How many of you are in a long-term relationship or marriage where you are neurodivergent (ADHD, AuDHD, etc.) and your partner is neurotypical? How does that dynamic work for you? Do they balance you out? Drive you absolutely bananas? Are they the calm to your chaos, or do they spend half their life asking "what"? My husband and I have been married for 20 year (together for 22). I feel we balance each other out pretty well.. There are times when he tells me to calm down though🤣🤣🤣 or needs to pull me back to reality..... I would love to hear how you maneuver.... the good and the "not so good".

For me it's going to sleep early (couldn't get myself to it for a long time). What's yours and how does it improve your life if you change it?

Good morning guys! Yesterday was quite rough on me..my daughter left for the summer.. and let's just say last summer her dad played games and I barely got to talk to her etc... so a LOT of emotions that I had to keep under control for days straight etc . But all of that to say, the URGE is to "stay in bed all day and try to deny what is going on". Right? But this is where I'm doing things DIFFERENTLY this summer: I'm showing up for ME. Because CATHY still is in this house. So that being said, I thought of something to try as a "framework" for my day, at least for today. To both hopefully give me that safe feeling of structure while also giving me the needed feeling of flexibility and freedom.. And I've decided to call it "9-5; 9-5". Here is what I'm going to do: From 9 am to 5 pm today, every hour I will set timer for 20 minutes and do SOMETHING focused. Whether that is drinking water. Whether that is eating. Whether that is exercising. Etc. But the other 40 minutes of every hour can be anything, nothing etc. The OTHER "9-5" will be 9 pm to 5 am. And the rule with that is I need to be IN bed from 9 pm to 5 am. Why am I doing this? Because I have a busy day tomorrow. And this week (already overwhelming me 😅) and for once, I am being CONSIDERATE of THOSE Cathy's. Why is this hard? Because I technically don't have to do ANYTHING today. but my life isn't how I want it etc. So if I don't give my brain at least little focused jobs it WILL take over and I will just suffer today frankly. Anyway, overall I'm excited to try this! Because it will make doing my streaks feel even more fulfilling. And I'm reminding myself, I STILL have flexibility with this rhythm. A LOT of flexibility actually. But this will hopefully ensure I don't end up watching 7 hours of TV straight (or more) AND end up regretting that. As an example. Historically, the day after daughter leaves i am in shock, I suffer, etc. I'm NOT doing that to myself today. Just because I don't have a partner or pet or "family" to rally around me doesn't mean I don't get to rally for myself.

I'm saying this to remind myself and hopefully others. I have created and been doing streaks. It has taken immense effort and frankly courage 😅. But they are WORKING. And I will share my extremely non-glamorous page😇🤣. Because if it can possibly help someone else, I want to 😊 This is what I'm currently doing. I cannot explain how vital this has been for me. Even though my brain STILL can't actually SEE the progress🙄🥴, it is undeniable that I've DONE these things every single day. And instead of tick marks, in this newest iteration (aka, I ran out of room on the previous page haha!), I write the number after I've completed the streak for that day, and then circle it. This has kept me going through some really rough times lately. And as always I want to BE the change. BE hopefully the inspiration. You can always HAVE fancier. But you don't NEED fancy. Huge huge lesson for me personally. Hope this helps! Love you guys! Also, I am writing this in the BACK of my journal. So I flip to the end to track and check streaks. I'm highly considering ripping it out and putting it on the bathroom door so it is SUPER visible to me 🤔 haven't decided. But regardless.

Trust me, part of me is grieving that I even have to do this :/ But that being said, I can either be a victim of my circumstances or do what I can to make the best of them (and over time, change them). So that being said, I'm at least attempting something. I literally put a huge post it on my downstairs bathroom door. And I'm taking the small post its that I have and doing my best to color code them and write tasks on them I can always refine this but at least I'm giving my brain a fighting chance.😅😅 So I made the green post its "environment" so it is house cleaning stuff Light pink is stuff that makes me happy Yellow is self care Trust me, the perfectionism is trying to rear its ugly head😝 But I'm pushing through that. It is a START. And that is SOMETHING. I literally currently NEED to SEE that I'm making progress. At a glance. In my face. So this is what I currently have. Love you guys!! And as a I do a task, I'm moving it to bottom of the huge post it It's not IDEAL but it is SOMETHING. The end goal is to have a life that feels like it is BALANCED. So the idea is to have at least one of each color at the bottom every day. Creating a bit of a rainbow 🥰 And at the very least, at least the mental work I've done so far to even think of things will not have to be REDONE tomorrow. I won't have to rethink and rewrite "20 minutes on bathroom", for example. That's actually exciting for me! Because this way, if I DO have an opportunity to do something fun, I won't feel like I "can't" because I'm not "caught up" on housework. Newsflash my brain doesn't want to admit: it will NEVER be "done". That is a completely false conclusion but if I know I've at least put some time and attention on it, *I* will feel better. ok so! My plan for rest of the day is every hour, get up and go to the door and pick one thing from the board to work on for 20 minutes. We shall see! But at least I'm trying 🥰 worth a shot 😅