Yesterday was a hard day.

I don’t know if it was the fact that I had slept poorly or the fact that the weather was so grey or the fact that so many of my planned tasks were irksome, but I couldn’t make my brain get things started.

None of my usual get-going techniques worked and I got more and more frustrated.

And it was hard to know whether to try to push myself harder or to find ways to rest and take it easy.

You see, the thing about ADHD is that I can’t always trust signals from my brain.

My lack of enthusiasm for the day might be a sign that I needed more rest or it might be a sign that there was some part of one of my tasks was off-putting to my brain and so it had put the brakes on all my tasks to avoid that one thing.

That makes it very difficult to glibly choose to rest because even though, in general, it’s good to rest it might be the opposite of what I need. And, in fact, resting might make things worse because then the task I don’t even realize I am avoiding is going to seem even more daunting when I return to it.

But if I push myself and it turns out that I do need to rest then I will be even more fatigued and miserable.

And, of course, all of this thinking means I’m going to end up overthinking and over-monitoring what my brain is doing (which is a path to misery in itself.)

So, it always seems like there is no good approach to a bad day and that, in itself, adds to my frustration.

Yesterday, I just tried to take it piece by piece.

I jettisoned anything I could.

I did some reading and some drawing.

I did a little exercise.

I tried to do some work.

I took the dog for a walk.

I made supper.

I met a friend for tea.

I went to bed relatively early.

Today, I feel a lot better so I guess yesterday’s non-plan worked ok.