I don't even know how to start unpacking this, but I just need to vent about it. I am late self-diagnosed audhd afab, gen X who has learnt a lot of unhealthy hustle culture and looking busy brainworms over the years. Been down the burnout path a few times too before I realized my neurotype around 2020.

I am currently working in a client facing, but also laptop touching position where I am constantly "out of work". I am always on top of the things I should do, because I always do them right away or otherwise I know I would forget them. I have constant "impostor syndrome" and question myself on whether I am doing enough, because I always end up with all this downtime. The work has no set structure and we very much manage ourselves. I have secretly compared my calender to my coworkers and I tend to have more client appointments than most, yet for example this week I have just been bored out of my mind for days. And questioning if I am somehow doing this wrong.

I am having a remote day today and am just here posting. I don't know why I feel weird about it when rationally I know that I very much earn my wage and just do the work differently than others. I for example write very fast. And solve things very fast.

But my question remains, do neurotypicals just fake it? Or do they think they are busy all the time? I for one do a lot of remote work and at the office I introvert it. I am always about the work, not socializing much, so my worktime never goes to those things.

I eat at my desk while I work too, I tried the neurotypical style of taking breaks, but it just doesn't work for me mid-task. My breaks are the bus drives to clients houses or slacking in the morning pretending to be online in Teams.

But I am having to do a lot of pretending and I think that is the part that is draining me. I actually really like my work and am probably pretty good at it, but this keeping up appearances stuff is exhausting and causes all kinds of self doubt.

I did teaching previously and the daily structure in it with the shorter day was a lot easier to handle. But I can't find things to do for eight hours in my current work. And I know nobody works eight hours in the office, but why is the pretend so hard for me? I feel weird listening to audiobooks in my worktime and I want to stop feeling that way, but I think it's the autistic lawful good that makes me feel kind of bad about it.