Anyway I had woken up pretty early when I started playing and so no surprise to me I fell asleep again and slept another 3 hours around 9am. I managed to get a little breakfast before I fell back asleep, nothing super spectacular though. There is this drink called Zevia I am quite fond of. It's pretty much soda, only instead of being sweetened with sugar it's sweetened with stevia. It's great and it comes in all kinds of flavors.
Not very many people know but not only am I am introvert, but I am a highly sensitive introvert or a highly sensitive person (HSP). HSP get overwhelmed by all the sensory info (stimuli) around them. I get pretty overloaded and overwhelmed by a lot of things around me. HSP process all of the external information around them so well that our brains can get overwhelmed and burned out. I'm aware of a lot more than it seems because of this, I notice a lot more because my brain takes in everything so excellently. A good example of this is if I am around neon colors, flashing lights, and / or loud noises like a lot of talking people or something. When I am overexposed to things like this I might get anxious, stressed, tired, and in some cases my brain tries to respond by spacing out a LOT (it tries to shut off my awareness partially). Sometimes I get super restless and jumpy, the effects vary, and come in different combinations. I listed only a few of the things that happen to me.
Anyway, even though I an an introvert and prefer to be by myself most of the time and I'm an HSP I try and get a healthy amount of social interaction. I try not to shut myself in to much, I start getting agoraphobia if I do that. The way I cope with all of the sensory information around me is I use my sense of touch. My sense of touch never overwhelms me. I get jumpy and fidgety when I am becoming overloaded and playing with something with my hands helps a lot with coping with everything. I find it very relaxing to take full advantage of my sense of touch, I tend to last a lot longer when I do this.
The kind of things I love to play with are pretty simple. Things like Slinky, tangles, Rubik's cubes, stress balls, clay, putty, etc. There are so many things that fit under the category of fidget toys and / or stress toys. They are fairly simple to find because autistic kids also love these kind of things. I am obviously not the only person that uses this method to cope with all of the overwhelming sensory info around me.
I use officeplayground.com to shop for my fidget toys and stress toys. It has a whole lot of stuff and the site is really organized. Amazon is a great site too, but it takes a lot more searching and stuff to find what I want when it comes to stuff like this. If i can't find what i want on officeplayground.com I always go and find it on Amazon. I made a pretty big order at officeplayground.com today, 20 items in total and it cost me a fair amount of money, not too much though. I won't spoil the surprise and tell you what i got, my package arrives in 3 days or so UPS says. UPS is pretty spot on usually when I order something though so I'm not worried. I love the excitement of waiting for a package. I will make sure to get pictures or video or something like that when it arrives.
Anyway, after I did my order nothing sectacular happened for a few hours, I just had pasta and chicken for lunch, listen to Harry Potter, watched anime, and played Puzzle & Dragons. I was pretty laid back today. The ward had family home evening tonight, we had pizze and rootbeet, and a spiritual message. I don't remember what the spiritual message was sadly, but I loved the company and the pizza and root beer. Everyone introduced themself before we ate, they told their names and something about themselves, it was pretty cool. I think I might have slurred my speech a little because when I mentioned I have an obsession with stars everyone heard it as I have a room full of stars. I didn't even bother to correct them, the whole introduction didn't come out quite as planned. I told them I love to read, how many brothers and sisters I have, that i am probably the quietest person in the ward, and that my dream is to become a clinical psychologist. Somewhere in there I mentioned the thing about stars, I could have left that out though. Stuff like that always happens when I intend to make myself sound even a little cool.
I won't lie, I like to talk about myself. I'm nowhere near being a narcissist though. I am pretty open with people when I don't feel nervous or pressured. I know I can seem a bit cold and aloof sometimes, but I'm a pretty nice person and i try my best to always have good intentions and get along with everyone.
Anyway after the pizza and stuff I just went home and crashed. I didn't do anything particularly spectacular, just more of the same stuff I was doing before.
I've probably written enough to today, sorry it was so long, I get carried away sometimes. haha. :)
















