thinkythink

Necessary Exercise

I've seen more and more talk about exercise and the brain lately, and that's a good thing. I've been to some great lectures by John Ratey on this topic at ADDA conferences and local coaching meetings. Now he's published a book about it, called Spark. I haven't read it yet, sorry John, I'm too busy reading about when to give the baby mushed up banana for the first time. But I would like to reflect on the theme and some of what I've heard from him before.

I think many of his points are well taken; for example, we don't hear as much about exercise as treatment for ADHD, depression, and so forth, because there isn't much financial gain involved in either studying or promoting it. At least not for the folks who look for financial gain here, i.e, the pharmaceutical companies. And yet, exercise can act like medications like Prozac or Ritalin. And, there are a lot of people for whom mental health and/or attention problems seem to appear only when they stop doing a lot of exercise for a long time. I believe John called it "post-marathon onset ADHD." In other words, some people's troubles with the mind only appear following trouble with the knees.

One conclusion: this dovetails with the concept of ADHD as a set of character traits (versus a pathology). Some people simply need a WHOLE LOT of movement on a daily basis, or perhaps a continual basis. The problems arise when they start moving. So the "symptoms" are circumstantial, and not a manifestation of a disorder.

Another conclusion: we need to take exercise more seriously. For me what automatically follows is that we need to put more attention on how we manage to get that exercise. We don't need to spend more energy thinking we ought to exercise more.

And yet another conclusion: Exercise can help. Some of us need a lot of movement and sweat and so forth, but that doesn't leave us happy as clams. Including enough exercise is, for some of us, like eating properly; if we don't eat properly, we don't feel good; but eating well is not sufficient to make everything great. It is necessary, but not sufficient.

Stay tuned for: how we actually get the exercise, exercise for us inattentive folk, and other subtleties.

Getting the workout

I know I do best when I workout a lot. This may mean at least 90 minutes per day. I first realized this in junior high school when I played on the volleyball team. We had practice every day after school. I remember telling my mother that I didn't seem to have any free time when I played volleyball, but the time I had was better. I was better. I was a better version of me,

I seem to come from people who are the same. Some of them take on vast athletic endeavors that require training as much as some people work. For some of the people close to me, this seems to be a natural process.

What I have in common with them:
-just a short workout can be boring
-getting through the first mile(s) is hard, then it get easier to workout for a long while.
-the challenge and goal may have to be bigger than for other people

What I don't have in common with them:
-I have to wrestle myself to get to my workout all the time
-It never feels like habit
-I've never gotten super-strong
-It doesn't get me out of my head sometimes

Ok, to be honest, maybe the others close to me who work out a lot have the same challenges. Except that last one. I'm the in-my-head gal. I think that's one of the things that people fail to address when they talk about how great exercise is for all of the mental woes and challenges; it's not just about doing it; it's not even just about motivating... the in-your-head stuff can persist through the exercise!  What I know is that it's generally still worth it. But I can't force myself through. Instead I have to find some way to it strategically. As in many things mind and ADHD and whatnot, force makes it worse. So next up: some ways I do get the workout done.

How much thinky thinking can I do?

You'd think that hanging out with a pre-verbal human would lead to a bit of boredom, mental talking to oneself, etc. But the fact is that this is just how it always was for me, with the possible exacerbation caused by my lack of medication. I can't take ADD meds while I'm breastfeeding.

The fact that I'm thinking enough to bore myself and tire myself is a sign that I'm recovering from the beginnings of being a mother. I'm guessing this only because it's the same thing that happens after I've been pretty sick; it's the bad-patient stage where I'm too tired to do what I want and have enough energy to be cranky about it.

Coincidentally, I just read something about boredom- I read it in The Week, my favorite news magazine, but it came from the Boston Globe originally. This article quotes the ADD community's own Edward Hallowell, saying:

"If you think of boredom as the prelude to creativity, and loneliness as the prelude to engagement of the imagination, then they are good things[...]They are doorways to something better, as opposed to something to be abhorred and eradicated immediately."

I read this and thought, how dare you Ned Hallowell! That seems rather harsh. The thing is, ok, we know that one of the characteristics of ADHD is a low threshold for boredom. And yes, I get that a lot of us in general are developing an ADHD-similar low threshold and low tolerance for boredom. That low tolerance is what the article is about; we have so many sources of stimulation to turn to so easily, that we're not used to the absence of mind candy, and the presence of empty space.

Now I'm overjoyed to live in a neighborhood where kids play outside all day, and have enough genuine play time to make stuff up, invent games, imagine scenarios, and all of that other stuff current culture seems to aim to remove a need for. And I remember doing that myself, and making up imaginary worlds all by myself.
As an adult, I'm all for taking one's quiet time and all that. But I just think this quote is doing us some injustice.

For me boredom is, with much practice, learning, and coping, a prelude to doing something that gets me out of a spiraling pit of pure thought and back into the world, at least slightly out of my head, and, say, noticing that I have four limbs and the ability to occasionally get up and do something instead of sitting and imagining doing something.

Before knowing myself as it were, and knowing what boredom did to me, I could sit an think of doing things all day, but never get out of the mental loop. Didn't seem much like a prelude to anything at all. Was potentially depressing. So I'd rephrase his quote: If you think of boredom as the prelude to getting conked over the head with something interesting to do, you might change the situation/room/physical state you're in when you're bored so that maybe you'll notice that you could actually do something.

Of course, my concept of boredom is merging here with my general understanding of (a) thinking too much and (b) being in one's head and possibly (c) inattentive crap in general. And far be it from me to say that thinking is boring. So to clarify, the point is that waiting for boredom to descend in its full glory isn't necessarily for me. In fact, all those types of mental crack that the article criticizes, are the kinds of things that can get me out of that state of un-ending thinking. They are sometimes stepping stones to the very creativity Hallowell wants me to find. They are the doorways between my own private bubble and, say, getting out of that bubble. There's too much else to say on this subject, but now that I've started speaking my mind, I'm out of my head enough to go get a cup of tea.

Mommyhood

I'm writing to you shirtless, with a tingling leg.
No, it's not sexy. My leg is asleep because I happened to be sitting cross-legged on the floor when I realized my baby boy was hungry, so naturally I had to nurse him right then and there. I'm shirtless because when I put my clunky travel cup down, which I use to avoid scalding the baby with my lukewarm coffee, I put it on its side. This is an incorrect position leading to coffee on Baby's playmat. Which, since I'm nursing and the baby feels much better now that he is, naturally leads to a minimum-change-in-position-solution, that is, using my t-shirt to mop up the coffee before it spreads.

I'm a Mommy now. And yes, words to describe the change it brings are trite. And yes, I would now remove each and every one of my limbs with inefficient implements if it were somehow improbably helpful in securing the safety of my child.

I don't think that makes me less of a person with her own being, even if I did notice his cold more than my own last week; I'm more inclined to think it makes me feel more like the mammal that I am. Producing and caring for our offspring, is, after all, part of being an animal, and not a social construct brought to us by the patriarchy/advertising executives/modern society/et cetera. Which is not to say that feeling utterly inadequate, insecure, and like I have to buy the right object to be a good caregiver, while having no identity and also being all about an amazing career and doing it "all" whatever "all" is, is not brought to us by the same collection of possible evils.

The fact is, I'm having an identity crisis. I'm told by wise people that as a new Mommy, I'm getting to know who I am as Mommy, and that's a new part of my identity that I'll have to get to know and I'll want to define my own way.

Here's what I don't understand yet: do I write about being a Mommy? Am I forced there? Do I want to?

But really: is it possible not to write about it? What do I have to prove by avoiding it? That I'm still myself, and not a character usurped by Mommying? That I'm still of interest to the rest of you who don't have kids? That I'm not abandoning you? That the same things are still important to me or are at least still on the list?

I may not have bought into the Mommy Wars, and the supposed importance of both being at home with the kids, or at work being an independent woman who has kids. But I've picked up some terror along the way of losing myself to thinking about different things, talking about different things. I've learned to fear that I'll lose my footing and fall into the well of continually forcing mediocre baby snapshots on others and mass-e-mailing not-so-humorous anecdotes about my brood and generally not being "about" anything else. What is the fear? That parenting implies poor taste? That the childless in my life won't love me anymore, or will be angry at me for the importance of my progeny? That I will become inconsiderate?

Or is it just a change in content, and the content is all so very unknown that it's just a wee bit unsettling? Whatever it is, you've now been officially warned.

Time boxing

A lot of people talk about using your time efficiently; about using it strategically and opportunistically. It's an art I've been humbly practicing for several years. It's an art that has been crucial to me because of my own chronic illness- which I know I have yet to talk about. Now it's crucial because of that new identity of mine (Mommy).

One way of capturing a piece of this art that has stuck with me is this: "Time boxing." I first heard the term on Dave Cheong's blog. I find it funny that the term seems to come from software development/project management, a world in which I have worked. I find that thinking about project management like a software engineer has advantages sometimes, maybe just because it's a way of abstracting away from my own navel-gazing details; yet funny that through all the reading about time management, adhd, and coaching, that this term from the other realm, as it were, would stick with me.

I'm using it right now. Baby has conked out briefly in his seat. I want to go to the grocery store/ cook that stew/ go for a walk/fold the laundry. But Baby is asleep, and because he's getting over a cold, I want to keep him warm and cozy. My usual walking buddy seems to be out. And Baby loves watching me fold laundry so why would I do that now? I have plenty of work to do but most of it requires undivided- uninterrupted attention. This task, however, can be started, and put on hold until the little one cries... which is now....