TuesDog

Parenting and Journaling

Holy fuckballs! Sometimes A lot of the time being a parent is freaking tough… When your kid’s teeth are coming in and they aren’t eating anything except frozen yoghurt and you feel like your letting them down. Then you have to take away their current favourite toy combine harvester because they kept chewing on the friggin’ chute that comes out of the side to sooth their teeth pain. They don’t understand why you have done this. They just feel like they can’t have their toy and big tears start streaming down their face as they mumble “combin’ ‘ster! combin’ ‘ster daddy!”. It fucking kills me.

Then you put them down for a nap and get to spend that time pairing up the millions of single socks that you have piled up in the cupboard with the single socks that you just took out of the dryer. The worlds most boring game of pairs… I did come up with a system though to stop me going sock blind (for a little while anyway). Group those bastards into piles by colour, brand, size, whatever is easiest for you. I went with colours and paired up as I went. Then I just went through each pile of colour socks and paired them up quick as anything. It is thanks to this mental hack that I am able to find a few minutes spare to chug a Coke Zero (gotta look after your health of course…) and churn out this mental rant.

Journaling is a new concept to me. I always loved the idea of it but could never commit the time to it, or I would forget to do it and get discouraged. BUT! Now that I know I have ADHD I can find strategies around this issue. My current working strategies (because let’s be real, none of them work forever even if your a non-ADHD person) are:

Pocket Notebook

A small 48ish page notebook that is the same size as my back trouser pocket. I take this thing everywhere with a cheap biro pen hooked over the first half of the pages. The beauty of this thing is that I sit on it all the time. I am not used to using my back pockets for anything so when I sit down it’s like a built in natural notification reminding me that it is there and I can write in it whenever I like! Super helpful for shopping lists, ideas, doodles, journaling, etc… I make these notebooks myself from boxboard that we put in the recycling and printer paper we have lying around. As beautiful as “fieldnotes” notebooks are, I am not paying that kind of money for something I am going to sit on and maybe lose somewhere…

Journaling on my PC

Journaling on my computer at the end of the day. This is for very stressful days, or days when there is a lot on my mind and I want to work through some things. I will just open up the PC, create a new file in Vim, and write until I am done. These are where the really cathartic writing happens and I can find myself going to all sorts of places and discovering all sorts of things about myself and events in my life. I am currently reading Ross Gay’s “The Book of Delights”, and he says that writing is thinking. That is 100% true in my experience. It also lets me flesh out ideas and trails of thought better than I can just in my head. Another ADHD issue there. Following a trail of thought for longer than a few seconds!

Blogging on this website

Blogging. This is the most recent addition to my repertoire of journaling and self expression/therapy. I normally do the same as I would when journaling on my PC, but the more light hearted or less personal entries make it into being blog posts. I think this has been a really fun exercise so far to get the website up and running. I am interested to see how it continues. I am definitely writing differently because I know it is going online and I don’t want any names or people to appear. I’d like to remain as anonymous as possible, but still share my experiences. I am trying to recreate a late 90’s style blog before all websites started being about advertising, data mining, and boostrap CSS styling. BORING 🥱. Give me the animated starry backgrounds and bright yellow text on a neon green website! Those were the glory days!

Anyways, that’s what works for now! We will see how it continues. A big thing for everyone to remember (but most important for people with ADHD) is that methods, strategies, and routines change. Don’t get down on yourself when they do as it is normal. Just keep an eye out for new and exciting ideas to try! If an idea works once, then it worked didn’t it? What does it matter if it doesn’t work a second time. Try something else instead. Better get back to my child-rearing. Good luck out there!