Friend visit…photography…ADHD/attention management
Mostly today I’m just clearing out some ongoing thoughts so I have room for new thoughts.
A friend and her spouse (who I’m going to declare as a friend at this point; I just think he’s cool) came over! I made them food! We talked! Ray hung out with us the whole time and seemed herself surprised that she hadn’t gotten bored and wandered off.
Woot!
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I hit a bad spot the other day and started a new short class on photography (as I do, when I’m me and I need a little extra brain stuff) and have been doing a bunch of exercises. The ones I already know how to do are good “reminder” exercises: look for new perspectives, concentrate on light and shadow, consider color in more detail.
The one today was more technical, on aperture/focal length (f-stop) settings. Cell phone camera lenses don’t change their focal length, they just simulate having done so, using AI shit. I played with the settings and initially hated it, GRAAHHHH, the AI shit seemed so inappropriate and clunky, putting blurry “distance” spots in front of things that it had focused on mere moments before when I took the picture. But eventually the two of us synced a little better, and not I’m like, “Okay, I’ll keep playing with this.” Some of the experiment photos look pretty dang snazzy, if I say so myself.
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I’ve been working on rethinking AI stuff. I’ll post that separately.
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I’ve been struggling with attention management the last few days, so if you’re interested in that, read on.
This morning: one second I was coming back inside the house. The next I was catching myself from putting a napkin in the trash, because Ray had left a trash bag on top of the can; she took the trash out when she went to class this morning.
In between I had taken a shower, completely on autopilot. How do I know this? My hair is wet. I have no memory of taking the shower. Fortunately I also got dressed. I brushed my teeth, too, and am going to assume that means I took vitamins right afterwards, as a matter of habit.
Autopilot me can take a shower but can’t shave legs, apparently. We’re just gonna live with that. It’s probably best that we don’t use a razor while I’m not really there to pay attention.
I’ve been poking around with some observations about how my brain works:
–I seem to get low on some of the brain junk people need to function effectively. Everyone gets low on brain junk. I get low on brain junk a LOT.
–Stimulation helps my brain function better.
–Stimulation is a tradeoff, though, because it uses resources that I need for other things (I get tired from using stimulants, for example), AND because there’s always a chance that I’ll push it too far and switch myself into emergency/stress mode and not creative/healing mode.
–In the end, that energy cost has to be paid for SOMEHOW.
–There are likely at least two things going on (two neurotransmitters?), because there are days when I can’t focus and am jittery (yesterday) and days where I don’t have energy (today). When both things happen the same time, I get sludgy. I am borderline sludgy today.
–Exercise works for energy but not lack of focus. Caffeine seems to work for focus but not energy (which might be why it puts me to sleep?). Sugar works for energy but not for focus. Meditation works for focus but not energy.
–Pursuing something interesting works for energy and focus, but has to have a bare minimum of resources to get started on. Sludgy brain doesn’t care about new things.
–Dance seems best for maintenance of current resources. I was in a singing mood yesterday and didn’t get enough dance in. (Although I did get a new move started a spin with a hip bump!) I also handled a bunch of bureaucratic PITA bullshit yesterday, and it drained me. I had to focus, AND I had to pressure people into doing what they were supposed to do, for about eight hours altogether. No wonder I felt exhausted by the end of yesterday and am struggling today.
–Video games that require twitchy reactions work the same as dance. Puzzle games and walk-around-talk-to-people games do not.
–When I get low on energy I start feeling like I shouldn’t be around people, that I’m a terrible person and being around me is a burden, I’m just going to fuck things up. AND YET meditation seems to help with that, even though it doesn’t seem to restore energy.
–When I get low on focus I start feeling like I like everyone, they’re witty and interesting, but only for like two seconds. I have to force myself not to flit. (I’m probably more likely to hurt people’s feelings in this mode, but I’m really not aware of it.) If I’m going to do stim-type stuff, this is when it comes out the worst. I’ll be talking to someone and start chewing my nails so I don’t wander off.
–Moving into minor superpower mode seems to be easiest using music, whether dancing or not. Brief, informal meditation works, too. Minor superpower mode seems to invoke 3D or conceptual space overlays on reality for me. I’m more graceful, can understand other people better (even if I can’t talk at the time because words go wonk), can change my mind without shutting down or doing a reset, can learn information and skills superfast, can turn off pain and mess with other nervous system stuff, etc.
–8D audio (audio mixed to sound like it’s moving around in a 3D space when you listen over headphones) helps with sludge brain. (I just remembered and put it on.) But if it’s not mixed well, it can also walks me right up to not-a-migraine. The bad stuff makes me tense up, makes it harder to type immediately. The good stuff makes me stretch and raises goosebumps. Some audio is mixed well without being called “8D” or anything similar. I’m already feeling better.
–My non-painful migraine symptoms include hands/feet swelling, letters swimming/hard to spell, difficulty typing or small motor tasks, feeling trapped inside my body, limbs in the wrong places, people’s faces seeming distorted. Visual auras, spikes in my constant ear ringing, joint aches. Loss of empathy (but not sympathy; I can still feel feelings ABOUT other people; I just don’t sync with them, so I still care about people but I have to ask if they’re okay). I feel mind-blind.
In the end, I think my lesson (for now) is that there are no simple, straightforward answers to managing my symptoms so that they consistently work in my favor. Perhaps unsurprisingly, my ADHD brain is in favor of continually assessing the situation and taking actions based on what’s going on internally/externally rather than doing something disciplined and regular every day. Any routine, as such, will fail when it comes up against my ADHD often enough. But developing a set of skills that can be deployed to course correct sounds fun and doable.
In practice, for example: using ADHD meds was doable and fine and gave me a baseline for “this is how it is possible to feel,” but often left me exhausted after work, too exhausted to get anything creative or social done for my own benefit. The cost had to be paid. But dancing means that I get fitter and more able to sustain energy and focus tasks over time. Dancing takes more time than swallowing a pill, though, and it isn’t always enough. And I still have to pay the energy cost, as well as health costs if I push too hard and strain something.
I’m feeling much better now, although I’m questioning whether I should just take a nap or what.
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Update: I took the nap.
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I had to be on the phone to handle some bureaucratic b.s. I made this monster while on hold.
One of the photo experiments, this one experimenting with aperture/f-stop.