Mombie – a bit of everything

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.

Winding Down The Week

More by happy accident than by design, I have found myself with a slow Friday afternoon.

I have let my brain off leash and now I’m reading until it occurs to me to do something else.

PS – I like the non-alcoholic version of Corona just as much as the alcoholic one.

A beer and an ereader in a case sit on a red patio table.
A beer and a book makes for a good way to spend a sunny afternoon. Image description: my Corona Sunbrew sits on a red patio table next to my Kobo ereader which is in a blue, purple, and gold patterned case. Beyond the table, the floorboards of the patio are dappled with sunlight.

Drawing with dots

I have many many different versions of drawings like this – a figure, back on, standing on a hill, reaching their arms towards the sky.

I don’t know exactly why I am drawn (ha!) to draw this so often but I am and I do.

Today, I experimented with creating this image from dots.

I really like how the sky turned out but I think that, next time, I’ll make the figure taller with longer arms.

A drawing of a person standing on a hill, arms outstretched toward the starry sky. This drawing is made entirely of dots. Curving horizontal lines of green dots for the hill, vertical lines of blue dots for the sky, clusters of yellow dots of stars, and a three triangles and a circle of black dots for the figure.

Avoiding the Crowd

Today is the St. John’s Regatta – a long running event that not only features a set of rowing races but also a variety booths with food vendors , games of chance, and other fun things.

I used to go every year with my family when I was young but now I haven’t been there in over 20 years, maybe longer. And I have no desire to be around that many people.

I enjoyed being with a large group when I was younger and I never gave much thought to crowds but now the thought of spending time in a crowd exhausts me.

For a long time, I thought I had just gotten out of the habit or that I had kind of borrowed my husband’s aversion to crowds and I kind of chastised myself for taking that on unnecessarily.

But now, I don’t think that’s what happened.

When I was young, I had someone else to do the navigating for me – to get me there, to make a plan, to choose how long we were spending at an event.

And I was less consciously aware of my own feelings, energy, and discomfort. I would put aside my feelings for the good of the people I was with.

I *can* still put my feelings aside now when necessary but back then I did it automatically. And I would sometimes get overwhelmed and say or do something that was embarrassing or that I regretted later. Or I would burn myself out and have no energy for days after an event with a big crowd.

So, I think that when I was younger, having someone else manage a lot of the details was a buffer for me that made crowds easier.

And the fact that I wasn’t paying attention to my feelings, comfort, and energy meant that I didn’t notice the things I notice now about being in a crowd.

I can still be around crowds when the event is structured (like a concert) or when I have a specific role (I’m the host or I have a job that needs to get done and I can prioritize that) or if my desire to be at the event is stronger than my desire to avoid a crowd (i.e. someone’s wedding) but mostly I avoid crowds and save my energy for things that I enjoy more.

And I’m ok with that.

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.