I’m amidst a larger personal project of retrieving passwords, changing passwords, closing accounts, getting 2FA and better password management and so after some layers of digging and resetting some things, I unearthed the email address this was attached to.

I just looked through my drafts and there is so much journaling and vivid recollections of specific days, many of which now feel like a blur. I’ve added to my running list on this project to copy/paste those things out and save them elsewhere. 

Two and a half years later I can report that getting 1Password & Authy, taking inventory of all known accounts / logins out in the wild, and tightening everything up / closing things out, was worthwhile. Around this same time I also got a bunch of airtags for the household - keys, wallets, bikes... started a journal x index card system for myself, and kinda made a few bajillion-point-turns in life since.

Probably no surprise but I am AuDHD, my frontal lobe is finally ready, and I'm just kind of forever living as a katamari collecting coping tools / skills / self-accommodations accordingly because what works one day / situation / scenario may never work again and I have to keep trying. These efforts were the start of a critical trajectory shift.

I'm still here.

We* now live in the city of brotherly love, the west part, almost two years now. I'm 42. E's a tween. I'm finishing up a paralegal studies & eDiscovery program this year. I was doing stenography (with aim for CART services and maybe some depositions) before lockdown and beyond, but I burned out and pivoted, to nutshell. Might return to it when my brain can categorize it as a hobby-realm thing. It got to be a bit too consuming when I was putting myself on a timeline to finish and it kept telescoping out (it's like learning a musical instrument AND a new language in one thing... and I couldn't predict or plan the intersection of meeting the speed x accuracy requirements).

I am now post-three foot surgeries in the last 2 years. I ride a bike everywhere and hang out in parks, cemeteries and historical gardens (and sometimes the community garden behind E's school [oh I had also homeschooled for ~2 years? That was never the plan but it all fell together with lockdown x my long covid]). Cocoon.

We get a lot of sunlight in our home and have a lot more space and increasingly long stretches of nervous system regulation. We go fishing and kayaking sometimes at one of our favorite places to be in the city, but at a baseline we're always on bike/s together for everything. There's public transit here too but... not as fun.

Anyway, good changes, I'm glad to still be here to experience it.

*P's back and forth to/from NYC for his work. He's got a business partner and LLC and half a year after we moved, they landed a lease on warehouse space to provide storage in addition to their other art services. So there's that! He is usually here weekends and some extended ones like into the wee hours of a Wednesday, or, starting late on a Thursday etc.

Dealing with executive dysfunction and ADHD becomes so much easier when you stop trying to do things the way you feel like you should be able to do them (like everyone else) and start finding ways that actually work for you, no matter how “silly” or “unnecessary” they seem.

For years my floor was constantly covered in laundry. Clean laundry got mixed in with dirty and I had to wash things twice, just making more work for myself. Now I just have 3 laundry bins: dirty (wash it later), clean (put it away later), and mystery (figure it out later). Sure, theoretically I could sort my clothes into dirty or clean as soon as I take them off and put them away straight out of the dryer, but realistically that’s never going to be a sustainable strategy for me.

How many garbage bins do you need in a bedroom? One? WRONG! The correct answer is one within arms reach at all times. Which for me is three. Because am I really going to get up to blow my nose when I’m hyperfocusing? NO. In allergy season I even have an empty kleenex box for “used tissues I can use again.” Kinda gross? Yeah. But less gross than a snowy winter landscape of dusty germs on my desk.

I used to be late all the time because I couldn’t find my house key. But it costs $2.50 and 3 minutes to copy a key, so now there’s one in my backpack, my purse, my gym bag, my wallet, my desk, and hanging on my door. Problem solved.

I’m like a ninja for getting pout the door past reminder notes without noticing. If I really don’t want to forget something, I make a physical barrier in front of my door. A sticky note is a lot easier to walk past than a two foot high cardboard box with my wallet on top of it.

showers are hard for me because they involve a lot of steps to get in and out. buying cleaning hand wipes helps me stay a lot cleaner and happier when i’m too tired or distracted to make myself be a normal person– they’re faster and involve way less prep time, decision making, and unpleasant physical sensations. 

i have disordered eating because, again, getting food is complicated, much less cooking anything. buying 10-12$ of cliff bars at a go and keeping them in my room by my bed gives me a headstart on breakfast and lets me take my meds on time. otherwise i would lie in bed, not taking my meds because i had to eat, and not eating because i was too tired and nauseous from being hungry to get out of bed.  

‘just try harder’ is not a solution. figuring out the actual problem and addressing it is the solution.

My keys hang on the door so I literally can’t leave my apartment without touching them. My socks kept getting everywhere when I kept them with my other clothes, so instead I now keep them in a little hutch in the kitchen, where I keep all my shoes. All my silverware is in jars on my kitchen island so I can see clearly when I am out of forks. When I didn’t want to put on my socks to go running, I bought running shoes that didn’t require socks. There are people who would find all of the above unworkable and/or appalling but they don’t have to live my life and I do. 

for example, healthy people outlining the tasks they need to do that day might be something like 

- class - work - homework

if a healthy person is having a low energy day, maybe it becomes 

- make breakfast - go to class - class - go to work - work - come home from work - work on an essay - do 2 readings 

a depressed person, on a high energy day will probably see that same day as 

- make breakfast - eat breakfast - take meds - shower - get dressed - walk to bus - take bus … etc

a depressed person, on a low energy day will see that same day as

- wake up - get out of bed - walk to bathroom - use bathroom - stand back up - walk to kitchen - open fridge - take out juice - set on counter - go to cabinet - reach up arm - take down glass - unscrew lid of juice carton - pour juice - drink the juice - finish the juice …etc

the sort of chronic exhaustion manifests in how each ‘task’ takes a certain amount of energy and when you have depression, what begins to take that amount of energy- and thus, cognitively count as a ‘task’- are smaller and smaller subdivisions of what other people consider tasks. 

And the more ‘tasks’ you do, the less energy you have, and the smaller the subdivisions must be to take equivalent amounts of energy. And the longer that “to do” list of tasks is, the more exhausting and overwhelming and hopeless it feels, which creates a feedback loop of dysfunction.

So say our depressed person on a low energy day gets all the way to finishing their glass of juice. They’ve actually gotten through a lot of tasks! They’ve tried really hard. 

But to a healthy person, even on a low energy day, that probably looks like not having done anything- not having gotten through any tasks. And when our depressed person is surrounded by healthy people, they will likely internalize that they haven’t done anything, and further that they can’t complete any tasks no matter how hard they try. And that feeds worthlessness and suicidal ideation 

That, I think, is why it’s so important to encourage your depressed and chronically low-energy friends when they accomplish tasks, even if they’re operating at a level of subdivision that you don’t recognize. It is an accomplishment to get water and actually drink it for some folks. It is an accomplishment to get to class or to work. 

GRAN FURY ALL PEOPLE WITH AIDS ARE INNOCENT , 1989