Life moves so fast

I'm writing this while sitting beside my 7 year old daughter. She is home doing distance learning. She has barely seen her friends in the last year, besides our next-door and across the street neighbors, with boys her same age. She is in second grade and she has ADHD. I have to work beside her instead of in my office because every 30 seconds or so I need to remind her she needs to be doing her school work instead of singing and carving designs into my dinning table. 

Through researching her diagnosis, I have discovered that ADHD is something that I have struggled with my whole life as well. I'm not formally diagnosed, partially because our mental healthcare system is awful, partially because a pandemic has made it worse (or at least more overworked) and partially because one of the really "fun" things about ADHD is that it makes it difficult for a person to prioritize and that includes prioritizing their own care. 

I tell you all of this to share something about me. I am a really passionate, forward-thinking, creative, warm and generous person. I am also disorganized, have a memory that can remember a route I drove once six years ago, but not the fact that I have a meeting this afternoon and I have a horrible time prioritizing or completing important tasks. 

I have a lot of ambition, I am good at seeing things from a high level and seeing things logistically. I planned a five-part trip for my husband and I to go visit all of the Major League Baseball Parks in one summer. It took many hours of looking at schedules, planning routes, deciding on stops and other planning. It was intense and I am still so proud of myself for accomplishing it, even 9 years later. We plan to do it again with our children, this time in a fully electric car. 

My life goals also include creating a network of Zero Waste/Refill shops and other sustainability focused companies that work together to bring as many people as possible, low waste, natural and locally made products. I absolutely love the community of shop owners, manufacturers and other parties that I have gotten to know over the last two years. 

I also run a Facebook group: Zero Waste, Zero Judgement. We hit 20,000 members about a month ago. It is a terrific group, always eager to help those with questions and share interesting and inspiring ideas. I really want to construct some resources that I think will help all the group members immensely, but you can just add it to the pile of overly ambitious and altruistic projects that I just love to cook up. 

I have a lot of trouble with consistency. I can have an ultra productive day, followed by a day that I can barely get through just feeding myself and my kids. Some days feel like they go really painfully slow and I'm just waiting for bedtime so I can sit with my latest crochet project and a show. And other days are gone in a blink and I only got to half of my 18 item to do list.

All of this to be honest, transparent, and real. I have a lot of things I want to create, accomplish and share. I have been doing the research to get treatment for my ADHD so I can hopefully deal with my hurdles, but it's not going to be resolved in a matter of days, weeks or months. It will keep me from growing at the pace I want. It's extremely frustrating to me. I feel like I'm making excuses, and I know that's how it looks to some neuro-normative people. That's how I felt about it for a long time, the guilt and beating myself up over everything was constant. Through the power of knowledge, I am learning more about ADHD and to cut myself some slack, tackle each thing one at a time and to appreciate the positive side. People with ADHD tend to be creative, good problem solvers, generous and compassionate. I am all that and more. 

** Sorry, this post was supposed to be about my future plans, but I felt more like writing about the thing that has been occupying my mind the most this week. I will write about those plans in another post tonight.