rest

New Year’s Eve

I love treating NYE as a mostly regular night.

It feels like mixing the magical and the mundane to be journaling and drawing while people set off fireworks.

I’m not usually a fan of the saying ‘start as you mean to go on’ because I don’t usually know how I want to go on but this time I am certain:

I plan to spend this year going easy on myself and doing things on my own terms.

That works for this evening and it works for 2025.

Refreshing

It’s unseasonably warm today and, so far, I’m not really doing the work I had planned to do.

Instead, I’m resting and refreshing.

As in quenching a thirst.

As in reloading a screen so it can reset.

As in a new perspective making you feel better.

A tall glass of a cold beverage sits on the corner of a patio table.
My drink is also refreshing but in a more literal way. Image description: This tall glass is filled with water and ice cubes and a splash of cranberry-cherry juice. It’s sitting on a red table and the railing of my patio is in the background. The glass has condensation on the outside.

Trying to do one thing at a time

In my efforts to get things done ‘before I forget’ and/or not to hyper-fixate on one task and ignore everything else on my list, I often end up treating my day as a series of things to check off.

I end up feeling like the important thing is get things done rather than to enjoy the process of doing them.

I just set a timer so I could relax into reading my book and drinking my tea for 20 mins before getting started on my day’s work.

After a few sips of tea, I suddenly found my mind wandering to my to do list, because I had mentally checked off ‘drink tea.’

That’s not good for me and it’s a waste of a good cup of tea.

I have to find a middle ground between ‘drink tea and read all day’ and ‘take two sips and check it off.’

I end up feeling rushed far too often to do it to myself unnecessarily.

A photo of tea in an octopus cup.
This morning’s cup of tea in the cup that my dear friend Mary gave me – it features a cranky blue octopus holding an ice cream cone in one tentacle. My ebook is propped up in the background and my cup is on a multicoloured patterned mug rug.

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.