I knew it had been awhile, but not almost 9 months!
I’m glad some things haven’t changed, like the Midnight still being here. On the other hand, the titular reset button from my last post has not been located. We had a low-key family trip to the beach a little while ago, and it again reminded me that I *really* need to change something.
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One of the things they don’t tell you when your brain is broken in some way is that a lot of things like “conventional wisdom” are simply unhelpful. There is a degree of “draw the rest of the owl” to much of the advice I’ve seen, even when it otherwise seems on point.
There is reason to be hopeful nonetheless. The fact that I keep getting reminders that change is needed means both that I’m on the right track and that it’s not too late.
It seems like one of the inevitable cycles of life is changing social networks (in the general sense, not things like Facebook which I haven’t had anything to do with in more than a decade). These have tended to presage change, at least in my own life, and I’ve been noticing some of that lately. Over the last few months, I’ve left some online communities that I’d been in for years. The reasons differed a little, but the common thread was that I no longer felt welcome. Leaving made me realize how much I was putting up with to not rock the boat, as well as giving me a good look at who my friends really were. Meanwhile, my (interpersonal) focus offline has shifted slightly to different parts of some of the larger groups I’m in.
These are positive changes even if I’m uncertain how specifically they’ll play out.
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My personal meds regimen has changed since I was here last, but still remains a work in progress. Some things are better: reduced background noise, at least when the newest med is in my system. Unfortunately it’s not the kind that builds up in your system and stays there, so I have to really be on top of my dosing schedule. The “background noise” has been present for so long that even now I don’t consistently notice it when it comes back, even if I do notice when it’s good.
Motivation and energy levels remain a big issue, however. I’ve long wondered why imagining/planning doing the thing so rarely leads to actually doing the thing. I came across some lectures by a psychologist (or psychiatrist, don’t now remember which), and one thing she mentioned was that our brains can’t always distinguish between the two. The upshot is that we can often get the same dopamine hit when imagining doing something as when we actually do it. Since this comes with far less effort, it’s unsurprising that it’s so much more attractive.
While helpful, this is also where most “get things done” strategies, whether directed at neurotypical people or those of us with atypical chemistry, break down. Forcing deadlines on myself doesn’t work since it’s too easy to let myself off the hook; if I could adhere to the self-imposed deadline I wouldn’t need it. I need to re-watch the bit talking about ADHD specifically, since that makes this stuff a lot harder, but here too I don’t recall any strategies that seemed viable.
This aspect of my brain makes things a lot more complicated, especially due to the lack of consistency. I can find a strategy that works once but then doesn’t the next however-many times, or that doesn’t work the first n times I try it but could work on try n+1. The stimulants I take help but here too not consistently, and if nothing else I burn through them a lot faster than average (I’m lucky if I get 5 hours out of an extended-release formulation that’s supposed to last 8+).
I have been wondering to what extent I’ve become dependent on cheap dopamine hits. Usually this is discussed in the context of social media, which again I don’t use, but I’m wondering if things like youtube and especially video games are kinda doing the same thing. Again though it’s hard to know, since I can do everything right and still not have my brain behave itself. I do want to try cutting back on how much time I spend plugged in to these things, as I do think it’ll help, but it’s something I need to change gradually for it to be sustainable. Feeling any sense of satisfaction or accomplishment is so hit or miss right now, I imagine that the subset of alternatives that would work is pretty small.
~bartender: I recently developed a taste for Diplomático rum, if you have some.