(no subject)
Jul. 31st, 2020 12:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sorcyressState of the ADHD, late July 2020:
(Post inspired partially by reading a couple of really good threads (one link, the secondary thread is sub-nestled) on twitter about ADHD brain management, partially inspired by the fact that there's a global pandemic on and everyone's mental health is *shit* so why not put extra work into it right now.)
STUFF THAT'S WORKING:
*At therapy last week, I straight up told Jenn that I need to not talk about feelings for a bit and work on ADHD stuff instead. So that was last week and this week and will hopefully be the next few weeks until feelings get REALLY BIG again, probably totally coincidentally at the start of the school year plus move.
*One of the things we decided was that I am going to have an at-home clipboard, and it's basically going to live "with my laptop" (which I use often enough for that to translate to "within arms reach most of the time"). Should I need to literally carry around a clipboard to organize my home life? Honestly, who cares! If I've learned anything about mental health, it's that normal is bullshit overrated, and doing What Works For You counts as a success. So I have that. Like virtually every clipboard I own, it's the kind that opens up so you can store paper inside.
Is this strategy stolen one hundred percent from work? It IS! I carry my work clipboard all around the classroom (and play the "wait shit where did I set it down" game at least once a week) and to every single meeting and activity and PD I have to go to. I always have it close enough at hand to jot down notes at work, either specific (like on my attendance/participation weekly sheets) or general (like on a todo list). Now I am doing the same thing here.
*Last week, we also decided that I need to take advantage of the fact that chaining works for my brain, and create a daily checklist that I can draw pretty colours on for each day to keep track of my completion of maintenance tasks like "brush teeth" and "eat a real food" and "go outside". This strategy is *also* stolen from work, but it's even more stolen from 750words. See, the fact that I write every day is important to me in and of itself1, but I do like the little green checkboxes, that get filled in one at a time. So I have a dailies checklist that I've used at work, and I've just a week ago made a dailies checklist to use at home. I've used Habitica plenty (and would like to use it more) but honestly it's not as effective as plain paper and pretty different colours. I can keep the dailys list on my clipboard.
*I have a weekly/daily calendar that works for me. I figured it out back during the end of the school year, and was running it regularly then, but stopped when there stopped being office hours and department meetings for me to attend. I've started again literally today, in part because wow there are a lot of union meetings I can attend and keeping track of when all of those are is no longer happening in my internal-brain, so we're back to the external. This is also on my clipboard.
*Yesterday at therapy, Jenn suggested that since I seem to be overwhelmed with projects, maybe it is the time to make a really fucking huge todo list, and figure out some priorities for the different pieces. Since I happen to like fuxing with the ~aesthetics~ in google sheets, I whipped that together. It has different categories (moving, housecleaning, work, Pinewoods) and a 1-10 priority for everything (something is 11 but that's because I am _terrible_) and I've fit in a column to put due dates for things that have them and another column called "but first I must..." to help with ordering stuff. I have no idea if this will work.
I think I will keep a paper todo list on my clipboard and try to transfer back and fourth on the regular. There's a secret extra level where I try to Start My Day by looking at the todo list instead of doomscrolling twitter, but that sounds hard and dumb.
*I have been setting more phone alarms. This also falls into the "should I need to do this" category, and I'm not always great about following the alarms (sometimes I fall into the trap of "hit snooze twenty times, then be confused when it is two hours later) but they're definitely helping for getting to scheduled events, and sometimes helping for unscheduled things. (Unscheduled would be like how I have a "you've been staring at your electronics a lot" alarm, which is meant to be "go put down the electronics and interact with reality for a bit" but not having a specific thing to switch my focus to makes it really hard and not actually working well.)
*At age thirty, I have decided to embrace hyperfocus, as long as you understand that it is _not_ a superpower and calling my literal diagnosed mental disability superheroic will get things thrown at you. So I'm trying to recognize projects that are both things I can hyperfocus on, and that are things that actually feel like an accomplishment when I work on them, rather than a nightmare.
STUFF THAT'S NOT WORKING:
*It's a pandemic. The Hell Zone is real. I don't know how well any of this shit is going to work in the long term, where the long term is "greater than three days". But honestly that's kinda normal, so whatever.
*I don't know anything about my job other than it starts in a month, will not be 100% in-person, and I'm teaching Algebra and Advanced Math. This is not a useful amount of things to know. I am _extremely stressed_ about how I am going to be an effective teacher without the number one useful thing for my brain which is actually being in a different environment.
*Embracing hyperfocus is all well and good, but it's still hard to have (enough?) projects that actually feel successful and productive to work on. In general, I have been having *significant* trouble with goal setting the past several months. Part of that is having closed a really satisfying few chapters of my life in the past year --I got professional status! I got my SCD teaching cert!-- which is great but also like...now what? My romantic-scape is not in any sort of place for forming a family, I don't have anywhere close to enough money to buy a house, and oh yeah, it's a global pandemic which will be affecting the future for who even knows how damn long.
So I don't really have 'goals' right now (beyond the basic day-to-day survival stuff) and that's a weird and somewhat disappointing space to be in. Goals that I could put together -like going to grad school and getting my masters in education, or ringing a peal, or spending time volunteering at Pinewoods, or fucking around Great Britain for a while to dance and ring bells- are all things that are largely impossible at the moment.
I've talked about this with Jenn a little, and need to talk about it more. It would probably be good for me to at least create another 101 in 1001 list (if nothing else, it would be a nice snapshot for the future self) but w-o-w is it hard when I have no idea what the next 1001 days are going to look like, and half-expect I'd have to replace all 101 goals with "commit violent revolution to overthrow my fascist government or be killed by the secret police".
...sorry, this got A Lot.
*I'm pretty bad at not hyperfocusing? Like, I hadn't played Animal Crossing in five days (like four different animals had the gall to tell me they missed me and that was super guilt trippy thanks) and most of that is "I've been busy" but also I haven't had very much space in my brain for "I'll do a soft fun thing for mumbledy brief minutes" instead of "six hours". I have played AC for 30 minutes at a time (well...usually by choice it's closer to an hour, but still, one! not ten!) but I'm not very consistent about that, and I would like the brain option to be able to do "short brief relaxing check-in" without fearing "and there goes the rest of my productive time today.
I was playing wicked amounts of clickergames last week, and those were sorta working (clicker games work best if you play them for ten minutes and then ignore them for two hours) but I think I ran out of interest by 'solving' the ones I was playing more-or-less, and also I think I broke my trackpad clicker because it's not clicking right anymore and yes I feel extremely stupid about that and no I haven't had a chance to just hit it with some compressed air and no I don't wanna talk about it right now (sigh, if you're good at hardware, send me recommendations, I mean that, I just don't feel like googling.)
***
My stuff that's working pile was so nice and organized and easy, and my stuff that's not working pile is really rambly and disorganized, and I think we can all figure out which half of this entry I wrote in the middle of the day yesterday when I was right smack in the middle of my meds and which half I wrote today past midnight which means probably after the 12 hour dose has worn off ha ha haaaaa.
Gonna post this and move on with my life. I'm working on my brain. I'll try not to hell zone. Feel free to tell me what is and isn't working for your brains. Please feel free to flagrantly steal ideas and shit. I love y'all. <3
~Sor
MOOP!
1: Current streak: 75 days. I have missed two days since November 25th, 2018, one day since December 8th, 2018. Zero days since May.
(Post inspired partially by reading a couple of really good threads (one link, the secondary thread is sub-nestled) on twitter about ADHD brain management, partially inspired by the fact that there's a global pandemic on and everyone's mental health is *shit* so why not put extra work into it right now.)
STUFF THAT'S WORKING:
*At therapy last week, I straight up told Jenn that I need to not talk about feelings for a bit and work on ADHD stuff instead. So that was last week and this week and will hopefully be the next few weeks until feelings get REALLY BIG again, probably totally coincidentally at the start of the school year plus move.
*One of the things we decided was that I am going to have an at-home clipboard, and it's basically going to live "with my laptop" (which I use often enough for that to translate to "within arms reach most of the time"). Should I need to literally carry around a clipboard to organize my home life? Honestly, who cares! If I've learned anything about mental health, it's that normal is bullshit overrated, and doing What Works For You counts as a success. So I have that. Like virtually every clipboard I own, it's the kind that opens up so you can store paper inside.
Is this strategy stolen one hundred percent from work? It IS! I carry my work clipboard all around the classroom (and play the "wait shit where did I set it down" game at least once a week) and to every single meeting and activity and PD I have to go to. I always have it close enough at hand to jot down notes at work, either specific (like on my attendance/participation weekly sheets) or general (like on a todo list). Now I am doing the same thing here.
*Last week, we also decided that I need to take advantage of the fact that chaining works for my brain, and create a daily checklist that I can draw pretty colours on for each day to keep track of my completion of maintenance tasks like "brush teeth" and "eat a real food" and "go outside". This strategy is *also* stolen from work, but it's even more stolen from 750words. See, the fact that I write every day is important to me in and of itself1, but I do like the little green checkboxes, that get filled in one at a time. So I have a dailies checklist that I've used at work, and I've just a week ago made a dailies checklist to use at home. I've used Habitica plenty (and would like to use it more) but honestly it's not as effective as plain paper and pretty different colours. I can keep the dailys list on my clipboard.
*I have a weekly/daily calendar that works for me. I figured it out back during the end of the school year, and was running it regularly then, but stopped when there stopped being office hours and department meetings for me to attend. I've started again literally today, in part because wow there are a lot of union meetings I can attend and keeping track of when all of those are is no longer happening in my internal-brain, so we're back to the external. This is also on my clipboard.
*Yesterday at therapy, Jenn suggested that since I seem to be overwhelmed with projects, maybe it is the time to make a really fucking huge todo list, and figure out some priorities for the different pieces. Since I happen to like fuxing with the ~aesthetics~ in google sheets, I whipped that together. It has different categories (moving, housecleaning, work, Pinewoods) and a 1-10 priority for everything (something is 11 but that's because I am _terrible_) and I've fit in a column to put due dates for things that have them and another column called "but first I must..." to help with ordering stuff. I have no idea if this will work.
I think I will keep a paper todo list on my clipboard and try to transfer back and fourth on the regular. There's a secret extra level where I try to Start My Day by looking at the todo list instead of doomscrolling twitter, but that sounds hard and dumb.
*I have been setting more phone alarms. This also falls into the "should I need to do this" category, and I'm not always great about following the alarms (sometimes I fall into the trap of "hit snooze twenty times, then be confused when it is two hours later) but they're definitely helping for getting to scheduled events, and sometimes helping for unscheduled things. (Unscheduled would be like how I have a "you've been staring at your electronics a lot" alarm, which is meant to be "go put down the electronics and interact with reality for a bit" but not having a specific thing to switch my focus to makes it really hard and not actually working well.)
*At age thirty, I have decided to embrace hyperfocus, as long as you understand that it is _not_ a superpower and calling my literal diagnosed mental disability superheroic will get things thrown at you. So I'm trying to recognize projects that are both things I can hyperfocus on, and that are things that actually feel like an accomplishment when I work on them, rather than a nightmare.
STUFF THAT'S NOT WORKING:
*It's a pandemic. The Hell Zone is real. I don't know how well any of this shit is going to work in the long term, where the long term is "greater than three days". But honestly that's kinda normal, so whatever.
*I don't know anything about my job other than it starts in a month, will not be 100% in-person, and I'm teaching Algebra and Advanced Math. This is not a useful amount of things to know. I am _extremely stressed_ about how I am going to be an effective teacher without the number one useful thing for my brain which is actually being in a different environment.
*Embracing hyperfocus is all well and good, but it's still hard to have (enough?) projects that actually feel successful and productive to work on. In general, I have been having *significant* trouble with goal setting the past several months. Part of that is having closed a really satisfying few chapters of my life in the past year --I got professional status! I got my SCD teaching cert!-- which is great but also like...now what? My romantic-scape is not in any sort of place for forming a family, I don't have anywhere close to enough money to buy a house, and oh yeah, it's a global pandemic which will be affecting the future for who even knows how damn long.
So I don't really have 'goals' right now (beyond the basic day-to-day survival stuff) and that's a weird and somewhat disappointing space to be in. Goals that I could put together -like going to grad school and getting my masters in education, or ringing a peal, or spending time volunteering at Pinewoods, or fucking around Great Britain for a while to dance and ring bells- are all things that are largely impossible at the moment.
I've talked about this with Jenn a little, and need to talk about it more. It would probably be good for me to at least create another 101 in 1001 list (if nothing else, it would be a nice snapshot for the future self) but w-o-w is it hard when I have no idea what the next 1001 days are going to look like, and half-expect I'd have to replace all 101 goals with "commit violent revolution to overthrow my fascist government or be killed by the secret police".
...sorry, this got A Lot.
*I'm pretty bad at not hyperfocusing? Like, I hadn't played Animal Crossing in five days (like four different animals had the gall to tell me they missed me and that was super guilt trippy thanks) and most of that is "I've been busy" but also I haven't had very much space in my brain for "I'll do a soft fun thing for mumbledy brief minutes" instead of "six hours". I have played AC for 30 minutes at a time (well...usually by choice it's closer to an hour, but still, one! not ten!) but I'm not very consistent about that, and I would like the brain option to be able to do "short brief relaxing check-in" without fearing "and there goes the rest of my productive time today.
I was playing wicked amounts of clickergames last week, and those were sorta working (clicker games work best if you play them for ten minutes and then ignore them for two hours) but I think I ran out of interest by 'solving' the ones I was playing more-or-less, and also I think I broke my trackpad clicker because it's not clicking right anymore and yes I feel extremely stupid about that and no I haven't had a chance to just hit it with some compressed air and no I don't wanna talk about it right now (sigh, if you're good at hardware, send me recommendations, I mean that, I just don't feel like googling.)
***
My stuff that's working pile was so nice and organized and easy, and my stuff that's not working pile is really rambly and disorganized, and I think we can all figure out which half of this entry I wrote in the middle of the day yesterday when I was right smack in the middle of my meds and which half I wrote today past midnight which means probably after the 12 hour dose has worn off ha ha haaaaa.
Gonna post this and move on with my life. I'm working on my brain. I'll try not to hell zone. Feel free to tell me what is and isn't working for your brains. Please feel free to flagrantly steal ideas and shit. I love y'all. <3
~Sor
MOOP!
1: Current streak: 75 days. I have missed two days since November 25th, 2018, one day since December 8th, 2018. Zero days since May.
no subject
on 2020-08-11 05:47 pm (UTC)Yow -- I'm impressed. I don't think I've managed anywhere near that level of consistency for anything...
no subject
on 2020-10-10 02:42 am (UTC)Writing is less my superpower and more a foundational explanation of my very being. I am fond of saying that I have ink in my veins and it must spill, because really _yeah_. It's also a noun-and-verb thing for me --it is important for me to have a Writing that I can read later or consult, but it is also important for me to Do Writing because that act is soothing and stuff.
Which is all just to say that there is _nothing_ else that is this consistent in my life. Like, I try damn hard to do so, but I don't brush my teeth every night, I don't take my meds every morning, like, writing is the only thing I can be consistent on.
But I'm pleased with myself that I am.
~Sor
no subject
on 2020-10-10 02:46 pm (UTC)Very neat. I enjoy writing, but it's never been quite that deep-set for me. (Programming is kind of my rough counterpart, but it's not quite the same.)