Computer. Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of the podcast, all the things ADHD,
all the things, all the things, the things ADHD.
I like that that was very festive.
Thank you.
It's I mean, it is. You have your Festo Starbucks cup. I do here today. I'm one of your co hosts, we have an introduce yourselves. I'm one of your co host, Lee Skallerup Bessette.
This is a podcast. For those of you. I'm sure what's happening. The podcast about crafting jingles on the fly. Yeah, I am. This is not that podcast. This is a podcast about ADHD, as we mentioned, and I am the other one of your co hosts Co Co Co hosts.
That's one of those.
Amy Morrison. The first the first Yeah. Amy Morrison. The first cup of coffee of the day is currently in my hands.
Oh, gosh, only one that's all. You write about my coffee disasters this far? I did I have to say so we have his coffee machine. And it is it is great. We funded it on Kickstarter, like seven years ago and it finally came out but it's like it's got an app and you just press a button it does everything and it'll make you a perfect espresso or perfect americano or perfect. Yep. And it'll it'll grind the coffee, it'll have the water the perfect temperature because it's all programmed in. It's self cleaning. And when it works, it's glorious. And when it doesn't work, it's a frickin brick. And so it brick today this morning. And then I was like alright, well I have like the you know the the super coffee that everything and it's got like the mushrooms and the good fats and all of that kind of stuff. And so I'm like, oh make myself out of my super coffees. Well, I haven't had my super coffee in a while and it had gone bad so like took one sip of it was like God mushrooms in every
sale mushroom coffee. Yeah. Yeah, so
that was great. And then finally finally was like reduced to instant. Like the the Starbucks via instant is
you know what, those are actually really good. Yeah, I was gonna
say, Yeah, we traveled with them now. Still better than hotel coffee. salutely Absolutely.
I keep them around for emergencies to keep them in my desk at work. Because all you need is boiling water. And it's pretty good cup of coffee.
It does its job. It does its job it does it does.
No mushrooms were harmed in the making of Starbucks instant via and it is less likely to go skunky. Yeah, it was
great. Oh, yeah. But I was just really grateful that I'd already I decided yesterday and this is I'm saying this and I'm sharing this so that others who may be struggling right now or just generally will feel better about themselves. I decide looked at my calendar yesterday and I didn't have any work meetings. And so I scheduled a day off for today bless. And it partially because I just needed a break. Partially because I needed to take a shower and couldn't figure out how to do that without taking a full day off, you know, flowers. So I still haven't taken it. It's one o'clock in the afternoon. In this morning, and I still have not taken a shower it is like it. Yeah,
I had some goals. I had some goals on that front too. We've been talking last couple of weeks about what some of our limitations and failures are and of course yesterday was my big teaching days that was three hours in the classroom and a further three hours of feverish prep and being on campus and wearing real pants and all of that so today is my crawl in a hole don't do my hair, wear my pajamas and get some grading done today which I am doing blast but I also had this plan that I was going to to have a shower like I think everybody will relate to our shower stories because it's like you know if you want to diagnose with someone he said like do you ever like really want to shower and then you don't feel like all the time you'll be like Yeah, welcome friend. So like I had one of those moments, like we've talked about on the podcast before where I was like trying to optimize all the things and I spent so long trying to optimize all the tasks that I did not do any of the tasks right so I'm trying to like work the laundry around me being in the shower so that they have enough water yeah, doesn't cut out and but then like if I have my shower first and then do the towel load second then like, then I will have a bath mat to be on. But if I do that first and like will I wait to like come out of the dryer and then I'll have a cleaning bathmat to step on or should I use yesterday's last week's towel rate or do I start to like anyhow, I tried so long to optimize us that is 1pm and I'm just gonna A cup of coffee now and I've not have shower. But you know what? I think you are amazing just the way you are. And I expect you can't smell me.
Yeah, well, can't you either. You can't see either of our hair
clip action happening. It looks great. Everybody this way this is not a vlog.
Yeah, exactly. But, but again, I think that there's there is, you know, something to be said about you know, sometimes, sometimes if you look at your calendar and think I need a full day to be able to take a shower, then you should take that full day. We get
I know, I think it's it's creeping up on us Lee, that most wonderful time of the year. If you'll permit and I know in the US because I'm exposed to so much American culture that I guess Thanksgiving is kind of a big deal for you people the no apparently celebration, apparently
it this all hell breaks loose. Yeah, at this is I mean, again, being that I'm from Canada. I don't we don't really travel at Thanksgiving, because to go back home to Canada as everybody's still working. And everybody's like, why are you here on a random Thursday? And you know, my husband doesn't like turkey. And my kids don't like turkey. And I'm the only one who likes Turkey. And so we don't usually travel we will often have a Thanksgiving dinner. But for usually, usually we have friends. Like it's a Friendsgiving. Right? Because it's usually other Canadians and or people who can't, or do not want to go home for the holidays. So we typically we typically will have a Friendsgiving. And, and you know, and someone will humor me with some small amount of Turkey and then but a whole bunch of other stuff that is in Turkey because nobody else likes it except
me. Right. So you found a little something that that works for you. Yeah. And my husband
loves to cook, right? Like this is sort of his, you know, he's, you know, he gets to, you know, roast things and smoke things. And in my daughter loves to bake and social bake things. And usually we love
the things and we love to eat them. So yeah, yeah. Because it strikes me like from what I read on the intertubes on I see, even here in Canada, where Thanksgiving comes with a much more reasonable delay between it and the winter holidays, sometimes celebrated as a religious or secular version of what has come to be called Christmas, for everyone is that around this time of year you and I both work in universities, it is both very boring and frenetic. At the same time, this semester is not new. This semester is like getting a bit long in the tooth, the semester is your favorite pair of running shoes that won't come clean anymore, even if you scrub them and you don't even want to scrub them because you've given up right? You'll have disruption of like, I guess you guys go till Wednesday, then you get the Thursday and Friday off everybody in the United States tries to get on an airplane simultaneously. People spend a lot of time in the homes of people with whom they share some sort of kinship relation, that even if that's the only thing they have in common with those people, everyone gets exhausted eats too much spends too much money risks getting trampled at Walmart, and oh, yes, Black
Friday, the other the other great American holiday tradition, right? And then
from then it's just a full on race through to New Years. And many people really don't enjoy that. No, no, no. And many people, many of them who are neurodivergent some Shall we even suggest ADHD people really struggle with the changing routines, the constant travel, the forced social interaction and expectation of family feelings with people you may not have a lot in common with, with changes to our eating and exercise patterns. With the concomitant piling on of stresses in the workplace with a much higher number of social demands a lot of sugar, a lot of alcohol, a lot of caffeine, a lot of shoes that don't fit right a lot of party dresses that fit in 2018, which was the last time we looked at them and now we're trying to wear them again and that's
difficult. social situations, don't forget social situations, worry and all of that stuff. That
money actuations this time of year is like a very expensive way to make a lot of people miserable. There's the crowding of travel. I have been assured by no less a percentage than Andy Williams himself that this is the most wonderful time of year. But it is not for everyone. And we would like to talk today about how we might be able to take control of our own holiday Seasons, so that we remain in loving relationships with the people we care about. We don't blow through all of our spoons, all of our budget, all of our alcohol points, all of our socializing all of our coping skills and all of our patients, what would it feel like Lee to have a holiday season from which you emerge happier than when you entered
it? I don't know, man up some sleep, I would just I would really get like just some sleep. So what I really like is, and that's always I think that's always the the the challenges you're saying is that like this is, I'm already tired, just listening to you talk about it. And just thinking of like, in January, once we're all back from all the things is, is that then you just have to go straight back to work. And you're like, why am I so tired? I just had two weeks off. And that's, that is one of the privileges of working in higher education is that even in a staff role? They usually shut down campus for two weeks, because they're like, there's no this isn't like, why why are we that it costs more to heat the buildings than it does to, you know, give you paid time off for this? You know, so, but, but nonetheless, even though we shut down for two weeks, and nothing happens, and nothing can happen, because the first days been shut down. You know, it's still still come back from the holidays. And we it's exacerbated for for for our family because my my son is an early January, baby. And so we move out of we move out of the Christmas and New Year's and immediately into to birthday season, which is growing up it was even worse. So starting in at the end of October, every two weeks, from October 24. All the way to New Year. Every two weeks, there was a birthday or holiday.
I'm very tired.
So it was so it was my it was my mom and her dad's birthday. And they had the same birthday exactly two weeks later, it was my dad and my brother's birthday. Oh my gosh, oh, and then two weeks before that it was Thanksgiving, right, depending on when it fit what we were doing before that it was nice to me. And it was my then it was their birthday. And then after that two weeks later, I think it was my grandmother's birthday. And then it was like American Thanksgiving. And then it was Christmas season. And then it was like my stepdads birthday. And then it was Christmas. And then it was New Years. And yeah. And now. Now what we get what I get to deal with is my daughter does ballet and so we call it the tyranny of the nutcracker.
Right. So you're like verticals and dress rehearsals and performances and hairspray and costumes and shows and show events and driving emotional excitement and meal planning around. Yep, everything right. Okay. So let us let us stipulate then, that the holidays tend to pile up and that most of us experience them as if we are a snowball at the top of the hill. That is a manageable fist size at the beginning of the season, but we roll down at ever increasing velocity, the hill picking up snow and rocks and twigs and on weary skiers as we go down. And as we get to the bottom of the mountain, we smash into the ski chalet. And then someone leans over us and instead of calling an ambulance says I'm going to need that report on my desk by when's
your syllabus is due. It's just for a copy of your syllabus. Great.
So let's think about this. Right? It does not I suggest to you, we have to be like this. And I know that we both know this in our bones because we discussed in a prior episode a couple of prior episodes, we talked with our guests with Kelly and with Julie about our weddings and what we what we chose to do for weddings that maybe did not match the norm. Right, not a big sort of like giant church party for 300 people mostly invited by our parents debts from which we continue to pay off and we cried for weeks because the DJ played the songs out of order, like we did not do that because it was not a kind of party that we would be able to enjoy. It was not the right way to start a lifelong commitment. And so I have to thank my mom for this. My my mom, bless her soul was always very good about marching to the beat of her own drum. And so we always had slightly different holidays than other families did because my mom was I'm not going to 30 parties. I'm not going to enjoy that. Right. I'm not not making a target for Irving. That's a lot of work. So all through the 80s we had fondue for Christmas dinner, which was much more fun for my sister and I like so fondue for people who are not born in the 1980s 70 is like a pot of oil right? Over, like a stern Oh Can a flame and you have these long metal skewers that you jab into like, well at my house bits of hot dog because we were children or like bits of steak or bits of chicken or might have tempura batter and some vegetables, or cheese or whatever and you like basically deep fry your food at the table. And it was amazing. And it was great. And I thought everybody had fondue for Christmas dinner, but they don't. But it was what my mom wanted. It was fun for the kids. It was everybody want nobody was like, but it doesn't look like the Currier and Ives picture, right? It was like, This is great, this meal is fun. Nobody had to spend all day in the kitchen, we're all having a great time. And it's easy to clean up, right. And we didn't go to 10 million parties. And, you know, my parents would set limits, like we're not opening presents before, like x o'clock, because mommy and daddy would like to rest. So you're just gonna have to calm down children, right, like, put some boundaries around what people's needs and preferences were. And in fact, there was a chunk of the middle to later 80s Where on Christmas morning, we would be at our house in Kirkland, Lake Ontario. And we would open up our presence, which was an envelope full of cash for my parents and some stocking stuffers. And then we would all pile in the family truckster, which is to say the Dodge Caravan gold colored with wood paneling on this, oh
my god, I can write in my mind's eye that extended
would drive seven and a half hours to Toronto, and then we would stay in the hotel that's attached to Yorkdale Mall, and then Boxing Day we would spend all of our Christmas loot, right, that was the 80s. Greed is good. Right? But that was what we wanted to do. And yeah, we know exactly. family vacation. And we didn't buy these extravagant Christmas presents for each other and, and now every year, Tom and I and our kid we sit down and say like, we have two weeks where we're all in the house together, where nobody has to go to school, nobody has to go to work. What would you like to do in that time? Like if you close your eyes and try to imagine what a good Christmas break looks like for you? What would it be, you know, and one of us might say, like, I like to go see movies, I like to go to the theater and see matinees like, I want to do that or like I really want to, you know, do a lot of outdoor running, or I would like to have some friends over or I would like to, you know, go for a hike at some point. And we sort of manage, you know, what we'd like to do together what we'd like to do separately what our tolerance is for big parties or events, and then we plan it and we don't let the holiday have us. Right? We don't just sort of say it's Christmas, we got an invitation we have to go or there's a work thing I have to go or we have to make a turkey why? You don't just because everyone else does doesn't mean that you do. And so I'd like for us to think together in ways that we can maybe model for our listeners today about how do you how do you take charge of your holiday? What are the scripts like you can say to people like I'm not doing that I don't want to write or manage gift exchange? How do you set people's expectations around? How many presents or how your family is gonna? Is everybody buying for everybody? Or is there going to be a Secret Santa? How can you opt out of things? You know, how can you say I don't want to travel Thanksgiving weekend, all the way, you know, across three time zones on a super crowded plane full of people who are maybe not entirely vaccinated the way they should be? And like be exhausted by this trip. I would rather come see you at a different time or, or what have you. Right, like, because I think we have more control over some of the circumstances of our lives than we think we do. Yeah, right. Go ahead.
No, go ahead. I
was gonna say the great benefit of never fitting in, is that we can see normative social rituals for what they are weird things we don't know how to do. And that can give us a certain amount of freedom to say like, we could maybe do this differently.
Yeah. Well, I think that that. So the first step I took was was first step was moving across the country, and then changing countries, that was sort of our first step is like, we're not going to participate in these great. We're going to live, you know, five hours by plane away from right, from everything. So that that was that was step one, um, you know, and then we, you know, a blessing, but, you know, our son also really made us, you know, rethink because he's our little introvert and didn't like the big crowds and didn't like we, you know, my, our social butterfly daughter is like, take me to all the parties where our son was, like, you know, eff this noise, like, do we have to, you know, so, so we already through just negotiating who our family is and what we are, we're already sort of made rules, right where it was, you know, we have agreements about how long we're gonna stay at something what you know, are you allowed to bring your phone to the thing, how much time are you allowed, what what is the expectations around social interactions, but then other than that, you are free to like, hide in a corner somewhere and just like, sitting watch YouTube videos or, you know, so there's, there's there's that negotiation that takes place. And it's and that's always been something that we've tried to do with our, with our kids and with our, with our family and those kinds of expectations. But we've ever since we moved, or at least maybe I moved, you know, we've always I've all we've always had the sort of Friendsgiving and Christmas for the strays. Right? Right where it is anyone and everyone is welcome. If you don't have anywhere to go for the holidays, you know, you can come to our place. You know, again, the husband loves to cook, it might not be a traditional Thanksgiving meal, but it will be delicious, trust me. And we will have lots of, you know, lots of good booze if you want to drink. But if you don't want to drink, we'll have lots of non boozy drinks that you can have too. And if you need to stay overnight, then, you know, it's almost like an extension of undergrad in a certain way, right? Where there were those undergrad dinners where everybody just sort of plucked it out and brought their own stuff, just you know, with higher end
foods, right? So wines a little bit better,
you know, the wines a bit better. The bourbons a bit better. Yeah,
I mean, I think you're describing two different things. They're like the first one is, I really like that idea of negotiation with your family. And like, crucially, you guys are negotiating before the party, what the rules are for the party. It's not when you get there, and your kid pulls a phone out. And you're like, there's no phones here. And they're like, What, and you're like, I thought you knew how would they know? Right? Yeah, no like to sort of say to each other, like, I know, I can get more cooperation. From my kid, my kid is inclined to help me out in a social situation, if I'm also attentive to what their legitimate needs are right? And like, I will come to this party, but I don't feel like you know, you guys are gonna be there for five hours, because it's an account, but I don't think I can be social for that long. My kid will say, and I will be like, okay, so how about you participate in the meal? And you'll be charming at the city? Exactly. Yep. And for half an hour, when we get there, you talk to everybody, and then you can go sit on a couch with the dogs. Yeah. And watch YouTube videos. Yeah, that's fine. Right. And so that's something that works. For all of us. It's not an unreasonable ask, because my kid would enjoy seeing the people and doing this stuff. But they won't enjoy it for five hours. But the circumstances require that that's how long we're going to be out of the house for right. Yeah, so you can't negotiate this party. That's not the time, right? People are already sort of over their limits, and they're already pushed, you can say, also, like at the at the beginning of the month, like we each get to pick one event that the others will come to with us, right, you know, so you know, you might say to one kid, like, if we're going to go to this, like opening night party for your ballot, then that's what you chose for us to do. You can then say, well, no, but now you all have to come to my school assembly. Oh, wait, you also all have to come to this other thing with me, right? So say everybody gets to choose the thing that's most important. And then we can work together like so the idea there is, you get out ahead of it, which is like not what we're great at getting out ahead of it. But I think we've all had probably and now it's incredibly negative experiences of being completely overwhelmed and frazzled and making everybody including ourselves unhappy over the holidays, that for me, the trade off has absolutely been worth that we're have to like, sit down and get lists and get a calendar out and like, discuss details with people, which is like, not my wheelhouse. But when I do it, and my family does it, and we plan sort of mindfully about what do we want? And what can we expect from each other and even stuff about like, we now make Christmas lists for each other because like, you know, sometimes you have this idea, like I need to guess I'm going to get you the perfect gift without you ever hinting to me what it is, well, I'm like, legitimately very bad at that, right. And then I will just try to buy something really expensive, because it won't be as thoughtful isn't what I'm sure and now it's a sort of like arms race about who's going to get the most appropriate gifts so that everybody knows how much they are loved, which is like a very bad way to try to prove that you love somebody. Right? So now we set budgets. And we give lists and we sort of say like, well, we'll get items in categories, like something you want something you need something to wear and something to read. So like people, I'd like that. It's great. Yeah, I learned that from somebody else. I wish I could remember who but that's a sort of great way and then you don't have like 700 things under the Christmas tree that you just keep adding to because like there should be more or somebody's got more like June. I mean, like it's just ratchets it all down because I know sometimes you probably do this and I do this is that we overcompensate for some sort of perceived failing on our part by overdoing it and something else like I can't think of the perfect gift about something you mentioned last February that I ordered in March to make sure that it was going to be customized in time for Christmas. I want to show you how much I love you I want to buy you something meaningful and I can't so I'm going to buy you seven different things expensive and difficult to procure that I don't know if you want or not right so like why don't we skip all of that difficulty make lists for each other set a budget not be like I got you something on your list that costs $400 And you know, I got you like something on your list that cost $25 like so we avoid the potential for conflict and then we're a lot less anxious going into the holiday and we're like a lot more secure but we We don't have to be going to events that we don't want to go to or like, we're not allowed to spring events on each other. Oh, didn't I tell you like, the like entire, you know, cities, karate instructors are meeting on this and I have to go like, what? When is it tomorrow? Why? Right, like, so. So we don't do that or we can Yeah, yeah. So you're talking about moving away from your family, which gave you like your family of origin, and your sort of social networks, they, which gave you a chance to sort of reset with your own family and build your own traditions, because you're the head of your household. So you get to set the rules in your house, it is hard when we live near to our families of origin, because when we're still sort of beholden to the authority figures of our childhood, they will often try to guilt trip us into doing the holidays, the way that they want to do them, not the ways that we want to do them. And since we tend to be the different ones in our family, we are often made to bear a sort of psychic or social penalty for insisting on our boundaries. So sometimes the easiest thing to do is to move five time zones away. That's,
I mean, if it's if it's possible, you know, like, there's, it's not
one way, it's all down and start over. Exactly. I
mean, that was pretty much how I've got my entire life every five years and just burned it all down and started over burning. Literally. I've moved languages, it's like I'm gonna burn it all down and just go to a French university reinvent myself in a different language, but that'll be fine. I'll move west and become a western Canadian, that'll be fine. Go to America,
and then a different place in America and then Jack place in America. Yeah,
but two stories that all address the like other boundaries to stories, though about like the glides, and boundaries around presence both involving Well, one of them really involving my son, but we would often when they got a little bit older, but still had the wonders of Christmas, we would often fly out to fly back to Montreal for the holidays. Right, right. We're in California, there's no
military.
Yeah, exactly. Oh,
Christmas vibe is expensive with Montreal. Exactly. And,
and, and, you know, they there's lots of family and friends there. And so you know, we nod over our kids with Cassie, you'd loved more than anything, of course, you know, and they would get spoiled rotten again, that sort of making up it's like grandparents are far away. So we're gonna make a big, big deal out of Christmas, right. And again, this is sort of family tradition. And you know, this growing up in the 80s You'd always get clothes, right? You always get clothes at Christmas. You didn't underwear, your stocking your stocking, new socks and underwear and your stocking and US sweater say yeah, and clothes you would have like, I remember my grandmother had the Sears catalog. And you would mark in the Sears catalog what you want me to show you Oh, yeah, yep, circle, you had the toys section, which you would circle the knowledge flow the intersection, you had to make sure you had clothes, as well. So there's always clothes always clothes under the tree. And so and that was fine. My my daughter, she'd open it up and be like, Oh, this and that. And all my son. He would open the clothes.
Agree. Oh, my God. That's amazing.
And my mom would want lots of presents under the tree. So she'd wrap all the clothes individually. My guy is one t shirt. That's third shirts. Right? son took it. And it was for my brother to it. It was a Montreal Canadian shirt. He took it. Yeah.
Oh, nice. Right. So your son did not understand what was happening. And so he reacted, like in the ways that we react when we don't know what's happening. We don't like what's it like getting clothes? Exactly. It's not what Christmas is about.
So from then, on his college because she's still buying clothes because she wanted to be fair. And so the better. You know, the the Grand Bargain was, but she would put it all in one bag right off in the corners in one miserable bag. Yeah. His clothes over there. Like he that's fine. But that's amazing. Oh, no. And it's like it was a running joke for so long. And I always like I'll take clothes as long as their sweat pants like, All right, that's me too. Yeah, right. But, but it was so bad. It was so bad that we did not have enough room in our car. After we like we would get off the plane one time. Modern Language Association The MLA is they switched it around. It used to be between Christmas and New Year's and then it was just after New Year's. So what would very often end up happening is that we would leave Montreal, get to a hub like we'd get to Detroit. And then I would go off to the MLA and the husband would go home with the kids and then I go to
MLA dodgy Well, yeah, yeah.
If I had been in the car, if I had not gone to the MLA there would have been gifts left in the airport parking lot. Oh my God, because literally the trunk was full. The backseat was crammed full between the car seat, and the front passenger seat was full.
Okay, that's too much stuff now. Yeah. But it's just too much stuff. Yeah.
Yeah. But that was definitely dead. That's what my cousin's like, what is this? All of this? Yeah, it was with the kids now are like, they want to build their own PCs, both of them. Right. And so they're at the point where they're just like, could you just like, literally give us money? Because we're going to buy our PC pieces to build our PC gaming PCs that we want to do. Yeah. And, and, you know, they, they've, again, they've always been, because we've allowed them and given them space to be like, advocate what it is that they want. And you know, that they feel comfortable enough doing that. And they will be like, is that okay? And I'm like, of course, it's okay. If that's really what you want? Yeah,
I mean, I think we want to get back to first principles and say, like, what is the holiday for? Right? What is the holiday for? It's like, you know, you know, in the warm embrace of shift and can, as you know, Clark Griswold says in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, which is both a how to and how to not have Christmas classics, you know, if we're like buying EACH OTHER WAY too many presents, because we want people to know that we love them. But then those presents are burdensome for people to try to transport them, then we can still love them. But we could ask them what is a way that we could express that love that they would feel it right? So sometimes it gets difficult, you know, with your own kids, sometimes you you can lay down the law. I mean, you try to negotiate about it. But like with broader sets of relatives, sometimes it's hard to say like, you know, we would really prefer, like, we really don't want any, any gifts this year, we would, you know, love, we would love for you to make some time for us to come and see, we would like to do that instead of having gifts, we would like to spend an afternoon we would like to take you to a restaurant, we really these are the things we would like to do to show the way that we care because the tending of relationships, when everybody seems to have the same period of work, I mean, when they have the period off work, because a lot of people don't write. So some of us work in industries where you get like a week or two weeks off and and some people don't some people one member, one adult member of the household gets a bunch of time off and the other one doesn't. And the one who does get the time off just wind up doing childcare for two weeks, and the other one winds up working in paid employment and neither of them gets a vacation. Each is resentful of the other. Right? Like
yeah, so you Well, this is this is the reason. So just just a backtrack on what I think we were talking about it before we started recording is one of the reasons Thanksgiving is such a big deal here in the states is that, unlike Christmas holidays, where like kids get two weeks, who knows what parents are gonna get or who knows what everybody else day, one day, right? Thanksgiving is you have a four day weekend, everyone like it is it is the time. And now thankfully, there's been pushed back and a lot of retailers are staying closed on Black Friday now to or not opening on Thursday. And that because it is one of the only times where almost just about everyone in the family is going to have those four days off.
Right, unlike they should spend it all trying to do exactly the same things at the same time in over wieldy sized groups of people that do not fit in the houses where they're meant to be fit. So they I think oh wait for your comes to critical theory. I think that we are trying to compensate for capitalism by trying to rescue all of our personal relationships in four days of sanctioned holiday because y'all in the US do not have sufficient paid holidays. No, don't. Right. You don't have you know, enough stable jobs you'd like there's all kinds of reasons that it feels super important to get the whole family together and lavish each other with food, booze, attention, and gifts. It's because we're starved, often for family contact. And then the world that we live in now where so many of us move far away from where we grew up, and everybody we knew moves far away from where they grew up because of the needs of capitalism, right? We're a sort of nomads. Now we're all over the country doing all kinds of things for our jobs, our jobs are usually too busy. And we're very stressed out. And we have these sort of dreams that are that we see in a television advertisements do about this is you know, the most wonderful time of the year and it's about family, and it's about love and it's about togetherness, and those are all things that we're all starved for. Not because our family doesn't care about us or because they bought us socks instead of a like Nintendo Switch. But because we don't have enough time to nurture those relationships, right but you cannot nurture every last relationship in your family after a sort of transcontinental flight that has made you broke and angry. Where you possibly sick and impossibly sick and like and then you're nauseated the entire rest of the week because you have to fly with Like your stomach's still full from Turkey to come home, right? So maybe we invest too much. And like the sort of Hallmark Ad Council version of what you know, like, there's a whole channel now devoted to Hallmark Christmas movies, right? Because we want those feelings of snow as softly falling and the town is walkable and you know, the men are eligible and handsome and have are connected with their own feelings and our children come to love us more. And our parents reconcile and like, all these things, but that seems to be like if you compare people's real experiences of the holidays versus the homework version, there's a huge gap in between what people want to have and what they get. And maybe when we keep trying harder with the same strategies we've always been using. We're not ever going to change the effect there. Yeah, right. My parents came a couple years ago, they came to our house for Christmas when my mom was still alive, but they stayed at the hotel up the street, I have a guest room. Right. But they sit at the hotel up the street, because honestly, we functioned better when we're not trying to share one shower between for grownups and a kid and my parents are not like, so great with being 24/7 with my pets, and my kid and my husband, and me, and I also find my parents low key annoying if I spent too much time with them. And so they came for Christmas, and they stayed at a hotel. The hotel is like, literally 200 yards from here. And then my kid got to go there and like splash around in the pool. Yeah, it was a hotel. Yeah, life. And so it like it added a new kind of thing. And it wasn't like, wow, you'd like your parents can tell they didn't even stay with you. I'm like, bless. Yeah, right. Yeah. So we just made that up. It was like going to the hotel in the 80s with our fistfuls of cash fresh off the Boxing Day sales at Yorkdale Mall, right? Like we the important thing was that we got to see each other and share these traditions. But it wasn't going to work to be squished in the same house. And it wasn't like come for the whole two weeks. They came for two days. And then they went somewhere else because it's quality, not quantity, right. So I think we're all starved for family. Everyone enters into this with the best of intentions and the fondest of wishes, and it keeps blowing up in everybody's faces. So maybe they are a little bit ADHD. But we can we can put a stop to it. And if we begin those conversations with our loved ones around, like, I really care for you in this relationship is important. And I know the holidays are both showing our love for one another right. But I find this part of it overwhelming. I don't want to bake eight dozen cookies. With you this year, we just pick one or two recipes. And do that or, you know, could we do this instead of that other thing? Or could we just, you know, have a Secret Santa for the extended family instead of everybody buys stuff for everybody else. That doesn't mean I care less or I want to cheap out it just means it's a little bit overwhelming, honestly, for all of us to try to manage it. Right? Yeah. So maybe
supply chain,
right? Is it our learning outcomes for Christmas, right, by the end of the holiday season, you should be able to see, right. But it's like once more about alignment, getting clear on what our values are, and then trying to align our actions with those desired Christmas outcomes.
And there's also I think, yes, and there's also the flip side of that, which is the ADHD brain where I could do all the things, right until you write until you can't write but no sobbing mess on the floor. Yeah. So So Can I can I tell you how much my family loves me? Yes. Okay. So and how well my family knows me because even my daughter was like, Are you sure that's good idea. So I get it, I get to tell you a story. And you're gonna laugh, because so my mom is actually coming out. She hasn't seen the kids in two years because of COVID and all of that. So there was supposed to be usually this is what has always happened is that the weekend of The Nutcracker, there was also a
swim meet, right? I mean, of course, there's of course there is yes.
So this isn't the first time she's done this before where she comes out and he kind of gets to see everything right, she gets to see her granddaughter dance in the Nutcracker. And my mom used to do ballet and so this makes her very, very happy. And she also gets to see her grandson swim in a swim meet, which is, you know, a lot of fun, and, you know, and that sort of thing. So when we got pushed, that's fine. But my son is also in a play this year. And he's acting and he's on stage. Yeah, that that's this weekend. And so I was thinking because I was thinking well, maybe maybe my mom could come out for the play and then she could be here for Thanksgiving and then she could be there for there so like that's that's almost three weeks but you know she get to see his play and right have an American Thanksgiving with us which we've never been able to do cuz she's retired now. And and she get Nutcracker and a swim meet is so
out of this
house was like, Are you insane? Yeah. Like are you seriously considering this?
Yeah, yeah, you're so kind but this is Stupid, right? Yeah,
yeah. No, like it was it's like, my daughter was like, No, Mom. Yeah. Don't do that not serious, are you? And I was like, Yeah, I am.
Like you can love people, but not want them at your house for three weeks like we have difficulty as a culture generally making these finer gradations right to say, I love you very much like my sister and I were always joking about after our husbands died because, you know, statistically speaking, it's likely that they will die before us because they're dudes that were going to buy a duplex. Yeah, she will live in one half and I will live in the other half. Because we love each other dearly and can spend oodles of amount of time together. But our design aesthetics are different. Our tolerance for dog noises are different. And our needs for solitude are profound. So we know that we cannot ever live in the same house because we tried that. And we fought all the time. That was our entire childhood. But we do really like each other. So we're quite happy to have a boundary, which is quite literally a wall down the middle of the house. Right. And it's separate address. And yeah, exactly a separate mailing address. Right. Yeah. You know, it'd be like 22 A and 20 GB, but whatever, right, like, yeah, it'd be, it'd be different. And we know that that would work. Great for us, because we're able to discuss those boundaries, right. And so like, when my parents decided they were going to stay at the hotel instead of at our house, I was, like, inclined to be like, Oh, I mean, yeah, parents are supposed to stay with their kids,
why don't you want to stay with us? Yeah, I
didn't want them either. I wanted them to want to, so that I could complain about it, which is the normal thing to do. And don't be ridiculous. Like, we're all happier if we just accept, like, we get along great. But we're all grown adults. And it's hard to put multiple adults in one house if they're not romantically involved with one another, right. And even that isn't even over the edge. Right. And, and so I think it's just, it can be really, really hard to hack the holidays in a way that you can say to people like these are our shared learning outcomes, these are our values, these are the experiences we want to have, these are the feelings we want to have. We also want to like our pants to still fit at the end, or, you know, I don't want to I'm training for a marathon, for example, like you could say, I'm training for a marathon. So I do really need to maintain my training through that it's important to me, or, you know, like, I just want to cook for everybody. So if you don't want to come I can bring a big meal to your house because I really enjoy the cooking part. Right. So like other people might say no to us, we might say no to other people. But that that No, to an event, or a practice is not a negation of the amount of care that you have in a relationship, right. But we tend to conflate those things. Oh, yeah, much easier to buy stuff. Right and make extravagant gestures than we are to talk about our feelings with people.
Yeah, yeah. No, you're not wrong. I mean, it's, it's really, it's really challenging in that sort of way. Because we do. And again, the not enough time, and, and it is a, it is really the only time of the year where you stop. And you stop. No, you but but but again, like it's, you want to do all these things during the year. Right? Like you want to see more your family or you want to see more your friends or you want and then all of a sudden you blink and it's Thanksgiving. Right? Right. Like I mean, I'm suffering and maybe ADHD time is even worse. But like, yeah, right now, it's sort of like, how are we already been November? Like, why did that happen?
Are you cramming your life? Did you leave your assignment of 2021 to the end of November, and now you're trying to do like a year's worth of family life? In the holiday season?
Yeah, that's, that's pretty much we're all. This is, as you said, one of the maybe the cases where our society is a little late DHT. Yeah,
like if there was not enough time to do it before, when it was activities, you would spread out over maybe the prior 11 months. How on earth if you couldn't do one thing per month, in 11 months? Are you going to do 12 things? In one month? Right? Like the first day
of Christmas? Yeah.
So like, I'm wondering, like, instead of thinking like, what are the things because I hear you saying this, too. What are the things I want to do? What have you asked yourself instead? What are the things I want to feel? Yeah, right. I like skating. Skating is relaxing. Last year, like there's an outdoor rink, it's a Dilek. Honestly, it's like next to the Starbucks in the uptown. So it's like 300 yards from my house so I can walk there and it's an outdoor skating rink in the public square. And I love going there I go there all the time. I did not go at all last year, because last year was COVID protocol. And they would let you in on the hour. let you in. It's a sheet of ice on a parking lot. Right? With no boards and they would let you in only on the hour. And you know only for 40 minutes. Exactly. And you had to line up because he would only let 10 people on for the hour and people were standing in the snow holding their skates for two hours to get on the ice for 40 minutes and I thought I love skating. You know, skating makes me feel free. It makes me feel like a child. Again, it is an activity with no stress and no expectations. But if I didn't line up for two hours to do it, then it's not worth it. Right. So I love skating, there are things that I want to do, but I will abandon that thing, because the way that I want to feel is relaxed, and easy, right? So if I could walk to it, and I can do it without waiting in line, then I'm going to do something that I would just change and say, like, well, this is not the season of skating, we're just going to go for walks in the neighborhood and look at lights, because we don't have to line up for that, right. So instead of like I, you know, I really wish I could have seen these people, well, maybe we'll maybe we'll throw like early Christmas party, and then all the people that we meant to have dinner with one on one, or 212 we can have all them at the same time. And then the next night, we're gonna like, you know, all the I'm gonna make cookies for all the teachers and all the bus drivers and like all the coaches and stuff because like, I don't I'm not good enough at telling them through the year like how much I appreciate them or like, oh, you know, I don't I don't tip the cleaning ladies enough. I'm gonna like buy them like extravagant gift cards for this thing. But I got to get that well, no, we got to get chocolates for like we're trying to express all the care that we feel too frazzled to do often during the year, all at the same time, because there are things that we want to do, but they produce ways that we don't want to feel. And that's why we're so exhausted at the end. And then do we just ratchet up the expectations on other people's if we pull this sort of heroic all nighter, which is called November and December, right? If we do that, if we bake all the cookies and hand make our own candy canes and like do fun activities in the snow and like do some midnight caroling, all these things that go on this great cosmic list of like, what a good family or a good friend or a good co worker? Does. We feel awful about it. Like what do we what do we accomplish like it there on the checklist? It's like when you go to Disney, right? And say like, we're going to do 10 million activities so that I can have the photos after right. Yeah, not enjoying it. When you're there. What would it be like if we prioritized like how we felt when we did the holidays? We looks confused. Podcast audience Lee as thoughtful. I think that that's, I don't know, Leah speechless.
Well, so again, um, you know, I come from a white Anglo Protestant family of which like, holidays are just supposed to be about crushing. Right, right. Like, you're not supposed to feel good about
right. Boast, do with it. You're performing. Right? I mean, correctness?
Yeah. And I mean, that there's, you know, there was there was warmth and love and all that. But there was a routine. Right, like, there was a routine that you followed. And I think that that's, you know, a part of part of it. And yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's, it's gonna be different again this year, because it's not COVID. I mean, it still is COVID. That's the thing. It's still COVID. But it's not COVID.
Isn't is not COVID. Yeah, it's shrewton
Jers virus, you know, but And so, yeah, I don't know. And that this is our first Christmas. And I can say this is our first Christmas in our new space, right. And we keep changing spaces. And every time we change spaces, it's like we switch up the holidays a little, right, like, because it's, and of course the kids get older. And so yeah, you didn't automatically have the kind of, you know, you have this break point where it's like, oh, the kids have gotten to a certain age, we don't have to do this thing anymore. And it just so happens, we also changed houses. So right,
so they won't notice that we will notice
or no one cares, right? Yeah. But yeah, no, I think I actually have to go because I have another meeting. Even though I took the day off. I scheduled like three podcast recordings, because that's where I am because I don't know how to rest.
Right? I don't know how to rest. We have some episodes on that. You might
Yeah, I know. We might want to might want to listen to them. And, and we did not forget, just want to say we did not forget that. We did talk last week about strategies. And so we talked about different strategies for the holidays, because it's a little more pressing, or we thought was more pressing and we have ADHD and that's just what we want to talk about today. But we did not forget it and we will be getting to it. Probably this the this next recording session that we have. So that would be next week's episode or maybe in two weeks. Who knows? Who maybe it'll maybe it'll be giving Yeah, maybe never, maybe never just like the memes, right? Did we ever get about ADHD?
The now the not now? We don't know. Yeah. So for this week, I would encourage our listeners to think about what feelings you want to have from the holidays and then ask yourself maybe are there small things you can try now that would allow you to align some of your holiday practices with the way is that you want to feel? I believe in you listeners.
Yes. And with that, happy holidays, as we approach I know you've made the saying it's too early. It's not It's mid November. I'm sorry.
I'm playing the songs on the piano. I'm doing it. I'm in there all the way.
I'm ready writing on Twitter. Amy is did you want you can always email us at all the things adhd@gmail.com Yeah, let us know your strategies. We'd love that. How have you how do you manage the holidays? Or how do you catastrophically not manage the holidays? That's alright, as well, because, yep. You know, it's a work in progress. We're down. What Yeah, we're here for you. So, thanks for listening. And we'll see you next time. Bye, everyone.
