frustration

Great in a crisis, defeated by a hassle?

I have always said that it will never be a big thing that defeats me, it will an onslaught on little things.

When a big crisis occurs, my brain automatically puts things in perspective – I can see what’s important and what to brush off, I know how to choose between tasks and ideas, I can prioritize and delegate.

When small hassles occur, especially when they arrive in a group, I get easily overwhelmed and defeated.

This is definitely an ADHD thing but I undoubtedly put my own personal spin on it as well.

One day last week, I was so frazzled by little things that I had to ask my husband to drive me to the drugstore because I wasn’t sure I had the wherewithal to drive. And once I was inside, the collective hassles of the day had my brain so jumbled that I lost track of what I was doing because someone at the other counter had a whiny voice.

Is it ridiculous? Absolutely.

Is it still a problem? Definitely.

You see, knowing that a situation or an issue is affecting me disproportionately does not change my experience, especially in the moment.

I’ve gotten pretty good at saying to friends and family, “I know my stress about this is out of whack but please help me.”

Instead of being hard on myself and instead of getting frustrated by what feels like indifference or sabotage by other people, my ADHD diagnosis has helped me see this as a perception problem and ask for help in a more sensible way.

Some days, though, no amount of help will help.

Yesterday, I just had one tiny thing after another happen to me – to the point that my husband and I were joking that someone had cursed me – and I couldn’t seem to get a grip on things at all.

I’m sure part of the problem was that my back was wonky so I had a low frustration tolerance but mostly it was a string of annoying coincidences.

I gave up on trying to move forward. I took a bath and then lay down to read for a while.

It kind of felt like being defeated by hassles but I prefer to think of it as a strategic retreat.

Gotta choose your battles, right?

On creating order

We painted our living room this weekend and amidst the tidying and rearranging, I somehow awoke a need to move through the entire house in a flurry, creating order, adding intention, tidying things up.

Just like most people’s houses, ours is rather cluttered. It’s filled with stuff we love and stuff we used to love, and all of the equipment for the people we hoped we’d be (or that we were for a while.)

I’d love to be able to just forge ahead, working all day for weeks in a row to get rid of stuff, organize stuff, find the right place for everything.

Alas, I have other priorities too so I have to squeeze in the organizing a little bit at a time.

My brain just hates that but I am going to keep trying to convince it that working that way will, eventually, help me get all of the stuff done.

Let’s see how it goes.

Not the boss of words today

I generally find it pretty easy to write.

Sure, it might be hard for me to actually get myself to sit down at my desk but once I have the document open and I start typing things usually flow pretty well.

In fact, I often describe my writing as bossing words around.

Today, however, I was not the boss of words. They did not want to pay any attention to me and they flatly refused to line up on the page in a logical fashion.

Luckily, I’ve been writing for a long time. These kind of days are going to happen. They don’t have any special meaning about my writing, or my writing skill, they aren’t a sign of anything.

Today’s frustrations only mean that today was frustrating.

There’s always tomorrow!

A GIF of a monkey typing.
Image description: a monkey (or maybe a chimpanzee) in a pink shirt types on an old-fashioned typewriter.

Feeling Sick Is Boring

I found out a couple of years ago that the headaches that have plagued me for years are actually migraines. They have been relatively infrequent, just a few times a year, but they have been awful. Finding out that they were migraines was a kind of relief, actually, because it made me learn to take better care of myself instead of trying to power through them.

Over the last year though, things have taken a different turn and I have been having ‘silent’ migraines. All of the other awful symptoms but with no actual head pain.

I have a few days of being unfocused and sleepy (which I only notice in retrospect) and then I have an evening of feeling hellish.It’s horrible, of course, but it passes fairly quickly.

It’s the next day that really upsets me though.

That’s the day I feel better than I did but still not good. I’m well enough to do necessary things but not up to doing much. I feel okay enough to feel weird about lying around but I know that, if I don’t rest, this feeling will go on longer.

I can read but I’m not very focused. I can’t watch a tv show without feeling a bit nauseated. I don’t feel up to drawing. I’m too bleh to have a conversation.

It’s just boring, boring, boring.

Apparently, I *can* write a blog post though. 😉

A photo looking up at light fixture ceiling fan with brown blades.
My view all day. Image description: a photo looking up at a light fixture/fan with brown fan blades on a white ceiling. The top edge of a window can be seen at the bottom of the photo.

More resigned than annoyed

It snowed today.

On June 10th.

Two days after some straight-up summer weather.

I couldn’t work up a full positive attitude but I do feel kind of resigned to the facts here. (Acceptance is important, right?)

June is often awful here in Newfoundland and Labrador. And we have had so many foggy, rainy, cold Junes that our recent good weather is the aberration, not this.

It’s pretty rare for us to have our patio furniture set up by this point and the leaves are hardly ever put by now.

But still, the fact that it is has been so warm and so green makes this snow a sort of insult.

This was not in the plan.

A backyard deck, set up for summer, is covered in snow.
Image description: a corner of a backyard patio, decorated with star shaped lights. There is a deck chair with a red cushion on it under a leafy tree. There is snow on the deck, on the ground, and on the tree.