I am very hesitant to talk about diagnoses because I am scared that someone will find this post and try to apply this to them even if it doesn’t affect them. Because that’s what I would’ve done in the past. I used to read a lot of books about bipolar and then tried to fit the criteria, and felt disheartened when it wasn’t me. I used to identify myself through the diagnosis, not see myself as a human being with a word to describe the issues I was facing. Bipolar was an identity.

This piece of the internet is my own corner, my place that I can control and talk about myself and explore my brain and my experiences. I am not talking as an expert on ADHD or neuropsychiatry or any related field. I am talking as an expert in myself. My own lived experience. If you relate to this, it does not mean you necessarily have ADHD. If you don’t relate to this, it does not mean you don’t have ADHD.

This week I’ve struggled getting back to work. I know what I have to do, I know where I need to start. But so far today I’ve showered, put away some of the laundry and tidied my room while I should be coding. I just can’t seem to do it. In the past I have just forced myself to do it and then eventually burned out because I can’t keep forcing myself to work against my brain. So I am trying a new approach and be kind to myself. To observe what me, my brain and I might need today. Luckily my work is very understanding and I work two days a week. I also tell them if I just can’t get it done today and I will do it another day.

My brain works in bursts and any kind of distraction can ruin the flow. Even as a child I was called a “Duracell bunny”. When the batteries ran out, I shut down and fell asleep on the piano keys or bathtub. My parents have a lot of pictures of me asleep in random places. Today I woke up to my alarm, which might or might not be the reason I’m so tired and completely unable to concentrate on anything. I get distracted by the smallest things today, and it’s especially disheartening when I had such a good month at work in December.

I have started to call those distractions side missions or side quests, depending on which falls out of my brain at a given moment. The terms are interchangeable in my head, except quest seems more noble. This very moment I am still in my underwear after a shower, a hair towel on my head because I was in the middle of getting dressed, but the inspiration to write struck. Side quest: write a blog post about this. Before I sat down to write, I put away some laundry that’s been sitting on the dryer since last year. Side quest: organise reusable cotton pads.

And now I’m getting cold and uncomfortable because I can feel my skin. So I will take a break in writing and come back to this later. Main quest in the background: get dressed after a shower.

20 minutes later I’m back, I have a top on and I ended up on another side mission trying to fix the broken lamp that’s in my wardrobe, I couldn’t get it done, brain malfunctioned and now my wardrobe has three lamps, none of which are connected or working. I also lotioned myself and looked for my hairbrush. It’s not where it belongs so my hair is still wrapped inside a towel and I have no trousers on.

This is my life. Every day. And this is what doesn’t tire me out. Being allowed to go on these side quests, I am most me. I get so much done, except the mission I was originally on. Like today, work.

When I find something to focus on, I can spend 14 hours without eating while working on a miniature or writing code, and I get annoyed if someone dares to remind me that maybe I should eat something today. I can be an excellent software engineer when I manage to find the focus. I see the big picture, I see the connections. But on days like these, I don’t see the connections. I can’t even step into the code because I’m on side quests.

I know it makes me an unreliable employee. That’s why I am not working full time or being paid full-time salary. To get 8 hours of work done, I do about 24 hours of side missions.

And now I just took a 30-minute break where I fed my dog and successfully solved multiple side missions. I am glad to announce, I finally have trousers on, a hoodie on, I am not cold and I have glued some bits and pieces that needed gluing. The human body is such a fragile and useless thing to take care of. I have been unconsciously angry that someone gave me this stupid body that I need to take care of. No one asked me if I want to do that.

I used to stress myself out trying to do self-care perfectly. Brush my teeth twice a day, floss, take iron at the perfect time with the perfect drink. And if I wasn’t able to do it perfectly, I didn’t do it at all. But I have finally given myself some grace and if I brush my teeth whenever the fuck I remember to do it, it’s better than not at all. If I floss once a week imperfectly, it’s more than never. And if I take an iron tablet when I remember, more iron gets inside me than if I abandon the whole idea of getting iron from iron supplements because it’s too much work.

Lotioning yourself when your skin feels dry is enough. You don’t have to have an elegant self-care ritual that you keep forgetting, lotioning your face when it feels tight is enough.

Some of this is neurodiverse features, some of this is my unique trauma and learned coping skills. The main thing I have learned is that there is no book about me. There are a million books about ADHD, neurodiversity, AuDHD and whatnot. But this is the life in my brain every day. And diagnosis or not, what I need and I have always needed is to learn to live within the realms of my own brain and body. What I need is to listen to my brain and my body, and work with what I have. I can get help and ideas from books and diagnoses, but the most annoying part is that I need to do the work in finding what things work with me.

As much as I hate accepting the fact that I am me.

(And I ended up actually publishing this post about 8 hours after I started writing it and four hours after finishing it, because I did a lot of side missions today.)