Last updated on November 26, 2023
Podcast 0002; Season 01, Episode 02; April 9, 2018
I have five interview-based episodes recorded, and I was certain that one of the interviews would be this week’s episode. However, I ended up working on several other projects and ran out of time to post the planned episode featuring Lu Randall, Executive Director of the Autism Connection of PA.
That planned episode will be released late Tuesday or early Wednesday night.
Consider this episode a bonus short: a confession of sorts about not being able to accurately anticipate the time required for major tasks.
Transcript (lightly edited)
Welcome to The Autistic Me Podcast.
I am Christopher Scott Wyatt, speaking as The Autistic Me.
For this week’s release, I had planned to alternate between interviews I had scheduled, but instead, I found that I ran out of time. Running out of time is not uncommon for me, as this is a result of an impaired executive function.
Unfortunately, many autistics — and many individuals without autism — suffer from executive function impairments. We are unable to accurately estimate the time required to complete a task. We are also unable to organize ourselves to properly meet deadlines.
Normally, my wife and my cellphone are my executive function. I live with a calendar on the phone and a calendar on the computer because otherwise I forget deadlines and forget when things need to be done. When I say that I need to know when things need to be done, it is not the complete tasks, but the parts of a task that I have to schedule… or the complete task is never finished. This challenge with time is not unusual among autistics.
To produce the podcast I have to schedule an interview, record the interview, transcribe the interview, and then edit the final audio — which you are listening to right now in this case. After the podcast is prepared for Tuesday, which is the ideal release day for a podcast, I need to submit it to our aggregator, have the RSS feeds ready for iTunes and elsewhere, and I need to prepare my blog entry based on the transcripts and the audio files. Each one of these steps needs to be part of a checklist for me, or I won’t be able to complete the entire task of preparing, producing, and distributing a podcast.
One of the reasons The Autistic Me did not launch until April of this year, instead of my planned January release, was that life kept happening. I would set aside time thinking that I could sit down and record a podcast and start working with guests and instead I would end up working on other projects trying to meet other deadlines.
Because I am one of those individuals who frequently says yes to everything I am asked to do by friends and colleagues, I ended up working on several other projects instead of working on this project.
Again, over the last few days, I had other projects that came into the picture with deadlines and I gave priority to those instead of my own project. I did manage to complete several projects involving other individuals and other teams, but I did not complete my own projects.
This is a common problem among autistics.
Executive function impairment means that we often believe that we will have time for ourselves and our projects, so we do not mind setting those aside temporarily.
We are also easily distracted.
While I was working on some of the other projects, I encountered website problems with one of our hosting plans. Our blogs are hosted on an ISP and our SSL certificates, which are the security files that tell browsers and visitors that we are a safe site where you will not be scammed or otherwise hacked, those SSL certificates had expired on our website and so individuals were unable to reach our website or our blogs.
I became distracted with solving that problem and then another problem and then another problem with the blogs. One of the problems involved the podcast syndicator and the plugin for the blog software we are using, which is WordPress. I invested six hours trying to debug the blog problem instead of investing that time in simply preparing the podcast and getting it ready for distribution. I understand that I could have waited now that I think about it, but instead I had an immediate problem and I needed to resolve it immediately.
This goes back to a typical autistic problem. When I have a conflict with something, whether it’s a piece of computer software or even something around the house, I will do battle with the problem until I solve the problem.
Unfortunately, this often leads to not meeting other deadlines. This would be why my wife and my cell phone and my computer have alarms to tell me, “Stop! You need to go on to another task.”
I realize that you can always come back to solve a problem. But there are certain things that need to be done at certain times.
Because I was distracted by life, The Autistic Me Podcast ended up incomplete this week. That frustrates me and reminds me of what it is like to be autistic.
As I said in my first podcast, I am a reluctant autistic.
I keep telling myself that I do not have any of the traits associated with autism. Yet, here I am struggling with executive function and failing to meet a deadline. It is extremely frustrating when something comes along that reminds me that I’m autistic or at least that I have autistic traits.
I do not like admitting that I have problems. And again, this is a common issue among autistics, especially autistic adults and autistic young adults in high school or college. Many of the students with whom I work and many of my colleagues on the autism spectrum fail to properly plan. They miss deadlines with drafts. They miss final deadlines with projects. All of these problems are because they were distracted by life.
When I see myself doing the same thing that I tell students to avoid, it is incredibly frustrating. I tell my students and those autistics I have mentored that you must have devices or people to keep you on track.
I don’t always take my own advice.
I should have stuck to the schedule that I had posted and The Autistic Me this week would have featured Lu Randall of the Autism Connection. Unfortunately, I missed that deadline. Now, I’m going to make it up to Lu and the Autism Connection by posting the podcast featuring our interview later this week — ideally on Tuesday night. But, I’m not going to make my self-imposed deadline of early Tuesday morning.
I need to have a routine and I need to follow it.
With The Autistic Me Podcast, I am setting up the routine of preparing the podcast during the week, doing the editing on Sunday and Monday, and then scheduling the podcast and the blog post to be released early Tuesday morning.
Once again, I missed that deadline. This is extremely frustrating, but I know that I need to keep practicing to develop this routine.
This reminds me that I am… The Autistic Me.
And this has been The Autistic Me Podcast with Christopher Scott Wyatt.
The Autistic Me on Social Media
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