Too much free time is bad.

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If I have too much free time I go off the rails and get into problems. I don't control my thoughts and emotions well if I'm not focused. I have to be working or studying or doing tasks. Normal people would probably hang out with friends during free time but that's a work in progress so me. I can't do such a thing just yet.

Is anyone else like this? I wonder is it an aspie thing or just random.

I can't work or study or do tasks well. In fact I hate it. Every time I wish I had free time again.
I really like to be needed occasionally for small things that I can do, but for the most part I'm happiest when I don't have to do anything.

I think you're at a stage where you're still having trouble with personal interaction--but you're gaining practice, and you're probably getting better.

I would continue with the studying and the learning. It's very productive--and it will help you in gaining knowledge which will help you, in turn, have enough confidence to be more social.

Agreed, too much free time is very bad. Like you I prefer to be busy and have something to directly focus my mind. Not sure if you experience similar but with not enough inbound stimulus to distract me, I start with the circular, self-obsessive thoughts, just spinning my own issues over and over and over, and scarily, forget that I have had these same thoughts millions of times before. It's much better to be doing something productive.

This is about learning to pull the necessary strings within ones' brain. For example, I love caffeine. I don't really have ADD but I'd say I'm getting there most mornings until I reach my almost-daily ritual of code & cappuccino. I get something done, always.

Upon realizing your self-puppetry goals, I think you'll find reconciliation with goofing off.

That's the reason that I'm working. Working makes me happy because I don't have too much time on my hands.

I often debate this idea with myself because I read a lot. Like hours every day. And it's a form of escapism, it distracts me and stops me from thinking about things - just like over working etc

a while ago I had the idea that endlessly distracting myself was bad and I should be facing up to whatever was going on in my life that needed facing up to. So I stopped all 'reading for pleasure'. During that time I had some really powerful and ground breaking thoughts about myself and my life. But then it became too much. Like I couldn't deal with so much reality and truth, it was leaving me depressed and anxious and exhausted. Reading had been my stress relief/escape and I was suffering from its absence.

So right now I've reverted to embracing escapism through reading again, yet I can feel my anxiety levels rising because I am not taking the time to emotionally process stuff that is happening in my life.

I know somewhere between the two extremes there exists a happy medium where I can face up to stuff just enough to have insights that improve my life, yet spend the rest of the time in escapism so I can de-stress and avoid the obsessive 'faulty' thoughts that result from too much introspection.

Finding the happy medium has never been my strong point.

Last edited by Purrbaby on 29 Nov 2015, 6:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

I'm the complete opposite. I love my free time and I get bored, frustrated, overwhelmed and miserable when I don't have a lot of it.

It can be good or bad. It depends on whether you have anything to do.

Dolph: "All this free time. I never thought I would get sick of Razor Fight II: The Slashening."

Kearney: "I probably should stop. My doctor says I have the wrists of an 80-year old.

This. I have executive function issues and work best when my schedule is not too busy, but decided by factors outside myself. Such as a job, family needs, etc.

When i have to put my own schedule together for any length of time, it is terribly difficult. I end up "frozen" with being overwhelmed at where to start. Then i can't gather my thoughts at all. It's like there is a void where my brain needs to be. Aaaccckkk. At those times the circular, obsessive thoughts come in and spin around blowing up any problem i might have, big or small, to giant proportions.

I have literally nothing but free time, all the time, and.... I aint gonna complain too much. There's boredom, sure, but it's vastly preferrable to the utter torture that is having a job. I've had so many jobs in my time. Every single one of them was a nightmare.

Havent worked in probably 7 or 8 years now, and probably never will again. Sure as heck dont WANT to either.

I'm not counting the contract work I'm doing right now for an indie game developer; I have extreme freedom with that one and it sure doesnt feel like work most of the time (and the stuff I make takes little time to do despite it's complexity).

But yeah, if I didnt have the free time, it'd be.... bad.

Me, too. I need plenty of free time to be happy!

I think having a s**t ton of free time was necessary for undoing the damage being a school slave
did to my brain. You must maintain a zen mind state before you can become your true,
leveled up self ^__^ I maintain zen through lots of video games, anime, and not working
too much. Too much work causes stress and stress f***s with your hormones and life quality.

^ Working for yourself / online / as an indie game dev is the way to live!! ^___^

Well, it's pretty rare that I do this; this is only my second time doing it. I did it once at the end of last year, for a developer I've done alot of alpha/beta testing for, and that went really well, so I'm now in this second, larger one with a much bigger role and more freedom (and it goes very well so far, aside from the "yell at the glitches" bits). The game releases in January or February, so after that, it's back to my normal state of not working at all. Wether or not there'll be a third time, I dont know, but if there is, it wont be for awhile, as I know that developer's next game isnt one I can work on (different genre, not in my skillset to design/create, so I'll just be doing the usual testing and discussing).

So yeah, MOST of the time, I still dont work. It was just a couple of months last year, and then this month through the end of January for this time around.

And the only reason it works at all is that I've gotten to know the developer well enough and I have alot of presence on their forums and enough influence that I can often suggest things that end up in whatever game they're working on at the time (have difficulty levels named after me too; I was often saying that such and such game wasnt as difficult as I'd like it, so one time the head dev jokingly said "Oh, should I make a 'Misery' difficulty then that's even harder?" and about 2 hours later decided this was a good idea and went and did it, stuffing it with a few suggestions I'd made that'd increase the challenge; that trend kept up after that, which has been pretty awesome), and also that the head developer is a very accepting and understanding person; I explained in great detail the autism stuff and my limitations (I can only do a small number of hours in a week, though this ended up not actually mattering), and he was fine with it. Most developers, I think, wouldnt accept those restrictions of mine so easily.

Mostly what's nice this time though is that I have *way* more freedom than the first time. Was brought in during the concept phase this time, and most of my ideas ended up in the game so far. And when I'm actually making stuff.... mostly designing enemies, bosses, and their attack patterns.... I have a ton of freedom there too. They never say "Okay, make THIS boss now". Instead it's "just keep making crazy stuff", which basically translates to me adding whatever seems like a good idea to me at the time. It's pretty neat to be in a position to make decisions on just what goes in there and how alot of it is balanced. The devs have been very pleased with it so far. All the testers have also been pleased with it.

But yeah, MOST jobs, including game development jobs even in the indie sector, wouldnt go so easily for me. I got REALLY lucky with this one. Really, really lucky. Fortunately, I dont actually NEED the money; I'm mostly doing this for a chance to help them out, making their workload alot easier, and helping improve the final product. I'd love to have more chances to do this sort of thing, but yeah, definitely a very rare deal.

Wow, so you're not a programmer or artist on the team, you're like an advisor/playtester? Sweet gig. ^__^ And yeah difficult games are the beessstt. Praise the sun! What are your favorite difficult games?

Are you set for life money-wise?
Care to elaborate? I'm curious; I plan to be set for life money-wise sometime in my youth.. right now I'm well off and very free compared to others my age.

Hm, no, I'm doing programming for this, the design and stuff just goes along with it. Well, programming for the specific stuff I'm working on; they've got every member of the dev team focusing on specific things. Mine is mostly designing/programming enemy/boss patterns and behavior, but I'll make suggestions and such about basically everything; the genre is one I'm very familiar with so I know a ton about it. Which is also why I have the freedom to just decide "Well I feel like making this enemy explode or something if it gets too close" and just stick it in there because it seems like a good idea. If you've ever seen bullet-hell games (like Touhou or Dodonpachi) the stuff I'm working on is kinda like that. I was contracted because I'm the only one that can make those sorts of things out of that community or anyone they know. I've played bullet-hell shmups absolutely to freaking death, they're my favorite genre as difficult games go. Roguelikes being my second favorite, and the game is sort of a combination of the two, so it's perfect for me. I'll end up doing some area/room design and such as well probably, to help out. As testing goes, most of what I'm testing is whatever I'm working on at the time; I only test out the other parts of the game in limited fashion, it's up to the usual testers to do all of that. Blasted testing though, it takes like 5 times as long as actually making the stupid things since I'm obsessive and will sit there testing and then tweaking numbers until it's bloody perfect.

As for favorite difficult games? I'd say most of Cave's games... Mushihime-sama and it's sequel, Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu, Progear, various others (these all being bullet-hell shmups of the really nasty sort) and then a large variety of roguelikes, I have alot of those, usually Bionic Dues (made by the same developer I'm contracting with), which is one of the ones with the "Misery" difficulty level, so it gets *really* stupidly difficult at it's highest settings.

Or alot of older games too, particularly stuff on the NES. With those.... too many to list, there really are. Older games on pretty much any console or device tend to be pretty difficult by default. Which is good, easy games lose my attention quickly.

Also fighting games, though in those the challenge is entirely determined by the opponent, so that varies wildly.


As for money and such? Ah, "wealthy family" is the best way to put it. I can basically just do whatever I happen to feel like doing at any given time which often includes buying stuff at random as I'm a total impulse buyer. I'll end up buying new games or something just because I've been bored for like 10 minutes. Kind of a bad habit, but I figure, it's alot better than people that go out and buy really absurd things like private jets or some damn silly thing like that. I also travel, mostly to anime cons (I get into cosplay and all of that) whenever I spot one that's within a sane driving distance (travel by plane can be WAY too much of a pain if I have to do it alone... talk about overwhelming! I've gone to cons that way before, but yeah, it can be tough to deal with, especially as the airport near here is rated #1 worst in the nation, I hear... and I can believe it, completely). But yeah, pretty much set as money goes, that's for sure. But I did not earn any of that on my own, that'd be my father and stepmother that did that.