ADHD

Tomorrow is the 1 year anniversary of me getting my ADD diagnosis after ~40 years of not having it (and knowing something was definitely "off", but not being able to put my finger on it).

To celebrate, let me take you through the last 30 minutes (and then some) of my life (which, by the time I've finished writing, will be more like the last 60 minutes of my life), a pretty thorough documentation of how easy it can be to get distracted, and how fast an ADHD mind can find new paths to explore:

EARLIER:

• Woke up at 7 (should have been 6), having only slept some 5 hours. Wife is already up, but gave up on waking me and is getting ready for work. Calls upstairs that I really need to get out of bed. Look at clock, fear of making my oldest daughter late for school gets me motivated.

• Get kids downstairs and fed, wife gets them dressed. Brush their teeth, shoes on, wife has handled packing lunches in bags (she's a champ).

• Managed to remember to take my meds!

• Get out of door, drive oldest kid to school, manage to get there with 10 minute to spare, mission accomplished. Kiss goodbye, she's in a great mood.

• Drive youngest daughter to daycare, greet people, put lunch + water bottle in the fridge, get her to wash her hands, take her to her group room, she's also happy, kiss goodbye.

• Go to supermarket, shop for dinner, cokes for wife are too expensive, text her to check other supermarket for prices. Better deal to be had there, next stop. Manage not to buy candy or stuff I don't need, nice.

• Not really, morning routine has taken too long, need bathroom. Stop by library for nice, clean bathrooms.

• Go to second supermarket, get cheaper cokes. Managed to not buy anything unneeded again, yay, although did spend a few minutes in soft drink isle zoned out over something on phone, can't actually remember right now what it was.

• Youngest has "kitchen day" at daycare tomorrow, drop off minced meat in fridge back at daycare, very nice to have this out of the way.

• Drive home, short chat with wife about what needs to happen today (and a few other things that will be important in next few days). Kisses, get to work!

• My studio is 2 metres in front of my house. Work as an independent graphic designer+, so can't really be "late". Walking from the garden to the studio, I think: "Today! Today I'm going to go through my task list(s) in Obsidian, and I'm going to make a prioritized list of what needs to get done. I will do this first thing!

• Unlock the door, sit at desk, turn on computer.

• All in all, this was a pretty good morning.

THEN:

• Computer screens turn on. I get ready to open Obsidian and finally have a day where I'm productive and get important shit done! But...

• Spotify is open. I glance at my Liked Songs list, and notice Aphex Twin's seminal 1999 track Windowlicker is the most recently added song. This split second sends me down the rabbit hole...

• Remember I wanted to post this to /beehaw/music. That should take a second, I'm allowed to do this one thing, surely.

• Open Voyager (Lemmy client) on computer. Notice that there's an available update. Click on Settings, update the app. All good.

• Brain: "While I'm here, I really should post that issue about how the Inbox in Voyager functions to GitHub. Get it over with, been postponing that for ages".

• Chrome > GitHub.com.

• I posted a comment about how I think the Inbox flow should work in someone else's issue. I should find that comment at make it into its own issue, for visibility. But argh, I can never remember how to find my own comments on here. I know, click on the Notifications Inbox!

• Oh! Looks like that issue I posted in the Raycast repo has been closed! Well, that's annoying. Better go have a look. [clicks on Raycast issue].

• OK, seems someone posted that it's not possible to get Raycast to play my Liked Songs in Spotify because Spotify doesn't see Liked Songs as a playlist. He's added a link to a thread on Spotify Community. [click]

• OK, so it's not exactly possible because Liked Songs isn't a playlist. There's a suggestion about a workaround. But someone else has poster a context URI for Liked Songs! So maybe there is a way?

• Attempt using the context URI in the Spotify search field, does indeed take me to my Liked Songs. I go to Spotify Developers and start poking around the documentation (did I mention yet that I'm not a programmer?).

• Find a reference to how to start user playback. Combined with the URI/endpoint, that should do the trick! Back to GitHub, write a comment saying maybe these two things could make Raycast do what I want. Job done, now get back on track! (forgot about the Voyager thing...)

• Notice that the GitHub comment guy referenced another thread. Click. A similar issue to mine. Go back and get my comment about a possible way to fix, post it here as well.

• Oh, this guy also wants the list to shuffle when it starts playing. People say it's not possible. I want this, too. Back to Spotify Documentation, find code for toggling Shuffle, add to comment.

• Notice another commenter has posted a link to his spotify-tools repo. Maybe something in there would help? [click].

• Hmm, this is a bit over my head, don't really understand what it does. Read through Guidelines anyway. "Format your code correctly (pnpm lint)". HEY! Linting! That's that word I couldn't remember the other day!

• Context: I'm writing a novel (a few lines a month...) in Obsidian, and the other day I remembered that there is some sort of open source project that goes through your prose and checks it for bad writing. I'm worried about bad writing, because I've never written a book before, and while I'm bilingual, English is not my first language. I remember that I looked into testing this Linter out, but couldn't get it to work for some reason, and now I can't remember what it's called (and couldn't find it because I couldn't remember the word "linting").

• Google: Linter. Hmm, this seems to be mostly about code, but I want prose.

• Google: Linting literature. Here's a Medium article, let's have a look. [click]. No, still about code, but linting is definitely the correct term.

• Google: Linting prose. Bingo! And there's a mention of Vale! That's the prose linter I couldn't get working! Article about prose linting with Vale, [click].

• Other prose linters exist! Interesting! Google: Obsidian prose linting. Obsidian Writing Style Plugin, that sounds new! [click].

• Ah, it's in Beta, that's why I haven't seen this in the Obsidian Community Plugins. I'll give this a quick go, check the install guide. Needs Vale installed, let's get that done. Can't hurt to run a chapter of my book through it, just for fun. Right now. [click].

• Hmm, I can install this with Homebrew — I have that! Open my terminal.

• Brain: Hey, you should probably update all your Homebrew Casks. OK! Terminal: homebrew upgrade. Ugh, this is taking forever. I'll go outside to get some fresh air.

• Outside: This is fucking nuts, I'm completely off track. I should write this whole thing down and post it on Lemmy.

• Back inside: open Voyager again, search for ADHD communities. Find a few, find this one, check the feed. Send 8 ADHD memes I find to wife, all of them fit me like 95%.

• Start writing this post about my last 30 minutes (and also the rest of the morning, I decide); documenting my failings will help me focus! And maybe get some feedback as well.

• Add a note about how I know this post will take an additional 30 minutes to research and write. That was [checks clock] more than an hour ago. Also, in going through my browser history to document my rabbit hole, it is now clear that the "30 minutes" I wanted to write about was actually 90 minutes 😓

–––

So, here we are.

I didn't manage to sort my daily to-do yet. I also didn't manage to post that Voyager inbox flow issue. I haven't installed Vale yet (nor the plugin that needs it), but my Homebrew is up-to-date (absolutely not necessary...). Oh, and I absolutely haven't posted that Aphex Twin video to /beehaw/music yet. Which was supposed to take "1 second". Which was two and a half hours ago 😓

I've also left a few things out, getting side-tracked by some other songs on YouTube, looking into the "lyrics" of Windowlicker (which has none), because there's just a weird french sentence when asking Spotify for the lyrics, but I managed to not go too far down that hole.

My meds are helping me so much, but they haven't made a dent in my procrastination issues. And I hate that word, procrastination; makes it sound like I'm actively avoiding a task, which is just not the case. I get distracted. Severely distracted. And then when I become aware of having been distracted, my brain is capable of convincing me that spending "30 minutes" (now 70 minutes) on writing about it is worth it, a stellar idea.

The only thing I can think of to get better at this is cognitive behavioural therapy, but can't afford a therapist, because I'm not making enough money, because I get distracted too often, and side projects, ones that have no monetary value, take the wheel and away we go.

Been considering trying CBT via AI (Claude-instant-100K looks primising due to the enormous token allowance), but haven't gotten around to it yet. It's on a to-do list, somewhere, though! 😔

Anyway, how is your "morning" going? 😑