Writing Challenge Day 8
A paralysing brawl
My to-do list is ridiculously long. I want to do it all—I need to do it all—but instead, here I am, sitting on my lovely green leather sofa, staring into space. There's a cuppa on the table in front of me, the remote in my hand, and I'm aimlessly flicking through channels, hoping something will catch my interest. It's one of those days, the ones where ASD and ADHD are in a knock-down, drag-out fight for control.
My body is restless, desperate to move, create, and get things done. But my mind? It feels like it's stuck under the world's largest pair of noise-cancelling headphones, drowning in static. A million messages are trying to reach my brain's control center, but they're all jumbled, contradictory, and senseless. It's just white noise.
ASD is yelling, insisting, This is the routine we need! It works! It's regular and predictable! She needs this to feel calm and productive. But ADHD is shouting back even louder, Freedom! Flexibility! Schedules kill creativity! We need to be free!
It's an absolute shitshow—a paralysing brawl that leaves me stuck, fidgeting on the couch, getting nothing done. Life screeches to a frustrating halt. It's like trying to break up a fight between two pit bulls—jump in, and you'll only get hurt. Nothing gets resolved, and you're right back where you started.
Over the years, I've tried waving a few truce flags. Physical weekly calendars? ASD loved them, but ADHD found them dull, uninspiring, and too clunky to carry around. Google Calendar seemed like a practical solution to please both—it was sleek and easy to access. ASD was thrilled, but ADHD didn't have the patience to properly set it up, so it went nowhere. I introduced a big whiteboard with lines, a daily planner, and colour-coded magnets that were easy to move around. For a while, it was a hit—both ADHD and ASD loved it—but being fixed in one location behind my desk, it quickly fell out of use once the novelty wore off.
My psychologist had some ideas. One was mind mapping in a small sketchbook, much like how I use sketchbooks for art. ASD found it too chaotic but enjoyed dumping all the to-dos onto paper each morning. ADHD loved the headspace it cleared but still found the process boring. A purpose-designed ADHD focus planner was another suggestion. It promised to be a game-changer, but navigating its overly complicated 913 pages made it more of a full-time job than a solution. I deleted it after a day.
Finally, I landed on a compromise: a weekly paper planner and Google Calendar, synced up at the start of each week. After some trial and error, I found the perfect planner—simple, clean, and colourful enough to keep ADHD engaged but organised enough to satisfy ASD. It had sections for goals, priorities, reminders, and to-do lists, all laid out to make everything easy to see at a glance. With a friend's help, I got Google Calendar set up properly too. It's now on my phone's home screen for one-touch access, with long notification tones that play through my hearing aids so I never miss an alert. For the first time, I haven't missed an appointment—victory for me, ASD, and ADHD!
My psychologist's second suggestion was even simpler: when the bickering and white noise start up again, sneak past them by taking one small step. Open the document you need to work on. Don't think about the whole task, just the first tiny action. Usually, ASD takes over from there, clicking into routine, and by the time I get into it, ADHD jumps on board, hyperfocusing to get it done in no time.
It's not perfect. ADHD and ASD still bicker a lot and cause that mind-numbing noise and no action. But now, I've started to see those moments as a sign that I'm pushing too hard and need to slow down. When that happens, I pull out my planner, get everything out of my head and onto the page, and create some breathing room. It helps them hold hands instead of punching each other out.
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