Bouncing Around, But Getting Things Done

Despite code red air quality alerts, unpleasantly hot (99°) temperatures, and a lack of sufficient air conditioning throughout my house, I made today's paid holiday hours productive ones.  This is encouraging, since the forecast is calling for highs of 103° for Tuesday and Wednesday.  Hopefully I'll be able to keep a positive outlook on life until things calm down (read: cool down) later in the week.

On the bright side, today felt more balanced than my life has in a long time.  I woke up in a good frame of mind, thinking about various professional development I've undergone lately, specifically where I've heard the words "don't fight yourself."  Clever girl that I am, I contemplated how I could apply this to my life at home, too.  I think ADD adults spend a lot of energy fighting our natures, and sometimes it's important to remember we need that energy for creating positive, self-affirming strategies for living our lives.

I'm past making excuses for my house: it has become a pit.  I love a clean, simple, orderly environment, so this makes me feel bad down to my core.  And since I've gotten behind on so much stuff, catching up seems positively overwhelming.  To make matters worse, the second I see clutter in the hallway, I tend to discount all my efforts in, say, our office.  Today I decided to be more reasonable, setting a goal of one room per day and no more.  So today I cleaned the bedroom, for real and true, and then accepted the fact that more work would lead to intense fatigue and eventually bad feelings about myself/the house/life in general.  Clutter in the hallway was okay, because it gets its own day (not today)!

This small victory really started me rolling, and after I was done I didn't go back to my reading for class (time for that later).  I took a break and played some WoW.  Then I went back to my reading, added 1000 words to my manuscript (exciting!), and took another WoW break.

I work best when my life is fragmented, likely because I lack the attention span for longer tasks anyway.  I get interrupted nonstop at work, but this rarely throws me off because, as I see it, I would have interrupted myself anyway.  My mind bounces from one thing to the next, and it's often best to preempt it if I can.  Forcing myself to work really hard on a single task (like cleaning out my basement) for a painfully long time leaves me feeling drained and often irrational.

Today, I encouraged myself to stop a task before I got super fatigued and celebrate my victory.  This left me feeling energized for the next activity, especially since I built in breaks for myself throughout the day.  In the end, I got an amazing amount of stuff done, including washing dishes, doing nearly all my reading for class this week, hitting level 75 with my druid, making my bedroom tidy and clean, and writing 1000 words on my novel.  Yay for days off from work!