Life is Pain

The air was cold today. So cold it was hard to believe that somewhere not far from here on the continent there was summer. I could feel the polar ice caps on the northern wind, a chilling reminder of how far North we really are. 

The sky was gray and somewhat gloomy but I went about my day still high on the weekend vibes. 

By the end of the day the sky was blue and the wind had warmed a little. I was, as I usually am, grateful to be going back to Port Clements. The climate in Port Clements was milder than the one in Masset, protected on the center of the island it’s neatly nestled into the mountains. 

The grass whipped on the side of the road. The colours of stalks starting to turn, a sure sign that the season is maturing. The synchronicity of the flashing movement momentarily mesmerized me. They whipped back and forth in the cool winds with a beautiful yet simple display. I wondered if anyone else had managed to notice. 

So many of life’s simple beauty goes unnoticed as we chase our tails in the never ending race of what’s next,

What is next? I thought. 

I knew what needed to be done, what had to be done, what I wanted to do and what needed my attention the most. Unfortunately all these things were different. 

Flooded with gratitude for the work that I have put in to get where I am today I realized that if I maintained my boundaries and did my best to focus I could do most of those things. 

Brent and I had a nice dinner together, an omelet made from quail eggs we raised and spinach we grew. 

First I tackled the manure. Having been unable to use a wheelbarrow for some time now I have gotten used to my tiny buckets. My lovely horses have gotten the hang of pooping in one easy to access spot for me to pick. 

All the new poop picked up and plopped into the poop spot in the garden. I reminded myself that tonight was not the night to work on the old poop and as long as we keep up on the new poop we can chip away at the old poop as we go.  

Two weeks ago I was given the green light from my physiotherapist to work through the pain and start using my hand a little bit more. We worked together using a system with 3 gallon buckets to start slowly chipping away the neglected chores. I’m proud to say if it doesn’t rain I can carry full buckets. 

My shoulders, feet, knees, elbow and back all have their opinions of my lifestyle as well. Often I feel like I’m in constant negotiations with my body, bargaining with quality foods, supplements, rest and tools for a little more time enjoying the active lifestyle I love so much. 

The clock continued to tick on but I had just set the boundaries with the garden and I was so excited to go ride Punkin Pie I almost exploded. 

She did not share my excitement and stood in front of her feeder. You see she had grown accustomed to a certain lifestyle over the past 6 months and now that I’m able to ride properly a little bit, life isn’t all about cookies and mash. 

I put the squishy halter on her and walked her down to the mounting block. Today was my third ride on her bareback in the arena, and this time she enjoyed it. 

Tonka joined us in a short mosey around the tiny arena. The cold wind wiping off the ocean from the North made the most beautiful sound of waves crashing on the beach. 

We strolled around the arena for a while. Her and I with our matching fat rolls wobbling about as we explored this new way to connect. It was a short ride. 

I came into the house and thought about how well I had kept that boundary. Instead of running off into the sunset like I wanted to I worked on something nearly as fulfilling then came in to complete my night of work. 

There was even 10 minutes left on my horse clock so I picked up the sewing project I had been wanting to do for a while now and spent that 10 minutes carefully snipping the fabric of my new dress with scissors, a tool I hadn’t been able to use in almost 6 months. 

I sit here now, writing and working through the cornucopia of pain that tells the story of all the wonderful things I have done with my life and I am grateful for all these pains.  

*****

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Today I was Easy - A Good Day with ADHD

Friday I chose to run and slowly started breaking my body into the idea of learning to run again. The thought of not being able to outrun even the slow dumb zombies in a zombie apocalypse not only entertained me but concerned me as well.  

While I don’t suspect that’s a threat I’ll have to face, there are real life threats that could have me appreciating the ability to run. Like chasing a naughty pony through the ditches of Port Clements or outrunning a swarm of malicious blood thirsty noseems. 

In case you're unfamiliar with noseems they are the smallest of the pesty flesh eating flie and they hurt the most. They are so small in fact that just one of them is nearly invisible to the naked eye. Here on Haida Gwaii a swarm of them can turn the sky black if the wind stops blowing. Just the thought of being close to one of those swarms makes me sure that my plan to encourage my body to run again is a good one. 

Friday was the night before last now. Having stayed up way too late the night before writing it was apparent that I was going to have to make up for lost rest. And so I did. 

I spent the day curled up in comfortable clothes and on a whim rebuilt the website that I had accidentally deleted a week or so ago. I even made sure that I had my customary weekend nap and I took it really easy on the stimulants. 

It felt good to be inspired and relaxed. It felt good to be into something and hyper fixated without being physically hyper. 

I worked all day and into the night on the website. There was suddenly so many solutions to so many thoughts that fluttered around in my brain making it hard to create a plan forward with my vision. 

One of the cursed blessings my ADHD blessed me with was the ability to see many futures unfold at once quite quickly. Sometimes I have the rare privilege of just seeing now and soon in one reality but my mind unfolds so many possible realities in my imagination that it’s hard sometimes to keep track of what I really want. Especially when they all look like fun. Then before you know it I want all of them and off I go on an impossible tangent to do all the things. 

This was my stuck point with the website and with the business. I want it all and I want it all now. My excitement to create and provide some cool content left me in a world of wondering what direction to go on first. 

In the end I decided to let the people decide. Afterall all the paths forward look like they’ll be a lot of fun to create, I’m just glad I won’t be the one to decide where to start.

Most of today was spent finishing the first tier of my diabolical plan to see how the world approaches living a healthy lifestyle. There is so much more than just diet and exercise that need to be considered in health. After all so many people don’t have access to healthy food or time and energy to workout because of financial responsibilities.  

Maybe we should take financial health just as seriously as we take physical health. We should talk about the difference between mental, emotional and spiritual health, because those things are not the same and need to be worked differently and honored differently when we work on creating health in our lives. Social and sexual health come naturally to some people but for many of us we live in bubbles of “”EEEEEEWWWWWW People..” So how do we honor and strengthen those parts of us? 

Seven pillars to strengthen. Seven parts of the human to honor and work with. Seven colours to make up the rainbow because all the the parts should run alongside each other sharing in the beauty of life. 

Health is not black and white. Health is a rainbow. 

The passion oozed from me as I saw my idea come to colourful light on the page before me. Recognizing that I was doing work that made my soul happy made it that much better. 

Throughout the day I would wander out into the garden and once again let my soul lead the way. The ADHD runs thick through this human because I did not focus on one project or one spot all afternoon and still got a tremendous amount done. 

I did not fight with myself. I did not push myself to do what I thought I should be doing. I did not require a good excuse to switch tasks part way through the garden time I just left myself alone and did what I wanted to do. After all, it's a garden. Who cares if it's the garden that ADHD built. It’s getting built and that’s what matters. 

It was hard to come in from the garden but it had to happen. Laundry needed doing and I was wearing clothes that needed to be washed. 

After 2 years of trying to solidify this routine it finally felt easy. The clothes went into the laundry, and I chose an outfit for tomorrow. Then I transferred the smoothie cups into a freezer bag and prepped the daily protein drinks for tomorrow. Whey protein has changed my life in ways I can’t even begin to describe for fear that no one would believe me if I tried. 

I felt grateful to be getting together all the things that make me feel good. After feeling like garbage for so long, to feel good was the most amazing thing in the world. Everything felt easy tonight. Even going to be feels like it might be easy tonight. 

*******

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Introducing Mental Resistance

The cool ocean breeze whispered across my face, gently caressing my cheeks. A strand of hair that came loose from my ponytail tickled against my face. 

Soaking up the cold, I found the crispy air a pleasure. It’s June and for most the cold winds of the North Coast of Haida Gwaii can be somewhat depressing. Spring or even summer should be in the air by now but all I smelled was salt and seaweed. 

I was glad I hadn’t tried to coordinate all my clothes at the beginning of the week like I had all winter. The morning was hard though and the anxiety of having to choose my clothes weighed heavy on me this morning. 

It’s not a big decision but still a decision. I have found that when you’re forcing a brain with an executive function disorder to operate hours before it’s ready, the more choices you can make for that brain while its minimal executive function skills are functioning the better. 

The less I have to think in the morning the smoother my day goes. This is why I have “automated” as much of my process as possible. Choosing clothes a week in advance was not an option right now though. The winds may have blown down from the North today but any day now they may blow from the south bringing with them the heat of the summer.

My morning had derailed the moment I opened my eyes. The fact that they did not want to open was a sure sign that the day was going to be a bigger fight than normal. It’s a strange thing being in a fight with yourself almost all the time. Today the fight was more. 

I dragged my feet the whole morning and not just because yesterday was leg day. The minutes kept sliding past me without consent or control. The morning just kept happening to me and I was not a willing participant. 

Work wasn’t any better and in fact to put it lightly it was the most Monday I Mondays I think I have ever had. There was a moment when I thought about giving up and running away as soon as possible. 

The short walk in the chilling breeze helped cool my head in more ways than one. 

The day continued but I felt better after lunch and I started to feel in tune with the rhythm of the clinic. 

This morning's personal fight had drained me leaving not much energy to play with Punkin Pie. 

I could feel her getting a little bored and antsy and I knew that she needed me to get her out again very soon. First I had to collapse. 

I couldn’t fight with myself anymore. 

I laid in my cozy bed and thought about how sad life would be without horses. I promised myself I couldn’t take care of them the way I felt they deserved to be taken care of then I would have to find them homes that could.

Punkin loves to get out and do things and her quality of life goes down when I’m not able to provide her with outings. Therefore outings are a must in care plan for Punkin Pie. Tonight however I didn’t have an outing in me. I didn’t even have it in me to put on a bra let alone a saddle. 

Work stress had stolen far too much horse time from me lately though. Punkin needed to do something tonight. 

“Punkin”, I called out to her while cracking open the cookie jar. She was there at the gate before my hand had a clutch of cookies.

I opened the gate, put on the halter and lead and dusted her off with my good hand. She was willing as always to do whatever I had in mind, but she seemed shocked that she wasn’t getting a saddle. 

We went down to the arena, she looked and saw the gate to the outside world was opened and I could tell she was hopeful. Tonight we weren’t going to go on an adventure, we were going to work on the issue of mounting. Recently I discovered that she doesn’t like being mounted when there are stirrups involved. Seems like a fair compromise to me that if she learns to stand nice and still in the right spot I will learn to get on gently without using stirrups. 

I sat on the top stair of the staircase my husband had built me for the grooming shop. They now live happily in the arena and made the perfect tool to this training adventure. 

We hung out together and I scratched both sides slowly, winning her over with a nice chill attitude, massage and a couple of cookies.

When she was ready I slid onto her back and pointed her up the driveway. She refused and turned towards the open gate. She needs the adventure and in order to give that to her I’m going to have to get better at not putting up such a fight. 

******

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 Today was leg day. I love leg day for multiple reasons. A few months ago I could barely walk up my stairs because my fibromyalgia symptoms were so bad. Today I not only climbed the stairs but climbed the stairs backwards. 

I raked the first pile of manure up into a scoopable little pile. It was the farthest away from the house, the farthest down the long winding driveway and the closest pile to the gate. The gate separates my fortress of solitude from the outside world and today I wasn’t quite in the right space to be so close to it. 

The steel tongs of the manure fork scratched against the ground bringing up the old manure, some grass and a few rocks. I don’t mind rocks in the garden after all that is where minerals come from and I want my soil rich with all good things including minerals.

Picking up the brand new plastic manure fork I scooped the first pile into the tiny bucket. The nice light weight of the new tool was a relief to my hands. For 8 years I have been struggling to keep up with the manure here on Haida Gwaii. First my challenge was the grass. The grass would always clump into the manure making it difficult to scoop with a plastic fork. So I bought a metal one. The next challenge was the wheelbarrow. For 8 years I have been fighting with trying to use a wheelbarrow on a property that really isn’t very wheelbarrow friendly. 

The hand injury has made the choice to give up on the wheelbarrow a must. Now instead I carry everything in buckets. The buckets are small and on leg day they are filled with a light enough weight that my arms aren’t being over challenged. The object after all is to strengthen my legs, heart and lungs while getting as much done as possible, without of course staining my hand injury. 

I scooped the first pile into buckets. Thoughts of the work week starting tomorrow crept into my head. Before I knew it the stress of the week to come was encasing me in a cement of my own anxiety. This is not the time or the place to worry about work. I thought to myself. I had promised myself years ago that the fitness time and space was about working with and for my mind and body. 

Clearing my head of all useless thoughts I focused on my body and what I was feeling in the moment. 

The first set of 10 squats completed, I headed up the steep driveway, my lungs burning. It was apparent that I will need to focus on my lungs more during my daily workouts. Up I went taking long deep steps. This is hard I thought.This is supposed to be hard I reminded myself. 

I pushed through the hard and focused on enjoying the power in my body. I was getting stronger so much faster now. A function I thought fibromyalgia had stolen from me. Being on top of my supplements everyday was the only way to FM at bay but my ADHD makes that a challenge. 

Life is hard. I thought. It is hard and it’s even harder with so many challenges. The purpose of a challenge though is to beat it. Thankfully I love to win. 

I train for life in “the gym”. The gym is the term I use for the time, space and energy I dedicate in a day to focus on just that. Training for life. Because there aren’t enough hours in the day to spend an hour training each part of me. My mind, body and farm chores often get creatively blended to one task that benefits many parts of my life. 

Half way through the workout it was time to start going up the hill backwards. This was hard. This was really hard. I stopped. I could just quit right here.  The sound of my thoughts strong over the gasping of my breaths. This was the first time I attempted the hill backwards and it was harder in so many ways than I had thought it would be. 

My legs burned in places I hadn’t expected. My mind protested louder and more than I thought it would too. 

Suddenly I got excited. This is what it’s all about. Pushing myself to my limits and knowing exactly how to work with myself inside them. Sweat started to pour down m y face. My heart beat heard in my chest. My lungs and legs pulsed with the power of being pushed. Nothing was unbearable, just really hard.

******

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Introducing Life's Resistance

 Once inside I looked at the dishes which now seemed easier to do than the once simple task of organizing the laundry. I decided however that the dishes should have to wait just a little bit longer too because I normally do dishes and laundry at the same time. Let’s face it. Both are kinda boring so if I soak the dishes while I fold a few clothes I feel like I’m getting more done. Getting things done feels so good, but man it’s hard. 

If you're familiar with the fitness world then you are familiar with resistance bands. Lately I have noticed that life tends to have invisible resistance bands that cling to simple everyday activities making them much more difficult than they need to be. For me those resistance bands are both physical, courtesy of fibromyalgia, and mental thanks to ADHD.

While I try to take the medication that might help remove some of the resistance caused by both these conditions, I am not convinced that my health is better for it. Side effects always seem to happen to me. Just the thought of twitching from Adderall gives me the creeps. 

What if I chose to notice the points of resistance in my day-to-day life and find ways to remove some of that resistance? 

What does resistance look like? I ask myself. 

Resistance can look like procrastination for big or little things. It can be as simple as something being too hard to do even if there is no good reason or no good reason that anyone but me will understand. Sometimes even the little things like hanging up a jacket or putting my boots where they belong can feel so hard thanks to points of resistance.

Points of resistance can be disguised as waiting for perfectionism, over-thinking potential outcomes, being too tired, and things simply feeling too hard. I can wind myself into a beautiful knot of fantasy that leaves me trapped inside the idea without my mind being flexible enough to bend its way out. 

How do my choices impact those points of resistance?

Every time I choose to do something, even the smallest things, I am  teaching my brain how to respond to those activities. Maybe when I think about finding the fun in my mountain of laundry I’m letting my mind get too far. 

If I tell myself over and over again that I cannot do something until everything is perfect then my brain will add resistance to activities until such time as I think things are perfect. This however I’m starting to believe is a trap, there is no such time as perfect. Tasks and fantasies can be broken into doable easy pieces. 

This makes sense to me. 

After all, if something is too heavy for me to lift then I simply lessen the weight and practice lifting a weight I can handle until my body is fit enough to lift more. Maybe my mind could be trained like this too.

*****

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Life Is Hard -The Book Introduction

Introduction

Life Is Hard 

I took a deep breath and looked at the mountain of laundry that I myself have managed to pile up in only a two week time span. 

To think that only two weeks ago I was prepacking my outfits for the week in giant freezer bags. Meticulously picking out what I would wear each day of the week right down to matching socks and underwear before the week even began. 

I had the whole process down to a finely tuned 10 minutes that also involved folding and sorting the laundry for a week. One smooth 10 minute action that solved 2 of my biggest morning problems. What to wear, and how to find it. 

This one very easy action made my days smoother. They started with less stress and gave me the freedom to think less first thing in the morning while still showing up for work looking half decent enough. 

The world at work has more than enough stress right now without adding to the struggle by having to muddle through my own chaos of clothing clutter to find something to commit to for a whole day. 

The season changed as it always does, and the clothing I had worked into such a wonderful way of life was no longer comfortable to wear. Meaning that I have to put away the winter clothes and organize the summer clothes. The change has me frozen in indecision.  That really easy system fell apart on me again. 

Making due over the week I have worn what clothes I can pick up out of the pile and dressed in the shame of my own non-action and indecision. I have been starting the days already a little drained and stressed from my entanglement with the pile. 

The weight of that shame grows heavier, almost as if each article of clothing gains a pound everyday I don’t deal with it. The pile of laundry grows taller every week that I can’t lift the weight of that shame and indecision.  

The weight of that pile grows and spreads to the rest of the house leaving me feeling trapped under it. 

I like it outside. I can’t see it outside. There’s different piles of shame and indecision outside but thankfully I seem to be ready for those ones right now. 

I tell myself I don’t have the time but in all honesty it’s not the time, I have that and choose to use it doing other things as far away from that pile as possible. It’s not the ambition I lack. Ambition keeps me awake at night and drives me through desire to other things with so much obsessive passion that I lose the ability to do what is important here and now. 

The problem is my brain. I hate to admit it, I rather like my brain. Most of the time we enjoy each other's company and it allows me to experience things in a different way from some of the other people in my life as I am starting to notice. 

What my brain does not do however is things it is not ready to do. My brain is not ready for spring and the wishy washy weather that comes with it and until I wrote these words I had no idea why this simple thing had suddenly become so hard. 

It’s simple now that I can see the problem. All I have to do is choose a few cooler weather clothes to keep out and put out the warm weather ones that can be easily layered. 

The idea has suddenly become appealing and I can feel the stirring of ambition getting ready to pounce. It vibrates from deep inside me driving me from my bones. Thankfully I have learned to remember the moment of inspiration so that the moment of passion is not lost and I can give into the wave of relief and exhaustion from the profoundly stressful day I had a work. 

The sky is falling around me and my already fragile attention span is being tested to its utmost limits.Today I’m grateful for medication but I’m worried about the impact it will have on my body. 

Life is hard. In fact I don't believe there is such a thing as an easy life; however, I hope this book will help make your life easier.

For most of us life can be broken up into a set of fairly mundane routines. Most of those routines have aspects that do not need to be completed every day. In fact many pieces of our daily routines can be pre-done and ready for us to make those routines faster and easier.

Not everyone will find the same routine cheats helpful. As you will see in the following pages our brains all work differently so we will all have different points of resistance in our day-to-day activity. The secret to unlocking the key cheats to making your life easier is to pay attention and notice what your points of resistance are.

In this book we're going to look at working through points of resistance and all seven pillars of health using the eight steps to feeling better.

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