I am back ramblings

So, I failed at the daily ramblings. Things just got a bit crazy. The family
and I were getting sick and to be honest, I am just emotionally exhausted. I am
hoping that maybe coming back to write out all of these thoughts may help
address some of that emotional exhaustion.

As I sit here and write this, I can visualize all these comments and
thoughts ricocheting around in my brain like the little silver ball in a
pinball machine. My ADHD brain is kind of freaking out on what to focus on. So,
this post may be a bit chaotic.

At the forefront of my thoughts and emotions are some big societal issues.
The first is the likelihood that Roe v. Wade will be overturned. Reading
through the leaked document and seeing the words used by justices to support
their reasoning is scary as fuck. On the surface, the reasoning makes those who
possess a uterus nothing more than baby making machines. It makes us part of a
supply chain. In light of the racist terrorist attack in Buffalo New York this
past weekend, I cannot help but see this decision as being motivated by some
sort of replacement theory. And yeah, I get it, the sole black guy on the bench
voted for it too, but it doesn’t change the fact that parts of this decision
read like a white supremist manifesto. The reaching arm of this decision will
affect so many things and negate any progress. Folks wonder how someone like
Hitler could come to power and yet here we are, getting a masterclass on how.

This past weekend saw a shit ton of gun violence too. Milwaukee had 3
sperate shootings in the same area that injured 21 people. It’s surprising that
there was no one killed. This was after a Bucks game and literally in front of
police. Buffalo, a white nationalist terrorist open fired and killed 10 people
in a supermarket in a predominantly black neighborhood. His manifesto outlined
all his racism and hate and that he was trying to kill as many black people as
he could. Orange county California saw 1 person killed and 5 injured in a
shooting at a church. Why is it that we are the only country with this issue?
Why is it that we continue to read these same headlines over and over? In all
honesty, I feel like my own country is gaslighting me to think this is normal
and that there is nothing that can be done. A part of me is not surprised. After
all, this country was founded on violence, so it seems like it only makes sense
that there is still an issue with violence. especially since this country wants
to sweep it under the rug versus actually confronting it and trying to help all
who suffer from the generational trauma this violence has caused.

I finished my degree at the age of 33 in 2013. It was at this time that I
really started to listen to BIPOC folks and their experiences. I remember speaking
to this black woman who was raising 3 biracial sons. She was explaining what keeps
her up at night. I realized that we share a lot of the same fears, but she had
a whole other bucket of fears that I simply did not have for my kids. This was
my awakening. I have made it a point to listen more and learn. Because of this,
I have been shocked a million times over at some of the things I have learned.
I mean, its to the point where the stories I hear have become normalized. There
is no more shock value to them. And it made me realize that there are very
different Americas based no race, religion, gender identity & sexual preference.
 

I am I am struggling on how I keep positive and upbeat and raise my kids in
this fucked up country. I try so hard to raise my kids with optimism. That every
trying time has a lesson to be learned. Every negative has a positive to
counter it. Lately, I am not sure I believe this anymore.

Monday morning panic attack ramblings

I totally sang this in the theme song of the show.

Its been a morning. Everything is just slightly off. Just slightly off. I woke up slightly late. The toddler woke up slightly late. so everything was pushed back by about 30 minutes. Normally, this is no big deal and I can roll with it. For whatever reason, today, it has thrown me off to the point of feeling like I am on the edge of a panic attack.

And then daycare drop off happened. Since I was late in dropping the toddler off, their class was not in their classroom. They were in the gym. I have never had a complete tour of this facility and it is more than just a daycare. It is a community center and a youth center as well. The facility is a maze. I walk into the facility at ground level, but you can go down 3 different levels and be at ground levels for other entry ways into the facility. I am confused all over again just writing this.

I figure out where to go, but getting myself back out is a whole other story. I find someone, ask if they have an elevator. Yes, but they have to unlock it for me. So I get in, and I am already anxious cause I feel lost and my surroundings are unfamiliar. I get in, I have no idea what level to push. There are no numbers just different levels. So i pick the main level. I am starting to panic now so I frantically start taking off my layers that I am wearing. The elevator stops, the door finally opens and I get off. Again, I have no clue where I am. A panic attack is now starting. I start to walk around. It appears I am in the area where the 3 and 4 year old’s are at. I walk past a room and my toddlers normal teacher is in it. She opens the door and asks if I am okay. I tell her I am just trying to find my way out. She directs me to a stairwell and says go up the two flights of stairs.

At this point, I feel so out of breath due to the panic attack and I know there is no way I am going to make it up 2 flights of steps let alone survive a windowless area so I just go out a door and walk outside. Now, its all of 10 degrees out. I find my way back to my car and I am just shaking. I am finding it very difficult to settle down.

I make it into work and I am at my desk and I can not focus. My job is working remotely for the most part but normally, there are a handful of people in the office. There is NO ONE here. It is eerily quiet and its not helping my anxiety.

So I do what any, rational person does; I start to cry. I feel so out of control with how I am feeling that I just start to cry. the next thing I do is come here. I start to write. I start to type out what happened so I can identify the trigger but I know what the trigger is. Even as I am typing now, I still feel triggered because of the silence around me but that loudness of my thoughts in the brain is all contradicting.

It was dropping the toddler off and hearing him cry and scream but this time, it echoed cause it was a gym. It was being in unfamiliar areas and seeing unfamiliar faces in a building I walk into four days a week. My brain was having issues really processing how I could be so familiar with my surroundings but still be so disorientated.

I hate that my brain works this way. I was doing every grounding technique I could muster up. I was stimming to try and help calm down. I was having conversations in my brain, telling the freaking out side that we were safe. We knew where we were at. That this was all normal and no big deal. But no, instead of my brain reacting tot he situation in a calm, fairly normal way it decided to freak out and think the end of the word was happening.

Why do I do this? Now I am at work and I am completely exhausted and just want to curl up into a ball and cry myself to sleep. I have to end this. I am kind of spiriling at the moment and have to find some calm.

After the stomach bug ramblings

Well, I knew it was coming. After witnessing the kid in my toddlers class projectile vomit strawberries and cornflakes I knew it was a matter of time before it came home. And so less than 12 hours after that event, the toddler, tween and myself got our butts kicked by the bug. Luckily, my spouse was spared but they had the unfortunate task of caring for the three of us. It wasn’t too bad but he was exhausted.

So that is why I have not had any ramblings these past few days. I had a shit ton of random thoughts and soliloquies while I was sick that I wish I would have wrote down but honestly, my head hurt so bad that I just could not stare at a computer screen. I swear it would have felt like it was burning a hole through my skull.

On Friday, I wore my hair up in a high ponytail. I am normally a messy bun type of gal but for whatever reason, I went with the pony tail. I had it up fairly high on my head and it was tight. I have always worn my ponytails slick and pulled tight like Ariana Grande so nothing felt different for me. Until I took the pony tail down. I am used to my head relaxing and everything after I wear a pony tail but this felt really intense. It actually hurt like hell for the hair follicles to move a centimeter all around the crown of my skull. It was harder than hell to fall sleep but I figured when I woke the next day, it would be gone.

Nope. The pain was still there. It was slightly less but it was enough that I needed to take Tylenol. This all got me thinking about how this all came down to me wanting my hair to be pulled back perfectly. No baby hairs flying away. I needed to pull it back so tight to keep it as perfect as I could for as long as i could. That is when I realized that I have been doing this since I was a kid.

So I was shocked that my scalp/head was hurting so bad for so long since this is something it should be accustomed too but I slowly began to think about how perfectionism has showed up in my life in the most ridiculous ways. But I was also seeing how that was translating into everything I do.

An example is when I type. I can not have mistakes as I type. The best I can do is go maybe 3 or 4 sentences but then I have to go back and correct all the spelling and punctuation errors. I can not stand to have any type of those red line errors pop up. And what sucks, is that this is so time consuming and it interrupts a creative process.

Which made me realize why I no longer do artistic things. And when I do, when my idea doesn’t translate exactly the way I envision it, it actually causes me a lot of rage. I am slowly realizing that this desire to be perfect is controlling me and really have a negative affect on my quality of life. What sucks even more, is I see my tween have this desire for perfectionism. She loves to draw and she has a talent for it but I see her get mad and erase things over and over and over again because it doesn’t come out perfect for her. I wonder if she picked that up from me. And I realized many instances where we would do a craft together and I would be very precise and dictate how to do things. My fear is that she will have these things that she loves to do but the perfectionism will ruin it for her like it has for me. I used to love to paint and draw but it pains me to even think to pick it up again. I know that it will end up more like exhausting work than an enjoyable hobby. And this sucks cause I feel like I do not have anything to look forward too.

I don’t think I am going to be wearing my hair in a ponytail again anytime soon. Pretty sure I won’t be styling the toddlers hair that way either. Maybe just a braid to keep the hair out of their eyes. For me, I see an at home haircut in my future. Why at home, cause I got issues with hair salons but that is a whole other rambling for another day.

I am pretty sure this is part of my depression cycle

Damn Tired Rambling

Last night was a rough night for sleep. I had one hell of a time actually getting to a point of falling asleep and just when I was almost there, something would wake me up. I did get to a point of actually sleeping but I woke up with coughing/asthma attack. When my alarm went off to get up I swear I was just not ready.

The toddler seemed to not like this morning either. They woke up and just kept saying they wanted to go back to sleep. Honestly, I was on board with it. I told them I would hold and snuggle them and we both could fall asleep. That was a no go. Its not that they wanted to actually go to bed, they just knew that they would have to go to daycare and they did not want to go.

I found myself going to level 10 with anger and annoyance at them and I had to take a moment for myself. I had to have a mental conversation with myself. I am trying to be a more mindful parent. Realizing that not all fights need to be had. For example, any of my kids wearing coats. I am just not having that fight. I bring the coats and when they start to complain about being cold, they put them on.

So I told them I was going to get on with my morning and when they were ready, they can come find me. But I also told the toddler there was no watching horse (their obsession) videos until they are dressed and ready for their day. I made sure to take some deep breaths and just relax a bit while I got ready. This seemed to work. They either got bored or scared and they came and found my spouse and allowed them to get them ready for the day.

It was all going great until we pulled into the daycare parking lot. The toddler knows right away prior to the turn where we are at and they usually are not happy about it. So I parked and they cried a bit about wanting to stay in the car to talk with me. We eventually made it into their classroom only to witness their best friend puke up their whole breakfast of corn flakes and strawberries. The poor baby looked like they just got done with an MMA fight. Need less to say the toddler was like, “WTF is going on!”

The poor teachers were just overwhelmed. One was trying to take care of the puker while the other had like 7 toddlers doing their potty try and washing their hands and now I had to give them my crying child too. It didn’t help that this was not his normal classroom nor his normal teacher. His normal teacher was in the normal classroom doing a deep clean because there was a child who puked everywhere yesterday.

This all got me thinking how these people do not get paid enough. I would actually LOVE to work with young kids but the pay is not nearly enough to live off of. These people do SO much work and really, have one of the biggest, most important roles around and they are not even paid livable wages. How they stay in good spirits is beyond me.

Hoping sleep comes a bit easier tonight. I made sure to cut out caffeine by noon. I didn’t take a nap on my lunch like I was planning on either. Hopefully those things will help me fall asleep easier. Maybe I will do a nice calming sound bath before bed too.

Oh great the tween came home and said their stomach started to hurt on the bus. I have spaghetti and meatballs for dinner and now I am debating if its wise to even eat it cause lord know, I do not want any of us to look we got done with a MMA fight if this things is going to run through our family.

Send good vibes please.

A 2 for 1 Rambling

(This was written on 2/7/2022 at about 9pm. I thought I lost it. So glad it saved!)

This has been rattling around in my head all day today and I just thought I should type it out.

dread mornings. I am not normally a morning person but getting up and getting the oldest out the door and snuggling the toddler while I have a cup of coffee is actually something I look forward too. I try my best to send them out in the world with the best I can give them in hopes that they have a good day. I love to tell them how much I love them and remind them to be good people and that i can not wait to see them later in the day.

Lately, the dread is with the toddler. He has been kicking and screaming about going to daycare and I am not sure why.

He is 2 years and 4 months. He went to daycare at 3 months old for about 3 months, and then, the world shut down. For the next 6 months he stayed at home. Eventually he started up at a new daycare. He even moved classrooms with no issues. He actually LOVED to go. He has so much fun. One of his friends moved to another classroom and it seemed like he struggled with this. He started to get real clingy and cry when I dropped him off. It progressed to he knew where we were in the car and when I turned into the parking lot, he cries to go back home.

So I read everything I could about separation anxiety. We had a process in the morning where we sat on the bench outside, had a talk, went inside, and I gave him his lovey that he named Peanut and the teacher would take him and he would wave to me out the window. They crying was never real intense or anything.

Well then he transitioned to the next room for his age. The teacher in there was one he was familiar with. It was a decent transition. His friend was across the way in the other classroom and they got to play together often. His friend is about 6 months older and is like a big brother to my son. He steps in when other kids are giving him a hard time and really defends my son. My toddler likes to either play by himself or with this other child. Even though they get SOME playtime together they are not in the same class and I often wonder if them not being together has caused some issues for my son.

The teacher my son was use to has not been in the classroom for a while now. There is another teacher that is amazing and really helpful in the mornings. She has a little routine with him and even though the toddler has gotten more intense with the crying and kicking, she has found a way to help him transition as I leave. I often times sit outside the classroom just to hear how long it takes form him to settle and its usually not more than 5 minutes.

What is weighing heavy on my heart is that no matter what I have done, it seems to getting worse. If there is something that is not the usually routine its even worse. Like today, he had to go into the classroom next-door. There were teachers he knew but none of his usual teachers were there so he really had a hard time. He was screaming so loud and kicking so hard. It broke my heart. The two teachers in this classroom know he has issues when I leave so they took him, saw him next to his old, dear friend but when I walked out, he was just screaming. He was sitting at the table with his head down, just sobbing, crying the biggest tears. It broke my heart. It took him so much longer to calm down. I sat outside the room and just cried.

My oldest is autistic and I remember transitions for her were a challenge. She did not go to daycare as my husband was a stay at home dad but she did go to K3 in special education so my husband would have some issues with her when he would bring her home. The toddler shares many characteristics as his sister did and we are getting him assessed to see if he is on the spectrum. I have a feeling he will be on the boarder of an official diagnosis. So we are being proactive and doing some of the things we were advised with my daughter. Not 100% sure if its working or not but we will keep on with it since it hasn’t been that long.

My heart breaks because I feel like drop off is so traumatic for my son and for me. I fear that I am causing some psychological damage to him. My husband use to pick him up but now I do pick up too cause I do not want to be the “bad” one who drops him off and causes him all this distress while my husband gets the loving reaction of, “you came back for me.” when he picks him up. I am trying to get him to see that yes, I drop him off, but I always come back too.

I have purchased 5 different books about parents leaving for work or being away from their little one. How the parents miss their little one too but how they always come back. I tried to do a kiss on his hand and tell him if he needs a mama kiss, to just put his hand to his cheek. He kisses my hand and I do the same when I need a kiss from him. Tomorrow I have heart stickers. I am going to try him picking out a color he likes and he and i will wear the same color to think of one another. I am a bit stressed cause he freaks out about stickers on him but we shall see if this works. If not, I got these stretchy hair tie that as horses on it. (The toddler LOVES horses.) We will try each wearing the same color one and do the same concept as the sticker. I hope one of these two options work cause I do not know if my heart can take morning drop offs like this much longer.

It appears like its another late night/early morning 13 minutes of ramblings.

I finally did it. It took me just over an hour but I finally emailed a mental health professional. I rambled prior about how I knew I needed to seek some help but how I spent all this time researching and never quite pulled the trigger. I had actually found this therapist over a year ago. I was so scared to send the email to be honest. I am actually still waiting on hearing back from them but I am just glad that I actually did it. I explained my issues and how I used to speak to a mental health professional before but that was like 10 years ago. And for whatever reason, i was scared to start up.

As I am sitting here thinking and writing there is something that just sits in the back of my brain that there is something or some things that have happened that were traumatic that I need to deal with. Things that I may not even be are of yet. I am just so worried about the emotional labor and how draining it will be but I also feel a sense of relief. I know that whatever happens, If i can find it in me to stick to the help, I will find more peace. I will be a better human being. A better mother and wife and sister and friend. I just have to put in the work. My goal for this year was to put in the work for me to be a the best version of me.

When I reached out to the therapist I realized that I have been depressed or whatever you call it since I was probably 12 or 13. That is 30 years. I am not sure i know what happiness or normalness feels like. Sure I laugh and smile but I know that deep down I am just a functioning, depressed person. I have never really had an extended period of joy and happiness.

I feel like I FEEL too much. I know I am an empath. I know that word is like a buzz word these days but as I looked more into it, it all made sense to me. I wonder if being an empath just means living a life that is more depressed than anything else. After all, you kind of take on the energies of those you come across. Its like I am drawn tot he sadness of others. I come across social media posts or news articles or something tragic and I can feel the people’s suffering. I want to take it from them. I realize this is not my responsibility but I an not help but feel like the only way to help other in this world is to take on their pain and suffering. Its something I realized from a young age. I remember my older sister hurting over a guy or an argument with our mom or something with friends and I always had the urge to have her lay all her feelings on me.

After a situation happened between my mom and I this past summer, I started to realize a ton of stuff about my childhood. Things that I was to blinded to see because I was always the peacemaker and I just wanted to be close to my family. I was always the one everyone came to with their issues. Looking back, no child should have the weight of the families issues on their shoulders but that is what it was for me. The thing that I question is how much did my family realize this about me and take advantage of me because of my empathetic ways?

It’s too late to think of a Title – 13 Minute Ramblings

So technically it is 2/4 and I missed my 2/3 13 minute rambling. However, I have not gone to sleep so its still kind of like 2/3 to me so we are going to say my streak is still alive.

I was holding my 2 year old son today. We were snuggling on the couch as he watched the Mickey Mouse Funhouse for the millionth time. Every so often he would give me a bear hug. This is something we do every morning and every night. Its so sweet. But tonight, as he was totally taken in by the show I found myself staring at him and I just started to cry. (Shit, here come the tears now.)

I wanted so much to just freeze time. I wanted so much to make sure that the moment would imprint in my brain and on my heart.

See, he is my 2nd and my last child. I am 43, the plumbing has been disconnected so its just not going to happen on my end. His sister is going to be 13 in June. I look at her and she is so amazing and I love the person she is growing in to but I really wished I would have paused more to try and imprint the moment in my brain and on my heart. I wished I worried a lot less so I could have just cherished it all more.

Every day is a juxtaposition of being the one thing one child always wants to be around. The one that can make everything better. The one to comfort and snuggle while the other one is just trying to become more independent and hang out in group texts with friends or Zoom meetings in her room. The other night she asked me if we could snuggle and I was so happy to get those ten minutes before she went to bed.

This past year I worked out some things in regards to my own relationship with my mother and there were A LOT of painful revelations. I realized that what I thought our relationship was; never was. Its been painful having to admit to myself how much trauma she caused me. I just don’t want that for my relationship with my kids. I hope I will be the person they come to for comfort no matter how old they are. I hope that I can just be someone they want to snuggle with once in a while.

13 minute ramblings – before bed edition

Naiya, Allegory of Overstimulated and Under-Impressed Youth by Android Jones

I got a bit busy today with my job and family life that I was not able to write at my normal time in the late morning. But I was not going to blow my streak. So here we are at day three. I am curious to see if my ramblings are different before I go to bed.

I am not sure if anyone if familiar with the analogy of feeling like their brain is like a computer with 100 different tabs open all at once. I get this sensation a lot at night. My thoughts really go all over the place. I am at the point where I have a sound maker on playing rain sounds. This is a sound that I find comfort with seeing how for the most part, the past 12 years this was something one of my kids used in their bedrooms. I also have the TV on. I set the TV so the image is really dim and the sound is kind of low. I set the TV timer to 3 hours, turn Netflix on to a familiar show like “New Girl” or “Shitts Creek.” I need to have the sound where I can just hear their voices.

I do all this as a way to drown out the thoughts running through my head. Maybe writing them before I go to bed will help but I do not see my set up changing much.

I have found that the times I wake up and the TV is off I start to feel anxious so I have to turn it all on again. My mind can travel to some dark places in the middle of the night. There are times where for no reason I start to think about how I would go on in life if I lost my kids or husband. Sometimes I think about how their life would be with out me. Its not that I WANT to lose them or leave them its just thoughts that creep up. I think it happens more if I come across a news story or social media post where something like this is happening to someone else. It feels like I take on the emotions they are going through and I imagine it for me or for my loved ones. i have stopped watching the news in general because of this. I also try really hard not to come across print news too because of this. If I come across a social media post I tend to go down a rabbit hole. So yeah, the familiar voices of David and Alexis or Jess and Nick in the background as I try and sleep seem to help drown out all the those thoughts. The drawback is even though I have seen every episode a hundred times, I still have to stay up for one or two. Needless to say this does not help with the insomnia I have at times. The whole process to fall asleep takes me like 3 hours. Its so exhausting.

i sometimes wonder if this all has to do with the ADHD mind of mine. I remember I had difficulties studying and working at home. It was too quiet. I would often times go to campus and sit in the Commons or in the Rotunda and blast music in my ears. I did best with the movements and sounds of people coming and going as well as having loud punk or rock music blasting in my ears. I would be reading a book and I would think how ridiculous this must be. However, it was the only way I could concentrate and get my work done. Am I overstimulating myself? I react so negatively when I am at home and the TV is on, the kids are running and laughing and screaming or crying and the dog is barking and the dishes are being done. I am 100% way over stimulated by all that. I wonder why one I can tolerate better than the other.

Oh well, questions to be answered if I ever get my shit together and actually make that appointment with the psychologist(s) I researched for weeks.

ADHD 13 Minute Ramblings

Two days in a row of doing something. I feel pretty spectacular. I always start things with good intentions but rarely follow through. I get distracted to easily. It doesn’t help that i have a horrible time with depression and anxiety and it all just wears me out. the ADHD doesn’t help. What’s super odd is that I have no ‘hyperactivity” going on. So I feel like I need a different name. I suppose, my brain is hyperactive.

I got my diagnosis when I was about 33 years old when I went back to school for the 4th or 5th attempt to finally finish my degree. I reached out for some help because I was finding that I would read something, tell my husband how I read this amazing thing and then he would ask me, what was the amazing thing and I would blank. I literally read it 30 seconds ago and could not recall what I just read. I would trip over my words trying to explain it to him. This puzzled me a great deal. Ask me about the wallpaper in the kitchen in the house I grew up in at the age of 4 and I can give you all the details about that. Heck, my family refers to me as the Elephant Memory in the family cause I can recall so much stuff in such precise details its kind of scary. Ask me what I just read 30 seconds ago and I am looking at you like you asked me to jump off a cliff.

So the department of Student Services at my college sent me to get a bunch of psychological tests done. it was 2 or 3 days or tests. At the time, my then 3 year old daughter was just diagnosed as Autistic. I was trying to figure out a “why” for that so this testing had me in my feelings big time. I remember sitting with the psychologist for my results and breaking down. They reassured me there was nothing wrong with me or my daughter. They said I was ADHD. They explained it a bit and it started to make sense on why I struggled with school.

I realized why i could not take notes. I learned better by just sitting there and listening to the lectures. I did get myself a crazy notebook and pen that would record the lecture. I would jot down random words or phrases to spark my memory and I could place the pen at those words and it would recite back to me that portion of the lecture. I met with someone in student services weekly to see how I was doing and give me more ideas on how to stay on track and be successful. I really thought that my ADHD was just a school thing. ten years later and I am only now starting to realize how much it has an impact on my regular life.

I have this love/hate relationship with social media. I am the old generation X’er on TikToK but I discovered adult ADHD TikTok and it is AMAZING. I really felt alone but I am finding that there are others out there that do things that I do. Like, having random bags stuffed with shit that makes zero sense and hidden off in a corner somewhere.

Here, maybe this will help illustrate my mind……

As i am writing this these random words and phrases are things happening in my brain right now as I type.

Stickers for Dashiell – kids doctor appointments, OBGYN, my meds, dog food, Performance Review, time sheet, new email, was the phone bill paid, ticking noise, heating blanket. I can make all the lists in the world but they will only get lost. If they don’t get lost they get half done and then I feel like a failure and I go into a downward spirial.

It doesn’t help that when I start to tackle something, I have to research the living heck out of it. Example, I know that I need to seek professional help for this. I have spent numerous hours researching therapists. Have noted a few, confirmed they took my insurance, read reviews, but here we are. No appointments made or anything. Just still on the list. This way of life is just exhausting and I gotta really get something in place.

13 Minute Ramblings

I was looking back at this blog I once started and rereading some of the things I posted. One thing became clear; I am not consistent about posting anything. I am here today to try and change that. I came across someone who said they dedicate 12 minutes to writing everyday. There is no rhyme or reason or grammar rules to be followed. They just write whatever comes to mind. Afterwards, they burn what they wrote. I believe they do this to let the thoughts that might consume them and cause stress and worry and anxiety to be given to the universe to deal with and clear up the space in their mind that these thoughts took up. I thought this was brilliant but I wanted to have a documentation on what goes on in my brain and how my thought process works.

So today, I am starting my own 13 minute writing section here. This very post is an exercise in getting out the ideas on this journey. I am just writing to be writing. My fingers are going as fast as they can to get out as much as I can from my brain in what I want this to be. The truth is, I want it to be something that is completely free. I don’t care about the grammar police. I am not concerned with how the ideas and words flow from paragraph to paragraph. I just want to write what’s in my head.

So topics may be all over the place. Its like the group chat I have been involved in, for I think 10 years now, with my 2 best friends from college. We discuss anything and everything and sometimes we are on a specific topic and one of us just comment about something else completely unrelated. We bounce back and forth between all different topics. Some can relate to others but a lot of times, topics come from left field. No rhyme or reason.

So maybe you come across this and get confused. Maybe you get left hanging cause my 13 minutes were up. I have no idea what this will look like or read like. What I do know is it will be an accurate depiction of how my ADHD, neurodiverse brain works. It will give insight, maybe, hopefully, to why I have anxiety and depression. It will hopefully alleviate some of those thoughts that cause the depression and anxiety and maybe clear my brain out for more positive thoughts. Maybe it will allow me the opportunity to focus on the things I have control over and identify the things I don’t and let those go. (Can anyone write ‘let it go’ and NOT sing that song?)

So i may not be doing what the person who inspired me to start this is doing by burning my writings but I am hoping by putting these thoughts on paper and submitting them to the universe they can be released from my brain. My goal is to do this every day. Not sure when I should do it. If it should be mornings or night. So i will play around with it. I suffer from insomnia so I worry doing this at night may contribute to that but maybe not; maybe it would be helpful.

So if anyone sticks around – cool. If no one finds this – cool. But that’s my 13 minutes. Until next time.