Day 47: I Am the One Thing I Can Control
Jun. 6th, 2023 08:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jakebeWe had a surprisingly good discussion in one of our local-friend Telegram groups yesterday. L. had sent me a Reddit thread from someone describing how habit-forming works for someone with ADHD. Namely, it doesn't. Every time I brush my teeth, it said, that's a conscious choice, and that feels very close to my own experience. Habits, for me, are not something done automatically. They're a chain of conscious choices that I try to make as easy as possible.
In the morning if I'm on the ball, I'll:
+ wake up with the alarm
+ brush my teeth after going to the bathroom
+ wash my face
+ apply face gel
+ meditate before looking at any other app on my phone
+ make the bed
+ take my antidepressant, Adderall, ashwagandha and allergy medication
+ plan my to-do list in my Bullet Journal
+ take 30 minutes to write in my Dreamwidth journal
Those are nine conscious choices I make in the morning before, say, going to work or doing anything else. Each one takes a little bit of willpower, so every morning is this battle to make sure I apply just enough to make the next domino fall without expending everything I have for everything else I have to do. This morning I made seven good choices. ;)
That's one of the frustrating things about ADHD. I simply don't have the mechanism that makes choices automatic, so "sitting down to write at a set time for 30 minutes every day" is a conscious effort that takes willpower. And if that activity causes anxiety, that feeling digs the earth out from under me so climbing that wall is even higher. There is a certain amount of momentum one achieves through repetition. The choices get easier, but not all the time. Some days it's harder to find the willpower to make right decisions than others.
There's real calculus through the day, especially when I'm low on spoons, about which bullet in my to-do list I have the spoons for. On one hand I'm sure I have more spoons than I think I do. On the other, it's easy for me to come down to my last spoon before I've realized it, and then I'm sitting on a half-done to-do list with no more willpower to tackle it.
Other folks explained their own neurodivergent behaviors and attitudes, and where they think they come from. R. explained why he tends to express contrarian opinions in a refreshingly honest way and I'm really proud to see that kind of progress from him. I'm not sure it was noted by anyone else, but it showed me he's taking steps to change his behavior.
I was torn between treating yesterday like any other Monday and taking a day to decompress and ended up with the worst hybrid between the two: feeling bad while I wasn't getting anything done. I did schedule the first episode of Swiftie's Intergalactic to go up, practiced Duolingo significantly for the first time since the weekend trip, and cleaned up the burrow a little bit. But I also smoked pot a bit too early in the afternoon and didn't get any writing done -- which WAS my top priority.
Keeping my writing scheduled for the morning ensures I do the most important thing first before I lose the spoons for anything else. What I find is that once I get started, writing takes fewer spoons than I think it does. It's the getting started that's the hard part, but isn't that always the case?
Yesterday, we played another session of "The Wild Beyond the Witchlight". There are five of us in the group, but two are brand-new players and one is "new to us". The group hasn't quite come together by the end of the third session, but I think that's largely because the two new players are pretty shy and unsure how to respond at any given time. I think it took that long for me to realize that the more veteran players would need to hold their hands in more ways than one.
So I stepped up to handle as much of the plot as I could. I helped get involved with the various Witchlight activities, showed how to use my character sheet to pull skills for impromptu actions (in this case, an acrobatic performance using the Mold Earth cantrip to create beams, rings, and platforms to jump and move through), and even made a Hero Choice by offering to have a kenku steal my character's voice so a mime could have his back and renew his courtship with the mermaid he loves. That's definitely going to cause problems for my sorcerer in the next session since so many of his spells have Verbal components, but we'll see how that works out next time.
I guess I learned that a great way to teach others how to play D&D is to have fun playing it as well as you possibly can. I'll have to check up on the new players today to see how things landed with them, and really make an effort to pull them into the fun next time.
Today it's all about discipline and control. I don't have an excessively long to-do list today, but I'll be making every effort to be mindful about how I go through the day. I want to be sure I'm doing the "next best thing" as much as possible.
In the morning if I'm on the ball, I'll:
+ wake up with the alarm
+ brush my teeth after going to the bathroom
+ wash my face
+ apply face gel
+ meditate before looking at any other app on my phone
+ make the bed
+ take my antidepressant, Adderall, ashwagandha and allergy medication
+ plan my to-do list in my Bullet Journal
+ take 30 minutes to write in my Dreamwidth journal
Those are nine conscious choices I make in the morning before, say, going to work or doing anything else. Each one takes a little bit of willpower, so every morning is this battle to make sure I apply just enough to make the next domino fall without expending everything I have for everything else I have to do. This morning I made seven good choices. ;)
That's one of the frustrating things about ADHD. I simply don't have the mechanism that makes choices automatic, so "sitting down to write at a set time for 30 minutes every day" is a conscious effort that takes willpower. And if that activity causes anxiety, that feeling digs the earth out from under me so climbing that wall is even higher. There is a certain amount of momentum one achieves through repetition. The choices get easier, but not all the time. Some days it's harder to find the willpower to make right decisions than others.
There's real calculus through the day, especially when I'm low on spoons, about which bullet in my to-do list I have the spoons for. On one hand I'm sure I have more spoons than I think I do. On the other, it's easy for me to come down to my last spoon before I've realized it, and then I'm sitting on a half-done to-do list with no more willpower to tackle it.
Other folks explained their own neurodivergent behaviors and attitudes, and where they think they come from. R. explained why he tends to express contrarian opinions in a refreshingly honest way and I'm really proud to see that kind of progress from him. I'm not sure it was noted by anyone else, but it showed me he's taking steps to change his behavior.
I was torn between treating yesterday like any other Monday and taking a day to decompress and ended up with the worst hybrid between the two: feeling bad while I wasn't getting anything done. I did schedule the first episode of Swiftie's Intergalactic to go up, practiced Duolingo significantly for the first time since the weekend trip, and cleaned up the burrow a little bit. But I also smoked pot a bit too early in the afternoon and didn't get any writing done -- which WAS my top priority.
Keeping my writing scheduled for the morning ensures I do the most important thing first before I lose the spoons for anything else. What I find is that once I get started, writing takes fewer spoons than I think it does. It's the getting started that's the hard part, but isn't that always the case?
Yesterday, we played another session of "The Wild Beyond the Witchlight". There are five of us in the group, but two are brand-new players and one is "new to us". The group hasn't quite come together by the end of the third session, but I think that's largely because the two new players are pretty shy and unsure how to respond at any given time. I think it took that long for me to realize that the more veteran players would need to hold their hands in more ways than one.
So I stepped up to handle as much of the plot as I could. I helped get involved with the various Witchlight activities, showed how to use my character sheet to pull skills for impromptu actions (in this case, an acrobatic performance using the Mold Earth cantrip to create beams, rings, and platforms to jump and move through), and even made a Hero Choice by offering to have a kenku steal my character's voice so a mime could have his back and renew his courtship with the mermaid he loves. That's definitely going to cause problems for my sorcerer in the next session since so many of his spells have Verbal components, but we'll see how that works out next time.
I guess I learned that a great way to teach others how to play D&D is to have fun playing it as well as you possibly can. I'll have to check up on the new players today to see how things landed with them, and really make an effort to pull them into the fun next time.
Today it's all about discipline and control. I don't have an excessively long to-do list today, but I'll be making every effort to be mindful about how I go through the day. I want to be sure I'm doing the "next best thing" as much as possible.
