Joy & Austin 15: Standing for the Fetus

[SapphireSlytherin]

45 minutes ago, ChairmanMeow said:

I would also like to add my love of Germany and its people

Me too. I lived there for about a year-and-a-half, and I'd move back in a HEARTBEAT, if I could.

[Jana814]

My parents knew a couple who was always late. It's was mostly her. Even as a kid I thought it was wrong. When they got divorced I remember saying maybe (man's name) will finally be on time for things and he was. 

[Shouldabeenacowboy]

4 hours ago, ChairmanMeow said:

I would also like to add my love of Germany and its people. The kindest, most polite, and efficient country I have visited

 

3 hours ago, SapphireSlytherin said:

Me too. I lived there for about a year-and-a-half, and I'd move back in a HEARTBEAT, if I could.

Me three. So much so that I married one! 

[SapphireSlytherin]

We're working on moving to the UK, but Theresa May has made it almost impossible for me to go there, even though I've been married to a Brit for almost 20 years.

I'm so much more "at home" in Europe than the States. Always have been. It's almost torture living here! lol

[Shouldabeenacowboy]

3 minutes ago, SapphireSlytherin said:

We're working on moving to the UK, but Theresa May has made it almost impossible for me to go there, even though I've been married to a Brit for almost 20 years.

I'm so much more "at home" in Europe than the States. Always have been. It's almost torture living here! lol

That's interesting! My husband and I are both European, but live in the USA and there is nowhere else we'd rather be. We love our countries and Europe, but we found what we were looking for here in the US of A - funny enough, we reached the same conclusion coming from totally different life circumstances!

[Jinder Roles]

Question for the hella punctual folks: when you're on vacation, do you plan things as meticulously, or are you more lax? I sometimes find that people who are used to precise schedules have issues with just 'being'. 

To be clear, I can be on time. I'm always early for movies, flights, trains etc. Being on time for class gets harder the more stressed/burned out I am. But it's not too bad. I struggle with  morning activities though. Anything scheduled before 10:30 is a struggle. 

@WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?, I also find that my time-sense makes me a lot more patient with waiting for others. A lot of h more timely pairs get easily irritated sitting through long talks or waiting for more than 3 minutes.

 

[VelociRapture]

4 minutes ago, Jinder Roles said:

Question for the hella punctual folks: when you're on vacation, do you plan things as meticulously, or are you more lax? I sometimes find that people who are used to precise schedules have issues with just 'being'. 

To be clear, I can be on time. I'm always early for movies, flights, trains etc. Being on time for class gets harder the more stressed/burned out I am. But it's not too bad. I struggle with  morning activities though. Anything scheduled before 10:30 is a struggle. 

@WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?, I also find that my time-sense makes me a lot more patient with waiting for others. A lot of h more timely pairs get easily irritated sitting through long talks or waiting for more than 3 minutes.

 

Husband and I are fairly punctual people. The only vacations I’ve taken as an adult have been with him. We plan some stuff ahead of time, but mostly have zero issues relaxing and just rolling with things as they happen. This was especially true on our honeymoon - the only things we planned was travel and the one excursion we did. Otherwise we did what looked most fun or relaxing at the moment. Mostly laying on the beach drinking. Good times, good times. 

So no. We personally don’t have trouble with simply “being.”  

[HarleyQuinn]

10 minutes ago, Jinder Roles said:

Question for the hella punctual folks: when you're on vacation, do you plan things as meticulously, or are you more lax? I sometimes find that people who are used to precise schedules have issues with just 'being'. 

 

 

I'm very punctual and when I go on vacation it's kind of a mixture of both. I'll always plan one day in a new country where we take one escorted tour outside of the city we're staying in, so that day I suppose is very carefully planned. But on the other days I don't. We just go do our thing. I do try to plan things in my head beforehand and try to follow it, but I don't get bent out of shape if I don't get to something when I thought I would.

I never sleep in on vacation though, I'll always set my alarm for around 8:00am because I like to spend as much time as I can experiencing it. 

[singsingsing]

There's a pretty big gulf between having to have every single second of your day meticulously scheduled, and constantly being an hour late for everything/making people wait around until you decide that you feel like showing up. Most people are somewhere in between. You can be punctual and polite AND still be flexible and capable of 'just being'.

[allthegoodnamesrgone]

46 minutes ago, Jinder Roles said:

Question for the hella punctual folks: when you're on vacation, do you plan things as meticulously, or are you more lax? I sometimes find that people who are used to precise schedules have issues with just 'being'. 

To be clear, I can be on time. I'm always early for movies, flights, trains etc. Being on time for class gets harder the more stressed/burned out I am. But it's not too bad. I struggle with  morning activities though. Anything scheduled before 10:30 is a struggle. 

@WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?, I also find that my time-sense makes me a lot more patient with waiting for others. A lot of h more timely pairs get easily irritated sitting through long talks or waiting for more than 3 minutes.

I have a schedule, but I HATE it, I hate having to be on time for things, but I do it because that is just how I am.  Now for my vacations, hubby and I are very much fly by the seat of our pants kind of people, we set no schedule and do what we want when we want for as long as we want. That is what vacations are for, IMO, only doing shit you want to do and never having to look at the clock.

I think it is a not so fine line between being punctual and being obsessive about scheduled time.   I'm not a patient person in general, I have ADD so my attention span nonexistent. I don't care if you are early, on time or 20 minutes later, 2 minutes into almost any conversation, if you are rambling on, my mind is finding squirrels. That is my struggle, forcing myself to pay attention for long periods of time, hell any period of time honestly.  I've learned over the years to either have someone w/ me for important conversations, so they can hear the whole thing, or I'll record meetings and such because I know I'll have missed things because my mind wanders.  It is very upsetting being a grown ass woman and not being able to listen to a 10 minute conversation with out zoning our, or even worse, wandering away when someone is talking to you because you forgot you were supposed to be listening.  

Do you know what it is like to have to read 3 or 4 books at a time to read anything, because you can't read more than a few pages of each one with out getting side tracked? OR watching a movie or TV show while having to do something else, like surf the web or knit or play a game on my phone? School was torture for me, having to sit still and listen for 40 to 50 minutes at a time. GAH, work is horrible, I wander around a lot, I have 20 1/2 finished jobs on my desk, 90% of the time. it all eventually gets done, but I can get into a lot of trouble for not having the ability to tackle a task through to completion in short periods of time.  So I tend to work at jobs, that are generally very chaotic, like office managers, or warehouse manager where I'm supposed to be doing 40 things at once. I've avoided working in fields that require strict concentration. 

[Lurky]

I'm a punctual person, and that includes holidays if I have plans I'm on time - like, for example if I've booked a timed ticket into an attraction (often these come in 15 min blocks), or catching trains, or hitting restaurant reservations.  I can't imagine flying to another country/city and missing out on those opportunities.  But it never stops me just chilling out and having go-with-the-flow days.

I grew up with a super-early and insanely-late parent, and both are frustrating in their own ways.  When they divorced it lead to a million arguments.  The time my mum wanted to join us when we were on holiday with my dad, and see the Jorvik Viking Museum in York, and was like an hour and a half late.  At the end of December.  In the snow.   This was before mobile phones, so we ended up taking shifts in the nearby shopping centre to keep warm, and when my mum turned up so late, of course she had her usual excuses, but none of it mattered - it's just who she is.

I completely understand the posters who are late because of anxiety and OCD/ADD etc, but my mum is just late because she's so disorganised.  She was a teacher, so her days were planned for her, and she is the type who goes right up to deadlines, but her work gave her those deadlines.  Outside of work, she was always terrible, and is they type who, for example, doesn't care if she's half an hour late for a restaurant booking, and that messes up the rest of the table-swapping - that's just their job, right? 

My dad is stupidly early, and that's also shitty.  Like if he's meant to arrive at 12, I'll be ready at 10, because I've had that "have to leap out of the shower" moment.  I had NO idea how they managed to get together in the first place, but they met when my dad was at uni, and my mum was at teacher training college, and she was living in student accommodation with a load of friends, so when my dad would turn up early to take her out, and my mum was running 45 mins late, there would always be one of the friends around to chat with my dad, so he never really noticed.    (The friends stayed super-close, and were my mum's bridesmaids, and always told the story of how my mum wanted to make her own wedding and bridesmaids' dresses, and of course was late, so they all sat up until 3am on the morning of the wedding, frantically sewing.  That's my mum all over - she legit doesn't care about the impact on other people.)

I do have a couple of friends who I've known since the pre-mobile days at school and uni, who are quite open about the fact they aren't so careful about times, as they know they can just text if they're running late.  It's not I'll be standing in the rain, waiting at the usual meeting point, for that half an hour, because they can rearrange on the fly.

[singsingsing]

11 minutes ago, allthegoodnamesrgone said:

Do you know what it is like to have to read 3 or 4 books at a time to read anything, because you can't read more than a few pages of each one with out getting side tracked? OR watching a movie or TV show while having to do something else, like surf the web or knit or play a game on my phone? School was torture for me, having to sit still and listen for 40 to 50 minutes at a time. GAH, work is horrible, I wander around a lot, I have 20 1/2 finished jobs on my desk, 90% of the time. it all eventually gets done, but I can get into a lot of trouble for not having the ability to tackle a task through to completion in short periods of time.  So I tend to work at jobs, that are generally very chaotic, like office managers, or warehouse manager where I'm supposed to be doing 40 things at once. I've avoided working in fields that require strict concentration. 

I also have ADHD and I know exactly what you mean. I'm really struggling to find the sort of work that's going to, well, work for me. And when I say 'work for me' I mean not leave me so mentally and physically exhausted every day that I'm miserable, constantly on the verge of a mental breakdown, and incapable of doing anything other than going to work, struggling through the day, coming home and collapsing.

I tried the 9-5, Monday-Friday office job thing and I'm not exaggerating when I say it almost killed me. I'm sure that sounds ridiculous, but it's true. I'm now looking at going back into retail, or something similar. The shifts tend to be shorter, you're on your feet instead of stuck behind a desk, you're moving around and doing a bunch of smaller tasks throughout the day, you're talking to people who come and go... honestly, it's kind of a more ADHD-friendly job than clerical/admin work.

[SapphireSlytherin]

On-timer, here. Actually, early bird.

I'm also a morning person, so I'm generally one of the first at work (which is AWESOME because I can get sooo much done before people start wandering in).

On weekends, DH and I can get more done before 7am than most people do in a day.

On vacation, if we don't pre-book timed tickets (as mentioned above), we are always at an attraction 30-45 minutes BEFORE it opens, so we're first in, don't have to pay extra for "skip the line" tickets, and have a small (relatively) crowd to deal with.

The vacation we just wrapped up (in the UK) was super-scheduled because almost everything we did had timed tickets (Jacobite Steam Train, Harry Potter & the Cursed Child, Warner Brothers Leavesden Studio Tour). We went to Edinburgh Castle without timed tickets, and got there before it opened. However, there were about a zillion tour groups who ALSO got there at the same time (luckily - they went through a specialized entry line). We were EARLY, and in a long line that was moving slowly. Why? Because the people who WORK THERE in the ticket booths were LATE FOR WORK. Seriously.

We're going to Paris later this month for a long weekend and have timed tickets for the Louvre, the Catacombs, and Versailles. With only three days "on the ground" there, we have to be strategic and judicious with our time. Sleep is overrated - and I'll sleep when I'm dead.

However - we're going to NYC in December and we have NOTHING scheduled. That makes me just a leeeeetle bit anxious.

 

[KelseyAnn]

20 hours ago, cascarones said:

We'd probably be really great friends, I'm type B personality and pretty laid back, but love me some to-do lists and if there was a Flo for Post it notes, it would be me. Dream job, right there. Or being the Trello dog. Since Mr. C and I both travel, it's not always the easiest to communicate what's going on electronically, but the color coded notes keep the ship running.

I'm personally punctual, have a brother who until having a child that got the time gene, had no concept of being on time. He doesn't like his little dictator hollering at him about being late and has figured out how to work the necessary time of finding all of the belongings (wallet, keys, cellphone) he's flung about at random, since for the life of him he can't set a place to put things day after day. It's been an unexpected, but very appreciated blessing.

Um, just looked up what Trello was and have no idea why super-busy me has never bothered to get it. 

[Shouldabeenacowboy]

3 hours ago, Jinder Roles said:

Question for the hella punctual folks: when you're on vacation, do you plan things as meticulously, or are you more lax? I sometimes find that people who are used to precise schedules have issues with just 'being'. 

We are pretty lax with our schedule when it involves just the two of us, whether we are on vacation or in our daily lives - we wake up when we feel like, we eat when we feel like, we do what we feel like, etc. and we greatly enjoy that. 

However, if our plans involves specific, timed events (whether it's a theater performance or a work commitment) or plans with other people affecting their time (of whatever type) we are typically early or right on time. 

[church_of_dog]

2 hours ago, Jinder Roles said:

Question for the hella punctual folks: when you're on vacation, do you plan things as meticulously, or are you more lax? I sometimes find that people who are used to precise schedules have issues with just 'being'. 

 

I don’t take vacations, but I’m also semi-retired, so maybe I can still have a relevant reply.

I have a really large need for downtime.  I mean I suspect it’s drastically more than most people.  I spend what most people would probably consider an inordinate amount of time surfing the web, playing computer games, gabbing with folks in town, soaking in the tub, or just staring out at the garden with a cuppa coffee in my hand.

How does this relate to my discomfort with being late?  Well, before I could acknowledge my need for lots of “downtime”, I would often run late for timed events because I was struggling with (and giving in to) my need for downtime even though I also needed to be doing whatever was on my schedule.  My day as planned didn’t include enough downtime even though I really needed it.  Once I acknowledged my need, I made a point of leaving lots and lots (Seriously.  LOTS) of time between planned events.  In fact, I try to not schedule more than one event per day, knowing that the rest of the day will end up filled with quiet time, or chatting on the park bench, or whatever nonstressful thing happens to arise.

Now, someone with both a job and a personal life, or kids, or a homestead to run, or whatever, might find it ridiculous to decide to not schedule more than one appointment or errand or home project per day, and it’s true that that only works for you if it works for you.  But it works for me.

The lateness issue is, to me, really an issue of communication, and also of telling the truth to oneself about how long x activity will realistically take and when I will realistically be ready to begin.

Ex: If my mom is going to agree to have lunch with me at noon, she needs to be able to recognize that history shows it takes her an hour to get dressed, instead of getting up at 11:30 and telling me she’ll be ready in ten minutes just because that ‘sounds right’ to her, when she makes zero effort to actually be ready in ten minutes and it consistently takes her far longer.

To me this is not hugely different from whether a person keeps their word about things in general.  If you’ll be on X schedule, admit it and don’t keep promising to be there earlier!  If you don’t know long something will take, say that, and if possible don’t promise to be somewhere at a time that you don’t know you can make (barring emergencies)!  If you try to adjust your schedule to meet a regular agreement with someone else, and it doesn’t work, next time try something else!  Or change your agreement!  Don’t just leave the person hanging, expecting you to be somewhere before you will actually be there.  At some point this is not about morning people vs night people or early people vs late people, it’s about recognizing reality and not making agreements you can’t keep.  

I have no problem being told “I’ll try to get there by three but it might be closer to four.”. But if that person says “I’ll be there by three for sure” and I then, believing them, I make a plan to be doing something else at four (even if that plan is napping or playing candy crush or reading fj) I’m going to be extra frustrated when the person doesn't show up on time because it then pushes my other plans out of whack.

Now the issue of it sometimes being caused by a person’s anxiety/depression etc, I recognize that is real and needs to be considered, but I still think the ability to adjust what one agrees to, to reflect what can be relied upon, is a pretty fundamental part of interacting with others.  There is nothing wrong with saying “I can’t promise X but I will be as close to that as I can”, or “I’ll call right before I leave with an ETA but can’t say in advance what time I can be there” so that the other person can make their own plans in a way that jives.

/diatribe, guess I had a few thoughts on this, lol

[Playagirl]

3 hours ago, singsingsing said:

I also have ADHD and I know exactly what you mean. I'm really struggling to find the sort of work that's going to, well, work for me. And when I say 'work for me' I mean not leave me so mentally and physically exhausted every day that I'm miserable, constantly on the verge of a mental breakdown, and incapable of doing anything other than going to work, struggling through the day, coming home and collapsing.

I tried the 9-5, Monday-Friday office job thing and I'm not exaggerating when I say it almost killed me. I'm sure that sounds ridiculous, but it's true. I'm now looking at going back into retail, or something similar. The shifts tend to be shorter, you're on your feet instead of stuck behind a desk, you're moving around and doing a bunch of smaller tasks throughout the day, you're talking to people who come and go... honestly, it's kind of a more ADHD-friendly job than clerical/admin work.

Thanks for this post, and yours too, @allthegoodnamesrgone (no clue how to quote two posters at once).  

I work in an office setting with someone with ADHD and I watch her struggle on a daily basis.  You guys have perfectly described what I see every day.  My colleague is such an intelligent woman and is passionate about her work but she has to fight so damn hard just to focus enough to get anything done that she ends up exhausted and beats herself up constantly.  Your posts have given me a much better view into what's going on in her head and why it's so difficult for her to stay on task. I've always been understanding but I know I'll be even more so after reading what you both shared.

[Audrey2]

Thank you, @singsingsing and @allthegoodnamesrgone. I now understand why I usually have 6-12 books going at one time (depending on how many library holds came in), and why I like to do something along with screen time, which really annoys my Sweetie and our friends. I've described my brain as listening to different radio stations at the same time.

[singsingsing]

12 minutes ago, Audrey2 said:

I've described my brain as listening to different radio stations at the same time.

Funnily enough, I've heard ADHD described like that before. Like a faulty radio. Sometimes you can't pick up any stations, sometimes you're jumping from station to station, and sometimes you get locked in on one station and can't pick up anything else!

[adidas]

6 hours ago, Jinder Roles said:

Question for the hella punctual folks: when you're on vacation, do you plan things as meticulously, or are you more lax? I sometimes find that people who are used to precise schedules have issues with just 'being'. 

To be clear, I can be on time. I'm always early for movies, flights, trains etc. Being on time for class gets harder the more stressed/burned out I am. But it's not too bad. I struggle with  morning activities though. Anything scheduled before 10:30 is a struggle. 

@WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?, I also find that my time-sense makes me a lot more patient with waiting for others. A lot of h more timely pairs get easily irritated sitting through long talks or waiting for more than 3 minutes.

 

I’m a planner - super organised and always punctual. My husband doesn’t like being late, but is not a planner.

It has taken a while, but my hubby and I have found a happy medium for the most part. If we schedule things on vacation, they’re planned meticulously - but when we’re on vacation I deliberately leave time where nothing is scheduled and we just relax or do things as we want.

Eg when we were in Fiji recently I booked an island day trip and a forest day trek. We had to be punctual for them. But the other days were unplanned - we slept in until we wanted, had a leisurely breakfast, decided what we wanted to do each day. Some days we did absolutely nothing and it was bliss. I love having a lazy day every now and then. But not too often.

I will admit, I love doing stuff. I would rather be busy than bored. In the past, on vacation my husband has had to hold me back sometimes and remind me that it’s okay to relax and do nothing. It has taken me a while to believe him when he says we don’t have to do absolutely everything available on offer  . 

I’m still more likely to go exploring while he has a nap (or I hit the gym) and he’s better about letting me go off to do things in foreign places by myself (nothing to do with control, he just worries because I can be a bit dumb and not realise when people don’t have my bests interests at heart).

But there have been times when he’s told me to sit still and relax, so he snores away while I twiddle my thumbs and wonder why we travelled 10,000km just to have a nap. Eventually he gets sick of my sighing and annoyed noises and tells me to go and do something  so I take myself on adventures and come back to tell him all about it. He then tells me he gets exhausted just hearing about it and so then it’s time for another nap. 

[Marly]

11 hours ago, allthegoodnamesrgone said:

 I've learned over the years to either have someone w/ me for important conversations, so they can hear the whole thing, or I'll record meetings and such because I know I'll have missed things because my mind wanders.  It is very upsetting being a grown ass woman and not being able to listen to a 10 minute conversation with out zoning our, or even worse, wandering away when someone is talking to you because you forgot you were supposed to be listening.  

Do you know what it is like to have to read 3 or 4 books at a time to read anything, because you can't read more than a few pages of each one with out getting side tracked? OR watching a movie or TV show while having to do something else, like surf the web or knit or play a game on my phone? School was torture for me, having to sit still and listen for 40 to 50 minutes at a time. GAH, work is horrible, I wander around a lot, I have 20 1/2 finished jobs on my desk, 90% of the time. it all eventually gets done, but I can get into a lot of trouble for not having the ability to tackle a task through to completion in short periods of time.  So I tend to work at jobs, that are generally very chaotic, like office managers, or warehouse manager where I'm supposed to be doing 40 things at once. I've avoided working in fields that require strict concentration. 

I so very much identify with this! The first two appointments I had with a psychiatrist to discuss medication (I also had cognitive therapy) I went alone, and when I got home I wasn't able to recall everything what she had been telling me. I also have an anxiety disorder, so my mind had only remembered the 'negative' things she had said, causing me to have a lot of anxiety attacks. After two appointments my dad suggested to accompany me. That made all the difference. I do have to say, my psychiatrist initially didn't like that I brought my dad. And initially it also made me feel very small, that as an adult I still needed my parents to accompany me to things like this, that I wasn't able to do this on my own.
I kind of have accepted that bringing someone works better for me, but at the same time it also makes me very aware of how my disabilities limit me, especially when I see other people my age being able to do things like that on their own.
Also, when people are able to watch movies or 45 minute series without getting distracted. When my boyfriend and I started dating, he always got irritated when I started looking out the window or wasn’t able to stay seated while we were watching a series. I had to explain to him multiple times that this had nothing to do with  me not liking the series (or not liking him), but that I just don’t have a very long attention span. He still doesn’t completely understand how I can like a series and then not look at the screen the entire time.
Now, I usually crochet while watching something. When I can keep my hands busy, I can stay focused for a longer time. I used to do the same during lectures at the university. It got me a lot of weird looks, but it did really help me to focus on the lecture. During small seminars I doodle a lot.
Studying remains difficult though. I can’t have lectures or seminars from 9 to 5. That’s too much. It costs me so much energy to stay focused, that I’m completely exhausted after three hours, and I’m usually not able to do anything anymore after that because I’ve got a massive headache. The masters program I’m in right now is supposed to be two years. But I can’t study full time, so for me it’s going to take three years. And even that is difficult.

[Fjrocks]

  My SO has a childhood buddy out of state who is notorious for sleeping late and ridiculous tardiness of several hours, even days. When he comes to town he sends our lives into outright chaos will completely unrealistic concepts of time coupled with reckless unpreparedness. My sweetheart gets completely suckered into the wild time vortex, every damn time. 

   His lifelong friend will call late Friday morning, announce he's coming for a visit and would we please set a place for him at dinner? I don't even bother pointing out to the BF it's a 12 hour drive and physics make it so even a NORMAL person couldn't make it for dinner, we set the extra place anyways.  His friend goes radio silent and he'll roll in late the next day with wild tales of misfortune. They recently went on a boys trip to Yellowstone and were a day late leaving and two days late returning. With no cell service, by 48 hours even I was debating if it was time to alert the park rangers. It's not even party behavior with him,  just squirrels, backroad detours that "will just take an extra hour" and constant mishaps of running out of gas, flat tires, etc. Thankfully, he only see his friend a couple times a year.

     The thought that this man would likely be the best man at our wedding though... well when the time comes I am going to resort to doctored invitations,  questionably legal means and hired babysitters to keep us on a schedule for a weekend, I will tell you that right now.... 

   

[samurai_sarah]

12 hours ago, Playagirl said:

Thanks for this post, and yours too, @allthegoodnamesrgone (no clue how to quote two posters at once).

(snip)

For multi-quotes, click on the little "+" sign at the bottom of the posts you want to quote.

[Carm_88]

With vacation, I can be quite relaxed. I will make plans to see and do all that I want to, but downtown is time for a book or whatever else. In a recent discussion with a friend on this topic; she came in late as usual, I had my kindle out and earphones in, she had to get my attention and made the comment "It's hard to imagine coming to dinner with someone with a book prepared, it seems like you want to ignore me." Answer "Try being on time, that will keep the book in my purse." 

[Meggo]

I aim to be early to everything - because I hate being late. Would rather sit in the car and gather my thoughts than be rushing in anywhere.

On vacation - we traditionally pick things we want to see and always plan for a down day or two in the middle of all that. Where we have zero plans besides sitting by the pool and reading, or napping or whatever. Our best times on vacations have been when we found a bar or café and plopped ourselves down for people watching for the afternoon.

(of course - this was all before SmallFry, who is 4.5y, so I'm assuming those days are limited)