The to-do list that never ends
I struggle to do nothing. And as someone with diagnosed AuDHD and OCD, I know I’m not alone in this.
I genuinely don’t understand how people relax. Like, how do they turn their brains off? Mine is a perpetual to-do list, and no, it’s not just work stuff. It’s also the shows I need to watch, the movies I’m desperate to see, the albums I need to re-listen to from start to finish because I know I missed something the first time.
Even social things become tasks. Cocktails I need to try. Recipes I need to make. Hikes I need to walk. Beaches I need to swim at before summer ends and I’ve run out of excuses.
So when someone says just sit down and relax, I think: who has the time? I have things to do, people to see, places to go. (As my Pa would say to me as a kid, apparently prophetically.)
But underneath all of that is a belief I’ve carried for a long time, and I might as well just say it out loud: if I stop, I won’t start again.
Dark, I know.
I don’t mean it the way it sounds. I just mean that if I rest long enough, I’m genuinely not sure I’ll find the motivation to get back on the treadmill. Whatever speed it’s running at. Whether it’s work, life, connection, all of it.
The tricky part is that I actually love being busy. I love my work. It’s taken me close to 15 years to stop treating who I am and what I do as two separate things, because they were never separate to begin with. The person who shows up in a session is the same one writing this. The same one at the farmers market on a Saturday morning, catastrophising over which olive oil to buy. Same voice. Same person. No professional filter, no curated version. Just me, in whatever I threw on that morning, doing the thing I’ve somehow built a life around.
So when the busyness dries up, it doesn’t just feel like a quiet week. It feels like a question: am I the problem?
Which is a lot to put on an empty calendar.
The self-worth thing is vulnerable to admit, but I think most people who run their own business feel this and say nothing. When you are the business, a slow period doesn’t just affect your income. It affects how you see yourself. The two are so tangled that sometimes I can’t tell which one I’m actually worried about.
I’ve been sitting with that. Turning it over. Because if the “if I stop, I’m done” belief were actually true, I’d have folded somewhere around 2016, and clearly I didn’t. The brain just loves a catastrophe. Mine especially.
So now, when I need to move through something, I write. Not because I’ve figured anything out, but because my brain needs a task and writing is the one that leaves me feeling like I’ve done something real.
And here’s the part I may as well be honest about, since we’re already here: this is marketing. This piece, right now, is marketing. Substack is marketing. Instagram is marketing. All of it is, and I’ve just made peace with that faster than most people are comfortable admitting.
But here’s what I won’t do. I won’t write you a list. I won’t post “5 reasons you’re the problem in your relationship” with a little graphic and a call to action at the bottom. I can’t. My brain physically rejects it. Not because I’m above it, but because that version of content feels so far from who I actually am that I’d rather just not bother. The whole point is that the way I show up here, on Instagram, anywhere, is the only way I know how. It’s not a strategy. It’s just me, doing the thing my brain will tolerate.
And if that lands someone in my inbox who reads this and thinks she gets it, she’s my person — brilliant. That’s exactly what I want. I’m not trying to reach everyone. I’m trying to reach the right one. The person who’s done lying to themselves and wants to actually move. That person doesn’t need a listicle. They need to feel something, and then decide.
So I show up honestly, because it’s the only currency I have that’s worth anything. And quietly, yes, I hope it works.
So I write. Because my brain needs a task, because someone out there probably needed to read it, and because maybe, just maybe, they’ll know I’m their person before they’ve even booked in.
It’s a cycle. But it’s mine, and I’ve decided that’s enough.
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