Reentry Woes
I don't have a subtitle.
I have spent the last week trying to get my brain back into doing things, and it hasn’t been working. You see, I went on a trip to the Bahamas two weeks ago, and I think my mind is still on a beach somewhere. I must’ve forgotten to pack it up when the ship left or something.
I also came home with a head cold which has not helped the brain fog.
Part of it is also my schedule was thrown into absolute chaos before I left, then while I was gone my schedule was radically different than it ever is at home, then when I returned I was sick, so my schedule didn’t exist and… Welcome to autism. No routine? Nothing gets done.
To be honest, that’s one of the things that I struggle with the hardest. My ADHD wants no routine, thank you. It desires to be impulsive and act on its own whim. On the other hand, my autism would like everything planned out well in advance, if you please. Then you have my physical disabilities which might, at any point, pop up and inform me in a not-so-polite manner that I am, in fact, doing nothing at all today.
It’s a merry-go-round I would not like to be on, given my preferences. But it’s where I am. My ADHD medication helps, for sure, but it also comes with a cost: I have issues eating. The idea of food frequently makes me feel nauseated or I just plain don’t want to bother. Making myself bother is hard. It was easy on the cruise ship because a cruise ship is essentially a terrarium where other people make sure your needs are met. It was lovely. My cruising partner (and dear friend) and I could amble onto the Lido deck at any time and graze on something. Plus, there was always a variety of things available. If I wanted a salad? I could get a salad. Nothing but a plate of mashed potatoes? I could do that too. If I wanted to try some exotic food I’d never eaten before? They had a bunch of interesting options. At home, my options are far more finite and far less simple since I have to prepare everything myself.
I know that sounds entitled as hell, but having to prepare things in order eat them on my own is an executive function issue for me. It’s not so much that I think I deserve to be served at any given time. I absolutely do not believe that. However, taking care of myself is one of those tasks my brain likes to delete because I have other things it wants to do, and chasing the dopamine is a very real state of being.
The joys of neurodivergence, folks. I frequently joke that I’m the type of smart who can do complicated thought processes in my brain and parse data like a supercomputer but will wear my shirt inside out and backwards all day and not know why I’m uncomfortable. I say it fondly about myself, too. I am extremely intelligent, but so frequently that raw processing power is being eaten up by things that I did not ask it to do. And I can’t apply it to things at will. When I’m able to focus, I’m zeroed in on the task like a targeting computer. However, choosing the target is an entirely different subject.
Some days I can pull it into my writing and write upwards of 10k words in a day. But by doing that I have to shut down the subprocesses of “eat” and “use the bathroom” and “drink water.” If I’m focusing on making sure my needs are met, my productivity is sporadic at best without an active, rigid routine I can rely on. And I mean the kind of routine that had Albert Einstein wearing the same suit every day and eating pretty much the same breakfast every day because it meant he didn’t need to make those decisions.
My default for clothing almost every single day is jeans and a nerdy t-shirt of some kind. And that’s being bold and assuming I don’t wear my pyjamas all day because by then they’re comfortable and changing just seems like a lot of effort. (Yes, I shower, and yes I change after I shower… just sometimes into different PJs.)
I know this is a long ramble, but… I needed to write something for Monday, and this week my brain wanted to give you a diary entry, essentially.
So there it is.