With reference to this post: https://iaindstewart.net/blog/2023/11/03/starting-again/
This is another one of those natural break points in my life where everything seems to be changing or shifting – this time it’s not me waking up after a long period of apathy or feeling aimless, but I feel like things are going in the right direction this time. Lots of things are aligning, and I’m feeling positive about the future. Well, it’s not so much that things are aligning, but I’m learning to just take action regardless of whether things are “aligned” or not.
The main aspect that is helping the most is that I’ve got my ADHD medication dialled in. I started titrating at the start of the year, and I worked with my psychiatrist to find the perfect dosage level. It’s like magic, it really is, I don’t feel consciously different in myself on a day where I do take my medication, but I just get stuff done. My main problem was being indecisive and I was prone to choice paralysis – I had lots to do, or lots that I wanted to do, but couldn’t decide how to prioritise what to actually start with. This was coming after years of firing off in random directions with no rhyme or reason, starting new activities or new projects all over the place with no consideration for what needed to be done. Looking back now I can see how this would eventually get out of hand and I’d have short periods where I felt like I’d need to “spring clean” and tie up all the loose ends, officially decide to abandon
the projects and ideas that I no longer decided to pursue. I even wrote in my notebook at one point “STOP STARTING THINGS – START FINSIHING THINGS”. The realisation was there.
Anyway, that post I wrote back in November shows how disjointed my thinking was. I felt like I have to manoeuvre things in my head like a 3-dimensional version of Tetris, twisting the concepts, plans and ideas I had around until they interlocked and joined together nicely. ADHD medication massively helped me do this, in a way. Again, as I wrote back in November, knowing I have ADHD does not diminish the effects of ADHD. But having a diagnosis, having a medical professional tell me that I do have ADHD, well that allows access to medication, and medication does diminish the effects of ADHD. Thanks to ADHD medication I can rotate the abstract ideas and plans and concepts into plans of action a lot quicker, and it is less important to me that these figments are seamless – I was struggling with action, pure action. A plan of action has been decided upon and the start date for that plan is today.
Why today? Well, the second aspect is me changing roles at Asda – I was on George for about a year and it was not my ideal working environment. It wasn’t particularly hard, but it was tedious. Almost every shift consisted of just stripping the plastic wrapping off of the clothes. There was just so much delivery all the time, that’s all I felt like I was doing, day in, day out, every shift. It was monotonous and mind numbing, and I was standing up all day, leaning over at a slightly awkward angle, giving myself back pain. I used to have to sit in the canteen after a shift, take some ibuprofen and just recalibrate my vertebra. And then there was the unrealistic expectations of the management team (but I won’t go into any detail about that), and I had just had enough and I wanted out. And I got what I wanted,k I got out. Later on today I have my first shift on Security, and it feels like a genuine fresh start. New role, new workmates, new responsibilities. I feel like this is my redemption arc, where I purposefully do good things, rather than just indifferently coast along, letting my life slip away.
