when that happens the queue stops functioning. i can’t easily skip the current item to get to the next one. my emotional and cognitive capacity get partly taken up by a conflict between “hey, this is the current item” and “aaaah no bad item go away”
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like for a hopefully pretty relatable example, during tax season it’s pretty easy for “do my taxes” to become the current item and for me to be like aaaah no do not want to think about money too many feelings, and that just kinda sits in me preventing me from using the queue
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when i can’t use the queue in a natural way then i need artificial ways to get to other items in the queue, hence to-do lists and explicit reminders to drink water or w/e and other external tracking tools. but i can also instead sit down to process my feelings about taxes
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(which i did last tax season, and a lot of stuff came up related to my parents (naturally) that ended up feeding into the acid thread)
anyway very curious to hear from other people if they’ve noticed stuff like this or if it occurs somewhat or very differently to them
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on days where i feel like i have very few “spoons” it’s like the current item is so scary and brings up such uncomfortable feelings so early in the day that i can’t even easily access items like “get out of bed” or “go to the bathroom” or “eat” as a result
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this is btw like - i didn’t discuss this in the acid thread at all but one interesting effect of being a spoiled rich kid like me is because i’m effectively never financially constrained i am constantly aware of how much the constraints i’m operating under are psychological
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like i’ve sort of been forced to become interested in psychology because it’s been so clear for such a long time that that’s where all my real bottlenecks are. obviously other people can have very different bottlenecks but maybe this will be helpful perspective on me
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ah what i’m describing in this thread is a kind of collapsed awareness. like simultaneously my awareness collapses onto the current item and also i am blocking out the feelings it generates from my awareness?
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[guy who has definitely never studied alexander technique] what if EVERYTHING is collapsed awareness
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in grad school the current item was often “work on thesis” and that one would just get stuck there like most of the time in the background, for literal years. not coincidentally in grad school i had mild asthma almost all the time and really persistent coughs 🙃
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also not coincidentally, grad school is when i started using to-do list software and tried out systems like GTD in order to be “””more productive””” (three guesses whether this worked or not)
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don’t mind me just out here slowly working through my feelings about to-do lists because of course i have fucking feelings about to-do lists ugh jesus 😩
Replying to
“adhd is often characterized as forgetting what needs to be done but actually I always know exactly what I ought to do and that’s why I feel so awful” 😔
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Replying to @QiaochuYuan
yes adhd is often characterized as forgetting what needs to be done but actually I always know exactly what I ought to do and that’s why I feel so awful and it makes my agency into a fucked up tangle of self-loathing and escapism
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this is another great observation, “spamming the queue.” i find i do this with video games in particular - much more comfy for the current item to be whatever the next step in the current quest is or w/e than an irl task
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Replying to @QiaochuYuan
i also recently noticed myself sorta “spamming” my queue when i’m feeling avoidant
like, “oh i really need to get some food before i can keep working” even though maybe i’m not even that hungry
maybe: the queue is oppressive, leading to small acts of internal rebellion
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[guy who is only slightly hypomanic i promise] let’s solve ADHD
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i suppose it would be churlish of me to write something like this without offering any actual advice about how to have feelings, i have old threads about this but for now i'll just link to bio-emotive which is still one of my main practices
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