So, as those closest to me know, being a mom has been the most important goal that I’ve had for my life, for my whole life, except during times when things were so low that I had no goals. Once Dr X did his intervention and I was able to think about the future again, having kids quickly moved right back into first spot. I started making “10-Year Plans,” most of which are saved in my Google Drive. But there is an example in this blog entry from March of 2022. For most of my life, well-intentioned people have been hellbent on telling me to set “attainable goals,” by which they mean being underemployed and never actually doing anything with my life; so I’ve learned to keep my biggest dreams a secret. Which is kind of ridiculous, just given that I only want the same things for my life that most people do. But I digress…
I made “10-Year Plan 8” today and this is it:
It’s less than ten years now, tbh, but I just picked the range because I first started making these plans when I was younger, and I figured I had about 10 years until menopause. The details aren’t fleshed out in the document, but what did make me happy is that I went back and looked at my old plans, and the 8th edition isn’t terribly different. The third-shift idea is new because I have 18 million appointments a week, and this is the only way I could think of to work full-time and not constantly have to be absent for some dumb appointment. I did this in 2015 and it actually worked out really well. Perhaps it’s the silver lining of never having had a regular routine. Sadly, the job market has gone downhill in the USA, but I’m a woman on a mission.
Unfortunately, I have ADHD and I’m perpetually scattered af. So I’m writing this entry in large part to try to tie everything together.
One thing I’ve done is try to make artificial intelligence work for me with apps like this one, which breaks down your life goals into manageable steps:
I told the app that I wanted to have kids, and it generated a to-do list. I also told it today that I needed a full-time job working the overnight, and it gave me another list. Lord knows I can get bogged down with lists, especially since my current list of lists looks like this:
The plan was to gradually incorporate more and more things into my routine until they became habits. However, it’s not going very well. At all. Weirdly, despite not adhering to these guidelines, my life has not gone up in smoke, so that’s good.
My Google drive also has my to-do list, which is lengthier than I’d like but has decidedly less than 300 tasks on it; my to-do today list, which is obviously updated daily; and now a spreadsheet of job listings that I’ve either applied for or plan to apply for, which has a tab dedicated to online courses I could potentially take. So now, my plan is to take all these different lists and somehow turn them into an actionable plan. Given that absolutely NOBODY ever reads this blog ever unless it’s somebody who I specifically sent a link to, if you are reading this, there’s actually a decent chance that you are a clinician and I sent this to you asking for help.
If you’re Dr V the med guy, it’s probably not your fault but I’m initimidated by you. You are finding out about this now because I don’t want you to be shocked next summer when I ask you to move my meds around. Because if I bring this up in August 2025, you’ll probably think I’m being impulsive. So I’m sticking this on your radar now so that when the time comes to talk about it, you’ll know that it’s not. I’ve been having heart-wrenching dreams about “running out of time” several times a week since I was like 25. Please don’t crush me.
If you’re the very nice new therapist, I’m worried that when I get private insurance, it won’t cover you. I’m going to do my best to make sure it does when I choose a plan, but we all know how insurance is. In the meantime, I’m exhausted because I never stop working or being productive. So I need to figure out how to take a break! And I need to know how to be okay with myself at the end of the day. For the past couple years, the ends of the days are awful because even if I’ve been working all day, I can never allow myself to feel like I’ve done a full day’s work. I just beat myself up because why did X take so long, or why didn’t I accomplish Y, etc. This makes life really hard. Like right now, when I just wrote this whole entry trying to consolidate everything in one place, but I don’t super feel like that happened and I don’t know what I can say now to fix it.
If you’re anyone else (clinician or otherwise), I just need emotional support ❤️
Anyway. I’ve been pushing on toward the same north star since I was a kid, and it did make me happy that I’m actually ahead of the “schedule” I set in 2022. Now I’m just actually sharing that schedule with clinicians and social supports so I can manifest it into being. I’m stressed out and exhausted, but I have meaning and purpose.
