Journal

A couple of weeks ago I was cleaning the flat and unpacked some of my boxes of books and things. Not to finally properly move in after two and a half years, just to douse the boxes with cockroach spray and repack them again. It's a glamorous life.

In amongst the things I've not been able to throw out, there's a high school report from July 1987. I've no idea why this is in my possession in the first place; I assume my mother has the rest of them, along with other cherished reminders of my childhood triumphs.

I think I must have seen it at Mum's place decades ago and pinched it for it's entertainment value. According to Wikipedia, ADHD (then called ADD) was known about in the 1980s, but clearly the Australian education system wasn't equipped to identify it. Here's a selection of insights into my temperament as a callow youth:

… poor attitude has been detrimental. - Year master

… lacks the competitive spirit… - English

I haven't had a good month. I have to decide where to focus my energies when I don't really have any energies, and nobody's much interested in me anyway.

I was feeling pretty low last night, had drunk as much wine as I could usefully drink, and had taken a promethazine in the hope that I'd be zonked out for 12 hours, and might resurface with a more positive attitude.

Then I got an email from Darrell, the convener of my local #U3A philosophy group. I'd left it too long to enrol for the new year, so I missed out on a place in the class and was on a waitlist.

He invited me to come along anyway as an "Illegal", in the expectation that people will drop out, so I might as well be there from week one.

It was such a kind and thoughtful offer that I burst into tears.

Of all the things I've done in the last couple of years, talking about caustically controversial stuff with other dotty old people once a week has without question been the most fun.

It was the first time I'd been back to the house in which I was raised since The Before Times. Being back there always gives me the willies to some degree, but I wasn't overly worried about it. However my mother had led me to believe that my three siblings and their families were all keen to see me, which was a bit daunting (not to mention implausible).

I'd vague intentions of visiting Sydney for some time, with a view to spending a couple of days with family, and then a couple more staying in the city and catching up with one or two old friends as a feeble gesture toward making amends for years of neglect. But chronic spoon depletion led me to scale it back to a couple of nights at my Mum's house.

I don't know how it's possible for life to keep getting both harder and better, I just know that it is possible.

I don't mind, particularly. I'm a stubborn old bird, and as long as the quantity of the better keeps rising in proportion to the harder, I can maintain my equilibrium. 2024 was a bit over the top on this score, though.

For the prior few years I had been cocooning. It's a luxury I had available to me by virtue of the fact that I had already sleepwalked into a situation where I was living in near-total social isolation. So when I packed up and moved a thousand kilometres to a city where I knew nobody, with no particularly well-developed plan for what I was going to do with my life, I can't imagine anybody thought it odd. Well, no more odd than anything else about me.

After months of waiting, the authorities still haven't granted my GP the necessary permission to prescribe dexamphetamine, so a couple of weeks ago I went back to the psych who diagnosed my ADHD for a top-up from his prescription pad. He's a delightfully charming and intelligent young man, so despite the expense, I wasn't entirely heartbroken about this.

As would any self-respecting hypochondriac, I took the opportunity to ask further questions, including whether he he could recommend any resources to help manage ADHD.

He just gave me a blank look, as though he didn't understand the question.

He's such a sweetie that I didn't want to embarrass him by pressing the point, so I moved on to complaining about other maladies.

Thank heavens for spoon theory. I've had a crappy week work-wise, mental-health-wise, and every-other-wise. The temptation at my age is to think "Is this it? Have I finally used up my nine lives? Have I just gone splat instead of bouncing back?"

I lugged my laptop down to the library this morning and, with sinking eyelids, briefly considered going straight back home to bed, or finding a quiet corner by one of the less-popular ranges of the Dewey Decimal index to curl up in.

Working seemed easier in the short term than walking the three uphill blocks back home, or arguing for my right as a library member to snooze.

So I started poking at the keyboard, and scribbling in my notepad, and by chucking out time I'd done okay. Not brilliant, but okay.

I'm not nearly dead. I've just been a bit spoon-depleted. More spoons will cycle back to my stock. I can't hurry them, but neither should I surrender.

I should be catching up on all the stuff I couldn't do while studying, but so far this week I've been having a multi-day one-woman party. Have let my ADHD brain off the leash to chase imaginary squirrels, and I'm listening to music, daydreaming, composing witty replies to wittier people on the Fediverse and not sending them, etc.

Currently sipping wine, eating olives, and collecting reference images of hairstyles. Ruben recently suggested I might benefit from less conservative eyewear - a very sound observation, diplomatically made. Come to mention it, I don't have any nice jewellery either. Also, for the last year I've been wearing "my" hair pretty much as I'd done in my early teens, which is not too jarring for me when I look in the mirror and pretty consistent with standard Carlton old lady hairdos. I love it, because it's me, but it is a bit boring.