Determined to be hopeful

As often happens, my fears were for naught*

The workshop yesterday was delightful. Exactly what I needed.

And even though I didn’t completely understand what was going on, the instructor’s approach made it safe to feel that way.

It was a really interested exploration of the patterns of our inner worlds – not our mental space but our sense of our bodies from the inside.

A photo of a roughly traced outline of my body from the hips up, lying on my right side. The outline is filled with various patterns. ?
A photo of a roughly traced outline of my body from the hips up, lying on my right side. The outline is filled with various patterns.

*To be clear though, these fears of being the only one who doesn’t get it were not irrational. That exact scenario has played out MANY times.

On Trying To Figure Out A Bad Day

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.

Giving my brain a break

My brain is being a bit of a jerk today so I spent a bit of time listening to an audiobook and drawing and colouring this.

It helped a bit.

A drawing of brightly coloured shapes with thick black outlines
Image description: A drawing of shapes created by thick, black, curved lines that takes up the whole piece of paper. Each shape is coloured with a different bright coloured marker. The shapes are somewhat similar to how beach rocks end up when they wash ashore.

One of my favourite views

I love the way the ‘gateway’ to my yard from my patio looks.

I feel relaxed just looking at this photo.

A photo of a backyard as seen through the opening in a patio rail. There are flowers in pots on the patio.
Image description: a photo of part of my yard and patio. Near the centre of the photo is one side of the opening in my patio rail where the steps come up. On the right is the patio rail and post with some sunflowers in a pot with a beam of sunlight on them. On the left side of the photo is a green pot with purple flowers growing in it. Through the opening is the sun-dappled grass in my yard, in the middle distance an orange lawn chair and my square fire pit, and in the far background is a wooden fence with a small shelf, raised a little from the ground, with three flowerpots on it.