Make believe

I'm not even sure if this post makes any sense. It will at least manage to explain why it doesn't make much sense. I'm swimming through treacle.

From Monday I am going to start a thought experiment (check me out, I'm all Derren Brown-y!). I am going to pretend that I have a job and that my job is filling in my DLA form. I will try to spend my week in the way that I would advise someone else in my position to.

This might sound extreme, but the cold weather has brought with it a pain spike and consequent sleep buggeration, so some combination of pain/fatigue/brainfog is destroying my motivation and concentration.

When I'm talking to someone, or cuddling the cat, or curled up in bed listening to the radio, I'm all there. When I sit down to work on my DLA form or to address some of the other 1500 tasks on my to-do list I find myself drifting off into the middle distance and staring at the wall for hours. My head is so cotton-wooly that it's hard to get to the end of a complete thought.

It's not that I'm not getting anything done, just that everything takes hours longer than it should, that even small periods of concentration (like phoning the bank to ask for my customer number) seem to drain me to a ridiculous extent.

I think maybe getting out of the house to go somewhere else and work on the form would help, but I don't know where I could get to. My independent mobility is very limited at the moment, although hopefully the new chair will help. If I can get so I can easily take the bus on my own, then I can go to the library, which would be nice.

So, I'm going to make myself a timetable, set myself up to work in the study, and make a nice to-do list which is acheivable and has lots of small tasks to tick off. My timetable's not too ambitious, but it's a much more regular routine than I was managing before I was off. It's looking something like : up/dressed/breakfast by 10.30*, alternating tasks every half hour (or more frequently depending how shot my concentration is) until 1ish, lunch and internet messing around, 2-4 some more tasks from the to-do list, then a lie down, then dinner, then flop with a craft project for the evening.

I think by pretending I'm at work, therefore the deadlines I set myself are more concrete, that I might get a bit more done. This plus dividing each job into small tick-off-able tasks should help. I hope =/

*I have a bit of an issue about telling people when I get up. It makes me feel really lazy. Since I've had a few weeks of decent sleep I've been managing to get up by half 9, which is early for me to wake up naturally. It takes me a long time to get going even then - I have to follow a certain routine of meds and exercises to get near to awake. I hate mornings. Mornings hate me.