Guess what I usually do with my free time

[effex]

 Has anyone 'round these parts tried making a daily/weekly/whatever schedule? Did it work for you? I know these things are pretty individual but, eh, it's worth a shot.

I know there's room for more stuff in my week I'm just not very good at fitting it in.

Comments

[zanzando]

I have used that on occasion. I'm not very good at keeping to it though, so it did not work well - for me.

One thing that did work for me was putting several similar activities in the same slot, so I could switch randomly between them. Doing anything that doesn't require a lot of concentration for more than 3-10 minutes at a time makes me restless and twitchy. But that's mostly because I'm currently, uh, not on medication (for adult ADHD-I). At least I'm pretty sure that's why.

[I just keep coming out of the closet, don't I? It's like Narnia in here!]

[effex]

Pooh, switching thing out is a terrific idea! I've alway been pants at self-imposed schedules and that might actually help.

[no worries - I admire you for it. I've got closet space of my own that's, idk. Much less aired out.]

[zanzando]

Yeah, obviously it works best for tasks that don't need to be done, like, catching up with TV series (which I do via torrent) and reading my RSS feeds.

[My diagnosis is actually sort of in limbo right now. I was diagnosed by a psychologist as ADHD-I (and I'm still pretty sure that's it) with comorbid depression and anxiety disorder (mild OCD in my case, and let's be complete while I'm already at it), but another psychologist has recently made a good case for an autism spectrum disorder in combination with - god I fucking hate this label - "intellectual giftedness". Not like that ever did me any good. *grumbles*
I've only recently started airing out. There was an article I read, and it had two sentences that I can identify with strongly: "It sucks, but until our existence is widely accepted on Earth, we can either stay in our space-ship closets or spend inordinate amount of time and energy coming out ad nauseam. I deal better with nausea than with small spaces, personally."
So I pretty much said "Fuck this! I'm gonna talk about whatever I feel like talking about! Keeping silent about things that make me anxious never got me anything but more anxiousness."
Everyone's at their own point of their own trajectory. IMO, there's no saying what's right or wrong for any one person by another person, at least not with true authority.

So anyway I'm seeing an ADHD specialist soon. Hopefully they'll be able to clear this up. :) ]

[effex]

Ahahaha, I totally didn't mean to call you Pooh. Freaking tiny pretend keys on the freaking iPod.

[effex]

That's really excellent advice, if rather panic inducing - repression is my coping mechanism of choice (I can't easily recall, since we're sharing, most things between the ages 8 and 14) and if I started talking about/facing up to everything I've been keeping under wraps... idk. Scary. (It's nothing big - just a lot of childhood bullying and mistreatment, which led to major self esteem issues, some social stunting, and said repression. Which keeps me running at social-normal but runs the risk of sudden panic attacks. Contents under pressure, etc).

Wow. See, sharing!

[zanzando]

HAHaha, that didn't even register for me! Because in German, I could say "Puh!" (pronunciation "pooh") like a cross between "Ooh!" and "Phew!". Language barriers: sometimes they're helpful!

[zanzando]

Gah, bullying. :/
I was maybe lucky that I went in a different direction in elementary school (and also in that I towered over everyone), by threatening those who bullied others right back. I went through a shy phase, but made it through school by silent intimidation, cold-blooded non-reactions even when I wanted to cry, and wit. Maybe not the healthiest strategy, but it worked. (Also I was friends with the punk/anarchist crowd in school, so that helped!)
I can sympathize though, because
1) I only recall snatches of my entire childhood - but that's the ADHD.
2) Denial is my personal favourite. As you can probably imagine, this works really well for someone with my brain chemistry. But the constant undercurrent of frustration, fear and guilt forces the occasional outbreak. (Nights without sleep, crying jags, really bad OCD behaviour, etc.)

I'm just ... more and more arriving at a point where it's not worth it. All the stress, the anxiety are not worth protecting my illusion of normalcy.