If it has been a while, then please take this post as a sign to pat yourself on the back, congratulate yourself, and claim your gold star.
And if you congratulated yourself earlier today?
Well, pat yourself on the back, congratulate yourself again, and claim your gold star.
If you’re like me, there will be times when you are really challenging yourself and times when you are just kind of treading water.
Both are good.
In fact, the whole range of ways to show up are all good.
And I’d like you to celebrate every one of them.
I am proud of you for showing up when it’s fun and I’m proud of you for showing up when it’s annoying to be there.
And I hope that, overall, you get more fun than annoyance but here’s your gold star for your efforts either way.
Go Team Us!
I’ve been trying out gold star cards with encouraging text and I like how this one turned out. Image description: a black card with a small painting of a gold star on the left side. On the right side is a piece of white card with rounded corners that says, in black text, “ this gold star celebrates your hard work, the effort you put into showing up every time. Congratulations! I’m so proud of you.” The white card is framed in black with a gold frame outside of the black one. There is a thick gold line a little ways under the star that also extends downward underneath the white card.
I packed good snacks, I made sure to buy breakfast in the airport, I moved the things I planned to do on the plane to the top of my backpack, and I walked around a fair bit and did a little meditation in the airport to ensure that I was as unfrazzled as possible when I got on the plane.
Once I was in my seat, I put my papers, markers, and water bottle in the pouch on the seat ahead of me and made myself as comfortable as possible in the cramped space.
After take-off, I made a loose plan of how I wanted to spend my time and set my repeat timer so I didn’t feel like any task was going to go on forever.
The timer will let me choose a length of time to work and a length of time to rest and how many times to repeat the cycle. It’s really handy, especially since my ADHD brain will sometimes refuse to start something – even something fun – if it feels like it will take a lot of time. Setting a timer creates an escape hatch and makes it easier to start.
So I alternated between reading, drawing, writing, and taking notes on some YouTube videos I had downloaded and took breaks for snacks, for stretching, for napping, and for meditating.
Here’s one of my drawings from the plane. image description: a drawing of overlapping circles with about half of them filled in with patterns on an index card drawn in black ink. The card is resting on an airplane table and a marker and my grey pencilcase is nearby.
The flight to Calgary for my stopover felt pretty fast but I did have one recurring annoyance because of time math.
If I were to write it as a story problem, it would go like this.
The first part of Christine’s trip is a 6h 20min flight to Calgary where she will have a 1h 5min wait before her flight to Victoria. If her initial flight from St. John’s to Calgary leaves 1h late but the pilot says that the flight will only take 5h 30mins, will she make her connecting flight?
And yeah, the math works out but when you factor in me wondering if I had misheard the pilot, and my concern that I had miscalculated time difference (Is this a factor? no. Could I shake the concern loose? also no), I ended up with a low-key worry that I was going to miss my connecting flight and my arrangements to share a cab from the airport in Victoria were going to get jumbled.
I eventually realized I could ask the flight attendant and I felt better after that but the brainloop was irksome in the meantime.
I made the second flight, got to Victoria just a little late, had lunch with my storytelling friends (Hi to Cindy, Shelah, and Brigitte!) and got to campus feeling pretty damn good.
The conference was great – I heard some marvellous stories, took some terrific workshops, and I was thrilled with how my workshop and my story performance was received.*
On Sunday, I was heading back home via Ottawa. I was relaxed and looking forward to getting home and I got to chatting with different storytelling friends in the airport (Hi Colette and Gail!) and didn’t really give much thought to the practicalities of the trip.
Actually, I kind of forgot my ‘take good care of yourself’ strategy.
In fact, even the need for it slipped my mind.
So, when I started to feel a bit twitchy a little ways into the flight and then I realized that I wasn’t exactly sure how long we had been in the air, I realized that I needed a plan or I was going to drive myself and my seatmate bananas before we landed in Ottawa.
I did my best to calculate how long we had left in the flight and I set my repeat timer.
And, once again, I alternated between reading, listening to podcasts/videos, napping, writing, and meditating. I made sure to eat at regular intervals, to drink lots of water, and to do a bit of stretching.
This worked out pretty well, just not as well as it had on the way up and the flight felt loooooong.
Once I landed in Ottawa, I opted to walk around and stay standing for the hour or so wait so I could burn off some of the energy I built up sitting on the plane.
I did the same timer trick for the last part of my flight – with a few more nap/meditation times because it was late at night (my flight was supposed to arrive at 12:48am and actually got in at 1:30am) – and I made sure to have lots of water and a substantial snack so I could head right to bed when I got home instead of having to make time to eat.
Even though it was a relatively short flight, it did drag a bit because of the late hour and we got in at 1:30am it took forever to get off the plane and get my luggage so it was almost 2:30am before I got home.**
Why am I including those details?
Because the time of day makes it hard to tell how effective my strategy was on the way home.
I think, once you are up into the wee hours traveling, you kind of have to surrender to a certain amount of off-kilter feeling, no matter what you do.
But, I do think that I felt better than I would have if I had just tried to forge ahead through my travel without any distress-management plans.
However, I have to note that the disrupted sleep on Sunday night/Monday morning really left me feeling out of sorts for the rest of the week and I was decidedly out of sorts until the weekend.
That’s why I am writing and posting this a whole week later – I just couldn’t make my brain behave last week and I am grateful to @samanthabrennan for posting in my place on Tuesday past.
Overall, I think my lessons here are that making a plan and taking good care of myself really helps me travel with less fluster. AND that I should try to avoid flights that arrive in the very early hours of the morning.
I took this shortly after we left Ottawa. image description: A photo taken from a airplane window of the bright horizon at sunset. There is a dark area at the bottom, a stripe of red, then a stripe of orange, then lighter blue, then darker blue. In the foreground you can see the plane’s wing illuminated by one of the plane’s lights. It creates a great contrast to the dark in the middle of the image and the bright natural colours on the horizon.
*I taught an 1.5h workshop on how storytelling builds empathy and I performed a story about doing a tarot reading that asked, “What advice would my Dad give me?”
**Many thanks to the valiant Steve for picking me up at that late hour when he had to work in the morning!
By the time this post goes live, I’ll be on a plane on my way to BC for the Storytellers of Canada- Conteurs du Canada conference.
I’m looking forward to the conference and to seeing my friends and telling/talking about stories for DAYS but I always feel apprehensive before I travel.
I’m not afraid to fly or anything like that. It’s the disrupted schedule, the lack of control over my day, the eating at weird times, the crowds of people, the change in time zones…that’s what gets me.
And all of that is fairly unavoidable.
BUT
Then I remembered that the last time the conference was in BC my travel schedule was waaaaaaaay worse and I was miserable on the way up but I actually did ok on the way home.
And, sure, part of it was the fact that I was on my way home but, after the frustrating trip on the way there, I had decided to take really good care of myself on the return trip and it made a huge difference.
So, what did ‘taking really good care of myself’ mean in that context?
I brought some really filling snacks so I had a bit more control over when I ate.
I made sure to keep my water bottle full.
I did stretches and yoga frequently and did some walking in each airport.*
I planned something to do for each hour of the trip (I didn’t have to do it but having a plan made me less fidgety and irritated.)
And that plan seems really appealing to me right now.
In fact, once I thought about it, I immediately started feeling better about the long trip and I could focus more on the fun that awaits me on the other end.
So, let’s see how my plan works out, hey?
I’ll update you later tomorrow.
*Yes, I always *could* stretch or walk at any point but this was me being proactively deliberate about it.
I am solidly in the messy, frustrating middle of so many projects right now – fitness and otherwise.
And it is taking a lot of effort to keep working away at stuff instead of ditching everything and starting over.
The middle of any project is rarely fun but it can be especially dreadful for those of us with ADHD. The novelty has worn off, there’s a lot of trial and error, and everything seems very, very dull.
My brain really wants me to
start some new stories instead of working on ones that need revising.
try some new exercises instead of sticking with my walking/yoga/mobility routine.
buy new containers to store stuff instead of decluttering (decluttering = so many choices to make -ugh!)
try some new drawing techniques instead of improving my current skills.
invent different workshops and projects instead of finishing and promoting the ones I am already working on.
(don’t even get me started on my volunteer projects!)
But despite the noise my brain is making about this, I know that starting something new – in any category- will only be temporarily fun.
Pretty soon that new, fun thing will be at the messy middle stage and I’ll be annoyed all over again.
And, even though my brain has doubts, I know that I will REALLY enjoy when I finally finish something, when I can feel a difference in my body or my mind, and when I can see some of the progress I have made.
The only way to get to that real enjoyment is to keep inching everything forward, to add fun and novelty where I can, and to keep reminding myself that it is extra fun to actually finish something – even if that time feels very far away at the moment.
So, Team, even allowing for ADHD-related intensity, I’m pretty sure that ‘Why is the middle so annoying?’ is a pretty common feeling.
In fact, being annoyed with any part of any process seems pretty common.
You might be annoyed with the details required to get started or the details required to finish up.
You might find the middle incredibly tedious.
The unknowns at the beginning might get on your nerves.
Figuring out the last few steps might be frustrating.
All of it makes sense and it is all perfectly ok.
Sure, your frustration might lead you to use a slightly different approach or it could mean you need a little break or need a little more support.
But none of those feelings of frustration automatically suggest that this project isn’t for you.*
And when they arise, you can remind yourself that they are part of your process and then find a way to forge ahead – perhaps slowly, perhaps after a break, perhaps with a little more fun added to the mix.
I’m not saying that it is easy to do that, just that it is possible.
And your effort will be worth it.
In fact, speaking of effort, here’s our gold star for our efforts today – no matter which part of the process we are in right now.
Go Team Us!
PS – Be kind to yourself out there, pretty please.
*Meanwhile, if every part of the project is frustrating every single time, then it may be time to consider whether the project is a good fit overall.
Today, as you may have guessed, is World Creativity & Innovation Day and I have a kind of thinky post underway for later today but for starters, I have a few questions for you.
My answers will be in my later post along with ideas and resources about the intersection between fitness and creativity.
1) What kind of creative practices do you use in your day to day life? (Creative problem solving counts!)
2) Have you used creative scheduling approaches to make it easier to fit fitness activities, movement, or wellness activities in your life?
3) Do you stick to the same fitness routine or do you get creative with your movements, exercises, and activities?
4) Have you ever used exercise to boost your creativity?
5) Have you ever found a creative solution to a fitness-related problem? (like figuring out a way to accomplish a difficult exercise or finding a way to a piece of equipment in a useful but unexpected way)
No pressure, of course, but it would be cool if you could put your answers to at least one of these questions in the comments.
I’ll see you later with my thinky post.
PS – Did you notice that I creatively repurposed one of my December number images for today’s image? 😉
Hi, dear readers! This is the first installment of my spring tulip share from Five Fork Farms, a local and sibling-owned-and-run farm and CSA. This was half of my birthday gift to myself. The other half is their fall dahlia share (which of course I will share with y’all when it comes out).
Nothing says spring to me more than tulips– these are delicate yellow-and-pink parrot tulips on my dining room table.
A simple blue vase with lovely, frilly butter-yellow and pale pink parrot tulips. Ain’t nature grand? And yes, that’s my robot T shirt hanging on a chair. Well, nature is complex and varied in its beauties, I guess…
There are two promises of more:
I’ll share my weekly spring tulips with all of you– it would be selfish to keep them all to myself.
I’ll share my new monthly regular Research Roundup post this afternoon. Stay tuned…
I don’t know about how things are going for you but my brain has been rather uncooperative for the past few weeks.
It differs from day-to-day – sometimes I can do what I planned, sometimes it feels like my ADHD meds aren’t working at all, and sometimes I feel like I get up in the morning, get spun around for a few hours, and then I’m dumped into 9:30 at night without any sense of what kept me feeling busy all day.
Needless to say, this has not been a fun experience at all.
And I think I could just wait out the tiredness, the frustration, and the brain fog if my capacity wasn’t all over the place. The fact that I can do some things with ease (and speed) and other things (that are normally straightforward) feel so difficult and convoluted that I either can’t get started or I end up moving so slowly that I get on my own nerves.
The worst thing is that I know the things I need to do to feel better, I am just having such a hard time making myself do them.
Now this is the part where some people would be saying “You just gotta push yourself. Try harder! This is just resistance.”
I’m voting no on that.
Sure, maybe there is some resistance in the mix of my challenges right now but pushing myself or telling myself to “just” try harder* is not going to be the solution.
Instead, when things are tough like this, what I always need to do is to figure out a way to keep putting one foot in front of the other, to do what I can when I can, and to rest when I need to – all while being very kind to myself about the process.
I don’t need to push myself or to try harder, I need to pare things down as much as I can.
And if you are struggling in any way right now, I invite you to do the same.
If you aren’t up to a full yoga practice, spend a few minutes in Savasana on your mat.
If you can’t write in your journal, do a little voice dictation into your phone or do some drawing in your notebook.
If you can’t tackle that big project, is there a smaller section that feels doable right now? Is there someone who can help you with it? Can you do anything to adjust your own or other people’s expectations around this project at the moment?
If you have been waiting to respond to an email until you have composed the perfect message, can you send a ‘Here’s a quick answer but I’ll get back to you in a few days with the details.’ type of message?
If you are having trouble eating the way you would like to, is there a quicker solution that keeps you fed and isn’t taxing on your brain? (Someideas )
If you can’t stir yourself to go for a walk outside, can you walk in your living room?
If your strength training routine is beyond you at the moment, can you do some mobility exercises or leg lifts or some calisthenics instead?
You can see where I am going here, right?
When things are challenging but you know you will feel better if you take action, you don’t have to summon the energy to do the big version of something – you can do a smaller version. You can pare things down until that activity feels doable.
You can be kind to today-you and tomorrow-you at the same time by scaling your actions to match your current capacity.
And this applies at all times, not just when you are struggling. It’s ok – it’s ENCOURAGED – to meet yourself where you are rather than being annoyed with yourself for not being somewhere else.
So, Team, however today finds you, I wish you ease and I invite you to consider whether you need to reduce the pressure in any area of your life by paring things down.
And I’m offering you this gold star in celebration of your efforts to take good care of yourself.
Go Team Us!
Isn’t this a cheery star? I’m going to prop her up next to my computer. Image description: A small painting of a happy-faced gold star with lines in the bottom left that kind of make it look like she jumped into the middle of the white card she is drawn on. The card is propped up between the keys on my black computer keyboard.
*Christine shudders in neurodivergence. Never EVER tell someone with ADHD that they aren’t trying hard enough – you can’t see the effort they have to put in to focus their attention, corral their working memory, and try to get their executive functions to, you know, function. It’s exhausting and takes A LOT of effort – and that’s BEFORE they actually start the task.
So, apparently we’re starting April tomorrow which is bizarre because I am pretty sure we just started March.
Time is a mystery.
But seeing as the calendar is insisting that a new month is imminent, I thought it would be fun to look at some of the fitness and wellness related days that have been assigned to April.
April is…
Move More Month – that seems pretty promising and it could be pretty easy, if the weather cooperates even a little. And for many of our bloggers and readers, it ties in nicely with the fact that April is also Active Dog Month -it’s like a 2 for 1 special, really.
Stress Awareness Month – I think we are all pretty aware of stress (ha!) but this could be a good time to pay attention to your stress levels and see if you can find some relief.
For me, though, the best awareness day this month is April 5 – which is My Sister Denise’s Birthday Awareness Day.
Denise is a fun, creative, outdoorsy person and I highly recommend that you celebrate My Sister Denise’s Birthday Awareness Day by finding some nonsense to participate in, by taking yourself outside for some fun, or by doing something creative.
In fact, if you *do* celebrate My Sister Denise’s Birthday Awareness Day on Sunday, let me know and I will draw you your very own gold star as a reward.
I think I have found a workaround for one of my most annoying fitness challenges and, oddly enough, it involves one of my favourite offices supplies – INDEX CARDS!
If you have been reading my posts for a while then you know that I find it difficult to set big picture fitness goals because I’m not sure what I want my endpoint to be.
I mean, I want to be stronger or have more ease in my movements (especially after the challenges of the last few years) but I don’t really have a way to measure that except for ‘feeling stronger’ or ‘feeling more ease.’
Both of those things sound good in principle but I know that my ADHD brain will send me into endless loops of ‘Was that enough?’ ‘Do I feel better or worse than yesterday?’ ‘Am I putting in the right effort here?’ and I won’t find much fun or much satisfaction in that whole process.
Meanwhile, though, I also don’t have a lot invested in more measurable things like being able to reach a particular speed when walking or lift a certain weight or do a specific number of reps. Those things don’t really resonate for me and I know that I will just get kind of meh about them over time.
And even though I understand intellectually that additional consistent exercise will be helpful, some part of my brain is not really buying into the idea and keeps insisting that effort today is not really going to add up to anything and I will just be wasting time that I could spend reading or writing or doing something fun.
But, at the same time, I know that I am wrong about that and I keep trying different ways to jumpstart a fitness plan.
Last week, I did some thinking about how I could encourage myself to take on a longer term exercise project that would let me see my efforts all along without having to choose some sort of specific result to work towards.
I want the process of exercising to be so routine that any results will just be a sort of by-product of the activity rather than being the point.
Eventually, I figured out that I could choose to commit to 100 workouts.
I wouldn’t have to pick a specific type of workout or a specific length of workout and I wouldn’t have to accomplish anything specific, I would just have to pick something and do it.
And even my somewhat-belligerent-on-this-topic brain has to admit that I will definitely see and feel some differences after 100 workouts.
Once I had decided on that number, I wanted to find a way to track it and maybe make some notes about the various workouts I tried.
And that’s when I came up with the index card solution.
I love index cards for notetaking, for planning, and for art so they are a very friendly material for me – which is a good start.
One of the reasons I enjoy using index cards for those things is the fact that they are relatively small so I can’t take on too much. That seems like a good approach for these workouts too.
Friendly and will prevent me from taking on too much? So far, so good!
The other benefit of index cards in this context is that if I write one index card per workout, I will be able to see those workouts adding up over time as I move toward my 100 card target.
So, here’s the plan I started late last week:
Open a brand new package of index cards and put them in a container that will hold the blank cards and the completed ones side-by-side.
Workout 100 times in the next six months.
Write about each individual workout on a separate card and keep it in the same case.
Watch my progress and feel good about the whole thing.
And it truly has been ‘so far so good’ – I have done four workouts* and filled out four cards and it feels manageable and useful.
In fact, I feel exactly like I hoped I would – that the index cards are the point of the whole thing and any results are just a bonus – and I think that’s a good sort of feeling for me to have about this project because it keeps my brain from looping about the specifics.
Let’s see how this goes, shall we?
*Next week’s post will be about how I chose what will count as a workout. 🙂
My cold is of the regular kind, involving headache, congestion, runny nose, intermittent sore throat, and copious coughing.
It’s not catastrophic, but it is a drag. I’m tired, coughing a bunch, have no appetite, and I need rest and a some down time to get past it.
But have I gotten a lot of rest? NO. Okay, I’ve rested some, but did I take any sick days Monday or Tuesday? NO. Why not?
Hard question. Actually, not-a-hard question: I just didn’t feel like I could take time off work and my regular life to rest and do nothing other than rest until I felt a good deal better.
I did compromise by Zooming into meetings and classes I teach. But, I also prepped for classed and did a little grading and a medium amount of email Monday and Tuesday. And I also prepped for a talk I’m giving on GLP-1 drugs and food noise for a primary care medical practice on Wednesday, because I didn’t want to cancel or reschedule.
I can’t help but think.
What if there’s another way? By Jon Tyson for Unsplash.
OF COURSE there’s another way. There’s calling in sick, which is a privilege for those who have jobs that allow them to. I have such a job– I’m a college professor at a state university and member of a union that fights for and wins benefits like paid sick leave.
BUT BUT… We had a bunch of snow days this term. My students/colleagues will be/feel let down if I stay home. I’ll get behind on work/syllabus/meeting minutes. And it’s not like I’m seriously ill. I just have a cold. What about that?
Right. Exactly–no no no to this line of reasoning. Down with this sort of thing. By Don Lodge for Unsplash.
Sometimes– in particular (but not limited to) when we are sick, we need to shut down and do nothing but rest. Here are some role models I found.
This cat looks very comfy.This fox is sacked out.
Can we all pause and think about following the lead of Cat and Fox when the need arises? I’m working on it. After my talk on Wednesday. By which time I hope and expect I’ll be on the upswing.
But for next time… Here’s hoping, for all of us who work through things when maybe we don’t absolutely have to. Just a thought.
