Burnout!
As I sit here this morning, waiting for 11:30 to come around as that is the time I have to leave for work, I decided to write. At times I wonder if there are others who find solace in the pattern of a nine to five. Sometimes I do feel that way and other times I acknowledge that the same forty hours every week feels like it would be a mind trap for autistic overload. You see, I have tried many times to do the adult thing, with adult hours, the same thing, day in and day out and that for me ends within a year and a half… every time. I can’t keep it going no matter how much I try. And believe me, I have tried.
I think that is why I love to drive motorcoach for the company I work for. Yes, I am always driving, but I am always driving somewhere different. I get down time often and can just relax in the silence of an empty bus doing the things that I love to do, whether that is writing drawing or just staring up at the sky with an eBook playing in my ear.
I am going to try to break down and explain the effect of the same thing over and over in a way that I’m hoping everyone can understand. There are so many different facets that go into autistic overload that I will only be brushing the surface, but hopefully it will be enough to be effective.
I have a tendency to misunderstand co-workers or feel that I need to converse with them more for them to accept or understand me. This leads to either getting into trouble because I am talking too much; or my feeling as if I am in the outfield trying to hear what the catcher is saying. It doesn’t work.
On a bus, my co-workers are the people I am safely transporting behind me and the Saucon device that is staring at me, let’s me know I’m speeding when I’m not. As I pass an off ramp and it’s GPS glitches and thinks I’m taking the ramp, it adjusts the speed limit in the device, even though I am still on the highway. So, my angry co-worker is a little camera in the front window that I repeatedly tell to fix itself. Our safety manager finds my arguments with this little device (when no one is on board) are comical.
The same drive to and from work every day, seeing the same things at the same times without reprieve, is draining. I love driving, just not on repeat with the same stops and same sights. What begins with a good length of time to switch from work mode to mom mode, becomes the length of time that it takes before I can switch to mom mode. The drive in itself begins to feel like part of the job and it in itself becomes tedious.
Working at the same time every day may be nice for some, but the monotony of doing the same thing over and over without seeing a day when it won’t be happening is bleak. Yeah, yeah. I know that working forty plus hours a week is the way adulthood works, and I have told myself countless times that I should be ok with the way it is because I am a member of society, and I eventually want to retire myself. So, I chose to go back to the company I got by CDL with to drive their motorcoaches.
There is no monotony of having the same route driven over and over every day with the same wake up time day in and day out. I could work four days and have forty plus hours at times or work four days and only have sixteen. It depends on the time of year. Sometimes I could be at work at 8:00 am, sometimes it’s 2:30 am and other times it’s 5:15 pm. And though I am sure some people’s eyes just bugged out of their heads looking at the chaos of the times, but I am able to plan for them. I get my schedule 10 days prior to my work week and on that Tuesday, every week, I put the information into three calendars. One in my go-bag, one on the fridge for my family to see and one on my phone to alert me when I have to be ready.
During the summer and winter breaks there is a lull in the amount of work we have so I have more time with my family and during the spring and fall, the business is booming which leaves me with 60+ hours at times. Eventually, when my daughter is a bit older, I may even opt to be one of the overnight drivers who brings schools on their DC and Canada trips, but that is in the future. Something I can work myself up to. Driving motorcoach is fairly easy for me to do since I have particularly good special awareness and a lot of experience. When I am in a city’s hustle and bustle with a 45-foot coach, I giggle to myself imagining a game of high stakes Tetris and what it would look like from an aerial view as I maneuver.
The down time I get has to be my favorite part of the job. I drive to pick the clients up, bring them to where they need to be, hang my hammock in the cargo bay and either write or draw, break down my makeshift fort before they’re expected to be back and then return them and myself to our original location. The down time can be anywhere between an hour and even six at times. It all depends on what I am bringing the client to do.
On the side, because I have a few hyper focuses that I enjoy, I have a craft room that I will create any number of things in, A desk in my bedroom, where I am currently sitting to write this post, a big yard where I have tons of trees shrubs and plants to enjoy. More than sixty plants in my home that I care for and baby as if they were my own.
Working in the field I do allows me to do all of the things I want to and gives me the fluctuations I need in order to ensure I don’t feel like it’s true work. Of course it takes skill, patience, and knowledge to do my job, but I don’t want to hide under a rock as often. If I approach a point where I can feel autistic burnout setting in, I feel comfortable enough to ask my dispatcher to avoid scheduling me so many hours so I can take a break and reset without it being a risk to my employment as a whole.
The sad part is that I never knew this about myself until I was thirty-five. Well, I knew that I had a high turnover rate at jobs, always seeking something else by 15 months, but I never realized that there was an actual reason I couldn’t keep working somewhere. I thought there was something wrong with me. It wasn’t until I did research and found that many on the spectrum need accommodations to avoid the overload, that I put it all together.
I know now that I need to give myself a break when I start feeling overwhelmed. Thankfully, my job has times when there are very few hours a week and it gives me the reset that I need. This means that that 18-month overload doesn’t ever come to fruition. It’s perfect for me. What is your perfect employment balance?
