[Laghail]

I'm late to the hatter party, but I come with artz!! This is Ravensdagger's Broccoli, an Iseki'd lady with a Mad Hatter class. Not sure what your preferred flavor of nerd is these days, but she seemed tangentially relevant to you.

 

[Everstorm]

I hear you on avoidance brain lately, and spring weather is a tempting distraction.  Can you make a plan to fit some outside time with your other goals?  Handstands in the park?

[Elastigirl]

On 4/10/2024 at 3:15 AM, Mad Hatter said:

Does anyone know if allergies can cause like a next day hangover feel? I feel like garbage today and the only thing that happened yesterday was that I spent a lot of time outside. Otherwise I slept well (I think), didn't overexert myself at the gym etc... It's happened a few times recently. But the only otherwise allergy-like symptoms I get is sneezing a few times and mildly itchy eyes. Had I been freediving I'd say my sinuses are a bit stuffy too, but it's really nothing.

Definitely.  I hope you feel better now.

[Mad Hatter]

On 4/15/2024 at 5:47 PM, Harriet said:

Sorry about the scatter mind. I hate being in that state. I hope the scatterfog lifts and you get to focus on some satisfying stuff. Don't be ashamed, it drains your mental energy. 

It really does. It's locked away for now in the totally unhealthy mental prison.

 

On 4/15/2024 at 6:53 PM, Laghail said:

I'm late to the hatter party, but I come with artz!! This is Ravensdagger's Broccoli, an Iseki'd lady with a Mad Hatter class. Not sure what your preferred flavor of nerd is these days, but she seemed tangentially relevant to you.

 

Ohai! Not familiar with Broccoli but cute art is always welcome! 😊

 

On 4/16/2024 at 12:35 AM, Everstorm said:

I hear you on avoidance brain lately, and spring weather is a tempting distraction.  Can you make a plan to fit some outside time with your other goals?  Handstands in the park?

Honestly I have so much time I can easily do all of it. I just don't for... reasons. 

 

On 4/16/2024 at 4:30 AM, Elastigirl said:

Definitely.  I hope you feel better now.

I do, thanks! 🙂

[Mad Hatter]

Feeling much better now! I decided that the shame spirals are irrelevant and useless information whether true or not. I think weekends are a bit tough because when my grandma doesn't have any activities for three days she gets angsty and bored and takes it out on me. I have a low tolerance for rudeness and get irritated and snappy with the constant interruptions and then it all spirals and I feel like a terrible human.

 

But on Monday I solved one of the problems at least. I cleared out some drawers for my stuff and now there's less clutter, which is helpful for both of us. Plus I got to take out my anger on throwing away my grandma's stuff. I'll admit the motivation is petty and selfish, but it also needs to be done. She doesn't need TV magazines from twenty years back. 

 

Yesterday I finally got started on the website, which felt nice and productive and really not worth the procrastination (why is it always like this?).

 

Then I went to the gym where I did a little flow and some handstand training. Mostly conditioning because for some reason I'm enjoying it right now? Weird. 😛 Afterwards I hung out a coffee shop and read some of my handstand factory manuals which I got yonks ago and now I'm like hmmmm maybe I should lean in to handstands again since currently I seem to like it. Or would programming just ruin it? Who knows!

 

I just looked at the challenge todo list and umm there's a lot of stuff to do in 10 days! 😬 Better get cracking!

[Mistr]

Good to hear that you are feeling better.

 

It is such a good feeling to get rid of old junk. My grandma had a drawer full of sugar packets from places she travelled. Apparently it used to be a thing to have local images on sugar packets, at least in Europe. I understand wanting small souvenirs, but sugar packets? Those were an easy decision to get rid of.

 

Getting outside and away from your grandma sounds like a good option for both your physical and mental health. If you feel the need to add another reason, could you walk to run errands?

[Mad Hatter]

9 hours ago, Mistr said:

Good to hear that you are feeling better.

 

It is such a good feeling to get rid of old junk. My grandma had a drawer full of sugar packets from places she travelled. Apparently it used to be a thing to have local images on sugar packets, at least in Europe. I understand wanting small souvenirs, but sugar packets? Those were an easy decision to get rid of.

 

Getting outside and away from your grandma sounds like a good option for both your physical and mental health. If you feel the need to add another reason, could you walk to run errands?

LOL sugar packets. 

 

I can use whatever excuse - she thinks I'm a terrible child who goes to discos all the time anyway. 🤣 Never mind it's 10 am on a Tuesday.

[Mad Hatter]

Yesterday I tackled the basement to make room for my bike. And then I felt sick from breathing in all the dust and took a rest, but the "rest" ended up taking the rest of the day. Womp womp. I started a book and played "Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion".

 

Today

 

- Gym

- More basement?

- Find the electronics recycling 

- Website

- Hopefully something else from the list

[sylph]

4 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

"Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion".

I have questions.

[Mistr]

Can you set up a fan to air out the basement (and let it run while you are elsewhere)?

 

Cleaning a basement is bad enough without having to deal with dust and the smell of musty things.

[Mad Hatter]

On 4/18/2024 at 2:10 PM, sylph said:

I have questions.

Turnip Boy answers to no one.

 

 

On 4/18/2024 at 5:41 PM, Mistr said:

Can you set up a fan to air out the basement (and let it run while you are elsewhere)?

 

Cleaning a basement is bad enough without having to deal with dust and the smell of musty things.

Good idea, but I don't think there's enough airflow. Also I don't have a fan.  The sensible thing would be to wear a mask but when I'm in cleaning mode it turns into a full-blown workout and I don't want to deal with the breathing and it getting in the way. I'll just suffer and try and keep the sessions short.

[Mad Hatter]

On 4/18/2024 at 9:17 AM, Mad Hatter said:

- Gym - Yep handstands. Good session. I'm surprised at how quickly my skill has returned. In only a few full sessions my skill is close to my previous level! My hold times are not even close but I can balance and do some shape changes and my kick up consistency is similar to before. The limiting factor seems to be strength endurance.

- More basement? - Nope, in retrospect gym + basement is a bit much.

- Find the electronics recycling - Nope, I didn't walk in that direction

- Website - Yes. I went to a new coffeeshop for some quiet. The coffee was sadly garbage but it's a nice place to work.

- Hopefully something else from the list - I read a bit. At this rate I won't finish even one book, but I'm getting out of my reading slump which is great.

 

Yesterday I went to my other grandma and her friend was there and OMG she can talk. I had to listen to non-stop jabbering for two hours and it wrecked me. Uggh. Afterwards I rested "with just one puzzle" and ruined the rest of the day. How many times will it take to learn this lesson? 

 

 

To make it worse my grandma kept talking and singing to herself aaaalll frickin' day, driving me up the wall. I don't really want to blast my headphones all day long but seems like it's the only option. It's just impossibly hard to focus and start anything otherwise. All I'm doing is waiting for her to finally go to bed, but by that point I've run out of brain juice myself. Leaving the house helps too but I don't always feel like it and there's a time limit on how long I can sit like a normal person anyway.

 

Today's plan? 

 

- Hopefully finish my bike, if above mentioned grandma's friend has a large enough spanner.

- Gym. I'm still a bit sore and don't feel like it, but getting out of the house is necessary even if it's gross and raining.

- Get back on art train. I miss it.

- Order pole heels

[Snarkyfishguts]

46 minutes ago, Mad Hatter said:

To make it worse my grandma kept talking and singing to herself aaaalll frickin' day, driving me up the wall. I don't really want to blast my headphones all day long but seems like it's the only option

ME TOO! Even if it's a really pleasant time, my ears will literally hurt if I listen to people talking for long periods of time. Most of the time when I have my ear buds in, I'm not listening to anything, it's just muffling out the noise. I live with a blind person so the talking is constant. If someone isn't talking or describing something, then music is playing or podcasts/radioshows/audiobooks/etc. my ears literally hurt.  I have no solutions, I just wanted to say "omg, me too, it's so nice not to be alone!"

[Mad Hatter]

21 hours ago, Snarkyfishguts said:

ME TOO! Even if it's a really pleasant time, my ears will literally hurt if I listen to people talking for long periods of time. Most of the time when I have my ear buds in, I'm not listening to anything, it's just muffling out the noise. I live with a blind person so the talking is constant. If someone isn't talking or describing something, then music is playing or podcasts/radioshows/audiobooks/etc. my ears literally hurt.  I have no solutions, I just wanted to say "omg, me too, it's so nice not to be alone!"

❤️ Sounds brutal! I sometimes do the same with noise cancelling headphones but if it's at night I have to keep track of her so she doesn't leave the house. And they're not the best for voices anyway. The worst for me though is that my grandma has false teeth and the sounds she makes with them make me gag, it's so gross. 🤮

[Mad Hatter]

Yesterday:

 

Still no luck with the bike, nobody has a large enough spanner! Tomorrow I'll try the bike shop down the road. 

 

Then handstand training. My balance was absolute trash so I quickly switched to conditioning work. Not unexpected after a decent last session. But the upper back buuuurn, holy that was unexpected! 

 

The rest of the day was a bust, I don't really know what happened.

[Snarkyfishguts]

4 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

❤️ Sounds brutal! I sometimes do the same with noise cancelling headphones but if it's at night I have to keep track of her so she doesn't leave the house. And they're not the best for voices anyway. The worst for me though is that my grandma has false teeth and the sounds she makes with them make me gag, it's so gross. 🤮

My dad has dentures.  His break a lot because he chews really hard. He says he isn’t but I can hear him gnashing on applesauce 😭. I agree the sounds are gross.  
 

I’m sorry your grandma is a wanderer, that’s stressful af.  
 

Your hand stand training is super impressive!! 🙌

[Scaly Freak]

16 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

And they're not the best for voices anyway.

 

Noise canceling headphones plus this, set to Speech Blocker, was very effective for blocking out human voices and conversations when I worked in an office. My  co-workers learned to send me an IM saying "I'm coming to your desk" before coming over, as I often didn't hear them talking while standing next to me.  

[Elastigirl]

I had no idea what you were talking about, "Turnip Boy commits Taxs Evasion" so I had to look it up! That looks hysterical. A  great destressing game.

[Mad Hatter]

20 hours ago, Snarkyfishguts said:

My dad has dentures.  His break a lot because he chews really hard. He says he isn’t but I can hear him gnashing on applesauce 😭. I agree the sounds are gross.  
 

I’m sorry your grandma is a wanderer, that’s stressful af.  
 

Your hand stand training is super impressive!! 🙌

Oh no that's awful!

 

Luckily she's only done it twice so far, as far as I'm aware. But one time I had to go with her because it was in the middle of the night and freezing temps and that's enough to not trust her at night!

 

Thanks! 😊

 

8 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

Noise canceling headphones plus this, set to Speech Blocker, was very effective for blocking out human voices and conversations when I worked in an office. My  co-workers learned to send me an IM saying "I'm coming to your desk" before coming over, as I often didn't hear them talking while standing next to me.  

Thank you!! I was *just* thinking about that website but couldn't remember what it's called!

 

That's really polite of your coworkers, mine would opt for spooking me instead. Or shoot me. Or my boss would sneak up behind my monitor and slooowly creep up on me.  

 

7 hours ago, Elastigirl said:

I had no idea what you were talking about, "Turnip Boy commits Taxs Evasion" so I had to look it up! That looks hysterical. A  great destressing game.

Great little game, but only worth it on sale. It's very short and has no replay value. 

[Mad Hatter]

Yesterday I was another write off day. I procrastinated everything. And then I got frustrated. And I procrastinated some more by thinking about productivity. Classic. 

 

But it gave me some ideas. A while back I was listening to a podcast with Steven Pressfield who wrote the War of Art and his solution to fighting the Resistance was to become a Professional. So I asked myself how could I possibly have been good at my job despite my chaos, what tools did I use, what enabled my productivity. It might not have been exactly conventional, but it was very flexible and worked for me.

 

- I had a single to do list, which I constantly reprioritized. 

- I'd put down any random interruptions, thoughts, ideas and questions on the to do list as they came up. The list was equal part brain dump as to do.

- I broke down tasks in as small steps as needed. For tasks I procrastinated a lot I kept breaking down the steps until I found a tolerable entry point.

- I never planned for how long something would take, or exactly when I'd do it, it was all based on priority. (Admittedly not always popular with management)

- I selected tasks based on mood, as long as it was near the top of the priority list. If I was feeling tired or procrastinatey I'd choose some low hanging fruit, or something I could do without thinking until I got into the groove.

- I left breadcrumbs before leaving work for the day, both in the code and in my todos so I wouldn't forget what I was doing and so it'd make starting easier the next day.

- Sometimes I'd get straight to productive work, sometimes it took me some time to get into it, and some days I'd just write off and hang out in the kitchen and bake cookies. But this was never a problem since on average I got a lot of shit done.

- My slacking time was still somewhat work focused though. Like I might dick around a lot, but I'd still reply to messages and actively procrastinate work tasks. I was never able to completely do something else during work hours, so eventually I'd get bored or want to get at least something done before the day ended.

- I never expected the to do list to end.

- I never expected to do things "perfectly" because it's fundamentally not how you work in tech.

- If my colleagues annoyed I'd change room, if I couldn't focus in my flat I'd go to a coffee shop. 

 

Things I didn't use, that incidentally have never worked in my private life: 

 

- Schedules, time blocking, complicated systems with a lot of documents/tags etc, step by step chronological plans, time trackers, todos determined in advance...

 

Differences compared to work:

 

- There's no clear priority on my personal life, everything I do is a side quest. At work I prioritized based on urgency, who I wanted to help most, business needs... And when I didn't know or had very conflicting prioritized I forced someone else to make the call. 

- There's nothing at stake. I mean there is, it's my life, but I don't feel it. Even if there's deadlines or financial incentives I don't feel it.

- I don't have much personal accountability. Nobody relies on my work. Also not entirely true, but again I don't feel it. 

- At work the tasks are within my competence. And on the few occasions I couldn't solve something I didn't take is a personal failure, but asked one of the very smart and knowledgeable people I worked with and we'd solve it together.

-  There's fewer emotional tangles to deal with at work.

 

My idea based on all this is to set aside whole days to just one thing and treat it like work. Now a big problem is that it takes me forever to get started, and if something happens while I'm trying to get started I get distracted by things or people and then I have to restart the umm getting started process. But maybe if a whole day would be an art day I could start by the equivalent of low effort reading emails, say watching an art video or render an already started painting. And just immerse myself as much as possible. Still need to do a bit of thinking about how to prioritize random projects and things like that, but I think this has potential to work?

 

[WhiteGhost]

On 4/20/2024 at 4:39 PM, Mad Hatter said:

OMG she can talk. I had to listen to non-stop jabbering for two hours and it wrecked me.

Those kinds of marathon jabber sessions wreck me too.  

 

On 4/21/2024 at 3:58 PM, Mad Hatter said:

nobody has a large enough spanner!

I would lend you mine if you want to come over and pick it up.  I guarantee I have one big enough

[Scaly Freak]

17 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

That's really polite of your coworkers, mine would opt for spooking me instead. Or shoot me. Or my boss would sneak up behind my monitor and slooowly creep up on me.  

 

The third of fourth time someone approached me unnoticed and tapped me on the shoulder, I accidentally shoved my chair backwards, hard, from being startled. Pure coincidence. Absolutely unintentional. I was startled and embarrassed at how close I came to cause someone injury.

 

That's how the IM habit got started.

 

😇

[Mistr]

14 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

The third of fourth time someone approached me unnoticed and tapped me on the shoulder, I accidentally shoved my chair backwards, hard, from being startled. Pure coincidence. Absolutely unintentional. I was startled and embarrassed at how close I came to cause someone injury.

 

Dumbledore once came to visit me at work and snuck up behind me while I was concentrating on something. My desk was in stop where people had to walk behind me a lot, so I was used to ignoring them. Dumbledore leaned over me and said "Boo". I was so startled that I levitated from my chair and hit him in the nose with the top of my head. He tried to look hurt, but he was laughing too hard. 😂

 

Your situation sounds frustrating on several levels.

 

Would it help to make a list of things that would make your life better? This could work much like your to-do list from work. Some things would be simple, like buying voice-cancelling headphones. Others would be more  complex, like doing art or getting your bike fixed. Having a list would let you have some small (or bigger) wins every day.

[TimovieMan]

On 4/22/2024 at 2:29 AM, Scaly Freak said:

 

Noise canceling headphones plus this, set to Speech Blocker, was very effective for blocking out human voices and conversations when I worked in an office.

Doesn't seem viable at my office. I'd get startled whenever someone I didn't hear is suddenly standing next to me...

 

 

 

Although that already happens when I'm listening to music that's too loud... 😁

 

Good to hear I'm not alone in this. 😇