I feel some sort of deep resonance with so much you write about the ways you are now doing or being your creative that are helpful to you. I am not ADHD, yet still much of your sharing strikes me as pertinent to myself somehow - can't articulate it much if at all yet, but I feel stimulated positively in my own challenges to somehow be able to include my varied areas of creative - writing my memoirs, singing, visual art in terms of collage and some sort of impressionistic pastel drawing, poetry, photography - and to do so with a very small space in a HUD apt. where currently I am taken up with reorganizing all my various creative supplies, sorting and recycling, on a timeline of being inspected to be up to HUD and apt. standards of safety and health which are not at all understanding of creative "clutter" which they seem to be obsessively concerned with! Yet I must comply in order to stay here. All of this stimulates my CPTSD ongoing reactions, and while I see my excellent therapist weekly, which keeps me steadier and healing and growing, yet this current challenge really is testing my limits! So onward I go as best I can, doing what I can do on any given day and that needs to be enough even without much opportunity for soul-nurturing creative once I have gone walking and then engaged with my apt. "project" - so I must also realize what are my bite-size ways of working in a crowded too-small living environment while holding and nurturing my vision of what I intend to create of my living space, ah-yes, that is what I am creating right now and it is very Okay and satisfying, ultimately. Thank you always for what you share with us of your ever-enriching journeys of creativity, healing and growth :-)
thanks for sharing this, Beth, and hoping the inspection goes well . . . I almost had another part of this post where I shared about how having a very small room for a studio (roughly 8 x 12 feet) has been its own constraint and influence on how my attention works. The flow of the work often involves transitioning the room itself into different modes and moving that creative "clutter" around, which sometimes feels like part of the good dance with the work and sometimes feels overwhelming! all that to say, I hear you!
A lot to love in here - I particularly resonated with your point about moving toward, "iterating and experimenting instead of planning and goal-hopping." Thanks for sharing!
I loved your post, the trying to just let the ADHD thing be something that is, feels very helpful. I relate! The two-weeks idea is also good. Trying to manifest my own writing projects but I often have so many ideas that it feels too much to think too far ahead. Two weeks is good! Sam x
If you give the two-week thing a try, I'd love to hear how it goes for you . . . always curious about how time feels to other writers with ADHD, and how to flow with time instead of over-structuring it
I loved reading about how you organize things and get stuff done. My problem is getting stuff done. My art is sewing, mostly clothes for myself. I'm still trying after all these years to make a shirt that fits me and looks good and doesn't look "homemade". After I retired from my dental hygiene career, I said I was going to do that. Well, I'm still working on it. I love the colors and the feel of the different fabrics and my thread drawers look like rainbows, sort of. I did alterations for people after I retired. Sort of got into that accidentally. I was in a women's clothing store one day and someone that I knew was complaining to the owner that she had taken a bunch of pants to someone who was doing alterations 6 months ago and they still weren't done. So I spoke up, I could do that. Would you really, she asked me. I said Sure. It had been a long time since I had sewn much of anything and there I was jumping in with both feet. She brought me her pants, I hemmed them and got them back to her within a week. She was so impressed! Made me happy. She spread the word and soon other people were calling me. Then my aunt, who was doing alterations here in town, moved to Alaska with her husband after he retired and gave her customers my name and phone number. Then I was really busy. It was a good learning experience, or re-learning experience. I was busy until not too long before Covid. It had dwindled off, since many of the ladies were older and passed away.
Funny story: When I turned 65, my aunt called and asked if I was still sewing. I said I was. She said "Well, you have to stop!" I asked why and she said "You're too old!" 20 years later people are still calling once in a while. I'm happy they do. However, I'm not making much progress on my "perfect shirt".
well I might be a bit of a luddite, but in a world that's only getting more the same and more run by algorithms, the appearance of an obviously homemade shirt feels a bit like magic to me . . . we need our art wherever we can get it these days. Even better if we can wear it. <3 thanks for sharing this, Virginia!
1. The 11x17 paper thing is SO TRUE, and I felt a weird beautiful kinship when you named it, as if you'd peeked in my diary (but I wasn't mad!).
2. Speaking of--one of my own biggest ADHD revelations has been that there is no such thing as the right long-term planner for me. I've got a monthly one, a daily one, a weekly one; lately I'm experimenting with a digital one (Lunatask). Barring that last one *to a degree* (which serves more as a place to make sure everything is stored), I can't make any of them stick-long term, can't seem to formalize any kind of consistent scheduling structure.
But you know what works really freaking well for me?!? A large blank sheet of paper that I pull out as needed and make a little web-list of where I'm at with things right now. I use that sheet of paper and then recycle it when I'm done. I don't go back and consult them; at least 60% of their use is *in the making of them,* which orients me to my immediate time and space (internal + external). I long for something more permanent and formal (#autism), but it's just what works! I just spontaneously need these little process checkpoints.
I feel some sort of deep resonance with so much you write about the ways you are now doing or being your creative that are helpful to you. I am not ADHD, yet still much of your sharing strikes me as pertinent to myself somehow - can't articulate it much if at all yet, but I feel stimulated positively in my own challenges to somehow be able to include my varied areas of creative - writing my memoirs, singing, visual art in terms of collage and some sort of impressionistic pastel drawing, poetry, photography - and to do so with a very small space in a HUD apt. where currently I am taken up with reorganizing all my various creative supplies, sorting and recycling, on a timeline of being inspected to be up to HUD and apt. standards of safety and health which are not at all understanding of creative "clutter" which they seem to be obsessively concerned with! Yet I must comply in order to stay here. All of this stimulates my CPTSD ongoing reactions, and while I see my excellent therapist weekly, which keeps me steadier and healing and growing, yet this current challenge really is testing my limits! So onward I go as best I can, doing what I can do on any given day and that needs to be enough even without much opportunity for soul-nurturing creative once I have gone walking and then engaged with my apt. "project" - so I must also realize what are my bite-size ways of working in a crowded too-small living environment while holding and nurturing my vision of what I intend to create of my living space, ah-yes, that is what I am creating right now and it is very Okay and satisfying, ultimately. Thank you always for what you share with us of your ever-enriching journeys of creativity, healing and growth :-)
thanks for sharing this, Beth, and hoping the inspection goes well . . . I almost had another part of this post where I shared about how having a very small room for a studio (roughly 8 x 12 feet) has been its own constraint and influence on how my attention works. The flow of the work often involves transitioning the room itself into different modes and moving that creative "clutter" around, which sometimes feels like part of the good dance with the work and sometimes feels overwhelming! all that to say, I hear you!
A lot to love in here - I particularly resonated with your point about moving toward, "iterating and experimenting instead of planning and goal-hopping." Thanks for sharing!
I loved your post, the trying to just let the ADHD thing be something that is, feels very helpful. I relate! The two-weeks idea is also good. Trying to manifest my own writing projects but I often have so many ideas that it feels too much to think too far ahead. Two weeks is good! Sam x
If you give the two-week thing a try, I'd love to hear how it goes for you . . . always curious about how time feels to other writers with ADHD, and how to flow with time instead of over-structuring it
I loved reading about how you organize things and get stuff done. My problem is getting stuff done. My art is sewing, mostly clothes for myself. I'm still trying after all these years to make a shirt that fits me and looks good and doesn't look "homemade". After I retired from my dental hygiene career, I said I was going to do that. Well, I'm still working on it. I love the colors and the feel of the different fabrics and my thread drawers look like rainbows, sort of. I did alterations for people after I retired. Sort of got into that accidentally. I was in a women's clothing store one day and someone that I knew was complaining to the owner that she had taken a bunch of pants to someone who was doing alterations 6 months ago and they still weren't done. So I spoke up, I could do that. Would you really, she asked me. I said Sure. It had been a long time since I had sewn much of anything and there I was jumping in with both feet. She brought me her pants, I hemmed them and got them back to her within a week. She was so impressed! Made me happy. She spread the word and soon other people were calling me. Then my aunt, who was doing alterations here in town, moved to Alaska with her husband after he retired and gave her customers my name and phone number. Then I was really busy. It was a good learning experience, or re-learning experience. I was busy until not too long before Covid. It had dwindled off, since many of the ladies were older and passed away.
Funny story: When I turned 65, my aunt called and asked if I was still sewing. I said I was. She said "Well, you have to stop!" I asked why and she said "You're too old!" 20 years later people are still calling once in a while. I'm happy they do. However, I'm not making much progress on my "perfect shirt".
well I might be a bit of a luddite, but in a world that's only getting more the same and more run by algorithms, the appearance of an obviously homemade shirt feels a bit like magic to me . . . we need our art wherever we can get it these days. Even better if we can wear it. <3 thanks for sharing this, Virginia!
Thanks so much! One of these days ...... The Shirt will get done. Maybe. 😂
I'm also ADHD and my organization skills are 0! That's another thing I'm kind of working on but not making much progress. Oh well ...
1. The 11x17 paper thing is SO TRUE, and I felt a weird beautiful kinship when you named it, as if you'd peeked in my diary (but I wasn't mad!).
2. Speaking of--one of my own biggest ADHD revelations has been that there is no such thing as the right long-term planner for me. I've got a monthly one, a daily one, a weekly one; lately I'm experimenting with a digital one (Lunatask). Barring that last one *to a degree* (which serves more as a place to make sure everything is stored), I can't make any of them stick-long term, can't seem to formalize any kind of consistent scheduling structure.
But you know what works really freaking well for me?!? A large blank sheet of paper that I pull out as needed and make a little web-list of where I'm at with things right now. I use that sheet of paper and then recycle it when I'm done. I don't go back and consult them; at least 60% of their use is *in the making of them,* which orients me to my immediate time and space (internal + external). I long for something more permanent and formal (#autism), but it's just what works! I just spontaneously need these little process checkpoints.