Momentum is easily one of my favorite words in the world. In a positive context, both the word and it’s meaning are beautiful, I think; it is the strength or force gained by motion or by a series of events. It’s the definition of how something small can lead to positive change on a large(r) scale.
I am stuck.
At this point I have no intention of changing the world, but I would like to be able to change my situation. To summarize the first part of this story; I am stuck. I’m stuck in my house, in my brain, in my life. The latter consists of turning invitations down and isolating myself at home. I like to be around people, but I can’t. I have a business idea that is awesome, which I even made a website for, but it’s stuck. I have a lot of digital skills (web, graphic) and drawing skills with which I could do SO much, but I just can’t do it. I want to make children’s books, which in theory I CAN, but I can’t. I want to finish my house, but I can’t. I’m not sure if this is a vicious circle or a downward spiral.
The needs
At this moment I am considered too ill to work, mentally. But I want to accomplish things and CREATE! I want to make some money and be of value in this world. I am a smart, educated woman. So many times I’ve thought; I should be able to fix this. There must be a way.. I know I can move mountains and do cool stuff when I’m on a roll. It just needs to have little pressure, responsibility or obligations, and I need momentum. I need to get the ball rolling and I need goals. So this is me making a plan.
The Plan The Plan
- Goals
Overall goal: being able to do things that mean something.
Main goal 1: starting my business
Main goal 2: doing other creative things
Main goal 3: moving to another house
- Tackle ADHD
ADHD is all about dopamine. In short, dopamine makes you able to do stuff. Lacking dopamine makes you unable to do stuff. ADHD-brains are chronically short on dopamine. External sources are doing something fun (I hardly find anything fun anymore), food or psychoactive substances (both not very healthy as a main source of dopamine), ADHD medications (helpful to a certain degree), doing something you’re passionate about. It’s the latter that holds the key for me, I think.
I have to work with my brain, not against it. I have to use the advantages of an ADHD-brain (lots of ideas, thinking out of the box, creativity), and use tricks to work around the disadvantages (paralysis, depression, anxiety).
I need something to hold on to, to keep me going, to purge my brain, to journal; this will be my blog. It once was intended for others, now it will be mainly for myself, and hopefully others will benefit from it. It will be my journey of spiraling up instead of down.
- Tackle plant-brain
ADHD means trouble with executive functioning, and my out-of-order brain doesn’t make that any easier. I have been experiencing an executive disfunction jackpot for a very long time, and I have been trying out a simple ADHD trick for the past month; whenever you’re unable to do something, do something easier instead. For me this was doing the dumbest, easiest sh*t for three weeks in a row, sitting behind my Netflixing laptop, without a deadline or self-judgment. Things like sorting all of my gazillion beads, sorting a thousand eyeliners, I germinated seeds and planted seedlings. It also made me think about this as a solution to the current problem and it resulted in writing these posts! So in fact, it did work. These posts took me ten days to write, but here they are, and so is my new website! (I am exhausted now, don’t get me wrong.)
- Be nice to plant-brain. Look at possibilities.
I have to keep my own pace. If I need three weeks of doing dumb stuff to climb the stairs of dopamine demands, I must take three weeks. “Such self-care!”, one might think. But it’s rather the only choice I have. The actual self-care here is being ok with myself for it.
The fact that I am now writing posts means things are slightly shifting; I could never have done this a month ago. I haven’t been on my blog for years, I couldn’t look at it or even think about it. I felt a lot of shame everytime I thought about it; I have a shame-complex that makes me hate any creation I liked earlier. 😑 Also, getting back to writing means obligations. But it suddenly shifted from burden to scaffold. I had to rebuild it completely, because it was too outdated to match our new server. I think that actually helped, because now I could just start over and forget the old blog. And well, you’re looking at the new version, so this is another hill I could suddenly climb.
(Note: I liked most of my old posts in general. I still have them and I hope to rewrite them on the new site.)
- Physical health
Since about a year, I go to the gym 3x a week with my (little but almost 30) nephew. Sometimes other family members join as well. It’s a 10-minute walk, then we work out for about 45 minutes, and walk back. This is one of the few things that doesn’t induce anxiety because I feel VERY safe with him. I always do some weight lifting, core strengthening, and stretching. I’m quite strong and flexible now actually, and that feels amazing. I’m convinced physical exercise really benefits your mental health, so I definitely will keep doing that.
On to the main goals.
- My small business
I want to start my business. Quite some work still has to be done, but that’s ok. I just need to start very, very simple. Writing about it here will help, I think. Things I worry about are dealing with real clients, and terms and conditions I really need to dive into. I think I have a good idea, although I’m not sure if there’s a stable demand for it. But we’ll see. I’m not going to share it yet, but I hope to do so soon.
- Being creative
I want to do other creative things. There were times when I wished for more time to create. Now I have all the time in the world and I can’t… I want to make cool posters, patterns, printables, designs for t-shirts… but I also want to do cool home decorations and just fun crafts. Doing creative work, in any form, is really good for your brain! It actually increases the grey matter in your brain, so it should literally be medicine for a broken brain. And therefore, together with writing (which is also extremely beneficial), it needs to be in this plan.
- Moving out
I want to move out of my house and out of this town. The noises make me go crazy, I want a nice place to work with a lot of light and preferably a nice view, and there have been a lot of issues with the managing company of our building. I also keep experiencing anxiety whenever I leave my house because I’m afraid of running into former colleagues. This town is too triggery and I don’t think this can be fixed.
A few things need to happen though; our neighborhood will be disconnected from gas this year, which will be quite a hassle. Our 90cm wide gas furnace has to be replaced, a lot of pipe work has to be done in our home, and the streets will be closed off for months. We also have a window frame issue in the entire building that needs to be addressed. We just can’t sell this year because of all of this.
In the meantime we can deal with the many unfinished projects in this house that ALSO need to be finished first, and I will have to do a lot of decluttering. We hope to fix all of this in 2024. A deadline is an ADHD-brain’s best friend.
To conclude
If you’re still reading, thanks for taking the time to do so! I really appreciate it. I hope to be back soon with more progress and next steps. First I need to get through the upcoming week; furnace will be delivered, a day later installed, online Spanish lessons (stress!), and then 2 days of (pre)Kingsday which I am not looking forward to, but I NEED to get rid of quite some stuff at the flea market.
(Kingsday (April the 27th) is a Dutch national holiday. It’s the birthday of our king, which is celebrated in the entire country. It’s also unofficially known as a national flea market day, because every town and city in the country will have flea markets.)
And well, flea markets are not something I do for fun! But as long as I will probably not run into anyone I know, it’s not a trigger. I push myself to do it because I know I can handle it, and knowing that things will not be thrown away AND that I can make a little money really helps me with decluttering. It goes without saying that we will not attend any flea markets in my own city though! 
Updates next week.
Ok baii!! 
