On the Farm
At the end of Day 1 of driving, I arrived to midwest Illinois to stay a couple of nights and rest before driving further on to Nashville and then Alabama. Scroll down for more about the lessons I learned about traveling with recently diagnosed ADHD.
So in the 5ish months that I’ve been aware I have ADHD, I have gone through a profound change neurologically and self-conceptually. My philosophy of how to spend my precious human energy has changed as well. Back home, I rearranged my life and my space to better accommodate my brain. Now that I’m on the road, I’m noticing a lot of things that are bothering my brain, now that I’m away from the structure at home. In the past, these would have bothered me anyways, but I wouldn’t have given it much conscious thought beyond thinking I am a weird, quirky, needy person with weird annoyances. But now I realize that a lot of this has to do with ADHD. I’d love to share them with you!… Let’s do it.
I brought the wrong notebook. I need a notebook. For journaling. For capturing thoughts randomly. For taking notes on things at work. Back home, I have a journal in my room that is out for me to use while I meditate in the morning. In the office, I have another notebook for writing notes. What both of these notebooks have in common is that they have a spiral spine. So I can open and keep the notebook flat, taking up little surface space, and generally not being a pain in my ass. However, I grabbed a journal, one with just a regular spine. So it’s constantly trying to close and it won’t just lay flat. It’s honestly driving me a little nuts. Anything that makes capturing my thoughts harder is an obstacle to better functioning while ADHD. Lesson? Travel with a spiral bound notebook.
When driving yesterday, I had to stop quite a few times because I had unintentionally mega-hydrated in the morning. Being on a roadtrip is kind of like focusing on ADHD. It goes better if there are nicely organized chunks of time where you just focus on one thing. But this pee just kept getting in the way. I had to keep stopping. That said, my urinary system doesn’t know how to read a travel schedule, so it just does what it does, and I want to honor that. However, that left me with a self-care conundrum of do I dehydrate myself while driving long distances so I don’t have to stop so often? Or do I just let go of the sense of urgency when driving, stay hydrated, and stop whenever I have to pee? I’m leaning towards the latter.
I planned the rhythm of this trip fairly well. Not doing more than 7.5 hours a day. Giving myself an extra day at each stop so that I could rest and get caught up on work. Pretty good planning. Setting myself up for success by not abusing my internal energy, something I’ve done my entire life. However, something I noticed is that it was really hard to get into the work mindset once I was set up on Wednesday morning. First, I felt this terrible feeling of being a full day behind on work and this deep sense of urgency to furiously get through everything that piled up. That resulted in me starting to work at 7:30am when I don’t usually start working until 8:30am after I’ve done my meditation practice. Lesson? None. It’s the same thing I’ve already been talking about: deconstruct urgency culture within me. No one at work is putting this kind of pressure on me. It’s 100% me. This is a reminder to me to continue to move through my life gently, honoring my energy, not prioritizing non-existent deadlines over caring for my mind/body balance.
No bidet!! I like having a clean butt and not using up a ton of TP.
This particular item isn’t something that I learned after the fact. This is something I saw I needed and made it happen immediately. I am profoundly proud. When I arrived to the farmhouse, I knew I was stressed from the long trip and that I needed to stretch out my body and orient myself and my things in my room. So I told my host that I would be unwinding for a half hour and then would be out. Now, that was fucking delightful and I don’t want to dismiss that AND… a sub-lesson I’m learning from this is that I needed more time. I think when I go on a road trip and I’m staying with someone, I may prepare them ahead of time for what they can expect from me. I imagine in the future, I would let them know in advance that I’d need 1-2 hours upon arrival to attend to my mind and body before potentially socializing. I think I will also get in the habit of letting them know my work hours and night habits so that boundaries/expectations are known before I even arrive. It feels rude… but it’s not. I’m the only one who is not giving myself permission to behave authentically.
Something I didn’t expect but makes a lot of sense is that it’s really hard for my brain to do our usual structure when I’m not in my usual place. My items aren’t where I keep them. Like I mentioned above, I’ve modified my home life to support the structure my ADHD mind needs. Structure = good. Less burden on executive function. However, when you’re traveling, specifically the way I am, which is moving from place to place every couple of days, there is no ambient structure. All my belongings are in a giant suitcase, not stored in strategic spots in my space that I’m familiar with and that I transition through as I do the activities of my day. So I’ve had to think a lot more. “OK, so I can’t put X here… where can I put it that would make sense?” I’m making temporary structure in temporary environments and that is incredibly taxing on my mind. Solution? My thought is that if I am traveling, in addition to dedicating a few hours to unwind upon arrival, I want to begin a process of putting out the items I need for my daily self-care in intuitive places based on the location I’m in. And I want to give myself permission to take up space. I have a whole room to myself at this house and something inside of me feels really obnoxious for taking up space, even within my own room. I want to give myself permission to spread out and take up space. And to go through a process of determining where I will be doing different self-care routines, putting items for that in the right place, and the same for my work, as well.
Something I’ve learned about who I’ve made myself to be having undiagnosed ADHD is that I’ve created an adrenaline-fueled lifestyle. Not jumping-off-the-bridge type, but just a constantly busy mind that creates visceral stress in my body. Back at home, I’d begun to experiment with how to regulate that stress preventatively and responsively. But on the road, I have to admit it’s just stressful. Something I’m considering is releasing the fantasy that I’ll be able to obtain the ongoing internal balance/homeostasis that I’ve been enjoying at home (where I can control pretty much every element of my day). I kind of accepted that this is going to be stressful, I’m going to be trigged, I’m going to have challenges. However, what is different is that I’m not seeing those challenges as an indictment on my ability to cope with the world, rather, as an opportunity for me to learn about what makes me tick, what stresses me out, and to experiment with different ways of coping within an environment that I can’t control as much. It’s a workout.
Also, being away from my home environment, away from the control and structure, I have less reminders to be mindful. I’d kneaded those into my home and my life back in Minnesota and those reminders aren’t here. Instead, it’s all these new environments and unfamiliar social situations which cause more mental noise, which in turn needs more mindfulness to manage. For me, this emphasizes the importance of prioritizing my morning meditative practice as well as stopping several times a day to breathe and check in with myself. My internalized messaging about social performance often makes me feel like I can’t stop and breathe and check-in with myself. But, like I mentioned above, I’m the only one stopping myself. This is good for me to notice, even if I’m finding it difficult to change immediately. Like they say, it starts with awareness. But they don’t specifically say that when it starts with awareness, it may mean you’re aware while being incredibly uncomfortable, and that’s not super fun.
Outlets and lighting. Not only is finding space for my regular activities while traveling challenge, add the complication and limitation of outlet availability and lighting.
Again, related to some of what I’ve already written above, having all my belongings in a suitcase has my brain kind of freaking out. Without that structure of home, I don’t have a workflow that I mentally work through based on where things are in my house for different activities. So my brain keeps trying to check if I’ve done XYZ and it gets flustered because it doesn’t remember where A is, where we left off on it, and whether B is due already and what time is it already? Again, I think the solution for this is having a good practice of orienting myself and my activities upon arrival to a new location, putting things out so I can flow into my practices with more ease. Decrease the burden on my executive function!
