messing about is what I do
I have absolutely no issue with getting up in the morning. It's almost a clockwork procedure for me. It's what I'm doing afterwards that can stump me.
I seem to wake at 6.45am, or very close to it, every day. There is inevitably a grumbling going on in the gastric depths, and it has woken my brain up to tell it that things need attending to. No alarm clock necessary.
It doesn't seem to matter what time I actually went to sleep. Be it 11pm, midnight, or even 1am very occasionally if I get caught up in my book. Once it gets to 6.45am I wake and my day begins.
I start executing the program 'The Morning' now. Bathroom, Exercise routine, Medication, Breakfast. Each of these having a number of essential steps for completing them.
The exact order of things within each subroutine can be moved around a little, but I can't move on from one to another before each subroutine is completed.
All these habits have gradually built up into the morning choreography that works as a standard practice, to combat the ADHD holes that would open up and swallow me whole if there was not a framework in place.
As demonstrated by what comes next after 'The Morning' program has executed.
Brain freeze. Task paralysis. Many things that can be done, but I am completely stuck and unable to choose what I should do next.
I have a look at the task manager to find out if there's anything I should be doing, and take a moment to decide if I want to do it.
Answer: No, not really.
What I actually do: Open new tabs on the web browser (NOT reading the news. DO NOT READ THE NEWS)
Open RSS reader, read some blogs, open another tab, mess about on Mastodon.
Look out the window, perusing the garden, see stuff I need to do out there but I'm still in my pyjamas, I need to shower and put some proper outdoor clothes on.
In a minute.
I'll make a list of garden stuff I need to do first, while I'm thinking of it. I know me. I'll forget.
Turn back to computer, open task manager again, hear a notification bleep, where's that coming from? Open Mastodon tab, yay, had a 'like', ooh, new follower too, who are they then?
Mess about on Mastodon for a bit, have a blog idea prompted by something I just read, open notes program, write a title, start thinking, have an idea for a toot now, open Mastodon tab again, ooh, funny post, scroll, scroll, forgotten idea for toot, oh, blog draft, open blog draft, forgotten train of thought, what's this rubbish? Delete it.
Open task manager. Nah, don't fancy phoning and speaking to my pension company. And still don't want to do the 'task manager reorganisation' thing either. Open mastodon, mess about on there for a bit.
Ooh, yes, list of garden jobs to do, look out the window...
Oh.
It's dog walking time.
And I'M STILL IN MY PYJAMAS.
OK, shower and change and walk dog. But first...
Mess about on Mastodon for a bit.
The anchor points for the day are few, now that I don't have an actual job as such. Yes, I do a bit of holiday cottage management for a few local people, but that isn't a fixed and hard landscape to my days. There is no commute, there is no being in the office and structure to it. It's just dealing with things whenever it needs dealing with. That kind of suits me, and I do it well, I think.
What I can't seem to do is motivate myself to just do other stuff. The day's milestones are just 'The Morning', 'Dog Walk', 'Lunch', 'Dinner'.
When I have to decide what to do in between them, I'm lost.
Very occasionally there will be a flurry of activity, as it seems that I have chosen 'A Project' to get on with, and I will not stop until it is completed. But I come to a stop halfway through it because I have thrown myself into it at 100% capacity instead of pacing myself at say 75-80% and have now physically exhausted myself and I have to rest for a week or more now.
The remaining half of that project will have to go on the task manager. We know what will happen to it now. But maybe I'll get round to it one day.
At the moment, health is adding to my mind's reluctance to consider doing the heavier stuff out in the garden too. I get tired and wobbly very quickly once I'm digging or lifting stuff. So anything garden oriented is waving a 'Hmmm, you don't really want to do that' flag.
So I don't do that either most of the time.
It's actually hard to define what I have done all day when I'm asked by J when she comes home from work later.
Or perhaps it's not.
Messing about seems to feature quite a lot.
Maybe that's what I do.
NB: The above is a dramatised version of what happens and has been edited down for reading brevity. In truth, there is much more jumping about between different things in real life. Also, between 'Lunch' and 'Dinner' there is generally 'Nap', so that's a bit easier on my brain.
post link for sharing: https://skryblans.com/messing-about-is-what-i-do
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