Lifestyle

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Tackling My To-Do List with ADHD - EOL001

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This post is written from the perspective of my personal ADHD experience and should not be taken as medical advice. It is for informational and educational purposes only.

Ever since being diagnosed with ADHD at 30, I've spent the last 9 years learning how my brain works. The more I learn about the traits associated with ADHD, such as executive dysfunction and trouble starting overwhelming projects, the more I began finding ways of coping. In the beginning it was medication and I think that gave me a good handle on what my brain was capable of without all the extra noise.

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My Lazy Spinach-Berry-Ginger Smoothie Recipe & A Summer Update

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CW: DIETING, WEIGHT-LOSS

It’s been about 3 weeks since writing my post about some recent weight gain and my feelings about it and here’s an update.

I got on the scale for the 2nd time since that post and found I was down 4 pounds! After coming off a particularly uncomfortable period that included a lot of water retention, it was a relief to wake up today feeling better and well enough to get on the scale.

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Journaling Through Weight Gain and Creating A Plan for Health

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CW: DIETING, WEIGHT-LOSS

This post is an excerpt from my journal. I got on the scale to see a higher number than I was used to and I found myself spiraling a bit and letting the Itty Bitty Shitty Committee in my head run amok before finally deciding to journal it out and see if there was a logical explanation and get curious about it.

Some Background: I hosted a weight-loss comedy podcast called Hate to Weight where I lost 100 pounds while working with an eating coach and becoming familiar with intermittent fasting and intuitive eating. The show went on indefinite hiatus a few months into the pandemic because my cohost and I decided to go into maintenance mode, plus our time became more and more limited to work on our own podcast.

Excerpt:

For most of the pandemic, I stayed within a certain weight range and even lost an additional 10 pounds in 2021 without really changing much.

Fast forward to June of 2022 and I found myself this morning on the scale looking at a number about 20 pounds higher than this same time last year.

I'm not reacting very body-positive or body-neutral, which is what I've been trying to shift more toward. But I'm not exactly happy to see a much higher number than I’ve been used to since 2020 either. This is the highest my weight has been in 2 years and I'm having some big feelings I'm working through.

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Not-So-Quick Blog Update + Top 20 Introverted Mom Blog Announcement!

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First off, thank you to Anuj Agarwal for including Emily: Out Loud in Feedspot’s list of the Top 20 Introverted Mom Blogs!

Secondly, seeing that inspired me to write a quick update (Note: I thought it would be a “quick” update when I began writing it. My writing brain had other plans.)

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April Focus: FUN!

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After a long March spent grieving and healing from a friend’s passing, on April 1st, I woke up feeling a bit lighter than I had in weeks.

I’ve always loved April. It’s my birthday month and it usually signals the end of our long, cold winter and the beginnings of Spring. It’s only the first week and it’s been such a change to hear birds loudly chirping in the mornings again and little buds start appearing on the gray, bare trees we’ve been staring at for months on our drives.

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March 2022 Roundup

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I didn’t really write that much in March. I found out a few days into the months aththat a good friend had passed away. She was part of a years’-long group text with 6 or 7 friends from my hometown. It’s been absolutely earth shattering for all of us. In the weeks that followed, we saw one another at the funeral and have been staying in touch with one another to check in and support one another as we heal. It hasn’t been easy.

I learned one thing about writing, whether it’s for a blog post, social media post, or in general — don’t write from the pain. It’s messy, it’s raw, it’s reactive, and nine times out of 10, I want to delete it and never show it to the world. I think we all have those parts of ourselves, especially when going through something heartbreaking like losing a friend.

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February 2022 Roundup

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February’s focus was Decluttering — check out my past posts if you missed the start of the challenge and how I turned the challenge into a game 😉

I knew going into it that it wouldn’t be easy and it would most likely stretch into March. I wasn’t wrong. We had high hopes of decluttering and painting my daughter’s room for her birthday, but we underestimated just how tough it would be to do that, given our busy schedules and energy.

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Courage in February

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MY WORD OF THE YEAR WAS COURAGE. WHAT TOOK COURAGE THIS MONTH?

Seriously considering going to grad school and opening up to my partner about this little daydream.

It’s been an inkling of a thought ever since graduating college, but I had a hard enough time finally deciding on a major in college that making a commitment to even higher education would mean finding something that I truly, truly wanted to go into tons of debt and give my precious time to.

Even writing that, I am amazed folks do this. I’m pretty sure ADHD is why I was never able to give a consistent answer to the question, “What do you want to do when you grow up?”

For a while, I told myself that I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up because back in the 1980s, no one had ever heard of a podcast. And maybe that’s true. But also, I’ve started questioning if I wanted to be in podcasting for the long haul and what that would look like.

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Learning to Curl and Planning for Unpredictable Energy Levels

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Last week, my husband came into our room where I was enjoying a leisurely Saturday under the heating pad and said, “I have babysitting, want to try curling?!”

He was so excited in that moment and I knew he had seen the local curling club nearby was having an open house for folks to try it out.

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One-Task-A-Day Decluttering Game

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This Month's focus has been decluttering and I'm so excited to see folks who follow me on Instagram getting inspired and motivated by my one-task-a-day approach!

When I decided to tackle decluttering as my February Focus, I knew my house was in need of some cleaning and I didn't want to wait until Spring. February seemed like a great month to get going — we're over the holidays and now just trudging along until Spring. We've been in our house for so long and, I'll be honest, it's been incredibly hard to motivate myself to clean during the pandemic. I'm already so exhausted from working, childcare and the regular maintenance of the house that doing anything more is like pulling teeth for me.

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February Focus: Decluttering!

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This has been a long-time coming. Two years, really.

I’ll be honest, when we went into the pandemic, I was determined to get rid of excess everything to save my energy. Survival Mode felt temporary at that point and things like decluttering became something that turned from a regular thing to something I would do when everything was over and done with.

As you can imagine, that strategy didn’t work out too well. It’s not two years later and what started as small piles have become near-avalanches. It’s nowhere near what you’d see on shows about Hoarding Disorder, but every time I watch those shows, I can see that if I don’t stop and pay attention, those piles-turned-avalanches will meld together to form walls of just STUFF!

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January 2022 Roundup

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I wasn’t expecting to have an easy January, especially doing a challenge that’s really not in my wheelhouse.

Oh sure, I can eat. And you may even be surprised that I took a few semesters of home ec in high school and can follow a recipe. Unlike Moira and David Rose, I actually know what “fold in the cheese” means!

But I really, really don’t like to cook. It’s not my favorite way to spend time. This has been such a weird phenomenon for me because I really do enjoy delicious food with lots of variety. But unless I can find it in the freezer section or it doesn’t involve a whole lot of prep and juggling multiple preparations at once, I’m not interested.

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Marking the New Year and Picking My 2022 Word — COURAGE

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Is it weird that I still carry a tiny glimmer of hope for the new year? For a lot of December 2021, I wasn’t sure I would. I wasn’t feeling the same excitement about a new year, even though I can’t say I was a huge fan of much of 2021.

But nonetheless, I found myself looking forward to the start of a new year. And it is nice to bid farewell to the past year and feel that sense of new beginning

I don’t do resolutions anymore for the new year and I’ll talk more about that in a bit, but I do have a few traditions. The first two are very mundane and tedious if I’m being honest. But they’re still my own traditions that have oddly helped me bring in the coming year with a sense of newness, and you’d be surprised at how satisfying it is when they’re done.

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January Focus: Cooking at Home Challenge

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Every January, I’m tempted to hop on board the health and wellness marketing train along with others starting their New Year’s Resolutions. I can’t help it. It’s like how after being out of school for 13 years, I still want to buy new pencils and notebooks every September. I’m trying to be more conscious of consumerism and how marketing contributes to these waves of interests, but sometimes I like to get swept up in it.

This January, even though I initially wanted to put some focus on my health and re-evaluate some things, instead I decided to focus on something that actually benefited us as a family. My husband, Mark, and I have been letting the pandemic be our excuse for ordering out and getting drive-thru a lot more in the last two years. But with prices rising and our growing boredom with the usual places around us, I had the idea to challenge both me and Mark to cook at home more.

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Friendship Lessons of 2021

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I didn't originally intend for friendship to be a big theme of mine for 2021, but for a pandemic, I had a very full year of it!

I realized early in the year how much I was longing for past friendships that have dissipated or fallen by the wayside in recent years, even before quarantine and social distancing were in the picture.

This was one of the first times I know of in my life where I actively challenged myself to step outside my comfort zone of hiding behind my screen and to find people like me — and in a way that didn’t feel like I was bending over backward or pretending I was someone else or trying to act “normal” or make everyone like me (the impossible). I made some mistakes, of course. I even repeated a few until the lessons finally sank in. But I'm also proud of how I found strength and rebuilding in the process of getting back up from those setbacks.

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ADHD and Google Home Commands I Love

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Planning on getting a new Nest Hub/Google Home for the holidays and want to learn some of the ways I like using it to manage my ADHD?

Settle in because I have been immersed in the Google ecosystem for a while now. When I tell you I think of Google as my Second Brain, you’ll soon see why.

This will be a quick post, but let me know if you have any questions or want me to expand on anything I mention 😉 you can leave a comment over on my Instagram or in the comments below.

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Mid-Month Check-In — December Focus: Relax and Reflect

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There's this internal conflict that hits around this time of year where there are simultaneous feelings of wanting to rest and recharge, but there's also a push to be productive and finish the year strong. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who feels it, right?

Maybe that comes from the end of the year reflection and, as I alluded to in my Monthly Focus post, the disappointment we may feel as we look back at the year and find we didn't accomplish the goals we wanted to.

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Yoga for Every-BODY: How I Developed A Daily Routine I Love

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Sometimes I get embarrassed talking about yoga and how much I love it. A lot of people have very strong opinions of yoga I’ve found. I also get a lot of up-and-down looks when I say that I do daily yoga as if someone who does daily yoga should look a certain way, which I do not.

Sometimes people jump to the conclusion that I’m going to talk about how yoga is the be-all, end-all cure for everything. For the record, I try to stay away from that kind of talk about anything — I truly believe people need to search for what works best for them for their health.

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December Focus: Relax & Reflect

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After last month’s focus on Writing and creating this blog, plus all the other life happenings lately, I really felt like I had no choice but to declare this month’s focus to be Rest and Reflect.

Most Decembers, this mode seems to happen automatically and I've learned to keep the holiday season from getting too overwhelming and overbooked. With the extra stress of my mom’s health being up in the air, plus the ongoing stress of parenting through a pandemic, I know this is as good a season as any to take it easy and not push for a big project.

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Life Update + November 2021 Roundup

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I took this photo the other day in the hospital while waiting for my mom to get back from an MRI. She had a seizure the last week of November after a mini-stroke/TIA a few weeks earlier. Her health has been up in-the-air and, to be honest, it’s been a really difficult time.

Like last month, I’m still sitting in what I now call my little Kitchen nook to get the sunlight first thing in the morning to help my mental health, but with so much that seems out of my control right now, the overwhelm has meant a few more dark days. I’m using flowery language a bit. I’ve had days where everything is just f*cking terrible and feel like they kick my ass.