Is It ADHD or Is It Stress

My priority #1 is always whatever is right in front of my face, which is also why my brain thinks writing a blog post about it instead of actually doing those things is the most important thing right now. 

Photo by Stefan Cosma on Unsplash

I dread opening my computer these days. The number of emails to be responded to is long and unending, and the backlog means that there may be irate customers or massive mistakes hidden somewhere in that innocent-looking list.

To mitigate this problem, I'm supposed to go over the emails and classify them before starting work on them, so as to identify potential problems and give them priority. 

It's an excellent approach, and it switches my anxiety up to 150x levels. So I don't do it. 

The thing is, the worse my stress is, the more my focus is shot. So actually looking at the contents of 60 or 70 emails in one go is a bloody nightmare. I can manage 10, tops. And even that is while balancing on a knife's edge to keep myself from screaming and running away from the laptop forever. 

It's not like my approach of one-at-a-time is much better. I do get more done, but at the end of the day, there's still 40 or 50 emails left over. Some of them are still probably ticking time bombs that may already have exploded. Can you say nightmare? 

To top it off, morning is when I have a whole bunch of other stuff to do. Like feeding the five cats who, by 12 pm (which it is now as of this writing) are sitting around me and staring at me intently, waiting for me to get the message. 

Or brushing my teeth and washing my face. 

But I dare not step out to do that yet, because as soon as I go out of my bedroom and see all the things waiting for me out there, my brain goes on overdrive. Again. There's the dishes, and the cat food, and making coffee, and getting breakfast, and mopping the floor after Neffie smashed a bottle of gin in the middle of the night... 

So then immediately all of those things take priority. 

My priority #1 is always whatever is right in front of my face, which is also why my brain thinks writing a blog post about it instead of actually doing those things is the most important thing right now. 

It's like being put through the wringer over and over again, and I just... I just want a break. My eyes hurt from not sleeping enough, but the anxiety keeps me up until 4 or 5 every day, and I'm always too tired to actually do anything during that time so it's just a mess all around. 

Please send help. Or thoughts and prayers. 

Organizing my ADHD Brain 

(Writing that headline reminded me - once again - that I need to reply to my friend's message from APRIL.) So I did. Instead of, you know, finishing this post, or responding to emails or going to feed the cats. 

Fun. 

I will schedule the organization of ADHD brain section for another post. An important thing to remember when my brain is like this is to take some of that weight and urgency off, and break things down into smaller steps. So even if I'm able to implement absolutely nothing else, this I will, right now.