ADHD impulsivity, a fun journal hack, and some awkward humour: my first friday faves
5 things I’ve found helpful, noteworthy, or funny in the past week...
Welcome to the first installment of Friday Faves, a hopefully somewhat regular series1 featuring 5 things I’ve found helpful, noteworthy, or just funny in the past week.
A lot of what I write about here is on the heavy side—this series is where I attempt to lighten things up, knowing that If I fail, it will at least rank as socially awkward which... is almost as good.
This week’s Friday Faves
In no particular order…
A fun journal hack: Ever wish you could use journaling to become a more mindful observer of your day, but also feel like it would be boring? Me too, and Dani Shapiro’s 4 Quadarant Exercise has been an easy and fun strategy to play with. I first heard about it this week while listening to an old episode of Maria Forleo’s podcast (tw: a little raunchy at times).
Faith: Been slowly rereading Abraham Joshua Heschel’s classic The Sabbath lately and these lines cut straight to the bone marrow:
It must always be remembered that the Sabbath is not an occasion for diversion or frivolity; not a day to shoot fireworks or to turn somersaults, but an opportunity to mend our tattered lives; to collect rather than to dissipate time. Labor without dignity is the cause of misery; rest without spirit the source of depravity.
Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005, o.p. 1951), p. 18.Reminds me of the mini-series I did several years ago about the Sabbath on my old podcast, Time Eternal.
ADHD impulsivity: Last Friday I came across the “24 hour rule” in an interview with Lisa Woodruff on the ADHD Re-wired podcast and I love it! Basically: not buying any books or hobby-related supplies unless I’ve carved out time to start reading/using them within 24 hours of purchase. The rule doesn’t apply to everything, but there are a few areas/activites where I’m prone to impulse purchases (and impulse library loans and Scribd downloads!) I never end up using. In addition to being a waste of money, acquiring such items becomes unneeded physical proof of an arbitrary expectation I failed to meet.
Speaking of hobbies: This summer I’ve been doing watercolour painting for the first time (who knew it was so fun and relaxing?) and have learned a ton from Emma Jane Lefebvre’s youtube channel. Her tutorials are chill, simple, and pretty. A few of my masterpieces so far…
Just for fun: For nearly a year I’ve diligently curated a “Funny” category in my Instagram saves/bookmarks, a content cache calibrated to my specific brand of migraine-inducingly-awkward humour. A favourite find this week was the below post, which I also screenshot and texted to random loved ones with cryptic comments like “made me think of you, love you xoxo” just to mess with them.
Other posts that made it into my funny folder this week included:
This cringe-worthy short from new-to-me British comic Troy Hawke;
A 30-second spoof on nordic noir murder mysteries with a curveball ending;
And a highly relatable yoga session featuring the Grinch.
“Hopefully somewhat regular” is ADHD speak for “I have every intention of posting *every* Friday right now, because that idea excites me at the moment and I can stick to things I’m excited about, but odds are in a few weeks I’ll wake up to the demon of soul-crushing boredom standing over my bed like the monotonous sicko he is and then all bets are off, but eventually I will see something funny or inspiring and remember how much I really do like sharing random life-giving gems with people so odds are I’ll be back, and I might feel self-conscious that I dropped the ball but I can remind myself of something I once heard, which is that *persistence* is as valuable as perfect *consistency* and also as much as I wish it did the world doesn’t depend on how frequently I share memes featuring dudes with oversized craniums (crania? No, the singular doesn’t end in -ius) so it’s likely everyone will survive my absence when I inevitably do drop the ball from time to time, also this footnote has gotten really tangential and I apologize but welcome to my neural network.”