Summer is my favorite season, at least this part of summer. It’s finally warm out, you can go to the beach, you can have a whole array of cold beverages, and the evenings are longer. I love waking up with the sun already up. I love how we all just sort of go away for a second and come back together around mid August to complain about humidity and tell each other the random place we wound up for the 4th.
Summer is not, however, a time that I get much work done. It’s as if a part of my brain shuts down. Maybe it’s the heat, or the longer days. People in New York leave in summer, at least the ones with enough money. The city itself slows down. The pace is slower and more languorous.
We just got through an unusually early heat wave, and I’m wiped. It can be hot in late June, for sure, but it’s usually not this hot for this long. This felt more like late July. Baked in. Exhausting. The heat here wears you down here in a way it doesn’t other places. We all walk everywhere, and the crowds, cement and glass trap the heat. 90 degrees in New York City hits different. We don’t just jump in our air conditioned car and roll to the Starbucks drive thru for an iced coffee. It’s hard to explain if you don’t live here, but I’ve experienced heat elsewhere and it’s not quite the same thing.
I am also more sensitive to heat now, and to be honest, it is the most annoying side effect of my meds. It’s a change, considering I would much rather be warm than be freezing. I hate being cold. I know people love fall, and I suppose I would like fall more if it didn’t get dark so fucking early and the holidays didn’t exist.
Anyway.
I guess the problem is that I’m a little bored? And we know that boredom is kryptonite for people with ADHD. That’s when our brains can have ALL OF THE FUN.
There’s also nothing that pressing for me to do. I am not under deadline for anything. I finished my commission play before I left for my vacation. Instead of my brain being like, “Hey! You wrote a full length play in four months! Good job, you!”, my brain is like “OMG WHAT’S NEXT WHAT’S NEXT YOU HAVE TO BE DOING SOMETHING FUCKING DO SOMETHING DO SOMETHING DO SOMETHING”, like a parrot on cocaine, screaming the same shit over and over again.
It. is. making. me. crazy.
The hardest part about my recovery has been learning to sit with discomfort without making myself insane. Discomfort involves sitting with uncertainty, doubt, or just not knowing what comes next - and not immediately trying to numb it out with video games/booze/food/trash TV what have you. Most of that discomfort comes from the unshakeable feeling that there is something I should be doing that I’m not doing, even when I could theoretically be relaxing or doing something silly I enjoy. When my guard is down, Mean Mommy (Trauma) and Dopamine Rat (ADHD) get together and throw a dumb party and try to derail me.
Because Mean Mommy and Dopamine Rat are having a little summer fiesta, I’m in a space where being productive is difficult. It’s frustrating, because I love posting here at Substack. Everyone has been nothing but lovely and welcoming. I am really proud of how I’ve grown my base and for putting myself out there. I made a rule for myself in the beginning that I had to post once a week. I couldn’t fret too much about the quality, since they can’t all be winners, but I had to do it to hold myself accountable. These days, I am finding it more difficult to come up with something to write about weekly. I know that this is okay! And normal! I have posted nearly every week for a year.
But no! My brain was not satisfied. I started to feel guilty because I didn’t want to write a post, which made it worse. Instead of giving myself some grace, Mean Mommy decided to berate me for it. I had to catch myself and go, “KBQ, who cares? No one cares!”. Not to mention that the more I stress myself out about something, the more my brain goes “no thank you”, and then it becomes the dreaded Impossible Task.
Impossible Tasks are not actually impossible, but because people with ADHD don’t always get satisfaction from completing a task, it feels impossible. Impossible Tasks can include something as simple as printing a return label for a package and as complex as recording a podcast. What they have in common is that they bang around in your head at warp speed while you sit, paralyzed, Not Doing It. Task paralysis is one of the most annoying things about having ADHD. You need to do the thing, or you really want to do the thing, and you can’t.
The only way to counteract this is to implement healthy habits. Writing isn’t the only habit I have tried to cultivate. Regular exercise, flossing, eating right, making sure I leave the house even if I don’t want to…all of these help my ADHD tremendously when I manage to check off the boxes! It’s just really difficult to be consistent.
I think
said it best:I’m also battling the dreaded Shoulds. The main purpose of the Shoulds is to make my brain go “I Am Not Doing Enough of the Things So Let Me Add More Things”. I come up with another thing I could maybe do, feel overwhelmed, and then immediately talk myself out of it.
This is what that looks like in my brain (yes, I wrote it as dialogue. What can I say? I’m a playwright):
Maybe I should write a memoir or something?
Your attention span could never. It would take 27 years. No one cares about you that much anyway. Like, are you famous? Not even close. Why would you even do that? Narcissistic much?
Okay…something easier. Got it. Maybe I should try stand-up comedy or something like The Moth?
If you want a TikTok video about the sad middle aged woman who can’t do comedy, sure. I mean, again, you are not even remotely famous and in fact are way less accomplished than your peers - such as the ones winning literal Emmys and Tonys - BUT if you bomb EVERYONE WILL FIND OUT and you will have to change your name and live underground like a mole.
I know. It’s awful. I can be awful to myself. But I don’t actually believe Mean Mommy! She’s just loud, persistent, and knows exactly how to get under my skin. I also know that means Dopamine Rat is hungry and I should do something healthy like…work out or something. But this is why people with ADHD do things like drink too much or binge eat or shop. There are two times in ADHD Land: Now, or Not Now. It’s so much easier to give your brain what it wants in the moment. I’m glad that most of the time I can anticipate my needs and make better decisions for Tomorrow Kari.
I guess it’s just that there never seems to be enough time in the day. I’m turning 43 in September, and while I know that isn’t old, I can see the window of opportunity narrowing just a bit. But that’s the human condition. We have limited time, and we also don’t know how much. Do I want to spend my time on earth feeling like I have to be working constantly for my life to mean something? To be worthy? No. I am done with that. I think a lot of us are. It’s just really hard to do something you have no idea how to do. It’s easy to say you don’t want to wrap up your self-worth in productivity anymore. It’s quite another to believe it.
I suppose, in the end, it’s just fear. I feel like I just got my spark back, and I’m scared that if I don’t keep it going, my fire will go out and I will be left fumbling in the dark. I think that fear can be our greatest teacher - if we let it be. I let fear drag me around me my whole life. Now, I’m trying to just observe it. To walk next to it. To listen to what is has to tell me. To acknowledge it and move past it.
Nothing lasts forever in this world. Not even the bad times. It’s easy to forget that. Before we know it, summer will be gone too. I’ll be sad when it’s gone. I’m always sad when it’s gone. But something about the Fall gets my brain going. School is starting, the air is crisper, and something feels so alive about it. The last chance before the leaves die and things go cold and dark. And hey, we gotta get it all done before the holidays. I think we all can use a deadline once in a while.