ADD

I have self-diagnosed myself with ADD. Now, a lot of people say they have it, and I am not denying it for them (because who am I? A doctor?) but I would like to insist that not all of them know wtf they are talking about. First of all, there's a difference between ADD and ADHD. Mainly bursts of hyperactivity. I'm not going to go into detail about that... or about ADD at all, really. That takes time, effort, and will bore the shit out of you. (If you're anything like me... who's had to re-start research on it countless times). I'm going to tell you specifically how it affects my life.


If you are a follower of mine, you have undoubtedly noticed that I list things, constantly. It helps me get the things buzzing around in my head to at least stand in line. (Though I would rather they line up from tallest to shortest, if you know what I mean.... sometimes they do line up that way... anyway back to the point) Sometimes my lists are very specific, down to what I need to do in each room of the house... or what I need to buy in each department of each store... or worse - both. I wonder if this might be a little OCD. I'm not really sure... remember, I'm not a doctor. But my lists sometimes can look like FLOW CHARTS if I'm not careful. Those don't usually  For example (goes and makes a list of current tasks):

...sigh
That feels good. See? This stuff is generally ALL buzzing around my head, because once you get one list tackled* another one just shows up. You know? And this doesn't even count the other things I have to do, like the people I have to call, the yard work, cleaning my car out, feeding the animals every day, and of course blogging here, there, and everywhere. ( http://einthecorgi.tumblr.com ) <- shameless plug for my puppy's blog, which I write... duh.

*note that getting a list tackled means something a little unexpected. I.e. I always wind up saying something like:

WOW! That was a LOT of hard work... and I'm not even freaking done yet!!! 

and following that with sitting at the computer.

For example.. I just said that when I "cleaned my bedroom"... there are hardly any articles of clothing in my dresser... they are all in piles and baskets AROUND the dresser, in a very organized state of Clean and Not Clean.


And earlier when I "did the dishes" ...there are still about 10 things of silverware, a bowl, a tupperware lid... ummm I think that's all, not sure.

My desk remains unsightly, though I thought I cleaned the living room.

Oh, and of course, I wrote a to-do list that doesn't have everything I need to do on it.

Basically, things are never finished... and I've already started the next list. And it REALLY does constantly bother me in the back of my mind. (Shit, I just realized I forgot "clean the litterbox" in my to do list). What was I talking about?

....

If I get more sleep, and take caffiene supplements, and eat more green vegetables, and get a good work out every day or two, I do a lot better. But just thinking of how much work that is makes me want to write another list about it.


Ok. So that's me. That's why I get to say I'm ADD. And I didn't even mention the Mike's I'm drinking, the Jimmy Eat World playing, or the side conversation I am having with my fiance... until now haha. :) 

Inhale, then "outhale" ...advice from the internet.

(this was found on the internet... it isn't my image or my friends or my drawing etc.)

This quarter has been stressful, but great. I have done so much writing, I just can't wait to get out into the world and experience it so I have some more things to write about. Because although my dog is SUPER adorable:

he probably isn't the only thing you want me to blog about for the rest of forever. So I have applied for a job. I am not guarenteed to get this job by any means. It is the first of many applications to send off to employers. However, I really hope I get a job like this one, even if it isn't this one exactly. 

I feel like if I say much more about it, I will jinx it, so I am going to leave the job subject alone! :)

Chibi trading card.

I am moving back to Sequim! In case you missed that news. Oh, and I have big plans. I plan to go back to making every day an adventure. I got so caught up in school this quarter that I forgot that's what matters! For example, maybe some artistic adventures. That chibi is Yotsoba. I drew her for Gerrod because he saw my other chibi and wanted her to be Yotsoba and to be near a 4-leaf clover. 

(other chibi trading card)

I told him I'd make him a Yotsoba but he has to make me a chibi card to trade, because thats the rules of this game I just invented. So if you want to trade some chibis get a hold of me :) haha! As far as artistic adventures, I'm really hoping to put together a zine, too. I'm hoping for an anonymous outlet, like post secret, but local. I'll put a call for submissions in some local places, then scan them into a PDF and run off copies to put in coffee shops and stuff. I also will have them available digitally, possibly in dead drops. Still thinking this through. If you'd like to work with me on this I'd be more than happy to get help! :)

I am also planning on real outdoor adventures!! 

(Photo from a real outdoor adventure)

You know, the type where we go outside and use our muscles?! The kind where we see wildlife, and even our lungs burn calories in the morning air?! Now THAT is an adventure. I've put together a group on facebook called "adventure team" and we will be getting in our exercise however we are able, but I'm hoping many come with me on adventures! If I have learned anything from bootcamp, it is that the support we provide each other is the best support out there! So I am hoping to have that kind of community when I get back home.

I love you team 41! :) I'll miss you!

(photo from an outdoor adventure with 41 sports)

I am hoping for adventures in babysitting for my two best friends who are having babies! And also for great adventures in photography, always... every day... because my camera strap is always looped around my heart. Sure, that sounds cheesy, but this is a blog. I am allowed to get cheesy.

Say CHEESE!

On top of that, I have a wedding coming up! Yes indeed, my AMAZING fiance and I are saying I DO in September! We've planned it all out to be steampunk, with some modern influences, and I am SO EXCITED I can't help but wiggle every time I think about it and say, "Les!! LES!! Hey Les!!"

"What?"

"WE'RE GETTING MARRIED!!!"

:)

SO in short, look forward to MUCH more blogging about adventures far more fun than homework. Look forward to seeing me smiling, eating healthy, running on the beach with my dog, and throwing parties!! Look forward to more weightloss, look forward to my wedding... look FORWARD!! 

Because looking back just doesn't freaking solve anything!!

(This is now advice you have found on the internet.)

Oh. And don't forget to... um.. "outhale."

Location, location, location... silly ramblings. Cuz I need to free write.

I found an old blog I used to keep.

It got me thinking... to have found it, that means I had lost it. Right? Maybe not, but still. Or I was lost from it. Like it was an old house.

There is a lot of talk about internet citizenship, who you are on the web, and internet "real estate." We go to web addresses and keep our faces in a book. We keep web logs, or "blogs," which seems like such an interesting thing to call it, now that I think about it.

We bloggers, we say "I have a blog online," the more professional or experienced tell you what they blog on, perhaps sewing, or cooking, or photography. Perhaps their daily life, their cats. Basically, we are saying "I keep a log about ___ on the web. You should read it."

What if we kept these logs in books? Some of us still keep diaries, but those are private. "Log" seems like either something scientific, like recording how often your cat snores while he is sleeping, or a broken tree.

Anyway, so blogging... public logs... telling people "come read my stuff"  ...what does that say?

Or when we post something on a social networking site and practically pray for comments. Feedback. Support.

Validation.

I found an old blog I used to keep. I found it, and I read some thoughts I used to have. I realize I have made similar mistakes, and new ones. I realized that I probably forget most things immediately after I write them, because how could I remember all that???

I have years of blogs. I have kept one (sporadically) since about 2005. In the days of tblog. Livejournal. In the days when blogging was basically a community. It was bloggers who read each others' blogs. We poured over people and their mundaneness and spouted our opinions in their comment sections.

We bounced in our chairs with excitement when xXzGiRLxOfxFirE_777 told us that every single word of our blog was amazing. When hatefedlove told us our poems were deep. When smiles6are6lies6 posted a new blog and mentioned you.

When ixamxaxzebra made you a sign.


When you made them a sign back and they left you comments and you felt like you had a secret life.


I found an old blog I used to keep. I found it and I remembered all this and now my friends, my family, and more, read my blog.

It is a TOTALLY different dynamic.

It's not even all people who actually write blogs who read them. In fact, there are literally famous blogs and bloggers who have books at barns and noble (I love you oatmeal) and that will have books soon (hyperbole, we miss you!) and I WANT TO WRITE A BOOK.


There. I said it. I want to write a book. A novel.

I don't want to be that person who is like 'blah blah blah working on my novel'

but that's who I am. Because I am a blogger? Maybe. Because I grew up on the web? Maybe.

I am an internet citizen, and a writer. I have done hard time for web crime (and by that i mean i cyberbullied and got my computer taken away). I take pictures while thinking of what people will think about when they see them online not on walls. Is that weird?

Is blogging weird? 


Yep.

Do I care??

HELL NO!!! I LOVE IT!!

I want to post something new.

I really do... but all I have time for is to post something I did for homework.

Enjoy!

I Want You To Remember. (very first draft)

You felt lost, remember? I want you to remember, because you don't feel that way now. I don't want you to go back there. You felt like you were gone and your body was all that was left. Your body sat at your messy desk and drank Mike’s Hard Lemonade and kept the blinds shut—in the middle of summer. When your body was hungry, it walked to the kitchen and ate, but you were lost, so it ate nothing but frozen pizza, hot dogs, sandwiches, swiss rolls, string cheese, toast, hot pockets, pop tarts; it ate the things that it didn’t need you for.

            Your eyes squinted as the door opened every couple days when you finally convinced your body to at least go get the mail. They lay wide open while your body was in bed, staring at the ceiling. You were in there somewhere. While your body waited for you to come back, it gained twenty pounds. Your hair grew long and a little ratty. Your laundry kept your carpet clean.

            You tried to reach out of your body to talk to your fiancé when he got home at seven in the morning from his graveyard shift. He was just as lost, and exhausted, so your bodies would finally kick into sleep mode. For around four months you lived this way. Your mother came to visit you and your fiancé a few times. You could hear her talking, and you were able to talk back to her. She came and helped you clean, put up some curtains, and find your body. She cooked for you, and you remembered food.

            You were accepted at Western and you forced your body out of your apartment and started your classes and you started to feel a little better but you were still a little mixed up. Your body still weighed too much, you didn’t sleep, and then you struggled not to drown in your homework. Your first quarter flew by, and as the year went on, you continued to get better. When your fiancé got a better job, you slept at night again. You had sex. You went on dates. As your friends came to visit from time to time, and you could feel yourself again, you remembered really smiling. You moved into a house and you had more space and you remembered really breathing. You controlled the body that cased you.

            That summer, you knew you couldn’t do it over again, so you took classes. You knew by then that doing nothing was bad for your body, so you made yourself do things. You made yourself talk to people. Your fiancé got a really good job, and his friend moved up and got a job, and money was less tight. You went to movies. You drank. You ate real food and frozen pizza. You put on more weight. Looking in the mirror still upset you, but life itself had really improved by the next fall.

            You needed new clothes. You bought sizes that should be too big, way too big, but they clung to your stomach. Your body smiled, and you noticed the smile looked less real in the fitting room mirror than it felt when you had drinks with your fiancé and roommate the night before.

            Your mom sent you a link to a video she saw on evening magazine or some other show on TV. A fitness trainer in Bellingham talked about his bootcamps while they showed clips, and you at first rolled your eyes. Then you willed your body into sending him an e-mail. The trainer e-mailed you back, and your fiancé went with you to meet him.

            He met you at Starbucks, and you discussed goals and issues and prices. You talked about your body, and what you wanted to be able to do with it. You realized that your body is yours.  You met with him for private training shortly after. He made your body run up Taylor Rd. He made your body do push-ups. Crunches. Squats. Jumping jacks. He made you nauseous and then made you keep going. You wanted it to be easy, easier at least, but you did it anyway.

            After several private training lessons, he convinced you to go to a boot camp. The group pushed you, encouraged you, and you did things that you couldn’t even do as a teenager. You shocked yourself, you shocked your body. While your body ached, you grew stronger. While your body grew stronger, you grew happier. While the pounds came off, you smiled in the mirror. You smiled in the fitting room mirror. You even smiled looking into the window of stores, and you touched your waist.

You are still going. After over a year. You have lost tons of weight, you eat better, though not always. You are happy whenever you are training. Your running shoes make you smile, even though you thought you hated to run—you aren’t sure now. You still have goals, and the goals make you happy. Your relationship is better, you are broke, your job is only six hours a week, you train at least six hours a week, you aren’t sure if you can pay rent, but your trainer is willing to make trades for you. He is willing to move mountains for you… but at this point you are ready to move them yourself, with your own body.

Some Advice ♥

I posted this to a friend recently, and I wanted to share it with my readers.

Appreciation:

Your man should make you feel beautiful/smart/perfect, even when he is not saying it. 

Maybe it is in the way you catch him watching you walk around in a towel. Maybe it's how he goes back for seconds when you cook something. Or in the way he can tell you he hates you while laughing and shaking his head, and you are the only one who knows that he's really saying he loves you so much that he can't stand it. When afterword he hugs you and kisses you. Maybe it is how he asks you a question that you know he wouldn't ask anybody else ever. However he does it, you feel his love and appreciation. APPRECIATION. You should feel appreciated.

Trust:
Other men are allowed to speak with you. You are your own human. You can have male friends. You can call Les and cry to him about something and I will not even think twice about it. I trust you. Les trusts you. Your man should trust you.

Sure, there are boundaries. You probably shouldn't go out with them alone at night, or during the day if it's a romantic setting... Anywhere. That's like a date no matter how "just friends" you are. Or you shouldn't call and say "is your wife home? no? good I'd really love to talk to you alone." 

ESPECIALLY not if the guy proceeds to not tell his wife/girl/fiance/whatever. 
Same way the other way around. Les shouldn't call a girl and be like "Is your man home? OH good. I want to come over and talk to you." 

But you should be confident in one another. Your man should be able to call me and vent and ask for advice. As should any other friends' man, or anybody. Ryan's vented to me before. It goes both ways. 

TRUST each other. 

Love each other.

Appreciate each other.

Of course there are other things I feel that are important in relationships, but just in highlighting these two...

What are your thoughts on all this? Do you think these are important traits? Obviously this is an opinion. Some relationships survive without any of this. But I feel these two things are very important.  

Discuss :)

Support

I remember the possibilities we felt in our hearts. We looked at apartments that were way too expensive, way too small, way too cheap. We took keys from front offices up elevators to apartments with giant windows and fluffy white carpet and huge brand new kitchens. We ogled at the cement floor and small size of a "modern" studio apartment. We went around downtown and to all the parks and to the mall.
We signed a lease.

I got into WWU, Les found a job...

We drank.

We put on weight. We paid our bills. We played xbox and wii and Portal on PC.

We felt like this had to be the place. All our friends needed to move here. They need to come visit, and then they will see. We threw parties where nobody from Belligham actually came, and several friends made great efforts to come see our new place and congratulate us.

I went to classes. I did my homework. We put off the laundry, the dishes, the litter box. We put on weight and we put on music, and we put on a show pretending not to notice we weren't making friends.

-------------

Fast forward.

I am almost done at WWU. Les has gone through about three jobs. I have made friends who seem to not want much to do with me. Ryan has moved up to live with us and get out of Sequim. We are stir crazy. We are lost.

I almost have my Bachelor's degree in English, creative writing. People scoff at my ambitions to write a novel and hum and haw at my goal to run a photography studio. Even suggesting I also have a retail store. How is that even relevant?

Les is considering joining the police force, or some other government thing where he will learn many things and have a good career. People play devil's advocate or suggest other things to him every time he knows what he wants. This is discouraging.

All of it is discouraging.

We are moving back to Sequim to live on my parents property (at least a few months, we need to find jobs) and figure out what we are doing in life. My mom tells me they are selling the house... hopefully that doesn't interrupt out plan. We are counting on that window of time before our wedding to save up some money and find our own place.

I am posting this because I need some encouragement. I realize it's kind of depressing, but Les and I actually decided the other day that this is what everyone has been talking about. This is that "growing up" thing that people refer to... that point where you are in your 20s and everything changes and you realize... you are going to have to work for the rest of your life. People are going to doubt you for the rest of your life. Though you may want to, you're not exactly likely to change the world in any way. And though some days you may feel great about yourself, and ready for what life throws at you, there are others where you just step back and say "wow... what the fuck is the point of all this???"

And you don't cry. You don't scream. You don't get angry, even. You just.... exist. You exist with the knowledge that out of 2,000 goals you might reach 50. You exist with the knowledge that the world isn't as big as you thought it was... at least, not for you, specifically. You nod, trying to figure out your bills, and you exchange knowing glances with the people you love. Knowing glances that they are feeling the same way.


I am posting this on my happy blog because it is not exactly sad.

We are growing up. We are sort of moving forward. We are failing, succeeding, and dancing with life.

Just tell me... just remind me that thinking about all this won't solve a thing. Just push me to keep making goals even if I never reach them. Just tell me you have felt this way before.. and that it is going to be just fine.