Like many people that live on a fixed or limited budget, I live in the basement of other people’s home. I happen to live in the basement of the home of my sister and her husband. When I lost most of regular income after COVID, they too me in because that’s what family does, or because I guilted them into it. My ADHD is pretty bad and at age 58, finding myself homeless was to overwhelming. I had a pretty successful run with my own business, having chosen a good field for a struggling mind. One tiny detail I refused to consider that was a flaw in the long term success. When your business model is primarily supporting seniors, by the time I was a senior too, my customer base had shrunk considerably.
I had not had a real job for 40 years. My ADHD habits were perfected for my lifestyle. Everything I do is in reaction to something or someone needing me but the idea of holding a regular job brought back a lot of anxiety remembering the problems I have when I try to live a traditional life.
The change was drastic. I ran away from a reasonably active city life in the busy city of Toronto to a farm in the interior mountains of British Columbia 30 minutes from a small city, without a car, or transit, or luxuries like fast internet and food delivery.
I felt like Ava Gabour and my new home was Hooterville. An old reference most of you won’t get. A riches to rags story
It was a bid adjustment to my system and initially felt like totrcure, exagurated by the guilt that uncertainly liked on as to whether I was welcome, or an obligation.
I was assigned some reasonably easy chores and with the help of alarms, I worked out a new schedule. I made surprisingly few mistakes so I built up some confidence. My presence as a live-in farmhand was useful so the guilt mellowed a little.
It did leave me with much more free time, and that was harder to adjust to. I’ve never worked hard, but I’ve also never had 15 hours a day with nothing to do and no people to do things for. I wasn’t needed.
This also means I wasn’t feeding off the various interactions with people. I have always been motivated and driven by interaction far more than money. I work for praise. Therapy told me that was a bad idea and peers in my business bought homes and cars.
What I had was a strong base of loyal customers that stayed loyal until they aged out. I have no regrets.
I never promoted myself or asked for business, but I stayed in a comfort zone income of contentment, until I couldn’t
Instead of watching 15 hours of TV to fill my daily idle time, I started working on the computer, learning about AI. I became obsessed with that, and my days were active and mentally stimulating.now I have to figure out a way to make some money from it, but that’s where my mental struggles get in the way. I’m still just a low self esteem kid in my brain and my best skill was being likable which is valueless to a chatbot. It does however still feed me praise and I choose to ignore the understanding that it’s programmed to tell me my ideas are genius.
I’m masking for it because that’s who I am.
The actual topic of this was supposed to be something else but I went off on this biographical tangent. I wanted to say how much harder it is for an ADHD person to live in a basement. Consider there is science behind why many people tend to lose their thought when they enter a new room. There is science that says ADHD people don’t view standard tasks and routines with the same ease as neurotypical people, always citing showering as their prime example. Routines are individual tasks we need to think about each step, which is why ADHD brains tend to cut corners if we can.
Today I realized something for the first time, and I wanted to ask other people. I realized I think about stairs. Every time. Walking up or down, the stairs are always something that isn’t an automatic task. They are their own thought process which is interrupting the thought between floors. Whatever I was thinking on one end of the stairs is paused while I tackle the stairs. When I reach the other end, I do my best to resume, but if anything new presents itself apon reaching the new level, it takes priority and my brain releases the initial task.
Don’t talk to me on the stairs.
I’m curious if this is yet another self realization to add to the long list of things that are not just me.
Do not read this while on the stairs.
