Living alone with ADHD is a roller coaster. I hate roller coasters.
I am a rock climbing and all-out adventure lover, the thought of driving my camper van to an unknown location and seeing where the world will take me in heaven. Living alone with ADHD feels like doing this every day with everything I do that gets old quickly.
I am a 24-year-old coach and creator who moved out of his parent's house a year ago in the middle of a pandemic and have been riding a roller coaster ever since.
Where it started
As with everyone in the world right now, the pandemic has changed how I live my life. My parents are older, and my mother is particularly vulnerable, so I decided in September of 2020 to move away from my family home to break the connection between me working and potentially bring home COVID 19.
I did the maths and worked out I could afford to move out, get my one place, and keep my parents safe. So I did just that, I moved into the local village and jumped back into life.
All abroad
Over the next 6 months, I would meet an amazing person in my life, have Christmas dinner around a fire pit and fully started my video business. All amazing things, but my day to day became a never-ending painful adventure.
Let me walk you through it. I am not going to start in the morning but, in fact, the night before. At about 11 pm, my brain, for whatever reason, every night just wakes up and goes ham. Every little worry and mistake I have ever made jumps into my head and makes me want to get up and push myself forward. Sometimes I do get up and create something or come up with a new idea, but I normally aim to stay in bed because I know the next day will be hell without sleep.
So I wake up the next day after struggling to get to sleep about 9 am. Get up, have a coffee, and normally come across my first stumbling block.
I need to wash up because I put it off and have no bowl.
So I wash up.
Now I realise I have no milk because I forget to go shopping.
So I try toast.
Nope, I got no bread.
So sod it out I go for breakfast (which I know I can’t afford).
Wait, where are my car keys?
Looked everywhere…
Bangs head against the wall and decides to watch some Youtube, to try and calm down.
But I can’t find the TV remote.
OKAY, so not every part of that happens every day, but a lot of that happens at least 5 times a week (sometimes I remember to buy milk). But things like this happen all the time, and I am not even going to mention the distraction of social media.
Okay, so you are forgetful.
I am self-employed and for a good reason. It is not just the fact I lose my car keys 5 times a day. It's also the fact I lose time. I really struggle in any work environment that I have not created. I have found that I need to have a large amount of natural light, music playing out loud, snacks (all things I have been told are not suitable for a workplace) if I am going to have any chance of focusing.
Some days focusing does not seem to be an option for my brain, so I fail to do any admin or video production work and thus do not make any money. Which, in turn, enters my brain at 11 pm as a fail for the day. The only aspect that seems to beat this focus is when I go to coach Hockey, maybe because I have been doing that so long my brain is used to it.
There are highs to the coaster
I want to say that there are highs to all this. I have times where sometimes, up to 6 week periods where I can literally work every waking minute. After these times, I crash taking a long time to get my gears back in motion before sprinting again. I push myself massively forward, and I love it and feel like I am getting somewhere, but these times are never sustainable.,
It's just bloody hard work.
I will end this blog here because it's 12:45 am, and I need to sleep before tomorrow becomes a write-off. I will leave you with this.
Living alone with ADHD just makes everything so much harder.
I am currently trying to work out the best way to move forward with that knowledge in hand. If anyone has any tips, please do share.
