And, finally, the huge amount of shame I would feel for not being able to fulfill a very basic, reasonable commitment would make it really, really difficult for me to show up at all, even if I still was able to maintain my membership in the space.

​Nobody wants me to feel ashamed, or to leave. But still. I can't just keep being inconsistent. The Mothership needs to be able to rely on me to do what I say I'll do.

And asking someone to have coffee with me doesn't necessarily qualify as asking for help, even if I'm feeling a little wobbly at the time. By the time I get there, the wobbly feelings might just be gone. Or not. But that's being human. Or so I hear.

I had SO MUCH FUN and LAUGHED SO HARD. I've been thinking about it every day and looking forward to the next class all week long. (UPDATE: Class #2 just as awesome.) I could write A LOT about all the ways that improv clearly connects to the emotional and spiritual work I'm doing, and how the "Yes, and" philosophy could, in fact, bring about world peace, if only everyone would sign up for an improv class. For real.

But I'm not going to write that blog post. Because I DON'T WANT TO THINK ABOUT ALL THAT STUFF. I JUST WANT TO RELAX AND HAVE FUN. (God, please. I exhaust myself sometimes.)

All I'm going to do here is write about this one thing we did in class. 

We started off by introducing ourselves. Besides the usual stuff -- what's your name, where you're from, and "what you do when you're not pushing at the edges of your comfort zone with a group of strangers," the instructor asked us to share our spirit animal*. Except in this case, we had to pick a made up one. Like, we could combine the traits of two different animals, or give an animal magical properties. 

I knew that my spirit animal would be some kind of underwater creature, because I'm my most comfortably calm self when I'm near, on, or especially in, water.

By the time it was my turn, I'd made my decision.

In my magical and mystical world, my octopus spirit animal would grant me the ability to breath underwater and withstand oceanic pressure, so we could explore the depths of the ocean together. Bliss upon bliss upon bliss.

​But that's not all.

​Now that I've done a tiny bit of research, I've learned that octopuses or octopods (not octopi: it's a Greek/Latin root thing) are even more incredible than I thought when I chose one as my magical spirit animal. But what I did know is that octopods are really, really smart and deeply intuitive. And that octo means eight. 

I imagined my octopus would attach to me like a miraculous, floating backpack and accompany me everywhere, intuiting the next task to be accomplished and seamlessly moving from one to the next. I'd simply focus on whichever of the day's creative endeavors I found most appealing. I'd be free to move into sustained hyperfocus (the attention deficit flipside of ADD, which a lot of people don't realize exists) while my octopus returned emails and managed other essential details. You know, things like paying bills, and other stuff you gotta do in order to be considered a competent adult.

Also, I'd ask the octopus for lots and lots of shoulder and neck massages. Like, all the time. 

I know I said I wouldn't go into what I learned in my research. But check this fabulosity out: three-fifths of an octopus’ neurons are not in their brain, but in their limbs. And get this: an octopod's limb can be severed from the rest of its its body and still think (for a while, anyway). Because its brain cells travel with it! MINDBLOWN, right? The octopod's magical multitasking abilities are so far beyond...beyond. I can't even.

I realize as I write that I'm selling this magnificent creature way short. An octopus deserves much, much more than a life as an unpaid intern/massage therapist.

I'm not sure if my longing for octopod task management is just an ADD thing. I know plenty of people who could use an extra set of hands, or four extra sets of hands. (For those of you with children too young to drive: the carpool possibilities of the detached limbs occurred to me immediately.) 

Over the years, I've gotten a lot better about attempting to execute a more reasonable number of ideas. I've acquired a decent set of organizational skills, and found tools that suit my particular way of engaging with the world. And I've learned how great it is to collaborate, particularly with people who bring complementary skill sets to our work. I'm confident about my abilities and don't undervalue or apologize for my work. 

But lately, I've been feeling frustrated and sad. I've developed relationships with people I like and value that have opened up opportunities for me to work on projects that matter to me. And sometimes, I'm able to move forward effectively. But often, it takes so much more effort than I'd like, or that I can always sustain.

I wake up with a good sense of what needs to be accomplished to stay on track. I get out of bed. Get going. But most days, it feels like a fearsome, buzzing cloud of doom -- made up of wrong choices and potential failures -- joins me somewhere around the end of breakfast. 

This cloud doesn't announce itself dramatically. It just shows up and settles in. It's just there: tinnitus of the to-do list. 

I've tried fighting it: reconfiguring schedules and lists and where I work and how often I take breaks. Some things help, sure. But it the cloud also makes me angry. It doesn't make sense that this cloud exists. It feels like it belongs to a much earlier time in my life, when my struggles with depression warranted this kind of gloomy, anxious company. But depressions not the issue. Maybe it's some kind of depression hangover.

The other day, my therapist observed that I speed up -- a lot -- when I'm trying to solve some deadline quandary. That she starts to speed up, trying to help. We both surmised that the speeding up doesn't make things better.

Which makes me think that my multi-tasking octopus may not be the solution. That doing more things, faster, is not the solution. Which is annoying. Because more, faster, is one of those ideas where trying harder is the fix, and I know how to try hard. It's very important to me that people know I'm trying very hard. 

But I'm at the point where I'm convinced that if trying harder would have made it better, then it would be better by now.

It's difficult to be curious when I'm afraid. But I'm trying something that is deeply counterintuitive. I'm slowing down. All the way down, to stop.

These lines are from a poem I wrote about a decade ago:

I've practiced different forms of mindfulness for a long time. I've learned that there is something inherently reliable about how my body responds to this kind of focused attention: here. stay. longer. 

Yesterday, I sent my therapist a text:

Today, I sent her an update:

Now I'm imagining my octopus as a weight on my shoulders. A good kind of weight. Steadying. Helping me find the ground. Keeping me from floating away.

Everytime I think about it, I'm finding my feet. Settling in. Listening.

​I'm setting timers and taking five minute breaks.

I get out my new blocks.

I play whiffle ball with my dog Lady Godiva in the back yard. I hit, she fetches. Her short game is improving. She's getting better at fielding the bunt. 

I make art just to make something.

I escape for an hour to stare up at the trees as the sky grows dark.

I go to my improv class. 

I do all of these things even though I have work that's overdue. Embarrassingly, painfully overdue.

​It feels risky to stop. To play. To breathe. But I'm gonna try. If I fail, at least I will fail trying something new.

I can’t remember I if dreaded getting on the scale. But after the heavy thunk of the big weight, and the tinny back and forth of the smaller one, I heard a number. Eighty-nine. I weighed eighty-nine pounds. And somehow, I knew that eighty-nine pounds was a terrible weight to be.

In retrospect, that “somehow” isn’t so hard to trace. It’s a messy confection of family, hunger, love, food, power, unrealistic cultural standards of beauty, and how annoyed I felt when I started to grow breasts, because they got in the way when I played soccer.  (That was a bit later. And I’ve reconciled with my breasts and now I like them.)

​Knowing that I weighed eighty-nine pounds didn’t stop me from playing hard, from running up and down the soccer field in 100 degree heat. Usually, my body wasn't something I thought about; it was something that did things. It moved. I rode my bike as far as my parents would let me (sometimes, a little farther). I went rollerskating up and down the biggest hills in my neighborhood. 

My sophomore year in high school, I auditioned for the school musical, and as an enthusiastic chorus member, I started to hang out with the “theatre group." I knew that other girls made themselves throw up, because sometimes there were two or three of them together in the bathroom closest to the auditorium. I’m sure it wasn’t just a theater thing, or just a girls’ thing.

Super Shitty Art is extremely similar to my 80% Manifesto, but so much more fun to say. Check out my friend/hero Eri's Instagram feed, supershittyart, to experience the drawings that started a world-wide wide movement. Well, a Durham movement, that's sure to break out soon. My attempts to comprehend/explore my relatively new passion, astrophysics, through super shitty paintings, were featured in the Mercury Studio Instagram feed. I'm so proud. And so grateful to be a part of a community of such an amazing group of people. Best-coworking space, ever.

With Thanksgiving (and any related inflamed emotions) sufficiently in the rearview mirror, perhaps now is a good time for us to reflect on which communication strategies were, say, more, or less, effective.

For many of us, the holiday season offers a second, or possibly third or fourth opportunity (depending how often a family gathers and how many family configurations exist) to try again and focus on what's really important at this time of year: cultivating a sense of gratitude whenever possible, practicing the art of self-preservation/care, and doing what we can to not make anything worse. For me, that sums up a good enough family gathering.

Without further ado: "Stuck at the Kids' Table," the next installment of Dawn's Personal Guide to Having a Good Enough Holiday Season. And thanks to Carolina Partners for their support of this series as part of their anti-stigma initiative!

If I go by the arrival Christmas merchandise on shelves and the first time I hear “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" over a store’s sound system, the “most wonderful time of the year” begins in mid-September, and kicks off in earnest the day after Halloween. 

Even so, I obstinately persist in defining “the holidays” as beginning around Thanksgiving and ending soon after New Year’s Day. As an adult, I’ve generally found that these six weeks stir up challenging emotions, as well  moments of joy and togetherness. Sometimes simultaneously. 

The first morning of the Au Contraire film festival, I attended their youth program (along with a couple hundred high school students). The organization Art With Impact (AWI) screened a selection of short films that presented different perspectives on mental illness, that (see above image) I found really moving and powerful. The other thing that impressed me so much was the way that Cary McQueen (executive director of AWI) structured the presentation in order to allow sufficient space for the audience members to observe their response to each film. 

I feel very grateful that as an adult, I've been able to practice close listening to my body and learned to trust my body as a highly reliable source of information. I don't always remember to pay attention, but I've gotten much better at it over time. 

But as a teenager, I don't think I ever had an adult guide me through an exercise that encouraged me to pay attention to my response to an experience such a holistic way. Not just what I thought about something, but what I felt. And not just what I felt, but where in my body I felt it. 

After the presentation, Bebe (my dear friend and a consulting producer on Bipolar Girl Rules the World who joined me on this adventure) and I went to find the river. And we did. And the sun was warm and the air was cold and I could really, really breathe. And the river was beautiful.

I've done pretty well this week at remembering to listen. And my entire experience has been that much richer for it.

​Also, total bonus: both Cary and her colleague Natalie Daley are awesome and generally speaking, kick butt. As does Art with Impact. Go see for yourself!

October is ADHD month! 

The Carolina Partners in Mental Health Facebook page has lots of great info about ADHD and other terrific resources to explore. Go check it out!