Don't Worry, It's Not Just The Blogs That Get Stupid Titles,

 When I bought the house a little over two years ago - yes, it was that long ago and yes, I struggle to believe it was that long ago - I wrote myself a list and named it after a Barenaked Ladies song. Thankfully, it wasn't Tonight Is The Night I Fell Asleep At The Wheel or the Big Bang, but If I Had a Million Dollars (The House). 

I can't remember if it was the very first night I stayed over in my own house or a little bit later, but it was back in the very early days of living here, and the things that are on it range from the, oh, that's for next week, or that's after next payday to being, okay, we need to do a few things before that, or that is going to need more than a little saving up for... It was very aspirational. 

The last few months has rendered me quite nostalgic and I do end up sitting and thinking about how much things have changed in all of that time, because a lot has changed and things have changed a lot (and yes, that is two different things).

One of the things that was on the list was DOG =D and I feel like that was an amazing bit of foreshadowing, because it's a small word with a big meaning and it brings me lots of big smiles, just like the little fur ball it refers to. If I wrote the list in around June then it really didn't take a long time for that to change because the 28th July was the anniversary of the day Chai and I met. She wasn't fond of me then, but now she definitely is. The next thing on it was Car - Any f***ing car. Well, that changed a bit more slowly, but it certainly changed and my attitude towards cars has changed as well, though I seem to change my mind pretty regularly as to what I actually want for my next car (and when I want it seems to change quite a bit as well though that might be partly because I have revised the budget a couple of times.) 

My feelings towards the house have changed a few times as well, whether it's towards things like the parking outside, my office upstairs (which has formally become a junk room) or the loft that I was going to store everything in. Sadly, I despise ladders and it's not getting any better from trying to force myself to use them, so I tend to not put things up there unless I'm sure I'm not going to need them for an extended length of time because it means I would have to go back up there gain to get them and I know I will just keep putting it off. The plans I had for the house have changed, too. There was a point over the last couple of years when I considered applying for an overseas post and so would have had to clear it and rent it out, there was another when I was thinking I needed to sell it and move to the sea (I think everyone goes through that pretty regularly), there have been points where I thought it was my forever home (fleeting points, but they have existed all the same) and points where it has been the bane of my existence. 

Earlier this year, in a time that I could refer to as The Bad Beginning in the same way as a Series of Unfortunate Events because it was the first, or one of the first dominoes to fall, something went wrong with the paperwork for my new mortgage deal and I was convinced I was going to lose the house for the whole time until it was sorted. I was proud of myself because I handled it exactly how I needed to handle it, but it was horrible, because it wouldn't have just been losing this house. I knew it was an admin error, the mortgage company knew it was an admin error, but it was the scary sort of admin error that felt like it was going to ruin my life and something I was really proud of. I didn't love the house for a while after that and I didn't love it when I had issues with one of the utility companies causing damage to it by works they were doing locally. I'm not sure I've loved it anything like the same since either of those to things happened. 

I've talked about having struggled with 'stuff' in the last couple of months, and this isn't even the tip of the iceberg, it was just the start of things and really, one of them I look back on and think, it was so easily solved it no longer matters and I almost forget it happened, and the other is still rumbling on, but I'm not alone in it, because it affects so many of my neighbours as well, and everything feels less crap when you're not on your own, but this is the stuff I can bring myself to write about. These are the things I can commit to a page, even if it's a virtual one, and these are things that the person writing that list would never have even thought of, but now I've done it, and I'm through it, and I'm just not going to think too hard about whether I feel stronger for it or not. I have to keep looking at those things and thinking, it was hard, it was horrid, but you got past it, and this too shall pass. Eventually.

Why is ADHD Paralysis Such a Nightmare?

At the moment, I'm on a waiting list for an assessment to confirm a diagnosis of ADHD for me. I know there's been a lot of noise about how it's over diagnosed these days and that there's no point in getting a diagnosis if you're no longer studying, but firstly, it's definitely worth it, and secondly, no, not everyone has a little bit of ADHD. You might experience momentarily lapses in focus or forgetting what you are doing once or twice a day, but I literally forget to drink. I ended up so severely dehydrated during the hot weather a few weeks ago I had to call my parents to come and collect me and my car from work over an hour away because I was in agony, I was throwing up and I didn't know what was wrong. It's the reason why I tend to have a bottle of something or one of my flasks permanently in my hand - because that wasn't the first time I have ended up so dehydrated, but I am hoping it is the last. 

Somehow, that's not even the most annoying part of the way my brain works. 

There is a feature of the 'condition' (God, I hate calling it that) which is called ADHD paralysis and it's the reason a lot of people who are eventually diagnosed in adulthood spent a lot of our childhood being told we were lazy. People think of ADHD as the tiger bouncing (which even now my mother is struggling to see was probably due to ADHD), lack of attention or hyper focus, and a need to be constantly busy, but it's also the fact that it's not the body that can't sit still - my body would be exhausted and broken if it could keep up with the speed that my mind runs at. The best it can do is fidget to try and expend some of the energy that I don't know what to do with. There are also times where my mind is racing with a million and one different things, and writing itself a to do list, whether that's an immediate one or things I want to do 'eventually' to the house, the garden, places that I want to visit and things I want to try, and when I have a list all I can do is sit on the sofa and feel exhausted by the idea of everything that is on the to do list and trying to choose one of them to do. Overcoming that exhaustion is really hard, and it is like trying to put a firework up your own butt. It's the total opposite of when I wake up with too much energy and throw myself at every task I can think of and either exhaust myself really early on, or I keep getting distracted from the original task by finding lots of other bits and pieces that need to be done.

The ADHD paralysis thing has been bothering me more the last few weeks because I have been working parts of the weekend and I find that once I'm done with work, I really struggle to get myself out of work mode and into getting something else done, or going out and doing something fun. I'm affected by it a lot, and I know that part of the reason it is able to run my life is because I can be very sedentary, working from my sofa and only really getting up from the laptop when I want a brew (but, flask) to get food or a few other reasons. That's the nature of my job though. 

Anyway, rant over. And since writing a blog was on my list of things to do, hopefully that was enough of a kick to get my brain out of paralysis mode and get to doing something else before it gets too late in the day for me to reasonably do something. Unfortunately I always seem to get restless about this stuff on a Sunday evening, likely because I'm looking down the barrel of another week at work where I know that I just wake up, work, and sometimes forget to log off until so late in the evening that it's dark outside even in the middle of summer, which is just another habit that I need to get out of.