My ADHD: The Bad

I'm open about being diagnosed with ADHD in 2024. As an adult, which means I spent my entire life thinking my brain worked like everyone else's and I just sucked at being an adult.

Because I thought I was normal, I always assumed my planner obsession and neurotypical people who were obsessed with planners shared a common goal.

Organizing our lives so that things don't fall through the cracks.

Even after learning I had ADHD, I never revisited this assumption that we were all interested in the same end goal.

The planner channels I watched on YouTube were plan with me videos or plotting out which planners to buy or why they'd decided to switch to another planner part way through the year. But I'd never seen anything that made me question my basic assumption that my interest in planners wasn't different from everyone else's.

And then YouTube's algorithm served up a woman who went through every planner available at a small, boutique planner company and she walked through why she wouldn't buy this planner or that planner. My mouth literally dropped wide open.

The one comment that absolutely floored me was she referred to daily planner pages as journaling pages and said she didn't want her journal in her planner.

Daily pages to her are  journaling pages only.

I was stunned. Daily pages are vital to me actually getting anything done. Without my list of things to do every day, I'd forget those things existed. There are some items that get listed on every single day of the week and I still write them down because I will forget them if they're not there.

I've since been told that neurotypical people don't require lists the way I do. That they just remember.

They just remember.

This was on a Friday evening and I spent a lot of time thinking about what this woman was saying. She wasn't trying to be mean, she was just walking through why she didn't like the planners and the things she was calling out were things I find vital.

I'll be honest, this was the first time that I had a wake up call--a real wake up call--about how neurotypical brains work as opposed to how mine works.

Then I got curious. How many people have ADHD? According to what I found, about 5% have been diagnosed, but maybe up to 12% of the population total have ADHD.

Another fact that made me think. I guess I always assumed it was higher than that. Like maybe 25%, but I was wrong. Only maybe 12% with those who haven't been diagnosed factored in.

I wasn't depressed about it, but it was sobering to learn how different my brain is. Even things I do every day, like meditating, are tasks I can't hold in my mind. If I don't write it down, I won't remember to do it. And people who aren't like me just remember.

And so I went into Sunday, wondering why I had to have ADHD. Why couldn't I just remember to do things without using my daily pages, split into four categories, each with tasks? Why is it out of sight, out of mind for me? Why do I have to carry my planner around with me on busy days because I feel frazzled when I have too much to do and I can't see my daily page?

Come back on Thursday for part 2. 

On the Mat

Back in August, I had my house power washed. And part of having this done meant moving things off the porch and patio. Including the mats.

My patio mat was thin and light and was constantly being blown around. It also had cracks on the rubber backing, so I threw that away.

The front porch had a different issue. The welcome mat was slats of wood. I discovered two things when I lifted it. 1) this thing was heavy and 2) the slats allowed all kinds of debris in between it and I didn't like that.

Thus began the search for new doormats for both the front and the back doors.

I could get by without one on the patio because that thin one was always underneath the patio table anyway, but I wanted something to wipe my shoes off on before coming into the house.

I definitely wanted a new front mat.

It took a little research, but I decided on coir mats. They looked nice, seemed as if they'd be good to wipe off shoes on before going inside, and the brown color would complement the house. There was one note that I found about coir mats. Don't get them wet. ETA: I have since discovered that they are made to dry out after rain, but that they shouldn't be in standing puddles. I stand corrected.

Not a problem, I thought. I have a covered patio. I have a covered porch. It should be fine.

I found two mats I liked ordered them, and when they arrived, I immediately put them out. This was about 10:30 in the morning.

I took pictures. I went grocery shopping. I went about my day.

And then late afternoon came. I heard a rumble of thunder. It's not going to rain, is it? I looked at the radar on the app and a little pop up storm was headed my way. How bad could it be?

Let's try 40 mph wind, rain being blown hard into the house, and gusts driving the rain even harder. It lasted a while, too.

And I went to check on my mats. The ones that aren't supposed to get wet.

The one on the back patio was caught by the wind and crumpled up underneath the patio table like the thin, lightweight mat I had previously. It was also wet because the storm had blown the rain all the way to the back door.

I put my mat back into place and went to check on the one at the front door, fearful it had blown away.

It was there, right where I put it, but the strong winds drove the rain all the way to my front door and this mat was wet, too.

My brand new, didn't-even-have-them-twelve-hours mats, were both drenched by rain.

Here's my mats after I first put them out. The difference in lighting is because the back patio had more sun on it than the front porch. At least I have a picture of them before the storm came.

 

 

 

 

The Washi Dilemma

There was a washi tape crisis in my craft supplies.

By crisis, I mean storage crisis.

For years, I kept kits together, but if I didn't use the kit, the washi tape sat with it. The washi tape that wasn't part of a kit was tossed into a clear plastic drawer/bin thing I bought. Also completely unusable because things were jumbled together and it was impossible to see what I had.

And with ADHD, out of sight, out of mind.

I hit on a new idea. I found some zippered storage containers that were exactly the right height to hold washi tape standing up. I filled enough of those to line them up on the bottom shelf of my big craft cart and add one to the second shelf.

And this plan failed miserably.

Pulling out box after box of washi tape when these storage containers barely squeezed onto the shelf (I stood them up on their ends) meant I had to wiggle them out. It meant I had to wiggle them back in. It meant the zippers got caught and made wiggling even harder. I would look at a box or two of washi and just go with whatever.

The final option was washi cards.

These are plastic cards where you wind the washi tape off the roll and onto the card. Depending on the size of the washi, you can fit six or seven different tapes on there and it stores flat.

This system has pluses and minuses.

Pluses:

• Storage is easier and takes up less room. 
• I'm sorting by color as I begin this plan, so eventually I should be able to see everything I have and use the tapes I already own.
•  I've discovered tapes I don't remember I have and that are beautiful and now I can use them.

Minuses: 

• Wrapping washi tape off the roll and onto the cards. Time consuming, but oddly relaxing, so I save it for the end of the day, just before I'm about ready to head to bed. I'm slowly making progress.
• Using the washi tape from the cards is awkward. I tried it the other night and rolls are definitely easier.
• Tearing washi tape as I try to pull it off the roll. This is more of an issue with the older and cheaper tapes that I bought years ago, but it's still annoying.
• Mistakes are an issue. 

My plan was to separate by color with the exception of holiday and seasonal tapes because I won't look for Christmas washi in the red collection. I already messed up my plan. I had a black washi tape with gold Christmas trees. All I saw was that it was black. It's on a washi card with the other black washi tapes. That was me being tired and not paying attention.

The second mistake was a strange one. I had a pale teal washi tape and I was wrapping the teal rolls onto the cards. As I'm wrapping this light-colored one, I pause and think: Are those snowmen? And then I decided I can't be right. They must be the seashells I thought they were. I stopped and looked several times while wrapping. I held it up to the light. But I decided they had to be seashells because the pale teal color screamed Beach!

Gentle readers, they were not seashells. I discovered this when I decided to put down a strip of seashell washi in my journal. Now, on paper, they were clearly snowmen. Swatching while wrapping would have been impossible without breaking the tape, but now I have two mistakes.

Overall, as much as I prefer the rolls to the cards, I need to be able to see what I have. I need to be able to say, I need black washi tape and find all my black washi tape. Keeping them on the rolls was unworkable since I need as little friction as possible.

This project is at the early stages. Much more winding to go. Now I have to figure out storage for the cards. I want them standing upright and sorted by color. 

Microbursts

I'm very open about the fact I was diagnosed with ADHD in 2024. Before that, I just assumed I was a failure at adulting and struggled along.

After getting diagnosed, I learned that the things I struggled with are things many people with inattentive ADHD struggle with. It was a relief and it allowed me to grant myself grace.

However, that doesn't mean I don't have projects around the house that need to get done and I can't get started on. It's frustrating.

Then I heard about the microburst method. Ten minutes. You do the project for ten minutes a day and then you're done. No continuing on. You just stop when your time is finished.

I was a little skeptical, but I'd used the Pomodoro method with my writing while I was trying to build it into a habit. Once something is a habit? I'm set. If Pomodoro worked, microbursts might be worth a try. But I wanted my test to be on something small, something that wouldn't disrupt my entire house if it failed.

I decided to tackle organizing my planner stickers.

I have a lot of them. I have a lot of storage books where I shoved them in wherever they fit. I literally can't find anything without taking every book out and looking through it because there are no categories, no system, just everything shoved in willy nilly.

Step one: Take everything out of the books and sort into broad categories like functional, deco, boxes, bujo, scripts, icons, etc.

To my great surprise, the microbursts worked beautifully for the first, broad sort. I have everything split up, and as I was doing this, smaller categories came to me like fitness, writing, days of the week, etc.

And then I had to throw everything back on my craft cart because a service person was coming to my house and I didn't want him to see piles of stickers all over my dining room table.

That added friction to sorting Step Two and friction means I'm stalling on the project.

On the plus side, it's not all sitting on my table. On the minus side? My craft cart has stacks all over it and my empty sticker storage is stacked on a dining room chair. This is not optimal.

I probably need another microburst to setup for sort #2 rather than rolling it into the actual sorting itself.

I'll probably write an update if this works. Right now? I'm a little worried. 

Switcheroo

I've been dealing with an annoyance for years. Both my Wii gaming box and the box for my TV plug into the same ports. That means if I want to switch to Wii, I have to unplug the cable box. If I want to watch TV, I have to unplug the Wii.

It got to the point where I just didn't bother using whichever one wasn't plugged in for long stretches.

Research led me to a device switcher, and I bought one, but I couldn't figure out how to hook it up correctly and my Wii video didn't work right. I gave up and returned to plugging and unplugging.

Sometimes.

The annoyance didn't go away, though, and since several years had passed, I thought maybe there was a new solution. There wasn't.

Device switcher.

This is where someone who doesn't have ADHD would pull out the old switcher they already bought and search for better instructions. Unfortunately, I have no idea where the switcher is and it would take me forever to locate it again, so I bought another one. It's the ADHD tax.

This device switcher, though, was much easier than the first one I bought. Maybe because it was made to be simpler? I also bought a new set of cords to go from the switcher to the TV and this one clearly labeled the two red cords "audio" and "video" so I knew which one went where.

Once I had everything, I hooked it up, fixed the settings on my Wii like the instructions I found online said, and my color was still off on the gaming system.

Yes, I mixed up the audio and video red cords for Wii.

I tried my best, but I can't tell the difference between them and this cord already in use is not labeled like the new cord. Once I fixed my mistake, everything worked beautifully!

There are no words for how much I love this. I press a button and I have Wii. I press another button and I have TV. The fact that I'm this excited? It says a lot about how annoying the situation was previously. I still marvel every time I hit a button and it's been a week now.