Challenge Day 4 (of 30)

Today is a shorter update. I worked on my Secret Project — it’s a painting, but that’s not the secret bit — and I did House Chores.¹ This episode isn’t likely to be riveting for anyone playing along at home, but I think there’s a metaphor to be mined out of the boring detritus of domesticity.

We have a set of curtains in the master bedroom that is Not Doing Well, and hasn’t been for oh, let’s say, a year. The lining, I suppose you’d call it, the stuff that blocks out light and attracts mould, is getting sun-damaged and fragile and has ripped accordingly. When the rip started it was about four centimetres long.

“We should fix that,” Louise, or I, said.

Of course, since then, the rip has grown up and had little baby rips of its own. It’s now a good metre long. Or I should say was over a metre long, because today I finally took the curtains down and fixed them.

Of course, I’d figured out how to fix them many months ago. About midway through what I am, entirely without justification, going to call the Rip Saga, I’d bought some iron-on patches and tape from Spotlight and done nothing with them. As is so often the case with ADHD stuff, there were what seemed like dozens of reasons not to fix the curtains. The stuff I’d bought might not work. The ironing board wasn’t big enough. The curtains might rip even more. All these excuses, half-thought, felt as a kind of almost tangible barrier in the mind.

So while the kiddos were out and after I’d done enough work on my secret painting I popped into our bedroom, took the curtains down — five minutes, tops — laid them out on a set of drawers, no ironing board needed, grabbed the iron-on patches and scissors, and the curtains were fixed. It took maybe 45 minutes.

45 minutes, for a job I’ve been avoiding for a year.

I don’t want to pin all this sort of thing on ADHD. Every person in with a house has housework they don’t get to. But that odd little barrier in the mind, the terminal indecision followed by a reflexive urge to do something else — that, I believe, is an ADHD thing. So many of the things I struggle with come down to indecision. I can’t decide, so I avoid, so I fall in to some kind of default behaviour.

Since finishing my old job and attempting my own thing, this sort of stuff happens far less. I’m noticing I get more done, more often. Some of this is the inevitable result of having more time and more mental bandwidth; there’s a reason newly unemployed people are so often portrayed in media as taking a sudden interest in housework or arcane hobbies.

But I feel like mine runs a bit deeper; I’m finding myself more apt to do tasks I’d typically avoid. That little mental hiccup of indecision, the stab of resistance, is somehow more noticeable and therefore more avoidable. And some of this is quite definitely because of my do-something-every-day project; instead of just letting the roadblocks get in the way I’m just smashing through them, and realising (to continue the road transport metaphor) they were more cones than concrete barriers.

Or maybe I just give fewer ducks these days.

Speaking of ducks! For inexplicable reasons, that duck I painted has gone almost legitimately viral on TikTok. Last I looked it had 123,000 views, which is still small beer in the scheme of things but is by far the most looks anything I’ve ever made has had. My almost-daily posting and gruelling video-making has, at last, paid off. Not in money, of course. That would be too easy. But there are a lot of folks asking for prints, and so I’m going to have to get some of those ready to sell tomorrow.

Oh here is that large red button again I suppose. Thanks to those who have taken out paid subscriptions! You can pay what you want, so long as it’s more than $3 dollarydoos

https://buttondown.com/cynicsguide?as_embed=true

1. Then I played D&D with friends, which is why this one is late (there will be a new reason every night, I’m sure.)