#if you like adhd ramblers who give as much advice as they like to get then thatsa me

[novadreii]

Someone, please tell me that things get better when they're hard. Tell me that tough times don't last but tough people do. Tell me it's going to be okay. Tell me sike. I am so tired.

[sandersstudies]

Sorry if this sounds rambly but i need to hear something positive. You have adhd and somehow manage to hold down two jobs. I have adhd too and it is kicking my ass. I am in mostly honors classes and barely keeping my head above water and get a part time job on top of it. I love school but covid is making it so so so much harder. On one hand its good that I am getting a job on the other hand it feels like I am trying to hold two fistfuls of sand and everyone else had a bucket and is getting frustrated that I cant keep a hold of all the sand. How the hell do you manage? (Sincerely a disster junior who is about about to start crying)

I don’t know if this is positive, but if not I hope you at least feel like you’re not alone: I have sand running through my fingers like water every day. It’s very stressful and I relate to what you’re saying. I have constantly unread e-mails and messages, chores around the house that desperately need doing, overdue  appointments with my dentist or the DMV, and friends that I forget to keep up with. It can feel debilitating at times. 

Here’s my advice; focus on the baseline of what you need to be functional. Make your spaces work for you and remove obstacles that cause executive dysfunction. Don’t make your goal 100%, make your first goal getting by. For everyone this looks different, for me it means stuff like giving myself permission to let certain tasks go undone. 

The office is always a mess, but if I can just make a goal to keep my own workplace clean so I can work on other things, then I’m functional.

If my workload is interfering with my mental health, I get someone to cover my shift and take a whole day to get back to stable; this means I won’t break down later in the week. 

If I can’t prepare a homemade meal for my husband and I, I buy the ingredients for him to cook or ask him to grab a pizza on the way home so at least we can have dinner together.

Instead of thinking of sand running through your fingers, think of the analogy of juggling balls. When you’ve got enough of them, it’s just impossible to keep them all up in the air, and you’ve got to let some drop, but if you drop the cotton balls, it’s a lot better than dropping the glass ones. Find which of your juggling balls are likely to shatter and keep them in the air. This will include things like a baseline of self-care and productivity, but it will look different for everyone. They can also include very specific items (i.e. “I won’t graduate without a B in this important class, but this other class I can slide by with a D and still be okay.”)

If you take my examples, leaving my workspace a mess is like a glass ball - not having a clear space to work interferes with my day and makes my executive dysfunction spike. Leaving the rest of the office a mess is a cotton ball - I’d like the office to be clean, but it won’t interfere with my day-to-day.

Being mentally healthy is a glass ball - if I let my mental health deteriorate, it’s not only bad for my well-being, but it makes it impossible to get other tasks done. While being punctual to work in general is important to me, a single shift that I’ve responsibly covered can be a cotton ball that is sacrificed for my glass ball of mental health for the rest of the week.

Eating healthy and wholesome food and saving money by cooking at home is important to me, but ultimately it’s a cotton ball. Eating food AT ALL is my glass ball. If I skip meals, it’s bad for my physical and mental health and I won’t function well.

All that said (and I think I turned into the rambler here) you should be very very proud of yourself. Having honors classes AND working a job through school are big achievements. You’re doing great and I hope you get a chance to build a sandcastle with your sand.