one of the signs that i’m emerging from a depressive phase to a normal-to-slightly-hypomanic phase is i spontaneously think of specific people i want to reach out to, to either: 1) catch up, 2) thank them for something they did, or 3) apologize to them for something i did
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i reflect on this as i think of the common ADHD thing about being bad at keeping up with old friends. the standard explanation appears to be that this is due to “bad memory” but actually i generally find that my memory is very good as long as i am not “clogged up” emotionally
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it feels like i have sort of an “internal queue” of things that it occurs to me to do, and this queue is actually perfectly capable of handling all sorts of things, including normal life stuff and friendships, *unless* the current item brings up feelings i am blocking out
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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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yea I relate
I used to update this every month and I haven’t since bc I been clogged with my book
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Aug 2021:
- crossed $100 in youtube ads (total)
- started posting on tiktok
- started eating eggs for breakfast to get more protein
- watched hunchback of notre dame, godfather pt 2
- guested on several podcast episodes (visakanv.com/podcasts)
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yeah i can imagine that really getting in the way. i imagine it’s like one huge item and you have to decide for yourself what counts as being “done” on a given day and it never quite takes?
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Yeah I feel very stuck. It actually feels very similar to how I felt stuck when I had a job, psychologically and in my body
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sounds rough 😔
i was wondering if you could invent some metrics to arbitrarily judge “doneness” by on a given day but idk. word count sort of makes sense but sometimes i imagine you’re deleting or reshuffling or rewording things, hard to incorporate that. hmm
seems like something other authors must’ve written about, wonder how they do it. i guess there’s a cliche where you retreat to a cabin and work on just the book and literally nothing else until it’s done, that’s one option?
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i feel like theres smth off about the idea of “doneness”
i def know the feeling & have tried things like writing down manageable daily goals in the morning & feeling “done” when all checked off
but i feel like there should be a way to feel “done” ALWAYS (but still DO stuff too)
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big if true 🧐 i think i share this feeling but like haow tho
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