Laziness or Catch-22?

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There's a general level of truthfulness to shaped behavior
But sometimes behaviors may be from our place on the spectrum.

Yes! When I was evaluated for AS, one of the questions was "Do you have a messy closet?" Messiness is an indicator of AS, as it points to a deficit in executive function.

Jojobean thanks for explaining it so well.

Whether you have executive dysfunction or not, anyone can at least get their environment organized with a little persistence and determination. It just takes a little longer and depends what your priorities are.

My room is...errr...pretty messy I guess. When I'm in grocery stores though it is a very different story. I will stop at every shelf to make sure all of the products are in their correct places, center the price sign, pull the products to the front to make it look even and tidy, if there is a section of different flavored drinks I'll make sure they are in the correct order.

Motherknowsbest and anyone else who can answer this......can you explain the spark thing in more detail. I have the hardest time getting motivated to do anything...unless it is something I really want to do, but most of the time I fret about changing activities...or fret about how hard something is going to be to do, and the fretting exausts me more than the activity does. Once I am doing the thing I fret about, it does not bother me much at all, but something about that spark that is needed to get me moving is lacking. I dont know if others have the same problem. I always blamed myself for being incurably lazy...when in fact, it may be part of AS. It would be easier for me to face part of my disability and aquire the knowhow to overcome that, than to face it as a character flaw when it may not be that at all.

anyone else have that problem?
Any solutions?

Thanks jojobean, this first part certainly makes a lot of sense. As for having been abused, I have basically been treated well by every adult I've known whilst growing up, so that doesn't really fit for me. I've always been my harshest critic, no matter how much others supported me. I think the perfectionism is a personality trait I was born with.

And in terms of the "spark" that was mentioned. I generally lack drive to do most things. I am awaiting the results of a sleep study to see if my sleeping pattern causes my daytime sleepiness and lack of drive. If they don't find anything they are going to suggest I look into depression. The sleep specialist said some people suffer depression and don't even know it. And we all know depression is comorbid with AS. So, maybe there's a connection. Have you considered this?

I have depression and suffer from it even though I take meds. You are fortunate that you have such wonderful ppl in your life, never take that for granted.
I have a very supportive mother, but my father was very abusive and could easily be considered a sociopath.
I am also tired most of the time, but that is from meds I take for mood swings and Ocd.

I hope your tests show something that is fixable. I took a sleep study a few times, I dont know how they expect you to sleep under those conditions. They hook you up to an EEG machine, if you never had one, it looks like something out of Dr. Frankenstien's labatory. The hook you up to all these wires glued to your scalp and heart monitors and some wires hooked up to your arms and legs. If you move to much while you sleep, you can unplug one of these wires and the testers wake you up to hook it back up. You get woke up often for moving around.
Often it takes more than one of these tests to get an accurate result because of them waking folks up too much.

I was found to have mild sleep apnea and was told to sleep on my side. But the real answers to my sleep disorder came later when they found out that I had Ptsd from being in a religious cult and nearly being raped by some "guru" of sorts. This caused boughts of insomia which caused sluggishness in the daytime.

I'm reminded of a "Zits" cartoon... The mother looks in a magazine and is reading about the different architectural styles... Neo-Classic, Grecco-Roman... etc, then comes to her son's room "Recently Ransacked".

In M*A*S*H we have "The Swamp", in Beaverton, we have "The Crater".

That said, I'm now involved in a purge, eliminating a lot of my collections, and the clutter, it's been going on since june, but it continues. My hope is that I will free up a lot of space, and mental distractions, and someday find someone special to share my life with.