I don’t know if this is the correct way to phrase it, but I oddly enjoy talking about death.
I think death is one of the deepest conversation topics you could talk with someone about. Everyone has a different take on it and reaction to it.
Tackling My To-Do List with ADHD - EOL001
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.
Journaling Through Weight Gain and Creating A Plan for Health
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.
April Focus: FUN!
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.
March 2022 Roundup
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.
Courage in March
MY WORD OF THE YEAR WAS COURAGE. WHAT TOOK COURAGE THIS MONTH?
No one prepares you for when a close friend dies suddenly. I didn't need to search hard for what gave me Courage in March — my fear of losing someone close was realized and it threw me into a tailspin. Courage was what helped me find self-compassion to sit with the big heavy feelings and know I could make it through.
Courage in February
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.
Learning to Curl and Planning for Unpredictable Energy Levels
Marking the New Year and Picking My 2022 Word — COURAGE
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.
Friendship Lessons of 2021
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.
Mid-Month Check-In — December Focus: Relax and Reflect
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.
Yoga for Every-BODY: How I Developed A Daily Routine I Love
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.
December Focus: Relax & Reflect
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.
Scaling Back on Productivity During Stressful Life Events
This week has been a very scaled-back week for me in terms of work and productivity. My mom’s health has taken some turns over the past few weeks and there’s a lot of uncertainty about her. The heaviness of all the emotions, plus the general stress of being a parent during a pandemic has really made me aware of how much stress can impact my motivation, energy, and focus.
I’m not a productivity expert (though I did write show notes for The Productive Woman podcast and that may have been one of the best experiences I could have had as someone with ADHD and who also wants to get a lot accomplished in her lifetime. One thing I learned from the host, Laura McClellan, is that different seasons in life require different forms of productivity and planning.
What a Night of Terrible Roller Skating Taught Me About Growth
One night a few weeks before the holidays I was exhausted after spending loads of time with our youngest who had announced that morning that he was sick — every parent’s worst nightmare to wake up to.
I was mentally exhausted, but after sitting through the editing of two podcasts that day, I knew I needed to move around. I decided to roller skate for a little while to get some practice in and give myself a bit of a mental break, like skating always does. As I stretched and warmed up by doing my usual yoga routine, I noticed I was feeling a bit wobbly.
Coaching Myself Through Unexpected Weight Gain
As someone who’s struggled with my weight my whole life, I have had times when I was a slave to the scale and it’s only been recently when I have been able to answer truthfully that I forget to get on the scale unless something feels off.
When I was doing the podcast Hate to Weight and actively pursuing weight loss as a goal, I was stepping on weekly to update my cohost and our audience with my progress. We made it a very big point on the show that the numbers and the scale didn’t matter — that said, it was something my cohost, John, and I both thought was important to talk about on the show since that was our original goal.