Part of making good use of the support in my life is to watch out for patterns. One of the patterns we have noticed is that Transition Days are normally the worst days of my week. A transition day is a day when i am changing where i sleep. For example, every other weekend i stay with my friend for 2-3 nights. The transition day is the day i come back.
The reason they are so challenging is because they are “neither here nor there”. I wake up knowing i need too “go home” at some point and it plays on my mind all day. It sometimes even effects my sleep the night before.
It’s sort of like the last day of a holiday. Knowing its going to end does effect the feeling of the day. These days are challenging because they contain a huge number of changes and a small leap into the unknown.
The good news is that transition days are less common now. I have support at home every other weekend so that means i am only doing a transition twice a months not four times a month. Woo.
Over the last few years i have tried a few different approaches. For example, trying to ignore it and “get on with my day” or trying to pre-empt it and going early. Pre-empting it and planning seems to be very useful. The key for me is to give myself a reason to go home early. Do not go home only when i “need” too at the last minute.
For example, today i started the day at my friends, i walked to the cafe for lunch (where i am now) and i will shortly walk home. I am going home to tidy up and after that i am going to help a friend to setup an online accounts system. To do that i need my iMac, therefore i need to do it from home.
Other times the reason has been heading home to play an Xbox game or heading home to play lego. Finding a reason to go early seems to be the best approach.
I think at first we use to “try and ignore it” and “focus on having a good day” because we thought it was just a quirk. However, on deeper inspection we noticed that the disruption was real and needed to be managed.
A relatively small change (recognising the disruption as real, making a plan) has had a large knock on effect. In the past i would loose a night or two’s sleep (and thus start every week badly!) but now i am starting to get that under control. It’s not easy, but with some extra structure it is much easier and thats a good start.
