Glow by Lady E

There are things I say to myself that I would probably never say to another person. Not because they sound particularly terrible. Most of them sound almost harmless. Ordinary, even. But I say them often enough that I’ve started wondering what they’re doing to me. I have so much to do. This is probably the one I say most often. I’ll look around the house, think about work, remember something I haven’t finished, think of three more things while doing something else, and there it is: I have so much to do. For my ADHD brain, this is possibly one of the least helpful things I can say. Because suddenly there isn’t one thing in front of me anymore. There is everything . Everything becomes one enormous, shapeless task hovering over my head. So I’m trying to catch myself when I say it. I don’t have to do everything. I only have to decide what I’m doing now . Then there’s: I’m so tired. Or its more dramatic sibling: I’m so exhausted. Sometimes I really am tired. But I’ve not...

Lately, I’ve been painting. Not because I decided I needed to become more productive with my hobbies. Not because I set myself a challenge to complete a certain number of paintings. And certainly not because every painting needs to become something useful. I’ve simply been reaching for my watercolors more often. Somewhere along the way, I realized that painting has become a quiet record of how I’ve been feeling. I don’t always sit down knowing what I want to paint. Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m feeling. I just know that I want paper, water and a brush in my hand. And apparently, my emotions know what to do from there. Sometimes, I Just Want to Play One day, I painted strawberries. There wasn’t some grand artistic concept behind them. I put blobs of paint onto the paper and let the blobs decide what kind of strawberries they wanted to become. Some were plump. Some were wonky. Some looked like they had absolutely no intention of conforming to proper strawberry geometry. ...