[46/366] chocolate, and getting stuff done

[cosmolinguist]

15 What’s your favorite piece in a box of chocolates?

I'm honestly not a fan. I don't like most fillings in chocolates, I don't really like milk chocolate, and I don't like having to, worst-case, guess but even the best case is reading a map about which fiddly decorations or shapes I should be looking for in order to avoid the fruit cremes and the chewy things and the nougat. It's not very accessible! I just don't like this kind of chocolate enough to make it worth the effort.

--

Today was Day 2 of "...what do I do with myself?" diffrentcolours and I were planning to be with his family this weekend (where I was going to confound their ideas of gender) but he was too sick. So, having fended off all other plans, I didn't really know what to do with myself today.

Yesterday, same deal, I ended up with too many plans but today I didn't acquire any. There's a storm with a name again (Dennis this time, which must delight my friend Dennis), must we do this every weekend now? So I didn't even get out to walk Gary. But I did wake up early, knit myself a hat to be a (okay, but inferior) replacement for the perfect one I lost in December, did a bunch of uni work, made two relatively decent and very easy meals for myself, had a nap, watched a bunch of Brooklyn 99 with Andrew... I'm going a bit stir-crazy, it's not like me to stay in all day, but otherwise it's been a good day.

Mostly I'm proud of how much uni reading I managed to catch up on. For months now, whenever I've had a day like this with no external obligations, I've had the best of intentions but ended up accomplishing absolutely nothing. I'm so relieved that didn't happen today. It really does feel like luck; I didn't try any harder or want to do the things any more than I did before -- that wouldn't have been possible! -- I just...somehow found it easier today. The executive function, the activation energy, was finally there. Not a lot of it, but enough. It felt really good; some of the reading was boring as hell but it was a lot more fun than playing Kwazy Cupcakes or listening to podcasts or whatever else I do when I'm procrastinating and avoidant.

I was so unprepared for this week and I was sick of that. Not only have I done the most urgent stuff for next week, I've gone back a little to catch up on stuff I didn't get around to the last couple weeks (I honestly forgot one of my classes had a textbook...). And I at least looked at the questions for my mid-term essay due in a few weeks (the first one I wrote an essay about last semester, so it shouldn't be too hard!) even if I didn't start working on them yet at least I remembered they exist.

Comments

[worlds_of_smoke]

go you! executive dysfunction makes it so hard to keep caught up on homework and damn near impossible to get ahead. You should definitely be proud!

[tarasacon]

I’m only recently starting to vaguely map my executive function for daily life. Historically I knew severe depression, anxiety, or stress made things challenging, but I didn’t understand that I had ADD and how much it impacts my day-to-day life. I’m getting better at seeing it in play but it sometimes feels like there’s an unmapped moon influencing the tides of my brain.

Aside from the obvious (fatigue, hunger, stress/trauma) are there factors that you know are relevant for how well your executive function is working?

[cosmolinguist]

are there factors that you know are relevant for how well your executive function is working?

Andrew is autistic, so I'm basically providing all the executive function for two people, and I may have barely enough for myself but not a lot extra. So when either of us is struggling (which could be due to fatigue, stress, depression, etc.) it tends to get much more difficult. And pretty much any time it's me struggling, he tends to flag at least a bit too, without the structure I'm usually responsible for providing. It can be a real vicious circle: I'm a bit depressed, so I let one thing slide, and then it gets hard to get some extra executive function to catch up on that, and then more stuff starts to suffer because of it...

Another factor for me is the season: I have SAD and I just spend the whole winter bone-crushingly weary. I'm thinking I might have managed a bit better on Saturday partly because the days are noticeably longer again.

[tarasacon]

That makes sense. I know that the cold dreary february weather here is aggravating everything for me.