Writing every day for 28 (make that 16) days ... day 12
Prompt Number 11 - Something you do not want to do
Today I am writing with somebody. We are not writing the same thing. We are not even looking at what the other person is writing. We are doing something called “body doubling”, which is a motivation technique often employed by people with ADHD. It is very similar to parallel play (of which I am a huge fan) in that you do similar, the same, or very different things alongside each other. You are doing something yourself but you are very much not by yourself.
The person I am writing with today is a fellow ADHDer, who also wants to write because they are good at it, they love it, and they are a bit out of practice. I am sitting at my desk writing on my laptop, watching the letters appear one after the other on my extra monitor screen, while on my laptop screen my friend sits and writes in her notebook, inspired by some old emails. We can see each other, so it’s like we are writing in the same room - it’s kinda neat.
My original (from a whole ten minutes ago) plan was to twist the prompt that I got: “something you do not want to do”, to talk about the prompts I get some days that I don’t actually want to use on those days. Before I drew number 11, I drew a couple of others - but they felt too heavy. They felt like I would be pulling blood from a stone to write about them, and it’s almost 10PM because I saved my writing today for this date; I wasn’t about to tackle something heavy! Then I realised that we are on this date to help each other do something we don’t want to do. This is perfect.
Body doubling is cool if you can find people to do it with, as it’s a great way to get you through something hard or annoying, or anxiety-inducing. It’s great for things like a chore, or filling out forms, or, in our case, shaking off the decades-long feeling that if what you write isn’t perfect, then it’s not worth writing. It’s not that we don’t want to write, we really really do want to write, it’s that we both have baggage associated with it. I can only speak about mine, but I feel they have similar roots. We are elder millenial women with something to say, and some skill in saying it, but we’ve both just not being doing it.
I love writing; I can lose myself in it. I can look at my fitbit and see 6PM when I start, and then glance at it ‘20 minutes later’ and it’s quarter past eight. I don’t know if it’s ADHD “hyperfocus” or if it’s just me being in a space where I feel so comfortable and free, and so stimulated, that I may as well have meditated for ten minutes. I remember writing as a child, and loving it because I could create whatever world I wanted to. I specifically remember seeing Fern Gully and then writing in my sparkly Durasealed excersize book about fairies for god-knows-how-long. I think I have never entertained the idea of being a writer, you know - for a job, because of all those movies and TV shows, and books themselves that I have consumed where the writer doesn’t actually write. I have thought - yep that’s me. I won’t lie to myself like that! I won’t be a writer because then I won’t write.
And I haven’t anyway. I could have written books by now. They might not have been good books, but they could exist! I am 40. I could have written ten or twenty of the damned things! I haven’t, I think, because I’ve always had this fear that if what I make isn’t perfect, then what was the point of making it? I think that’s fairly common with ADHD, and I have heard it called “lazy perfectionism”. You could do something good but you don’t do it at all because it’s not great.
There is that saying, something along the lines of “perfection is the enemy of the good”, which is attributed to Voltaire and also to a bunch of other people who have said similar things - because it’s fucking true. I don’t make art much these days because it’s not instantly amazing. I often want to learn a new activity, but I don’t have the attention span or the working memory to stick at it and build up the skill necessary to do it well, so in the dust it dwells.
Writing is different. I always come back to it. I feel words, and spelling grammar and punctuation, in my very being. They are inate to me. I am not perfect at them, but I am good enough at them that I don’t feel too embarrassed about using them and showing them to others. I think it has taken turning 40, and realising that there is so much I want to do and less time now to do it, to get me to write again.
I have come back to this piece, a few weeks later, to finally edit and publish it. You see, writing was my hyperfocus for about two weeks, and now it's the gym. I did not write every day for 28 days; Igot up to 16. My aim now is to make time and space for both writing and the gym as they are both good for me and are beginning to be essential for my good mental health. Lovely people have suggested I write one day and gym the next, which sounds like a good idea but will not be sustainable. My demand-avoidance will kick in and I'll fall off one or both boats. If anyone has any ADHD-friendly ideas for systems I could set up so that I can continue to work full-time, study, and make sure I'm writing and gymming on top of those, the comments are SO OPEN!
xx