and after I came of the age. By the time, I had realized I'm shy and basically I'm not sure what I want to talk about, although I believe that I have quite unique view with unique sensitiveness. Before I write the first words on the blogs, I hesitated to post although I had written something. I was afraid that something I said was on the Internet. I was also afraid of get any response for what I've written. This hesitation lasted about half a month, and it took as much time to actually write something on my blogs. After I began my blogs, I realized that it isn't so easy to describe my uniqueness. What I write is not unique as what I feel and I hope...

5 years ago I was on a job training program. I was engaged in data entry of business cards. The work was just for me, because I had known that I had the strength of high accuracy of data entry through job assessments. Still, I was far from perfect, and I sometimes made unconscious mistake. My problem was, and is great disappointment with mistakes, which lowers my productivity. My accuracy was still at the top level then, but there were superior trainees with higher speed and accuracy. I wanted to beat her by all means, so I practiced typing every day at least 30 minutes. I also analyzed my tendency of mistake. This worked well somehow and my skill was much improved, but at the same time I missed many skills essential to work for a company.

Editing graphic images for a web page requires much more energy than entering data. I was totally exhausted on the train back home and even after I arrived, it took nearly 30 minutes to set to the table for supper. I need to find a method to reduce task to complete an image not to exhaust myself by the the time I finish.

My iPod nano I bought nearly 6 years ago is still in use, without changing battery. It was one in the third generation and looks fatter than ones in other generations. I changed its cover twice and replaced headphones more than 5 times, but its main unit and battery has surprisingly long life. When I bought it, I ordered Apple care protect plan too, afraid of running out of battery in its first 2 years. This surprisingly long life of its battery is probably because it doesn't have any mechanical parts unlike hard disk players like iPod classic, or unlike players driving tapes or disks by motors. By the way the battery of my old PC doesn't work any more. It hasn't been working for more than two or three years. I think one reason the battery has run out is the PC was always plugged in to AC power and excessively charged, which makes its battery life shorter. Writing this article, I've just come up with another reason. As well as electrical circuits like CPU and RA...

Holiday is ending and I'm going to work starting from tomorrow. I'm a little bit worried, but I think it'll be all right if I take medicine after supper and enough sleep for tomorrow. I spent most of this holiday at home, not much going out. Still, it's precious time not to be worried about the stress from human relationships.

On holidays, I need not to be awake, depending on coffee or other kinds of stimulants. This is one thing I'm grateful for holidays.

At work I go upstairs to my workplace on the 8th floor from first floor for exercise when I take a break. I often count my pulse rate after I climbed. Usually it takes 2 minutes 30 seconds to climb. Usually it's between 30 to 33 in 15 seconds, that is 120 to 132 a minute. Since today is a holiday I need to take exercise otherwise, I jumped rope. I did for 2 minutes 30 seconds, and counted my pulse rate. It was 36 in 15 seconds, or 144 a minute. It was surprising that jumping rope is harder than climbing stairs. Since I became good at jumping rope when I was in elementary school, I haven't been conscious about how hard jumping rope is - until recently, I need not think about the physical load of exercises I've been practiced. Now I'm more conscious of the physical load, and this make me feel that my body has become weaker than ever before, probably because of aging and less amount of exercise.

Recently, I've seldom spoken about my past, especially about 3-5 years ago when I was preparing for job. I just remembered that I had struggled with finding job, and sometimes complained to myself about my situation then. Now I have my hands full with going to work regularly without much communication and mental troubles, and forgetting about my struggle just a few years ago. I need to be grateful about my situation in that I have a job which I can regularly go to, and hope some day I talk more about the experience about struggles before I landed my current job.

Recently, I spend more time listening to music on my iPod. Listening to my favorite music comforts me a lot when I'm under a great stress or anxiety. Spending more time in listening to music means less time listening to news spoken in English as I did before. I guess this is why I'm losing my English vocabulary, which is one reason why my blog posts have become shorter than ones in the beginning of this year. The effect of listening to English a lot every day is great. I've realized this even more after I'm on the verge of losing the habit of listening to English every day.

Since I began to work at my current workplace, canned coffees has been my favorite. I like them because of their high availability. They are available at vending machines and vending machines are everywhere, in the city and in the countryside. Basically a canned coffee costs 120 yen (hiked to 130 yen along with consumption hike), but there are many discount vending machine you can buy one for 100 yen if you search carefully. High availability is their strength and taste has been much improved in recent years. Of course, if I could drip coffee at my workplace, it would be great, but a canned coffee is an practical option to have a cup of coffee in a short break at work, and its prices are much lower, even though much higher than dripping by yourself or soluble coffees, than most of coffee shops. But these days strong rivals has been appeared for canned coffees. Drip coffees at convenience stores. In recent years, increasing convenience stores in my city are equipped with drip or ...