Today began with the now customary (but shortly lived) Monday morning trip to Starbucks and my medium latte. The walk, and coffee, give me time to think and catch up on RSS feeds and start writing this.
Curiously, I find that I don't actually think much when walking. Walking is supposed to be a great way to open the mind, to let it wander in a mental mirror of your feet. Mine kind of shuts down, absorbing the world around me, getting lost in forward motion. I didn't start thinking until I sat down with my coffee.
Maybe my mind is subconsciously processing as I walk but there isn't much conscious thought beyond "what's that bird?", "is the little black cat going to be there?", or "that's a pretty flower."
Perhaps it's just good to switch off for the time it takes to go from A to B.
A couple of conversations in the past few days have been enlightening.
I have written a few times about my three big triggers: boredom, frustration and impatience. It seems that the first is rapidly becoming the biggest. I've always had a very low boredom threshold but this has been getting worse.
Boredom is closely associated with ADHD and the more I explore this the more I see patterns of behaviour stretching out over my life. Recently, however, this seems to have gotten so much worse.
"I'm bored" can so frequently be uttered in place of "I feel depressed" and is so closely linked to mood. It can also mean "I don't have the mental wherewithal to deal with this right now."
My wife has noticed a pattern: my mood rises when I am sufficiently occupied with something I find enjoyable but drops, and drops drastically, when not and even before that activity has come to an end as I anticipate becoming bored.
I swing greatly from high to low, euphoria to depression, and find it increasingly difficult to regulate. It is becoming almost impossible to be okay with just OK.
It also appears I have some degree of ARFID:
Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID). This disorder describes the selection and rejection of foods based on their sensory characteristics
I have joked about being a "supertaster" but I don't quite fit the profile. I do, however, exhibit signs of ARFID.
There have always been certain foods I can't tolerate, some fairly innocuous like cucumber. Everyone says it just tastes like water but, to me, it has a very strong, distinct flavour which I can't stand. Other foods have a combination of taste and texture that I can't abide — mushrooms for example.
I also can't abide strawberries — they make me gag and want to vomit. I have always liked strawberry flavoured sweets because, in my opinion, they don't taste like strawberries.
My wife has been doing some dehydrating over the past few days (orange, lemon and lime slices, mushrooms, amongst others) including sliced strawberries. For some reason I decided to try a piece expecting the usual revulsion. Instead, I liked it. It tasted like a strawberry chewy sweet. I even had some sprinkled on my cereal this morning.
While the taste was altered by dehydration I think it's the texture of fresh strawberries, like a number of other things, that really sets me off.
# Stepping out of my comfort zone (and I'm so glad I did) I had a great chat with Guy of Gyubeats. We discussed the trials and tribulations of producing music and what would make a good course to help those struggling.
I've been watching his YouTube channel for a while (especially his track recreation videos) and have exchanged emails, but it was really good to get together for an hour and chat — with just a little bit of structure. 😆
