-I'm hungry, making it hard to do tasks. Preparing food to address my hunger is a task.

-There are smudges on my glasses, making it hard to focus/process, making it hard to think, making it hard to plan tasks. Cleaning my glasses is a task.

Like, today I had two Big Things that could not be rescheduled easily (or at all in one case) and I knew it would use up every spoon I had to do both things and then work in the evening, but both things were important and I did technically have spoons. So I prepared myself as well as I could, was as kind to myself as I could be, and I did the first thing, and I thought “wow, I’m going to be able to do this!”

And then in the car on the way to the second thing I sat on my coat wrong so it restricted my movement a tiny bit, and my husband turned the car heater on without me noticing, and those two things plus a seatbelt plus noise plus cars being a trigger for me gave me a sudden attack of sensory overload and claustrophobia, and I panicked and couldn’t get my coat off immediately, so that was a couple spoons. And then we had to wait an extra half hour for the thing because they let in somebody without an appointment instead of honoring our appointment time, so the kids got really loud and grouchy and needed extra shepherding. And that was several spoons.

So now even though I made sure to require nothing else from myself the rest of the day, and even though I had hours to do what I wanted with no demands on my time before work, I sat down to work tonight and I just couldn’t. Brain will not focus, I’m doing things but I’m slooooooooow. So I’ve done about 3/4 of what I need to do, my last quarter is going to be late, and... I’m having to celebrate even being able to do that much, because after so many spoon spills in an already demanding day this is genuinely a gold medal performance on my part.