#I will go to the mat about adhd buck

[mazzystar24]

[dzpenumbra]

12/5/22

"Tomorrow is rest, recovery, fun and maybe plant-shopping." NOPE. Today was frenetic productivity!

Today, I took the new cerium oxide compound out for a spin. It doesn't make a huuuuge difference compared to my 3K sanding pad, but I think it makes some kind of impact. I spent a few hours taking a piece of rose quartz I had started at the old house and beveling the edges to a polish finish on the floor while chugging coffee. It went spectacularly! I'm very happy with the final product!

I ordered Applebee's delivery, which I haven't had in a very long time, and I really enjoyed it. The whole night had big vibes of art nights in college (most nights), getting that kind of American cuisine stuff and working on the floor in a studio space, with the smell of coffee and incense in the air. I started to bevel the edges of what I thought previously was petrified wood, but turns out is Tiger's Eye, but it was getting late so I delayed it for now.

I shopped on Etsy for some stuff for the house - bath mat, shower curtains, essential oils and a diffuser. I'm much happier shopping over there than on Amazon, I mean that sincerely. I would much rather pay a few bucks more to get a better product from someone who cares than some cheap mass produced shit from a factory in China. I mean that at a very real level, and I feel like if I want others to buy my stuff... I should set an example by practicing what I preach.

I took a short bath, ordering the stuff in the bath on my phone. Because I'm the genius that takes his phone into the bath with him... And... I forgot to actually checkout the order, so I'm gonna do that right now! Cool, god knows when that's showing up but I'm glad I took initiative and got it. I'm going to probably order some more stuff off Amazon anyway. I just... have been struggling with confidence lately, social anxiety has been taking the driver's seat a lot. But today... today has been different.

I caught up on sleep really well! Maybe that was a big part of it? Finding a sense of conflict resolution and having plans for uncertain things in my future, that was huge. Having no pressure today, probably the biggest boon.

I'm gravitating towards two points that want me to talk about them. Two YouTube discoveries, one new and one rediscovered. The first was How To ADHD. This literally brought me to tears several times. Let's take a quick time-warp trip - join me, won't you? The year is 2004 or 2005 - work with me here, it was a while ago... I had failed out of my first semester of college, hid in my room during winter break alone during a blizzard and fled my college before the next semester because the college "requested" that I not return... I had a GPA of 0.5, because I suffered some severe traumas, stopped going to class, stopped interacting with people and just holed up in my room all day every day. I have no idea how no one knew or cared, I had a fucking roommate for God's sake. But alas, that was my story. So, they asked me not to come back. My mom wanted me to go to a college that was for people who had different learning styles. I just nodded my head and grumbled and went along with it, I had no clue what to do. My first night in the dorm there, I was sharing a room with 3 other people and one of the other kids brought his girlfriend back to spend the night and it set off even more PTSD shit for me and I just flat-out requested I get a single-room or I was not fucking going there. Of course, I wasn't able to articulate my reasoning on this in my larval stage, so no one had any clue why suddenly I just refused to have shared housing... Needless to say, that didn't pan out. If they were triple-booking rooms... they didn't have other housing options. I ditched that place pretty quick.

But, the reason I'm telling this story! I had to take a mental health exam thing as part of my pre-registration shit or whatever. It was in the basement of some woman's house, it was weird, really long boring tests in silence. I hope I have the timeline of this right, I'm pretty damn certain that's when this happened. Well, that was when I got my first diagnosis - now that I think of it, it might have been a confirmation of a prior diagnosis? But it was like, the real deal. I was diagnosed with Inattentive ADD. Which is now classified as a variant of ADHD. I think I was like... 18? So... 18 years later, an entire lifetime later, I look at myself in the mirror and I say to myself. "I have ADHD." And for some reason it hits a lot harder than saying "I have PTSD, I have Depression, I have a Social Anxiety Disorder." It just feels like a different breed of animal for some reason.

I have flat-out been rejecting this as bullshit and nonsense and "how could that be me?" for absolutely no reason for almost 2 decades. And I think I'm finally ready to give myself permission to have ADHD. Because it explains a lot. Like... why it took me 2 1/2 paragraphs to get from "I saw a YouTube video" to "I have ADHD." And why all my shit is in piles all over my house. And why I absolutely suck at executive functioning. And why I felt like this chick was talking specifically to me in her videos, and I'm like "oh shit, I came up with that trick to bypass my annoying brain, too!"

So, there was that, and then later in the night I reconnected with Adam Duff aka LucidPixul, a phenomenally talented artist and a kindred soul. Hearing him speak really gave me a similar feeling, a big trend for the day. Self-acceptance. Remembering who I am, embracing who I am and loving who I am. Allowing myself to be who I am. I passed his wisdom along to my Mom.

Then I set up my rent to be auto-paid, which is a big pat on the back to me that I didn't let it slip my mind. Then I worked on wire-wrapping a piece that I plan to make for my Mom. This did NOT go well. I have a vague idea what to do but I fucked up enough times that the wire is just kinda mangled and I think I'm going to have to start over. It's okay. Not every piece is gonna be S-tier first try. I'll try to get back at it tomorrow evening or maybe the day after.

Tomorrow is gonna be road-trip day. And kitty at the new home alone for the first time day. And wait for the maintenance people to either show up or call me - hopefully call me - at god knows what time and reschedule with them for Tuesday. This is hard to write because Max keeps trying to drink the water I was using for sanding, which she really shouldn't drink because it has rose quartz dust in it. But I'm pretty much done anyway.

Big day tomorrow, hope it goes smoothly. I get to finally decide whether I work on the skull or not! Yay!