Digging (myself out of) a Hole

ADHD in a time of transition

It's been a weird week. Our move is coming up fast, could be soon as 2 weeks. I didn't pack very much this week until yesterday. I have a nasty wound on my heel that makes it painful to walk in shoes so I've been trying to take it easy with moving things. Thankfully it's finally healing so I got some stuff moved this weekend. My room is getting sparser, my decorations are still up, but soon they'll too be gone as all my stuff gradually gets moved to boxes in the basement.

I've still been keeping up with keto and stuff of course. At this point I feel like I have a lot of that figured out and I've been able to maintain my routine without too much thought. It's certainly freed up a lot of time waking up early and having such a consistent routine. However, I'm just having a lot of trouble figuring out what to do with that time in the dwindling weeks before I pack up and move on to a new place. Not to say I can't start new work now, I've had lots of projects and ideas I've been tossing around and I don't want to just put my life on pause until the move happens. However, I'm struggling quite a bit to get anything moving, it still feels very much like I'm stuck. The main issue is that I spend way more time that I'd like just watching things on Youtube and zoning out. I've barely even touched any of the games I've been playing this week just because it's felt like I haven't had the mental energy to do so.  

I know things will get better once I move. The troublesome thing with my current apartment is that my safe place, the place I work, and the place I play video games or browse the internet are all in the same place, right in front of my computer. It's very hard not to get sucked into a rabbit hole when I'm right there so much of the time. Whenever I sit down to eat I have the temptation to pull up a video then who knows how long I'll be there before I gather the willpower to do something else. In the new place, I'll be able to separate work and relaxation a lot more. I'll be able to eat and just focus on the food. I'll be able to sign off of work and go chill on the couch and play video games or watch a video if that's what I want to do. Not to mention how helpful it will be to have my partner around so I don't just get sucked in to my own world all the time. So I am hopeful I'll be able to better deal with this kind of thing once I get settled in.

Still, here I am. This is definitely a problem for me so I don't just want to sit around waiting for it to go away or improve when my circumstances change. I want to start working on it now. Maybe I'm just being impatient, but I also think that if I'm able to master focusing on doing the work that I care about and living a balanced life while I'm in a situation that makes it difficult, then I'll be able to do it even better when I'm in a situation that makes it easier and I'll be closer to addressing the root cause of the problem.

So now I've been on Youtube (Yes, I know, a dangerous game) watching videos from a mental health professional on dealing with these issues. I'm taking notes and starting to think about how I can deal with my addiction to these highly dopaminergic activities. Feels like I've been struggling with this for years but I'm still figuring out how to start to be able to deal with it. I know there's lot of strategies out there people have for dealing with this kind of thing like dopamine fasts and intermittent fasting for technology. Hopefully I figure out something that I can sustain for the long haul where I stop losing so much of my time to all this stuff that isn't really helping me.

Not the most fun or exciting post, I know. But this is what’s been on my mind and I did commit to writing today so that’s what we got! In other news, my Marxist group’s fundraiser was a great success! People seemed to enjoy themselves at the party and we even surpassed our fundraising goal. I was pretty focused on making sure that went off without a hitch this week so I’m relieved it went well and feel like I can relax a bit now.

Hope you’re well wherever you’re reading this. Feel free to let me know if you’ve also struggled with procrastination or technology addiction and how you deal with it. I know this is a really widespread problem now and interested to hear others’ experiences. Thanks for reading! :D