Thread by @MikeStuchbery_

So I'm now living by myself - pretty much for the first time as an adult. Prior to now I've either been in cohabiting long-term relationships or married.

I gotta say, it's quite a trip - and has made me think a lot about, well, what I'm doing with my life.

For many, many years, I felt like I needed to care for others - that if I wasn't effectively tending to someone else, I was wasting my time.

This, I think, was a compensatory move to offset my (undiagnosed) ADD - I may be hard work, but at least I was trying.

Living by myself, I find that there's so much time that I have that I never noticed before. I must have been running myself really ragged!

So, almost to comfort myself, I end up doing chores, cleaning things, throwing things out - even if it ends up being exhausting.

I have found it extremely hard to do things that are traditionally 'fun'. I actually ended up really resisting suggestions in therapy that I schedule activities that are purely for my own satisfaction.

I know, ridiculous - hard programming to break! 🤣

So this year is all about letting myself have fun, and learning to be by myself.

It's also about deciding what my purpose is, and shifting that feeling of aimlessness I've been struggling with.

I know some out there are very interested in how I negotiate life with ADD, so it's something I'll be writing about a lot more. /FIN