This Adventure Known As My Life

[elisem]

 Bodies Are Weird, Part Eleventy-One: How on earth can a body just awakened from sleeping have a high blood pressure reading, and when re-checked six minutes later have a reasonably acceptable one?

So Many Things At Once, Part N: There are so many pieces I need to finish right now, what with a couple of special works by request (including one wall sculpture and one piece of jewelry capable of holding award pins) and the remainder of the Kickstarter rewards. I'm making progress, but it is complicated by the way that workbench time is an essential part of my pain management program, the ever-more-important stress management, and other stuff that falls under the heading of self-care. Counting and sorting beads is very soothing, and has helped me before when I was managing blood pressure issues on the high side of the charts, but counting and sorting beads gives so many inspirations that it's difficult not to follow at least a few of them right then. Hence I am still not done with the things that need doing and are officially in the queue, but there are more than a hundred new pieces still to put into the Etsy shop.

ADHD for (Some) Fun and (Some) Earning of a Living: ADHD means there's always something coming along to attract my attention and delight me with artistic (or other) problem-solving, but it's difficult to solve specific and known problems that are in the queue when all the new ones keep flowering in the sky like fireworks. My executive function has been insufficient for pretty much always, and I make up the difference these days -- or try to -- by various means including a wrangler, which is what I call my art and life management person who helps me identify what needs to be done and in what order to do it, and troubleshoots problems of stuckness and so on. Having a wrangler has been worth considerably more than I pay for it. While I used to have at least some executive function with the help of medication, after one has a stroke they do not let one have those kinds of medications again, so I've been washed onto the shore that is barren of executive function since 2011 when they took the adderall away for good. It is fortunate for me that workbench time is and has remained interesting these many years, and that I gravitate to it for pain management as well as for the delights it holds in general, but there does need to be some cat-herding of my energies and attentions if I'm going to keep things going. Ergo, wrangler and also habits and practices, plus a certain amount of finding the dopamine hits where ye may in where I'm supposed to be for best outcome. Maybe I should do an Ask Me Anything about that.

The Current Goal: As some of you know, some new and unfortunately exciting health issues need attending to here. I'll have to reshape the ways I live. Again. For far from the first time. 

OK, if that's what needs doing, then that's what I am going to do. After all, I'm going to have to. As Becky's mom used to say, when any of her offspring said "But I don't wanna!" about something that needed doing, "Well, you're gonna hafta, so you might as well wanna." It's been worth a try at other times, and has worked out well more often than not.

Do any of these things strike a chord in your life at the moment, or in your memories? Do you know good ways to learn to wanna when you're gonna hafta?

Comments

[mrissa]

I have signally failed at wanna-ing when I'm gonna hafta. One of my prime examples is yoga: I feel better if I do yoga three times a week, it is good for my back, it is a good idea, I KNOW that I will feel better if I do it. I have been doing this for nearly TWENTY-FIVE YEARS. (It was twice a week for the first twenty.) What I say about it is, I like to think of myself as a rational person, but clearly this is not true, because rationally I would want to do the thing that I have TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF EVIDENCE will make me feel better. DO I want to do that thing? No, not once, never once have I wanted to. I just do it anyway.

It turns out it still works if you say, "I DUNWANNA" or "FUUUUCK THIIIS" on the exhales. I have empirical data on this.

Would it be better if I could wanna, absolutely, but about ten years ago I discovered that beating myself up over not being sufficiently virtuous to WANT to do what I HAD to do was counterproductive, so now I just do it and leave out the beating myself up part.

[elisem]

That all makes good sense. I like the imprecations on the exhale thing a lot.

As always, I remain utterly in favor of people doing whatever the hell they choose to do, and I will cheer for them doing whatever works for them on their terms. Yup!

For me, being able to wanna has had nothing to do with virtue, which I am very glad about. It would have gotten a lot more tangled up for me if I did. Also, I count "wanting to get this thing over with" as wanna-ing. So my mileage varies. It comes out less like "I should be a different kind of person who could Do! This! Thing!" and more like distracting myself while I get started doing the thing. Distracting myself with "OK, theoretically, what might it feel like to do this thing if I actually did wanna? Is that even a thing my imagination could reach?" can work for me sometimes.

It's also different if you actually met Becky's mom, I'm betting. Marilyn was a hoot and a half.

"might as well wanna"

[redbird]

Sometimes I get things done by reminding myself that I don't have to want to do them, as long as they get done. Meaning that I'm not going to enjoy the task, but maybe I want to have done it, or maybe I'm leaning on bits of habit. That mostly works for small things: it's easier to think "don't have to like it, as long as it gets done" about relatively short things, like brushing my teeth, than about anything longer or more complicated.

Typing this, I realize that this is something I mostly do/need to do late in the day. Even with meds, I run out of executive function well before I run out of day (or evening).

Re: "might as well wanna"

[elisem]

Even with meds, I run out of executive function well before I run out of day (or evening).

That is a very important point, and a useful thing to figure out.

[azurelunatic]

For ADHD, sometimes I can sneak in a "might as well, while I'm here" -- I have what I call a "foot fidgeter" (sold as a "seated elliptical", which may or may not be on your forbidden list) stuck under my computer desk and in front of my usual seat on the couch. If I set my feet on it, I may fidget them, and that adds up to a surprising degree. (The one I have has a clock on it.)

Foodwise, as far as hafta/wanna goes, I do not recommend imitation foods, the ones that are trying to be something beloved without half the things that makes the beloved food wonderful. If you've got the space in the budget and other considerations don't prohibit: rare steak cut in tidbits or strips on salad is fantastic. Also depriving yourself completely of a thing is a recipe for ADHD defiance; that's the place where imitation or a very small serving of The Thing around the first or second sign of a craving can head off The Weekend of Only Jellybeans (a college stunt from someone I know who had not been allowed candy as a child).

[ephemera]

I've had some success with forcing myself to do enough research into the New Thing I've Gotta, to find an aspect that triggers as hyperfocus, and use my ADHD to advantage in that way. It's time limited, but it can be some juice to the getting started phase, which hopefully lasts long enough to get some frameworks in place to maintain. 100% building structures to make it easy to do the thing / be prompted to do the thing, so you don't have to decide to do each step independently each time, and also "don't have to like it, just have to do it" as a mantra.

[kellan_the_tabby]

For a long time I had Useful Systems which allowed me to leverage the autism to compensate for the (recently discovered) ADHD. Guess what isn't working any more! *sobbing*

However, I have used my ADHD atypical reaction to caffeine to my advantage -- if I have lots (by which I mean anywhere over 25 or so milligrams, or a quarter of a cup of coffee) I sleep, but if I have a TINY amount, say what's in precisely seven Hershey's Kisses (12 mg or so), that gets me a tiny bit of focus & functioning!

... it's still not remotely as much as I had, but it's more than nothin, & we're WAY less likely to have 'supply issues' with cheapass chocolate. I'll take it.

[queenbookwench]

I'm pretty happy with my systems/meds situation currently, but I have to ask: how did you find/hire/otherwise obtain a wrangler?