My brain works in cycles these days.
.
I have an ever-growing list of books I want to read. It exists alongside an identically organized (that is, whatever order I thought of them) list of movies and TV shows I want to watch, and a highly dissimilar (that is, painstakingly curated) list of stories that I want to write.
.
All three lists went frustratingly without progress for years. Having spent my entire life until this point with ADHD that was undiagnosed and untreated, I was at the mercy of the wind as far as whether my focus would allow me to participate in activities I desperately wanted to do. Library books came home with me, and then sat in the exact same place for their entire loan period, untouched, even though I had been excited about them day-of and would be disappointed when I had to bring them back. I would put movies on in the background and then wander the apartment, doing anything but actually watching them, completely unaware of even the most central plot points. I could write only occasionally, being more apt to sit in front of a blank page consumed in daydreams than actually putting pen to paper, or hands to keyboard.
.
With the vague idea that this could not continue, I finally pursued a diagnosis, and consented to try a stimulant medication. That this turnaround could be so immediately linked to the stimulant seemed to prove that it had never been mere laziness—there actually had been something missing in my brain that prevented me from initiating tasks even out of desperation. I already knew that, of course, but the shitty thing about having ADHD is that by the time you find that out you’ve frequently had it hammered into you as cruelly as possible that the real reason you didn’t do your homework is that you’re a piece of shit who didn’t feel like doing it and that you would have done it if only you weren’t such a piece of shit. This internal sentiment is a combination of the rejection sensitive dysphoria common to the disorder and the generally greater interest in punishing academic struggle than in determining its cause.
.
It was not the nigh-miraculous fix that many online anecdotes described it as, but it still made a radical difference. I felt vindicated for every school meeting I had as a kid where I was berated for “refusing” to “cooperate.” I was making progress that had been impossible before. I could finally shake my fist at all the times I had been told “it’s easy, literally just sit down and do the work.”
.
Now all that remains is to literally just sit down and do the work.
.
Like I said, the stimulant wasn’t a miracle drug. It doesn’t make things easy that are difficult for other people, it just makes them possible in theory rather than torturously just out of reach. There has been a learning curve. The longtime pattern of listlessness followed by panic that carried me through even the most basic of tasks before was no longer adequate, but I had never had occasion to learn better strategies because for years this was the only one I was capable of using.
.
I still don’t really watch TV or movies. I can consume a show, but I am incapable of the true Netflix Binge scenario. I will still half-watch while doing the dishes, but now with a general awareness of the plot, my focus on The Haunting of Hill House far more than the crumbs on the countertop.
.
Writing is a different beast. I really cannot be doing anything else while I do that. This is a problem. Little by little, I have been finding the strategies that work. Weirdly, having a dual-screen setup has been good; I have Word on one monitor, my playlist on the other, and then turn off the monitor with the playlist. This means that not only is there an undistracting expanse of blank, black screen in my peripheral vision, I can turn it back on to make changes to the music selection without ever minimizing the word document, so it never goes out of sight or out of mind. I have created challenges to obligate myself to form a habit—this blog, for example, which I have admittedly not been the MOST diligent about updating on time, but which I feel a pull to at least make an effort for, since I paid for the URL and all. I’ve been adding to Brother Shadow at least once a day for 214 days now, even if some of the updates are only a single sentence long.
.
Still, it’s a work in progress, and on top of that, the ADHD never really fully goes away. I don’t know if it is an imbalance in the still in-progress mix of substances I’m using to manage it or merely a lack of practice, but if intense focus is not in the cards on a given day, there is only so much I can do. The silver lining to this is that the thing I want to do is now often replaces by something else I want to do rather than staring at a wall or scrolling Wikipedia endlessly without actually reading anything.
.
This is where the cycles come in. My brain wants to either read or write. I will have a couple of weeks in a row where I want nothing at all but to sit and work on Brother Shadow, or my blog, or some other project on my list, and the line graph in my word count tracker spikes. This is often followed by a week or so of single-sentence updates, and then a few more, as the focus meter switches, at the whim of the four winds, from output to intake.
.
I just finished Clash of Kings, but haven’t written a post about it yet despite having things to say. I’ve picked up and put down my review of What Moves the Dead about four times in a row, and number five turned into this post instead. I’m still picking my way through Hyperion after being really put off by the introduction of the cruciform, parasite stuff being one of my few hardcore squicks. After realizing my card from my tiny, small-town library is also good at several of the larger libraries in towns nearby due to a reciprocal agreement between them, I was able to get the audiobook of Mistborn, which has been on my list for ages, and have been plugging away at it in plenty of time to return it on time. I started into The Lies of Locke Lamora, but I have little hope of finishing it on this cycle despite being impressed so far—as is evidenced by this post, the pendulum is swinging back from reading to writing, and The Gentleman Bastard will probably have to wait until next time.
.
Maybe I will eventually be able to control this cycle somewhat, or at least predict it and work around it in a way that lets me work a bit more consistently. The whole “building new habits” situation is even more a work in progress than the medication. I haven’t been getting as much writing done as I would like. Fortunately though, I have been doing SOMETHING, so all said I’m feeling pretty good about the whole mess of it all.
Dramatic Pause 