my gremlin brain

I’ve made a big miscalculation.

When I sat down to start the work day today, my gremlin brain didn’t feel ready to do actual work-work, so I decided to start with reorganising a Google Drive folder. This was admin work I was supposed to do anyway, and my idea was that once I got it done, I’d be so pleased with myself that it’d propel me into the next task.

Not so.

The reorganisation was very satisfying, but then I think the dopamine ran out halfway through and by the time I got to the end of that task my brain felt slightly melted and I didn’t have any motivation left to get the work I actually had scheduled for today done.

I ended up taking a break to eat some cup noodles, just in case the gremlin brain was striking out of hunger, because my lunch of leftovers wasn’t very nice. That helped a little bit, but the cup noodles didn’t hit right either and I had to drag myself through my work tasks, taking almost four hours to do something that should really have taken about one. (Actually, now that I’m looking back, I wonder why it didn’t take an hour—what was I even doing that would make it take that long?!) I was going to do one more work thing but I’ve rescheduled that for tomorrow because I don’t think I’m good for much else today but reading manga and playing mindless games in bed. This morning I thought I might even go for a walk or spend about 20 minutes in the gym or something at the end of the day. Don’t think that’s happening now.

Maybe the internet memes are on to something: I am the hardest Tamagotchi I’ve ever had to keep alive. Although, in fairness to me, all my Tamagotchis are dead and I’m still here.

I’ve been thinking recently about how I’m learning to distinguish between different types of procrastination. There’s procrastination that comes from perfectionism or a fear of failure, where I put off doing something because, as long as I haven’t started, I haven’t screwed up or fallen short of exacting standards yet. There’s procrastination that comes from wanting to avoid conflict or unpleasantness, like having to break bad news to people. There’s procrastination that comes from previous bad experiences or trauma; things went bad before and I’m not keen to go back to that. There’s procrastination that isn’t procrastination, when there’s work left undone because there’s simply too much work and it was unrealistic to expect myself to power through that much in a day anyway. Then sometimes there’s procrastination because all my brain cells packed little bundles and got on a tour bus to the mystical land of Fuckity-Bye. ADHD meds help with that last scenario somewhat, but they’re not miracle pills, so there are limits. Like today, when I actually didn’t forget to take my meds (another common scenario) and had a fairly good start, only to misjudge how much brain power (and food) it’d take to do all that admin and have my brain quit on me at about 3pm.

This is life with my gremlin brain. I’ve always been like this, I suppose; the main difference is that I’m now learning to not blame or guilt myself as much as I used to. I don’t want to give myself a free pass, but I’m also tired of giving myself a hard time. Maybe life doesn’t have to be so difficult?

Considering the frequency at which I feel tired out, overwhelmed or melty brain-ed—definitely a much higher rate than it used to be ten, maybe even five, years ago—the reality is that, if I really want to fully recover from burnout or trauma exposure or hyper-vigilance or anxiety whatever else it is I have on my plate, I probably need to go on a hiatus of a couple of years where I do nothing but read novels or cross-stitch or work on my own writing without having to juggle multiple responsibilities and stressors. But that’s not going to happen because I don’t have Elon Musk money (another reason why he pisses me off so much; he could just chill the fuck out and embrace the relaxation so many of us crave, but no, he decides to make the world a worse place), so the least I can do is not get too shitty with myself.

All this being a long-winded way to say that I’m going to go and eat some crisps and watch drama or read manga now. I think my gremlin brain would like that. ✌🏼

~ vibes ~

A motivational song that usually gets my butt moving, although not necessarily in the direction I need to be moving in…