Planting Seeds
Some time ago my therapist told me not to plan anything. Not look to the future. Goodbye big picture thinking. Just exist in the present. As a person with ADHD, I’m an avid planner. I have a ton of ideas; I just never carry them out. I believed I’d be the world’s best researcher. I could outline a topic, take a ton of random notes, and find you a vast wealth of information. Just don’t ask me to sift through it all and make something of it. And don’t rely on me to stay focused. I’ll either obsessively follow one topic, or jump from topic to topic to topic (times a billion) because everything is fascinating and boring all at once. I’d like to learn more about a lot of things and write about these things too and my environment is a reflection of that.
My room is a chaotic monstrosity. I keep a million notebooks, just to list all the things that come to mind. My bed is surrounded by piles of books on any number of topics. (Ancient civilization. Needlecraft. John Adams. The Middle East. Health magazine. Architecture and design magazines. Crossword puzzles. Crime and Punishment. Metamorphoses. The Time machine. Whales. ) I’m not kidding. This is a very small sample of the heap that engulfs me. Sometimes I get revved up to get organized. Generally this starts with doing laundry. Inevitably, I lose interest half way through. My clothes wither as a neatly sorted fortress around the washing machine. Eventually I’ll finish washing, but folding is out of the question. If it happens, it will be MUCH later. Add this to the stacks of notes, books and magazines already in my room and you have a hazy glimpse of where I sleep at night.
Obviously, the not planning thing was a struggle for me. I’m not sure I was really successful. My room is still a dump. Never getting anything done and always searching for things to do is an incredibly stressful way to live, but so is living with having no goals, no purpose and nothing to do. Basically it involved me reading (aka falling asleep while reading), sleeping a lot (which is something I do occasionally anyway, when I decide to go off certain medications) or wasting away in front of the TV. Neither options are working methodologies for a happy life. I love learning so very much. It’s sad because I failed so miserably at the college thing. And I still don’t really know what to do with myself.
Then I remember I used to enjoy my cultural studies courses, especially when these included literature and film. It was fun to take notes on what was going on and analyze the director’s intentions and artistic method. I also enjoyed writing, although my thoughts are so jumbled, I could never put down what I really wanted to say. This would frustrate me so extremely that papers would either be late or never get done.
So here is my new non-plan-plan. No planning for the future (i.e. degree, career, etc). I want to practice my writing. I want to write little bits, reviews of things I watch, read, observe and post them. I need to do something with all the lists I make every day. Eventually maybe there will be some underlying theme that links these snippets together. Maybe I will make something of it. This is not a big project, or a big deal. But getting in the habit of writing is what I would like.
