Adult ADHD – the good bit.

I have started using this morning pages site, an online version of the morning pages exercise from The Artist’s Way. It’s not a blog; it’s private. I like the idea of it. I like the way it automatically counts your words as you write, I like the way it produces a cloud of words that you use most often, and i like the way that it congratulates you when you reach 750 words. I am generally in love with any website that enables my narcissistic tendencies. But it’s more than that. I like the idea of writing 750 words a day   most days with some regularity, words that I have no intention of including in my thesis, that I won’t be viva’d on, and that I have no need to footnote, reference or edit. I enjoy producing non-academic writing, it’s good for me. But I also find that when I’m writing regularly, the quality of my academic writing improves, the words are more readily to hand, and I seem to be able to keep up with my own thoughts and I can focus for longer. I declare, therefore, that although this might sound like a brand new method of procrastination, it is absolutely definitely not. I am going to use it to tell myself to myself and see what I say.

Of course, it probably won’t last. Most likely, I will spend several days obsessively logging in, writing my words, poring over my stats, and congratulating myself on a new regimen of self-discipline. Then it will go the way of this blog, untouched, unkempt, and neglected for months on end. Until the next time I have a deadline, or have something else that urgently needs my attention, at which point, writing 750 words to myself every day will become the most important thing in the world again. I am so predictable. I bore myself. Part of this is the ADHD. People with ADHD are like magpies: they can’t resist the shiny sparkly, newness of concepts, hobbies, causes, and sometimes people. Distracted from all else, this new thing becomes everything. It is a prize to be valued, a project to begin, to nurture, be passionate about. But before long, the shine of that new object dulls, the attraction ebbs, and inevitably something else catches the eye, the imagination, the attention. People with ADHD often live among the debris of forgotten relics of past hobbies. Everyday they have to pass the half-painted living room wall, or the pile of fliers they volunteered to hand out. Every now and again they get a text or an email from somebody who they really meant to keep in touch with but whose last phone call they never got round to returning.

But you know what? I’m just not going to give myself a hard time about it anymore. I have spent so much time and wasted so much energy in hating this about myself and trying to change it. I’m not a bad person. But I’m disorganised, easily distracted, and a little bit fickle. That’s the way it is. Abandoning something, like this blog, used to mean that I’d once again failed to ‘stick at something’ (This was a common theme of my childhood – my inability to stick at things.I failed to stick at ballet, the recorder, the guitar, judo, gymnastics and countless other things. In the end, I ended up ‘sticking’ at things I hated, just to prove a point. Eight years of bloody piano lessons and I still can’t play). Well, I don’t have to these days. I may have Adult ADHD but you know what the good bit about that is? The ADULT bit. I’m nearly 29 years old so if I want to obsess about something for a few weeks, buy all the accessories to go along with said obsession, and then kick it to the kerb, well I fucking can. I might come back to it later, I might not. Doesn’t matter.

I have noticed that I come back to this blog when I don’t have the time to, when I really need to be doing something else. But I’m not going to give myself a hard time about that either. Because I’ve also noticed that there are reasons I come back to it from time to time. It’s not just about procrastination. It’s also about knowing myself, speaking back to myself, giving myself a good talking to. It’s there when I need it. And I like that. I just wish I hadn’t called it ‘I Won’t Forget A Single Day’ – perhaps ‘Here Lies An Account of Some Days Since 2008′ would have been setting a more realistic target.