Aug 25

 Slept a lot. I have continued to noodle very slowly moving things around. Throwing things out. And inbetween slept. Rested. Ghosted in and out. I am back to sleeping a minimum of 12 hours in one hit. And then sleeping again throughout the day. I would guess I am seeing at most 8 hours a day of being up and about. And that's being generous.

I am aware that overall it's not good for me. Not that there's a super alternative here. I can't spring energy from my ass and decide to go on a cross country hike. I am losing condition. I really felt this after 2020/2021 where I had been basically hardcore bedridden for 6 months, and just going out for a walk was... interesting. And there have been a couple of other times where I have had an extended downtime. And you lose condition. Your strength goes. Your capability to walk short distances goes. You rot.

It's the familiar spot for me, aware of it, aware it's not good, and you should do something, whilst simultaneously not giving a shit, just let it go, and let it end.

It reminds me of the saying. There are two wolves inside you. The one that prospers is the one you feed. Ha. I don't take a great deal of meaning in it, it just seems poetically apt at the moment. The reality is way more complicated than "two wolves".

I tried very hard yesterday to overcome the wall of... whatever it is... neurodivergent bullshit .... and tidy up my dining room. It's fascinating. It's like a literal wall. I get locked. Stunned in place. I can't do shit. And then I give up. And get no nearer to tidying the dining room. So. I tried very hard. No walking away. Concentrate. CONCENTRATE. Ha ha. Jesus. I took it one baby step at a time. Ok. Survey. What doesn't belong. Don't get overwhelmed. Don't look at it all. Pick something small. What doesn't belong. This doesn't belong. Ok. Where should it belong. Throw it. Store it. Ok. That was one tiny bit. Go back to the room. Do it again.

In this painfully deliberate fashion I have cleared most of the dining room. I did it in fits and starts, because, energy and burning out. So. Do it for 5 minutes. Take a break forget it. Come back in an hour. Do it again.

Eventually you get a glimmer of eagerness. Because progress is being made. Ah. The old ADHD itch. The need for action to be rewarded with consequence in short order otherwise chaos ensues. Although to be fair I think my job has also keyed me to really dislike that. A lot of my job - horribly framed, horrendously managed, and subject to the worst in poor thinking, whims, hypocrisy et al - suffers from tasks that never fucking end. Do it like that. No not like that. Make it red. Why is it red. I said blue ! Can you make it green. How about we change this thing at the start. Oh my fucking god. This can be IT to a tee. It's a common pitfall that arises from a common set of human failings. Lack of planning. Lack of understanding of a problem. Lack of competence. Rate of failure. And that from one angle, it is fun for someone to just spitball things into air and have an army of slave pixies do their bidding, only to change mind on a whim and see how it looks in gold. Wonderful. The world revolving around your every whim, fuckup and fancy. On the other end. You have someone who never gets to complete anything. Is always in the frustration zone of watching someone else fuck up despite being told. Of watching them forget then brand everyone else a liar. And yada blah. All of that makes you a little shy of tasks that have no pay off. It also completely destroys your opnion of your fellow humans. Useless. Fleshbags. Of randomness.

I saw a while back a lovely little ADHD like test  / study. About how you approach a task. It set out the same problem but arranged in two different ways. The first was a paragraph of instructions, a task to be done, long, involved, and you needed to work away on it in isolation before at the end giving your result. ADHD people crash and burn at the task. They meander. Fail to complete. Can't even concentrate enough to get through the description. Idiots. However. Reframe the task. Push it into steps that can be completed one after another, and each gives a ding of success. The ADHD people blitz through it. Way faster than the non ADHD people. And pull in insights that are lost to others. In other words. You get a task excelled at.

Interesting.

Dyslexia has a similar approach. It's not the problem per se that is the issue. But how it is presented. 

In any case, there is a lesson there. For best results, the approach needs to be tailored to the person. If you do a one size fits all approach to things, you will end up finding it doesn't actually end up fitting all and you ironically lose some of the best people for that task. Like perhaps setting a task in French, when your best scientists are all German. Or perhaps making one size of coat. When half your people wont be able to fit in it at all, the other half will be swamped, and a tiny minority will find it perfectly to their liking.

Laziness of management - just write a task, and then lay blame at everyone elses feet for not doing what it says - is the culprit here. Which is true of so many things. Like 9 to 5 hours. Set amounts of time off. Everything so that it fits neatly into a spreadsheet. Ok. But question. Are you running things for the sake of the spreadsheet. Or of actually getting things done. And having happy people. The management / accounts would say the spreadsheet.

Wrong answer. And lazy.

Management sure do like their spreadsheet with figures that have nothing to do with the messy realities of people. ( I mean I can sympathise to an extent, but also, fuck spreadsheets and bottom lines ).

Anywho. Off on a tangent there.

Today has been a rough day. I tried tidying a little today. Perhaps 10 minutes of sorting through some things on the table and putting them away. And it made me feel ill. Nauseous. Sweaty. Off colour. Ears whistling. That is as bad as it has ever been. When I was at my worst in 2021 I had the same thing just standing in the kitchen waiting for a kettle to boil. My legs would buckle. No buckling legs today. But everything else. And a worse feeling.

Hum ho.

Just creak along. None of it is even remotely right. But it is what it is. Not getting help for it. The resting comfort spot is indeed for me to just "Fuck off and die". The taxman is quick to stick his hand out and contact me about what I owe them. And incredibly reticent to the point of non existence when I need aid. So it goes. The whole world, by and large, works on the same principle. Who am I to expect it to buck the trend for me ?

It is the end of the day. And I am tired. Having done pretty much nothing. 10 minutes of tidying. 4 trips up and down the stairs. Uh huh.

Good stuff.

Roll on tomorrow for the same shit all over again.