My mental health moment for today: realizing the amount due on the gas bill ends in 69 cents, thinking about making a joke about it to the internet, and ultimately deciding no one really cares.
Category Archives: mental health
Week 15, 2026: Where My Head At?
I haven’t been regularly blogging for a while now, and it’s becoming more challenging for me to go back and find when a thing happened. Used to be that my blog was a digital scrapbook of sorts that I could access from anywhere, in parallel with Flickr.
So, as a gift to Future Me, here’s a brain dump of stuff that went on during the week ending 11 April 2026.
I’ve been keeping a weekly planner/journal for several years, and I find it interesting to go back through prior months or years and see what ideas I had for vacations or what meals I experimented with or what internal crises felt hard enough that I needed to take pen to paper to figure them out. What’s also interesting is looking at how much I update for each day; it tends to slow down over the course of a week, and I can totally tell where I transitioned from actively present to treading water.
This week, that transition started on Tuesday and I was in full-on phoning-it-in mode by Wednesday.
Continue readingBetter Than OK Today
This morning, for the first time in a long time, I woke up happy.
I really don’t know why. Maybe it was the after effects of Connor’s choir concert last night. He had a really great time, everybody sounded fantastic, and one of his friends braided his hair backstage before the finale.
Maybe it was because I got a good amount of sleep—deep sleep, anyway. I didn’t get any more overall sleep than I usually do, but I got a lot more deep sleep than normal, if my Apple Watch is to be believed.
At any rate, whatever it was stayed with me all day. I’m not complaining. It really was weird, though: I felt almost normal. I didn’t feel like I was dragging. I didn’t feel that pressing strangeness of this menopause body I’ve been dealing with. I stood up straight and tall all day. I wasn’t tired.
My inner critic never spoke up out of turn. I didn’t guilt trip myself. I didn’t end up playing on my phone to escape boredom.
I want to capture this feeling of okay-ness and bottle it up for later.
I’m actually sitting outside as I write this. Connor is off at the karate dojo, helping out with the kids program. One of his friends who just got a car is going to be driving him home afterward, so that means my evening is completely and utterly free.
Every time this Connor goes out on a Friday, I never know what to do with myself. It’s a little bit silly, but when Connor’s not here, I actually feel a little bit lonely.
Even so, as I’m sitting outside in the evening air, feeling just a little bit lonely, and maybe a little out of sorts, I still don’t feel that usual weight of depression. Maybe it’s because I’m outside. Maybe it’s the angle of the sun and the change of the season. Whatever it is, though, I hope it sticks around. I’m tired of being tired.
Progress Not Perfection
My laptop has been open to a nearly-blank WordPress screen for a good five minutes now, prompting me silently to “Add title.” Meanwhile, I’ve been staring out the window, elementary-school-style, letting my mind wander. Embracing the random associations without the judgmental undercurrent.
My therapist mentioned in our session last week that ADHD brains tend to be “nonlinear” when it comes to organization, and will have several processes or thoughts happening at once. I was reminded of a video* she’d shown me several months ago, where someone had narrated their inner monologue as they were puttering around their kitchen, complete with overlapping reminders and random thoughts and a constant earworm, and I had felt totally seen.
I feel fortunate that my therapist has a background in ADHD, with both her clients and her family. She picks up what I’m putting down and rearranges it from a different perspective. I suppose that’s what therapists do in general, but having someone who understands how my brain is processing — sometimes better than I do — is huge.
I think that’s one reason why I don’t blog or journal as much as I once did: I no longer feel the urgency to get stuff out of my head and into words to essentially psychoanalyze myself. (Or use CBT, or ACT, or whatever.) Instead, my tendency to write and document and plan gets channeled into my weekly planner spreads, where I do my damnedest to script the critical moves in advance.
My mental health is very much a work in progress… but at least I’m progressing.
* I intentionally didn’t to try to find the ADHD Simulator video until I was sure I was done writing, because I knew if I went down that rabbit-hole, this would never get this posted, and would go into my Drafts folder with all the other blog entries I’ve started and never finished. I found this video first, which is by the same woman but wasn’t the exact video I was thinking of. It’s worth including a link, though, because it captures the frustration I feel when I’m trying to backtrack through all the prerequisites of a single task.
A Solo Evening In
On one Friday each month, the karate dojo hosts a Parents’ Night Out. Sometimes it’s a video game night. Sometimes they plan a Pokemon trading party. Sometimes it’s a Ninja Ball tournament. But sometimes — like tonight — it’s a Nerf War, where kids bring their Nerf guns and the dojo supplies a massive amount of standard Nerf bullets.
Connor’s not always interested, especially as he’s now one of the older kids — but he’s always up for a Nerf War.
For the price of our usual “Fun Friday” pizza delivery, Connor gets to hang out at the dojo, shooting his Nerf gun and eating pizza, while I get two and a half hours of “me” time.
As drop-off time approaches, I always daydream about how much I’ll accomplish during those two hours alone. Maybe I’ll do some sewing, or declutter my storage spaces. Maybe I’ll do some weeding, or catch up on all the things I’ve been meaning to blog about. Maybe I’ll do an evening of digital detox — no phone, no laptop, no TV.
That never happens. None of it.
First, what happens is dinner. Sometimes I order out, or sometimes — like tonight — I scare up something simple for myself from the freezer or the pantry. My iPhone keeps me company while I eat, and continues to keep me company for a while after that.
Then the realization dawns on me: two hours is not as much time as it seems, especially at the end of the day, and even more so at the end of the week. If I’d planned a little more carefully, I could have knocked off a few tasks — as it is, though, it might be a better use of my time to sit in the sunroom and enjoy the sounds of spring. Feel the breeze. Watch the sunset. Calm my judgmental inner voice.
Yeah, that sounds good.
By then, the sunset has reached the cotton candy phase of blues and pinks, with a turquoise backdrop. It’s time to put my Mom hat back on and go pick up my Nerf warrior.