It’s A New Year & I’m Struggling

I’m at my parent’s house. I’ve taken the clock out of the living room and put it somewhere else so its ticking won’t disturb me as I write. This isn’t the first time I’ve moved the clock. If I forget to put it back before my dad gets home from work, he’ll grumble about it not being where it should be and ask, as he always does, why I insist on moving it.

I’m hypersensitive to noise and can’t sit in the same room as a ticking clock without becoming wildly anxious. Its sullen tick rudely reminds me that I can do nothing to slow the passing of the days. 

It’s the fifteenth of January today, and I’m panicking about everything I still need to accomplish. I know of folk easing themselves into the year without unnecessary pressure, and I’m curious how. How do they do it, and with such bliss, it seems. 

I’ve slumped into 2024 with overwhelming thoughts of my underwhelming creative output in 2023 and how pressing time feels now I’m in my 38th year. My days have been filled with one existential crisis after another for weeks, and they’ve drained my energy. I’m exhausted. I want to write this post so much but want my bed more, and this doesn’t feel okay. 

When I’m not Getting Shit Done every day, I suffer. I’ve NOT been Getting Shit Done since the year began. I wish I could move fluently with the shift of the seasons. I want to accept this resting time for what it is and nestle into it without anguish or expectations. But being currently town-bound makes it much more difficult to stop and find that necessary hush. In my bones, I know I need a rural nest out in the beyond to rest in, where the days are more honest and move differently, leading me to be more open and experience a more peaceful pace. 

Rest means something different to everyone, but for me, I would want to hunker down in a forest cabin and have a fire to tend to. There would be long walks, hot tea, soups and bread, reading, note-making, writing when I wanted to write, and pauses when my body called for them. There would be early nights and late mornings with deep, restorative sleep. And I’d be gentle with myself, something I’ve never been very good at. 

I read so much about wintering, about hunkering down, about rest. I have an excellent understanding of the importance of downtime, but my ADHD brain tells me that rest is for other people. It tells me I’ve never done enough to warrant a rest, which I know is fucking ridiculous, but I still feel powerless to argue. It tells me that what I’m experiencing absolutely COULD NOT BE burnout, and I definitely don’t need more sleep now than in summer because I don’t have an excuse not to keep on keeping on through winter.

I was told I had ADHD almost a year ago, but I’m still waiting on my ‘official’ diagnosis. Despite the time that’s past since my referral, I still experience heavy emotional reactions to the traits I now understand have shaped who I am and my life’s direction.

Time Blindness (the inability to sense the passing of time) is one trait I struggle with daily. But before 2022, I wasn’t even aware that my warped perception of time was a thing. I would rarely think deeply about time passing. Now this stark awareness that I’m ‘Time Blind’ has crippled me, and the clock just seems to get louder, harrying me along and making the idea of rest seem even more implausible. 

I put the clock back before my dad arrived home. I’m in my own living room now. There’s no obnoxious clock here scaring me, just a candle softly suggesting how much of the evening has passed.