Many years ago I crushed myself to be on time for things. I would stress myself out to the point of either making myself ill, tired, stressed and turning up wherever I was meant to be in a right frazzled state. That is if I actually ever turned up at all due to winding myself up so much prior to getting to where I needed to be that at times I would make up excuses and reasons as to why I couldn’t make it to a certain social or organised event. It was after going to counselling for the first time that I was told I could say no. This was quite a revelation to me, as being such a people pleaser, I would generally always say yes. That way I would overcommit myself to various things and wear myself out and not be very nice to be around and basically just be knackered constantly all the time. This was also not that brilliant for financial control either.
These days for self-preservation there’s every possibility that I say no more often than saying yes to things in my life. I find organising my appointments and my social time can make me anxious, ensuring I am careful not to do too many things in one week. I need to ensure that I have at least 3 to 4 nights where I haven’t actually committed myself to doing a something. I know if I do that this will basically be detrimental to me especially after doing a full time job. The thing is, I’m not actually doing nothing on those 3 to 4 nights, what I’m actually doing is life and life actually wears me out too. For me and it may be monotonous for other people, I need to keep some kind of structure in the week to save wearing myself out for what is an 8 hour shift at my daytime job. To take something else into the mix on an evening really does take it out of me. This isn’t to say that I don’t do other things, such as Tai Chi, but I have found that pushing myself to do things such as my Tai Chi, that this has been beneficial for me and worth pushing through the anxiety and the angst that I go through every week prior to class, even though I have been doing it for a number of months now.
When I have organised to meet somebody I generally add it into my calendar half an hour to an hour earlier than when I should be there. This generally then ensures that I will actually be on time. For those that know me well I will generally turn up any time between 10 minutes to half an hour later than what has been arranged. This is absolutely nothing to do with being disorganised. What it is is time blindness. I actually thought this was not a thing until I heard so many of the Neurodivergent collective talking about it and giving examples as to what time blindness actually looks like. Time blindness, for instance, is when you have an appointment that day and you decide to do something else before you go to that appointment. And what you generally don’t do, is you don’t actually manage to get the time projection correct for the extra thing that you are adding into your day. For instance, and I don’t know if this could be due to dopamine chasing, but what I do is where I have what I call a ‘little thing’ to get out of the way, such as say, doing some sewing. I will generally underestimate the time it takes to do whatever it is that I need to get finished, I then stress myself out and will turn up at whatever appointment that I have actually got booked late. Or alternatively make a right hash of whatever the hell it is that I’m actually trying to get done in the interim.
You wouldn’t believe the amount of unfinished sewing projects that I have. And don’t get me started on the DIY for that matter, half-finished as it is throughout the house! As I have become more aware of time blindness I have actually started to challenge my thought processes and make sure that I don’t actually start something that could go quite wrong or have unknown factors to it and it takes longer than what I believe it will. The only thing is, cramming stuff in I also find that I start to focus better when I put myself under the pressure and stress of a tight deadline. Again possible dopamine chasing that I have been unaware of until fairly recently as well.
The other similar thing to time blindness is over commitment and maybe not having an appreciation of the amount of energy or spoons a particular activity will take from me. For instance currently my parent is being cared for by health services due to various health issues. I took some time out for a particular appointment that really should have only been an hour the other week. There were additional unknown factors that happened that day that even though I had made another appointment three hours down the line from this particular one it actually did take longer with my parent due to additional phone calls that I needed to make whilst I was there. Luckily I was only about two minutes late for the other appointment that I had made which was to do with a memorial for a departed parent so it was quite important that I was actually there! A few years ago myself and my partner of the time arranged a road trip. He did not drive and therefore the road trip was going to be navigated by myself. What I didn’t take into consideration is the amount of changing scenery and different driving conditions in each area as I drove up the UK which obviously grabbed my attention, especially loving landscapes I could get a photo of but slowly depleting my spoon levels. When we did stop over it was only for 1 or 2 nights. This meant that I really did not have time for proper recovery and also meant that I ended the holiday a lot more tired than what I should have been, which you don’t expect from a holiday as it is meant to be refreshing. These days I make sure that I am aware of the time and the distance that I will be needing to navigate through either by myself or with another and ensure that I give myself enough of a break in between to actually enjoy the time away that I am having. There is also the oddity having been a driver for many years that being a passenger hasn’t turned out the best for me and that whoever the poor soul is that’s driving will probably need to either do a couple of stops because I will throw a whitey or I won’t be talking to them because I’ll have fallen asleep because that’s the only way I can cope with the motion sickness of not driving myself. My parents always took a sick bucket for me!
Overcommitment as well for me is when I come up with an idea, I decide that I am going to do this particular thing, activity, interest, and I tell all of my friends about it, as many people as I come into contact with. And then I don’t do it. Ever. I have put myself off doing so many fabulous things by doing this, I have so many things in my ideas book about what I’m going to do and where I’m going to take things, that it is such a shame for me to self- sabotage in the way that I do. Again another thing I have learned over the years is maybe just to keep my mouth shut as this seems the best way for me to actually get anything done. This kind of approach to life can also have as I have mentioned quite the detrimental effect on my finances. The amount of courses and things that I have signed up to and paid for that I have not then continued with or followed through on to actually complete them is just ridiculous. And I’m still unsure as to whether that’s something I have totally got a handle on quite yet having bought this year a sound engineering course from the BBC that I haven’t even started yet. Although then again I am probably being quite hard on myself as there have been a lot of things vying for my time so far this year.
I am soon to start my ADHD coaching. I do hope that there will be some modalities or methods that I could use that would actually help me with my time blindness and overcommitment, although the good thing about being aware of it is maybe I will start to change things in the very near future anyway. And thank goodness for calendars and lists on smartphones, because I rely on them quite bloody heavily…as long as I remember to actually put the items on there!