Getting in Motion

I’ve been walking a lot more, lately. It seems kinda vital to take advantage of these last bits of nice weather before things get truly wintery and unpleasant. Walking is my favorite form of exercise, and it’s been recommended by a surprising number of successful writers throughout history as a form of meditation when inspiration is lagging. It’s peaceful, the scenery provides stimulation for the imagination, and moving around is generally pretty good for the whole system. I’ve known for a long time that people with ADHD in particular tend to have better focus when they get exercise, but it has to be somewhat consistent to be effective, and consistency is difficult when you’ve got ADHD. Somehow, though, I’ve managed to get something like a routine established.

There’s a beautiful bike path around a lake near my place, and I love going out there, even though my dogs absolutely lose their tiny minds at the sight of all the fat and insolent squirrels who taunt them from the sides of the trail. It takes us a lazy hour and a half to go around the lake, and I don’t usually spend the time specifically thinking about anything in particular. I think it’s been helping with my general mental clarity, which makes it easier to choose to keep going out, and to make choices about what to do with my time without getting overwhelmed. I’ve always unconsciously classified walking in pretty places as “the stuff I do when I should probably be doing the dishes or writing.”

That was not great. Jogging around the neighborhood will never be my thing, even if it might seem more efficient, or like a “better” form of exercise, or whatever other judgement I had in the back of my mind about the whole thing. It’s boring, it hurts, and my dogs would rather tie their leash into a bow around my legs than trot faithfully at my side. It just doesn’t work for me, but walking in a spot with some good trees and water does, and I can do it for a long time before I get bored or tired.

We’re often taught a very adversarial approach to exercising our bodies, but healthy movement really doesn’t have to be any kind of a punishment to be beneficial.

These shots are all from this evening’s walk. An orange sunset over the lake framed by lacy tree branches.

A cute red and white spotted mushroom in leaf litter.

A great blue heron carefully ignoring me and the dogs from the water’s edge.

Canada geese silhouetted on the lake under an orange sunset.

Writing days this past week: 3

Getting Some Rest

I was sicker than I thought, but I’m finally getting over it. It was just an annoying flu-like virus, but it left me super tired, and that forced me to deal with the fact that I was also making myself super stressed out, which definitely wasn’t helping my immune system. (Seriously, I caught that damn thing and developed noticeable symptoms in like eight hours. Not great.)

I’ve never been able to do enough, in my life. I’ve always been functioning at way less than normal capacity, so I’m honestly kind of unable to think of myself as overworked, because the primary message I’ve always gotten is that I should be doing a lot more than I am. I never had a reason for the fact that I did less than other people, so it makes sense that I never learned to recognize my personal limits. They weren’t legitimate limits, they were just me not trying hard enough.

I’m still frustrated as all hell that I can’t magically leap from undiagnosed ADHD and years of totally unhelpful conditioning to being a medicated and functional professional, but I should probably acknowledge how impractical that expectation is. I should also probably be working harder to change the weird coping mechanisms I’ve developed, because they mostly suck.

In the past, being stressed was pretty much my way of showing that I cared. I felt guilty and anxious about not being able to do all the stuff I was supposed to do, and that seemed like a necessary form of penance. Like, if I was gonna be useless, the least I could do was feel bad about it, and then hopefully the people around me would see that I was trying. I also just figured that feeling bad enough about it might eventually motivate me to stop sucking at everything, but this was not the case, because that’s not how it works.

Basically, I spent a long time assuming that the problem with me was that I didn’t feel bad enough to change, or that I wasn’t throwing enough pure effort into things. I have been stressed and upset and anxious a lot over the years, but I’ve never been working too hard. I was just lazy. Working too hard is reserved for people who get results.

Being stressed has never made me consistently productive, but it was usually enough to boost me through those last-minute procrastination sessions where I’d finish something in one night that should have taken me weeks. That was the only way I could get any results at all. Unfortunately, now that I can actually do more on a regular basis, it’s also wearing me out more. Being in that guilt and adrenaline mode every day just doesn’t work.

It does, in fact, make everything much harder, and it also makes me catch every germ that so much as glances my way. So, I’ve been sleeping a lot this past week, and eating semi-regular meals, and not doing very much else. I’m gonna try again next week. I’m also going to try not to see being slightly more “legitimately” stressed as a sign that I’m finally doing something right, but I think that’s gonna take some time to shift.

Time for the stressed Toci picture again, I guess.

Writing days this past week: 1