I have a headcanon that Hermione insists her children attend some primary muggle schooling before Hogwarts, just as she had done. Now, imagine Arthur Weasley attending his grandchild’s science fair, being the ultra proud grandfather….and yet also completely geeking out over absolutely EVERYTHING.
Canon
“That is a volcano, that is a VERY SMALL VOLCANO, how - young lady, how did you make this? Baking soda and food coloring? MARVELOUS!”
Dealing with
executive dysfunction and ADHD becomes so much easier when you stop trying to
do things the way you feel like you should
be able to do them (like everyone else) and start finding ways that
actually work for you, no matter how “silly” or “unnecessary”
they seem.
For
years my floor was constantly covered in laundry. Clean laundry got
mixed in with dirty and I had to wash things twice, just making more
work for myself. Now I just have 3 laundry bins: dirty (wash it
later), clean (put it away later), and mystery (figure it out later).
Sure, theoretically I could sort my clothes into dirty or clean as
soon as I take them off and put them away straight
out of the dryer, but
realistically that’s never going to be a sustainable strategy for me.
How
many garbage bins do you need in a bedroom? One? WRONG! The correct
answer is one within arms reach at all times. Which for me is three.
Because am I really going to
get up to blow my nose when I’m hyperfocusing? NO. In
allergy season I even have
an empty kleenex box for “used
tissues I can use again.”
Kinda gross? Yeah. But less gross than a
snowy winter landscape of dusty germs on my
desk.
I
used to be late all the time
because I couldn’t find my house key. But it costs $2.50 and 3
minutes to copy a key, so now there’s one in my backpack, my purse,
my gym bag, my wallet, my desk, and hanging on my door. Problem
solved.
I’m
like a ninja for getting pout the door past reminder notes without noticing. If I really don’t want to forget something, I make a
physical barrier in front of my door. A
sticky note is a lot easier to walk past than a two foot high
cardboard box with my wallet on top of it.
Executive dysfunction is always going to cause challenges, but often half the struggle is trying to cope by pretending not to have executive dysfunction, instead of finding actual solutions.
i left cabinet doors open all my life and couldn’t make myself stop leaving them open until i figured out my subconscious just wants to know where everything is at a glance. i put labels on each cabinet door for what was behind the cabinet and after that i was a lot better at closing them.
showers are hard for me because they involve a lot of steps to get in and out. buying cleaning hand wipes helps me stay a lot cleaner and happier when i’m too tired or distracted to make myself be a normal person– they’re faster and involve way less prep time, decision making, and unpleasant physical sensations.
i have disordered eating because, again, getting food is complicated, much less cooking anything. buying 10-12$ of cliff bars at a go and keeping them in my room by my bed gives me a headstart on breakfast and lets me take my meds on time. otherwise i would lie in bed, not taking my meds because i had to eat, and not eating because i was too tired and nauseous from being hungry to get out of bed.
‘just try harder’ is not a solution. figuring out the actual problem and addressing it is the solution.
’normal’ isn’t the goal. you can’t be normal. it’s too late, but you know what, fuck normal. trying to be normal is going to kill you. ‘functional’ is the goal, and you can be functional. you can kick ass at functional. and that’s a lot better.
When I talk about how there is no universal system for Keeping Your Shit Together, and how it’s more important to find a system that works for you, this is exactly the kind of thing I mean.
My keys hang on the door so I literally can’t leave my apartment without touching them. My socks kept getting everywhere when I kept them with my other clothes, so instead I now keep them in a little hutch in the kitchen, where I keep all my shoes. All my silverware is in jars on my kitchen island so I can see clearly when I am out of forks. When I didn’t want to put on my socks to go running, I bought running shoes that didn’t require socks. There are people who would find all of the above unworkable and/or appalling but they don’t have to live my life and I do.
Find what works for you and work it. Doesn’t matter if it’s weird or unusual or not as healthy as some weird ideal which is probably just a marketing tool anyway. If it works, work it.
did nevada just elect a pimp who has been dead for almost a month into office
well shit lmao
actually i read an article about this last night and it specifies that yes at the polling stations they most certainly had signs plastered everywhere saying HEY DONT VOTE FOR THIS GUY HES DEAD
So my therapist has been helping me get to grips with my ADHD, and also the concept that I’m not shit at being an adult, I just can’t do things the way everyone has always told me to do them. Like every single “organize your life” books have always left me wanting to cry with frustration, and after I got hold of a copy of
Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD
by Susan Pinsky I realized that was because they primarily focus on “aesthetic” over “function”. And the function of most standard “organize your life books” is to “make things look Show Home Perfect”.
So the standard “hide all your unsightly things by doing xyz” may look nice for the first week or so, but by the end of the week it’ll look like a tornado made of pure inhuman frustration ripped through the house as I try to find the fucking advil.
To give you an example of the kind of hell I’ve been fumbling my way through the last 20 odd years: dishes will be washed and left in the drying wrack but never put away. Which means I can’t wash more dishes, which means dishes pile up, which means I can’t make food, which means I don’t eat, which means my CFS gets worse, which means I don’t have the energy to put the dishes away, and so on so forth until I have a meltdown, cry to ETD (who also likely has ADHD but has never had it confirmed) about how I can’t cope with life, and then we fix it for a while, but inevitably end up back at square one within about a week.
Pinsky’s solution to this was “remove an obstacle between you and your goal, if that means taking all the doors off your kitchen cabinets to make things easier, so be it.”
And lemme tell you, fucking revolutionary.
Laundry never ends up in the hamper??? why???? is it a closed hamper??? Remove the lid. Throw it out the window. Clothes are now miraculously finding their way into the hamper??? Rejoice????
Mail ends up spread out over every available flat surface? Put a sorting station right where your mail arrives. Put a shredder or “junk” basket under it. Shred or dump the junk immediately. Realize you only actually have two real letters that need attention, feel less overwhelmed, pay your bills on time.
Like I’m not saying this book is miraculous, but it did help me realize that I was effectively torturing myself by trying to conform to certain ideals of “perfect house keeping”, and presenting a certain image rather than just allowing myself to live in my space as effectively as possible. And why? Why was I doing that? Cause people with different lives and capabilities are perceived as the norm? Fuck that. If this was a physical problem I wouldn’t be forcing myself to conform to an ableist standard, so why am I doing it with this?
My lived space will never look a certain way, and that’s okay. It will never look show home perfect, and that’s okay. It will likely always be cluttered and eclectic where nothing matches, and that’s okay. Sometimes I will have odd socks on because sorting them out required too much mental energy, and that’s okay. Actually fuck sorting socks, just buy all your socks in the same color. Problem solved. Boring sure, but also one less thing to do, which means more time to hyper fixate on fun things. Which really, what else is my life for if not to write screeds and screeds of vampire shit posts, I ask you.
for the record, falling through the window was one of the only stupid things I’ve been involved in that wasn’t directly my fault. my older brother had people over one night when I was in HS and I went downstairs to get water and they were having a tickle fight (???) and one of them grabbed me to use me as a human shield and in my struggle to escape I braced myself with my back to him and kicked off the wall in front of us and we went stumbling back into a closed window that was at calf-height and we both fell through. Not my fault.
that’s not even the most important part of this story though tbh. the next morning at about 8 AM my dad already had a new window in and was sanding the windowsill when I woke up and I was like “hey dad how….did you get a new window so early” and he said “guy at 84 Lumber owed me a favor” and if that’s not THE most dad thing I’ve EVER heard
Your dad, standing outside the 84 Lumber guy’s house in the dead of night, hat pulled low over his eyes and most pooling at his feet: The time has come, Frank
