Author: Christine

Christine http://www.mombie.com I'm a writer/storyteller/director/creativity & lifestory coach with a black belt in ITF Taekwon-do. I read voraciously and I write like my fingers are on fire. I'm the founder and Co-Chair of the Association for the Arts in Mount Pearl and I'm the current president of the St. John's Storytelling Festival. I bake a mean chocolate chip cookie.

August Writing Goals

I have been doing lots of little bits of writing – blog posts, flash fiction, brainstorming – but I haven’t done any longer form writing in a while and I want to get back to it.

There’s nothing wrong with the writing I have been doing but it doesn’t require a lot of focus beyond the time I spend actually writing. Right now, though, I feel drawn to do something that needs planning, outlines, revision, something tangible that feels like I have said something I really wanted to say.

So, in August, I am going to be working on my novel and on a series of blog posts for my coaching blog.

Off to make some notes!

Monday, Monday

I decided to take last Friday and today off so I could have a long weekend and it has been great for my brain (even though the next few paragraphs will make it seem otherwise – bear with me.)

It’s kind of weird though because one part of my brain thinks it is only a day ‘off’ if I am doing absolutely nothing.

Yet, as I have said before, a day with nothing in it is very stressful for me because I spent the whole day subconsciously wondering if I *should* be doing something else.

So, basically my brain is telling me that a real day off is a day doing nothing but if I try to do that, my brain spends the day bugging me about what I’m doing.

Either way, my ends up spending a lot of time asking itself if this ‘counts’ as a day off, if I’m fooling myself, and…you get the drift.

When you couple that with the fact that it is tricky for me to distinguish between my work and my relaxation because my hobbies, my work, and my volunteer work have a lot of elements in common, it makes it even harder to tell if my day off is a day off.

(Especially when you add in the way my brain jumps around and makes connections between things. I could be solving work problems while I am walking the dog or lying in my swing. Not because those problems were on my mind per se but because that’s when the solution floated up.)

So, anyway, that’s where the borrowed phrasing of ‘letting my brain off-leash’ is coming in handy.

I’ve decided that any time in which my brain can be off-leash for the majority of the day counts as a day off.

That gives me nice, broad parameters that are still specific and it doesn’t limit me to specific activities.

And that’s worked out pretty well for me this long weekend.

ADHD Waiting Mode

This is one of those things that may not be unique to ADHD but is exacerbated by ADHD thinking patterns.

I have an event to go to this afternoon.

I want to go to the event. It’s important to me that I go. It will probably even be fun and it is only 3-4 hours out of my weekend.

But know I have to go has affected my whole weekend.

It feels like I don’t have enough time, like I can’t get anything else done because I have that event to go to.

It’s not a fact.

I have plenty of time to do everything I want and need to do this weekend.

And, like I said, I want to go to the event.

It’s just that having this one fixed point in my day, in my weekend, is putting me into waiting mode.

Waiting mode, as I experience it, is when time gets distorted (in my mind) around an event, appointment, or activity. That time distortion not only makes the event seem bigger (and like it is going to take longer) than it actually will but it also makes it hard for me to do things beforehand.

I guess I have trouble doing the things beforehand because I am afraid that if I hyperfocus I will end up missing the event?

Or perhaps I am afraid I have underestimated the time needed to get ready for the fixed event?

Or that I won’t actually have time to do the other things I want to do beforehand? Or that I will have scheduled too much before the event?

Since the event looms large on my mental to do list, I have this urge to get this clearly-most-important-thing done so I don’t forget about it but I can’t actually do it until a specific time.

So my brain tells me that there is nothing as important as that thing and I should just wait until it is time to do it.

Even if that thing is hours from now.

My brain doesn’t want to settle on doing anything else because it is not the Important Thing That Must Be Done.

It wants to just wait until it is time to do the Important Thing That Must Be Done.

So, I end up needing to consciously pour energy into the following things all at once:

  • Remembering the Important Thing That Must Be Done and the details surrounding that – including when to leave and what to bring
  • Remembering the other things I want to do beforehand
  • Reminding my brain that it is ok to step out of waiting mode and do those other things
  • Reminding my brain that the Important Thing That Must Be Done is later so it can wait
  • Keeping track of where my focus is and bringing it back to where it needs to be
  • The usual, routine monitoring-my-thinking-and-talking-and-doing that runs as an internal management system for me (Yes, I spend a lot of time thinking about my thinking. Yes, it’s tiring.)
  • Assessing new information that occurs/presents itself to me to see if I need to alter any of the other things that I have planned/have going on
  • Trying not to talk myself out of the Thing That Must Be Done because even though I want/need to do it, it is causing a lot of extra mental work so maybe it’s not worth it?

Having to do all of those things is the very opposite of letting my brain off its leash.

It’s no wonder that the thought of making plans just wears me out sometimes.

Even when I actually really want to do them.

Revisions.

I have been YEARS trying to revise my novel and it has been a struggle.

It’s not that I think my novel is perfect or that I can’t let go of the ideas in there. I don’t and I definitely can.

The problem is that I couldn’t figure out how to take it apart and reassemble it. It was almost a mechanical problem rather than a creative one.

And I’ve tried multiple approaches with minimal success.

Today, it occurred to me that it was time to get back at it.

So, there I am thinking that it had been ages since I had even touched it and dreading the painful process of trying to figure out how to revise when I had a sudden realization.

I was working on my novel in the weeks before my Dad died.

I had figured out a slow way forward.

I was making progress.

It’s not even particularly painful, just a bit slow for my liking.

And it may even speed up as I practice.

It’s odd that I had completely forgotten that it was only a couple of months since I last worked on it (and that I had forgotten that I had figured out *how* to work on it.) but I guess that’s grief showing up again.

Now my job is to get back to some regular revision sessions.

So that’s one thing on Monday’s to-do list,

Ducks!

My sister and I went swimming this morning, in the rain, at a local pond.

Some ducklings had the same plan.

Small ducks swimming in a pond with another duck walking towards the water.
Image description: a photo of some ducks swimming and walking up to get in the water at the shoreline of a pond with a pebbly beach on the right, the water on the left, some trees and greenery at the top of the photo.