I’m still thinking about my thinking and what parts of it I want to/think I’m able to change. In yesterday’s post, I talked about my unending difficulty in getting to bed at a reasonable time. It’s something I’ve struggled with all my life, and any time I think I might have a handle on it, I don’t. It’s the hardest thing I’ve done in my life, quite frankly (trying to get a decent sleep schedule), and I don’t know if I can actually do it.
Huh. This is the first time I’ve actually admitted that. Let me clarify. By “it”, I mean getting to bed at 2 a.m. every night. I think even 3 a.m. is pushing it. I have said for many years that it’s possible while I continue to not do it. Most emphatically not to do it. Right now, I’m getting to bed around seven to eight, which is the latest I’ve ever done.
As for eating, I’m also in a pretty bad rut. I’ve been DoorDashing way too much as it’s way too convenient. I hate cooking. I see it as a huge waste of time, especially as I live alone. I don’t mind eating the same thing several days in a row, so I get the idea of cooking in batches. But it’s still so much work for such little return. I hate all the prep work so much. But, I can do simple things when I put my mind to it. Like pasta and sauce, scrambled eggs, and salads. The last isn’t cooking, obviously, but it’s still more effort than I actually want to make.
Here’s the thing. It’s really hard to separate to stop thinking of myself as lazy because it’s what I’ve been told all my life. Seriously. How the fuck hard is it to put a simple salad together? I can even buy the bagged lettuce for fuck’s sake. It is literally buy the bag of lettuce/spinach/whatever and a bottle of dressing. Yes, I can add tomatoes to make it even better. If I’m very ambitious, I’ll buy an avocado and let it rot. This is the problem. I have all the good intentions in the world, but that means jackshit at the end of the day if I don’t actually eat them.
I have a dozen eggs sitting in the fridge right now. I bought them several days ago with the intent to make breakfast sandwiches. People in the Discord were going on and on about them, and it inspired me. I like eggs, and I can actually make a good omelet/scrambled eggs. I put in fake cheese, some kind of veggie, and sometimes chicken or ham. It truly is simple and doesn’t make time at all. Oh, sometimes I put lactose-free sour cream in it as well.
I have yet to make anything with the eggs. They are sitting guiltily in my fridge, and I am aware that time is running out. Will I make anything with them before I have to toss them? Who knows? If I don’t, then I’ll feel so bad when I throw them out. And yet.
I do this all the time. I buy things I know I should eat (like fruits and veggies). Sometimes, I do eat them, but other times, I let them rot in my fridge. It doesn’t help that I lve alone so it’s hard to buy things in portions that are amenable to solo living. Also, serving sizes are ridiculous. They are way too tiny. I know why it is, but I would prefer more honest servings. Let’s face it. No one is going to eat the tiny amount that they suggest (like a fistful of pasta).
I have resolved several times to start cooking. I do something simple like pasta, sauce, and spinach. Oh, with fake-cheese. It’s so easy–I can do it in ten minutess. Or just leftover rice heated up with fake-cheese. Or a bagel with fake cream cheese and if I’m feeling extra indulgent, fake cheese on top.
I hate cooking. I hate it in a way I can’t fully explain. I hate how tedious and boring it is. How many nitpicky details you have to attend. How nothing can ever be done at the same time unless you plan it precisely. How you have to put in so much effort for such minimal output.
Weirdly, I used to love baking–which is even more precise than cooking. You can get away with eyeballing things for cooking in a way you can’t with baking. If a recipe says to sift the flour before folding it in, you damn well better sift that flour. In a weird way, I think I might have gotten into baking moreso than cooking because I had to concentrate and focus in order to do it.
Yes, I like to do things the hard way. I’m not sure if this is a feature of autism or not, but I’ve been like this since I was a kid. I have read up on autistic inertia, and I’m not talking about that (though I definitely have that). I’m talking about my brain thinking the hard way to do things is the only way to do them. I don’t do it on purpose (despite what my mother thinks); I just…have to do it the way I have to do it.
I think if I could just–ok, I Googled it. It turns out that cooking can be difficult for autistic people for several reason. One of them being that it’s like five tasks stuck in one. Another is the different timing for all the things your’e cooking. The first one resonates with me. When I tried to use an instapot (what I call it), I tried to find easy recipes. The ones that claimed to be easy with only four or five steps went like this. “First, chop up all the carrots, celery, and a gazillion other veggies.” The instapot came with an ‘easy recipes’ booklet. I tried one of them. You had to sear the meat before putting in in the instapot. Um, what? I have never seared meat in my life. They said you could do it in the instapot, but I could not figure it out. So I did it in a frying pan instead. And burned my hand.
Have I mentioned that I have depth perception issues and extremely bad periphery issues? This means that every time I cook, I’m pretty much guaranteed to burn myself. Which, I suppose, is another reason not to like cooking.
Back to ‘easy’ recipes. I quickly learned that what cooks mean by easy is very different than what I mean by easy. It makes sense because the difference between the pro level of something and the noob level is hard to overstate. Or rather, it’s hard to emphasize just how big this difference is. It’s the same with the pro and noob of anything, really. (Resists urge to bring up the second finding of the Dunning-Kruger study yet again.)
When I mentioned the quandary to my brother, he was dismissive. He’s a cook, so he couldn’t see what my problem was. Funnily enough, he’s also autistic, even more so than I am.
More tomorrow.