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Life from my perspectiv. The good, the bad, and the totally ridiculous.

I’ve been on this earth for 43 years, in those years I have been a daughter, a sister, a friend, a girlfriend, a mother, a lover, and much more. I have done amazing, beautiful, wonderful, magical things. I have also done hurtful, ugly, stupid, crazy things.

I think most of us have, I don’t believe my life’s journey has been particularly unique or tragic. I don’t consider myself in anyway to be an expert on life or really on anything. I do believe that each of us have a unique perspective on every day life. I believe that we all have something important and worthwhile to share. I believe that my past may be someone else’s present and maybe hearing my perspective could help someone who needs it. Maybe just finding out that they aren’t alone can help, or maybe a good laugh at my expense ( I’m good with that, laughing at myself has become a huge coping mechanism for me) can help. Perhaps just knowing someone else has been there and made it through would help someone. Whatever the case may be , my point is that I don’t believe you have to be a brilliant writer, a doctor, teacher, or even particularly educated to have something worth blogging about.

If you are looking for expert advice on how to be a successful single parent, this won’t be that blog, if you are looking for stories about my experiences being a single mother, that I can give you. Some will be funny, some sad, and hopefully some will be helpful. If nothing more hopefully they will be entertaining.

If you want to hear expert advice on struggling with mental illness again, not your blog, but if you want to hear a different perspective on MY PERSONAL struggles with ADHD, anxiety, and depression that you can find here.

My hope is that this will be a mostly light hearted, entertaining, and fun blog with maybe a few touching, hopeful, and helpful things thrown in.

My idea is to just share pieces of my life with those of you who are interested. The good, the not so good, and yes even the down right ridiculous.

I may write about an incident from my past and how I think it affected me and the person I am today.

I may write about current situations going on in my life and how I’m coping, or not coping with them.

I may talk about my love for books, or my frustrations with life or I may just share an issue I’ve been dealing with and offer my perspective on how my plan is working out.

I hope to entertain, offer a new point of view, and in a perfect world to help someone, even if it is only one person and all I manage to do is make someone laugh.

I hope this is the start of a new part of my life’s journey, good, bad,or totally ridiculous.

Until next time.

Can we talk about it?

Have you ever wanted to have a conversation with someone about something that you know will be a difficult conversation to have? Not like, the break up conversation or the birds and bees talk with the kids, but maybe politics with someone that you know has an opposing view, or religion with an atheist, or perhaps the most uncomfortable of all race issues with someone of a different race? Not a debate, not a conversation that is intended to sway another’s beliefs or position but just an honest, open conversation in the hopes that you might learn something or gain some insight into something you can’t or don’t understand?

I have. It’s so difficult to do though. It seems like we all feel the need to be right, that we can’t accept that people are always going to disagree about somethings, noone is willing to just have a two sided, open, and honest conversation anymore. Everything is black and white. Right or wrong. No compromise, no gray area.

Your either for or against. What if you aren’t either? What if you aren’t right or left but somewhere in the middle? What if you believe in God , consider yourself a Christian but don’t believe in organized religion? What if you think that our country needs to do a massive over haul on our criminal justice system, that racism is a systemic issue , and that our police forces need to be completely re trained, but you don’t hate all cops and don’t believe that ALL of them are evil and racist? What if you just want to try to understand something that you can’t possibly fully understand because you aren’t walking in that person’s shoes but maybe speaking to them about experiences they’ve had could at least give you a deeper understanding of how they feel.

I long to have conversations like these. Real , honest, meaningful conversations with people who don’t look, think, or feel exactly like me.

If you feel the same please follow my page and let’s talk about it. Just keep in mind that this is a family friendly site and that harassment of any kind will not be tolerated.

Comment on some issues you would like to discuss and maybe my next blog entry will get that conversation started.

Until next time…

My two track mind

As I mentioned in my first post, I have diagnosed ADHD and anxiety and while both of these conditions can make life difficult, today I want to focus on some of the more humorous aspects of having ADHD. I do want to preface this by saying that undiagnosed, and untreated neither ADHD or anxiety are humorous at all, but with treatment I’ve definitely learned to see the funnier side of my adhd diagnosis.

Recently, I was talking to my son’s father on the phone, my son was at his house and I could hear him talking in the back ground so I said ” Tell him hi for me. ” His dad suddenly said ” Look ,I don’t have a 2 track mind like you do. I can only listen to one of you at a time.”

He wasn’t being mean, I started laughing because he’s right. I often find myself talking to someone while emailing someone else or I’ll be listening to someone while writing a to do list, and they will be annoyed with me. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had someone accuse me of not listening to them only to have me recite, almost verbatim what they just said. For example, I can remember being a teen and having my parents ask me why I was not paying attention to the sermon at church that day. When I told them I had been they said you were doodling the entire time, so I told them exactly what the sermon had been about. I was never asked if I had been paying attention after that. Two track mind. Well , it’s a two track mind on meds, off meds it’s more like a 100 track mind and I can’t figure out which track to take so I just stay in the terminal.

Several years ago I woke up one morning to the sound of a rooster crowing, now I live in a fairly large city so this was not a sound I expected to wake up to. I get up, make coffee, and wait for the kids to get up. It is a weekend so no huge hurry. My oldest is up first so I ask her to take the dog out, not thinking about the fact that I had been woken up by a rooster, cause yeah ADHD. She grabs the leash and out they go. A few seconds later she runs in saying mom come quick , no dog with her so I assume the dog somehow yanked the leash and got loose. I run out only to see my German Shepherd running down the road leash trailing behind chasing a rooster. I give chase and before I know it we have a rooster running through the city streets chased by a dog who is being chased by a woman in her pajamas, who is being chased by two kids. I caught the dog, the rooster was not harmed. ( turns out it belonged to my neighbor and that’s a whole other story)

My point is that ADHD is kind of like this. One thought chasing another, chasing another, each thought is trying to achieve its goal but not all of those goals can be reached, at least not at the same time. My goal was to catch my dog before she killed a rooster or got hurt herself, my dog’s goal was to have chicken for breakfast, and the rooster’s goal was to not be eaten. Well 2 of those goals were achieved. I caught my dog and the rooster lived to see another day but my poor dog didn’t get that chicken she had worked so hard for. If she had, I would not have achieved my goal of catching her before the rooster was attacked and the rooster, well the rooster’s goal setting days would have been OVER.

ADHD is like that for me. I have all these ideas and goals in my mind and I know that they are achievable, but I have to pick the one or maybe 2 that can be done at the same time without sabatoging myself or getting so overwhelmed I end up shutting down and not accomplishing anything at all. My brain wants to do 2 things at once, well medicated it wants to do two things at once. Without medication my brain wants to go to the store, clean the house, do the laundry, work on my blog, do my 9 to 5 job, and spend time with my kids all at the same time. The problem is my body just hasn’t caught up with my brain yet. It needs rest, it needs quiet, and it only has 2 arms, 2 legs and 2 hands so yeah, that’s an issue.

I guess until science can find a way to help my body match the capabilities of my brain ADHD will remain a challenge for me and medication will remain a must have, but as soon as I figure out how to grow another set of arms, hands, and legs and how to solve that pesky need for sleep I’m definitely stopping those meds!

Until next time…