Tag: executive function

At least it’s been a while since that happened, but I’m still just done for now.

Another episode of Checking Your Balance Is Good, this time popping up the street for a few groceries before early Sunday closing. So, I managed to hold up a whole checkout line right before closing time, getting my card declined and pushing items back at the cashier to void 😳

Embarrassing enough normally, but the looks I was getting from other people pushing it with the last-minute shopping too made the whole experience even better. At least I did have some cash on me, if about ÂŁ8 less than would cover everything without extended scrounging for change while getting glares already.

So I could get most of it, including the highest priority: cat food. Still not the most pleasant afternoon.

(To make it even better, right after I got home I went ahead and did a transfer. Turns out the account was short <£1 to begin with 🙄)

Besides just feeling like a financially irresponsible goblin in front of impatient people, of course that kind of thing will still set off the Ghost Poverty Panic. It’s right at the end of the month, and there was indeed still a reasonable amount of money left in the joint account to transfer over. Try telling that to the panic, though.

maltedmilkchocolate:

Time blindness is the weirdest aspect of executive dysfunction and so weird as an experience to live with.

It’s like you see the clock, the clock says 3pm, you look at the clock again and it’s 3:02, then 3:05, and then you look again and it’s 8pm and WHAT THE FUCK.

You don’t even need hyperfocus. But hyperfocus is like the Warp Speed:tm: version cause when that hits, it’s 3pm and then it’s the next day and why is the sun rising and when did i last eat and oh god i need to use the bathroom. And oh, also, you’re EXHAUSTED. The act of your brain tunnel visioning on something drains you (but that’s another topic).

Time blindness is…. having the general knowledge that today is Wednesday, and you need to do something on Thursday. Thursday is logically tomorrow, but the mysterious void of time is like ‘that’s like next week or something.’ 

It’s knowing you have to do something in three weeks on the 21st. And as the days creep closer, the 21st is stuck in a constant state of still being 3 weeks away, despite the fact it’s now tomorrow.

It’s wild. ADHD is literally living in a constant state of “There is Now. And there is Later.” and there’s no in between; no dates, no times; no hours, weeks, or months. It’s just Now and Later, and oh god why is is X o’clock already!?

Oh crap, I just realized that I forgot about Mr. C’s birthday on the day last week.

What makes it worse was that I was thinking it was a significant date, and decided that must be because the anniversary of my moving here was what turned out to be a few days before 🙄

I know what date birthdays, etc. fall on, but then have a hard time connecting it to that day as it’s happening. That great a grip on time. It’s pretty weird, and embarrassing sometimes.

I mean, I’m not sure he even noticed that I forgot. And he didn’t say anything about mine this year either. But, I still feel pretty bad about it.

toastheaven:

direhuman:

Executive dysfunction is like all of your abilities are on cooldown and you’re mashing buttons to try to do anything but your brain is just like “i can’t do that yet. that’s still recharging. i can’t do that yet. that spell isn’t ready yet. that’s still recharging.”

and everyone around you is like “why aren’t you using any abilities you noob my game is fine”

jumpingjacktrash:

umaruspeaks:

cleaning with ADHD is a nightmare. it’s an endless cycle of finding a half-finished chore and stopping the one you were already working on, then remembering that something else needs to be done and getting started on that, then finding half-finished chore and

i have the solution! i call it ‘junebugging’.

have you ever seen a junebug get to grips with a window screen? it’s remarkably persistent, but not very focused. all that matters is location.

how to junebug: choose the location you feel you can probably get some shit done on today. be specific. not ‘the bathroom’ but ‘the bathroom sink’. you are not choosing a range, you are choosing a center; you will move around, but your location is where you’ll keep coming back to. mentally stick a pin in it. consider yourself tethered to that spot by a long mental bungee cord.

go to your location. look at stuff. move stuff around. do a thing. get distracted. remember you’re junebugging the bathroom sink and go back there. look at it some more. do a different thing. get distracted. get a sandwich. remember you’re junebugging and go back to the bathroom sink.

nt’s will go crazy watching you, and if they demand to know When You Will Be Done you will probably have to roll them in a carpet and stuff them up the chimney. you’re done when you feel done, or you’re too bored to live, or it’s bedtime, or any number of other markers, you get to pick. but the thing is, by returning repeatedly to that one spot, you harness the ‘hyperactivity’ part instead of wasting all that energy battling with the ‘attention deficit’ part.

not only will the bathroom sink almost certainly be clean, and probably the mirror and soap dish too, you might’ve swapped in a fresh toothbrush, a new soap, you might’ve unclogged the drain – you will probably also have cleaned or fixed up several things in the near vicinity, or in the path between the sink and where you get the fresh toothbrush, or maybe you did your grocery shopping cuz you were out of soap, or maybe you couldn’t find a clean hand towel and ended up doing laundry.

this is good. you got shit done! it wasn’t necessarily Cleaned The Bathroom in the way nt’s think of it, but screw ‘em. things are better than they were.

plus you worked off enough energy to be able to sleep. which is not small potatoes when living the ADHD life. 😀

neukpunk:

If you’re one of those people who thinks executive dysfunction only happens for things we don’t like (school, cleaning,) then please consider the fact that I’ve been meaning to plug my phone in for 20 minutes and I’m now at 2% and still putting it off to write this post ¯_(ツ)_/¯

neukpunk:

If you’re one of those people who thinks executive dysfunction only happens for things we don’t like (school, cleaning,) then please consider the fact that I’ve been meaning to plug my phone in for 20 minutes and I’m now at 2% and still putting it off to write this post ¯_(ツ)_/¯