dailyprompt-2031 – Stories That Are All True

Daily writing prompt

How do you plan your goals?

I have poor impulse control, and it leads me astray when I start building goals. Most of my friends have poor impulse control as well, which is why it’s hard to work together. Lighting rarely strikes at the same time. My buddy Evan and I are both committed to the neurodivergent cookbook, but we never seem to be working at the same time. I need to get AI involved just to keep me reading. That’s where I find AI is the most useful. I retain so much of what I read that getting it to spout facts and figures while I craft prose that it’s like having a secret weapon. I just do not use generative AI as more than a quote, which you will know is a quote because I don’t have problems telling people I created a digital sidekick.

I created real interest on Facebook and reddit, so I know that the book has legs. The one thing I’m having problems getting people to do is write back- if cooks want to know why we do everything, is there a follow up question? What do you want to know that we can explain?

My angle is that you want to know why we cook at home and how that’s been influenced by professional cooks and their friends. Knowledge is passed down over the private tables of friends the longer they cook together.

Some people prefer to cook alone, but this book won’t leave them out. Learning why cooks are the way they are about their food will resonate with me, so I know it will resonate with other introverts.

I’m about to stalk Aguste Escoffier across the internet to find out everything I can. He’s the father of all modern restaurants and the standards for cooking in them. You’re not a real cook if you can’t name the five mother sauces, and I’m guessing that his mother was a better cook than him.

Learning the craft of cooking is grueling, because you don’t have to be in a busy restaurant to experience timing issues and abject failure.

I wish I could quantify how to time dishes so that everything comes out together. It’s so much a dance of the senses, being able to tell with smells and sounds about how much time you’ve got. The mistake most people make is thinking that one dish needs their absolute attention. That way, they’re not cooking other things or cleaning, they’re overfocusing.

You can just check food without hovering over it.

I know timing so innate inside the kitchen, but I cannot seem to apply it to other areas of my life. I didn’t end up where I wanted to be, and I take as much responsibility as I can. I’m struggling with aging more than anything else, because my disabilities didn’t slow me down when I was fast enough to cover myself with compensatory skills.

Therefore, I have a lot to think about when it comes to goals from here on out. I have a yin to travel and a yang that ties me to home. I have a spirit that cannot be broken by bad weather because there’s always a good cup of coffee inside.

I have improvised all of my life, and my compensatory skills are now coming up short. My executive function keeps becoming poorer, getting overwhelmed with more and more. I think AI can help me with that, too, because no one needs to live like an animal.

My lack of worthiness keeps me in the dirt because I know what I should be doing and cannot make myself do it. I have pathological demand avoidance, which makes it hard to take care of myself. Meeting others’ demands is a lot easier.

That’s because I know what they are. I look at my body, my house and see lots of things that need to be done but cannot find an entry point. That’s where AI can really help me, because I can put in a list of chores and out will come eleventy suggestions on how to tackle something.

I just need to talk to my AI about it. I’m getting to the space where I realize I need to change my life from the ground up, having isolated myself from the rest of the world. Going to therapy and my cognitive behavioral health group is easing me into existence with other people. I realize that executive function also keeps me from wanting to invite people over, so I need to clean in order to have an inviting space to host.

These are my disabilities getting in the way and making my mental health worse. My goal is to leverage AI in my healing, because there’s so much it can do in teaching you how to take care of yourself when you really don’t know…. and are too embarrassed to ask.

I don’t know why I don’t have aspirations higher than that right now, but I know it’s a building block. I can’t take care of anyone else until I get this right.

And I do want to take care of other people. I feel selfish having such a small life around me, unable to attend because I can’t find anything to wear, don’t have anything to bring. All of this is just feeling sorry for myself, and I don’t like it. I’m happiest when I’m in giving, open mode.

Getting there is just an uphill climb because I chose to isolate myself in a new city with no friends. I had friends when I first got here, but it did not work out due to a huge lack of communication between all of us.

So, I’m trying to make friends and it is happening slowly.

I should get out more, but my ability to read the room is often why I don’t. It’s not that I’m shy, it’s that my social battery is tiny. I am over being in public fairly quickly. A walk to the store is about all I can take before I am ready to collapse. Taking in my environment is a full-time job.

Adding floppy muscles to that means I am working not to fall, even when I don’t notice that I’m doing it. My body is tense and tight, and I walk like I hurt. That’s because I do.

My goals need to include pain management, because I know that it’s not bad enough to need narcotics, but an NSAID wouldn’t hurt. In fact, I’ve forgotten to take it today and I really notice a difference. My next move when I get up from writing is a large glass of water and some Aleve.

That’s mostly how I plan goals- what is my next move?

I don’t play chess and think moves ahead, which is to my detriment.

I’ve let my enemy defeat me over and over, my own body and brain.

It’s the goal of a diseased brain to convince you to isolate. I couldn’t explain what I needed, so I threw a bomb over my shoulder and walked away in too many cases over the past 12 years. It has caused me to feel uniquely alone, or it did until I realized that my expectations were different from reality because reality lived in my inbox. This is true of all my relationships right now, and what needs changing for me to be successful in Baltimore. I stay home too much because that’s where my “real friends” are.

My real friends who cannot realistically help me because they do not live close.

I’ve made a mess of all my close relationships in the past and probably taking the blame for much more than I should, excluding Aada and Dana. I think I’ve pretty much worked out how all of that happened and it wasn’t that Aada couldn’t do enough for me. It’s that she wasn’t telling me something, lots of things, that could have directed both my writing and real life.

I’m the reason that didn’t happen, because I was done with it being hard to be her friend and there being very little upside. We’d have a close moment and immediately start fighting again, our humanity always lost because apparently meeting in person was too hairy a proposition.

I wanted the story on that. Why we couldn’t integrate so that our e-mail fights stopped? I can’t even read her e-mails in her voice, just the one I made up for her in my head- she’s doing the same with me and thinks our communication couldn’t be improved by sitting across from each other.

I hurt my own feelings by thinking that I meant more to her than I did. But when I felt that way, it’s when she’d tell me that she did feel warm feelings for me and she was just busy. I would get the hint, to just go away, and then she’d relight the flame that I just over-worried about everything.

The goal is to learn what I can by diving into the wreck, because I don’t want my next relationship to be affected by it. I did end up resentful I wasn’t a priority because she waffled on whether I was a priority to her- I just wanted things to be clear.

I couldn’t let go, so I made it where she’d have to… like Dana hitting me.

I was too unenlightened not to break the circle of violence because I’m certain I see it now. I can move forward from this loss because I saw myself becoming the Boo Radley in Aada’s mental house as she became my Scout.

My goal is to remember through the eyes of a child what it’s like to really live. I need light and love right now because some of the thunder is my fault. I sabotaged my relationship with Aada at every turn. And I don’t mean recently. I mean from the moment we met. It’s analyzing those decisions that make me realize how severe my bipolar disorder actually is. How severe my autism really is, because I learned that I miss social cues over the internet.

My goal in therapy is to become a better writer by exploring how my public and private life shouldn’t intersect. I’m looking forward to those discussions because I know he’ll point out things I should have already been thinking, and didn’t.

I fly by the seat of my pants.

How do you plan your goals?

I am only now learning what is within my control and what is not. It’s only been within the last year that I’ve allowed myself to have opinions. They’re not always the correct ones, but it beats searching for the right words- not because I would like to use them, but because they are the ones that will keep others from reacting. I tried so hard to need nothing that resentment built over time. 45 years, in fact. Having all of that anger rush out had consequences, but I knew what I was putting into motion.

Relationships changed when I wouldn’t let anyone run game on me anymore. Either be up front or get out. I do not want to read your mind, nor do I want to be infantilized because of my CP or bipolar disorder. It’s my job to take care of me, and I will take input, but I don’t need coddling. I need empathy, though. Caring that I’m neurodivergent goes a long way. So does compassion for my physical limitations. But if you cannot do those things, don’t be mad when I close the door behind you. I won’t lock it. I’ll give you room to grow. But I won’t let you come back until you prove to me that you can do those things. The people who aren’t my friends do it enough.

I just don’t want that temperature in my life anymore. I don’t want to live with rage, even if it is appropriately directed. No adult likes to feel parented or that other people are frightened by their emotions to the point they feel unlovable. This is not a limited to me problem. Most ADHD/Autistic people feel this way. Our emotions are too convoluted for them to make sense most of the time. As I was telling Bryn earlier, I have never met an ADHD person that could plan a goal for shit, so what am I going to write about today?

I’m going to write about how much it sucks to be neurodivergent in a neurotypical world. We are struggling to be heard and understood. We will explain until dark when the street lights are on and Mama’s callin.’ It’s an intrinsic trait with ADHD/Autism. My particular need to expound upon everything I’ve already said once is generally a reply to someone hearing my words and don’t have any idea what dog I’m walking.

It’s Oliver, btw.

So, I’ll just ruminate until people say they get it or walk off. But even when they walk off I want to keep explaining because up until now, I cared deeply and desperately about what people thought of me, and I extended that kind of energy to everyone I met instead of keeping it to the friends I loved the most. That way, I was sure to disappoint everyone all at the same time because I was so overextended.

I have made Zac, Bryn, and Oliver my entire world because that’s as much as I can handle right now. I have so much to think about that it’s incapacitating at times, so I need to be mostly single and just focus on what’s right in front of me. It’s all ADHD/Autistic people really know.

Life with no executive function leaves me absolutely brilliant in some ways, feeling like I continually fail other people all the time because my software is different and there is a huge chasm that people dismiss all the time. Even my CP is problematic because my case is so slight it’s not as noticeable as, say, RJ Mitte. Therefore, people see me as normal when I have no balance and floppy muscles. I trip through life because I can’t not.

Very few people explain the logic behind things, and that’s all I really want to know. If I can’t figure out something on my own, I will tire and confuse my friends and family… and I know it. That’s the worst part. To know you are capable of handing out that exhaustion is devastating because you can’t change the way you were made. People alternate treating me like I have the smarts of all my favorite authors and then they spend time with me and all that goes out the window…. because when people are in adoration mode, they act completely differently once they see how my mind actually works.

I think that’s why I like the book shop at the Spy Museum so much. They don’t care if I sit on the floor and get obsessed with a subject and pull out 10 books and not buy any of them. It’s the same at the library, when I used to go. I don’t have to anymore because I can borrow them with an app on my phone (Libby), cutting out all the social interaction necessary to maintain isolation.

My self-esteem has been that low my whole life. That I have to get up the energy to even leave my house because everything becomes a Dorothy Parker quote within minutes.

What fresh hell is this?

That wasn’t terrible. That was fancy terrible….. with raisins in it.

Sometimes I’m the one that thinks them, sometimes it’s another person in reaction to me.

I can’t make anything better unless people tell me what’s wrong, and even that is a common problem. Because I do most of my communication in writing, people constantly write themselves off as “not a good enough writer to compete with me.”

First of all, you’re probably not. It’s not because you’re dumb. It’s because I’m a blogger and you’re not. I didn’t get to be a good writer overnight. I got to be a good writer by taking a knife and slicing it into a vein, bleeding out over my keyboard day after day after day after day after day.

Secondly, me being a writer is a pitiful excuse to shut down two-way communication, or extraordinary if you don’t want to be in relationship with me. That’s because it doesn’t matter to me how you communicate and what your natural style might be. It’s that you think that completely shutting down your emotions is okay. That our relationship will survive despite neither of us getting our needs met.

Zac, Bryn, and I are all good writers. Therefore, no one shuts down. And if we need to switch mediums for a conversation, we do it. Bryn calls me even when she can see I’m still typing. 😉

Because I live an hour and a half from Zac (whether I was caught in traffic or taking the train), Facebook Messenger is the most awesome thing ever invented. He sends me a picture of himself every morning so that I can see how he is before he leaves for work. I don’t have to guess, I can see it in his face.

Removing all the barriers to communication with those closest to me has been a godsend.

I don’t know if it’s the best way to plan a goal, but for ADHD/Autism, it is 90% of the time “accidentally on purpose.” I’m not sure that I could do anything differently, so I’m not a Monday morning quarterback in the way most people think. My mind moves too fast to retain all the information I need. It’s one of the reasons you’ve started getting entries every day. It’s not for me to show off. It’s for me to have a place to go when I need information about my own life. Seriously, how many of you can pick a year out of thin air and remember everything about it?

I can’t.

But my goal is being able to look it up.

It’s a plan.