Another project started on a hypomanic high, destined to fizzle out or become routine?

 Journal Prompt: How are you doing today?

A loaded question for a first post I suppose but very me as I am now. A good capture of my current sensibilities and a testament to my resolve to continue my projects created in a fever dream like state. Today I'm doing well. I'm itching to do some projects around the house, to improve my life with new lifehacks and follow my passions and hobbies but I have a small window to express these sentiments because it's a work day and work must be done during the day. After work I am set free to be feral on those projects and see what I can get done before bedtime to maintain some semblance of a routine.

So maybe I should start by introducing myself. Hi, I'm Heather. I am neruospicy in four different ways: ADHD (inattentive), Bipolar II, Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Social Anxiety. I've had these conditions since I was a child but most weren't diagnosed until I became an adult and reached out for help on my own accord. And I haven't seriously started researching these conditions until VERY recently over the past few months to try to mitigate what I'm not getting through traditional medicine and therapy. I still do take my meds and do therapy but I'm not getting the complete treatment I need to be able to cope with all these conditions. If you have a book, webinar, podcast, magazine, online resource that you have found helpful for yourself feel free to share with me here so I can continue my research lifeline into new avenues. 

Enough about my neurospicy-ness. You might be wondering about me as a person. I can tell you some things I like to do, some of my favorite things and what this blog will entail.

1. Things I like/to do: 
• I'm big on art, mostly fine art but I'm trying to break my way into the digital world very slowly with my pitiful ipad and Clip Studio Paint. It's a slow painful process but I will continue to persevere until I get comfortable creating art with a digital pen as well as I feel with a pencil. Paint falls into this category and I paint with everything except oils and I like to use mixed media.
• Reading is crucial to my research but I also like reading fiction for pleasure. I like high fantasy and yes, those popular young adult fantasy world stories. I also love LOTR and epic story series that span over books and books (looking at your Wheel of Time). Right now, for nonfiction, I'm focused on CBT (a literal manual for clinicians), Somatic Psychotherapy and Repetitive Negative Thoughts. I also squeeze in a chapter of something ADHD, Anxiety, communication or Bipolar related before bed.
• Photography has been a very long lasting love of mine that I never really developed much beyond the two classes I took in college with a physical pentax for black and white film. I'm currently a part of a community that has lots of webinars about different kinds of photography so I'm learning more about what I can start doing more of to become a better photographer and learn to enjoy the art more as well.
• Movies/TV/Anime I squish together as a hobby because I do all three and I do them sporadically.I have to be in the mood to do these things. And usually it's a binge for weeks of all anime or rewatching movies I love (I am pretty up to date on new movies) or a tv show I will obsess over until I finish every episode available to me (looking at you Doctor Who). My favorite movie genre is Horror.
• House projects are actually enjoyable big and small. From daily cleaning which has started to become a daily zen for me to decluttering that dang basement to building someone for the house that I have within my skillsets. The house projects that require a contractor are fun to plan and think about but not within my budget right now.
• Crafting which is mostly art in my eyes but with non traditional mediums. I like scrap journaling, breathing art therapy, making terrariums, adult coloring, scrapbooking, air dry clay projects, Paint by number paintings, mandala coloring, resin* (I want to get into this), painting miniatures, etc...
• Cosplay is a new hobby of mine that I've only feel I've been successful at a few times but I took a very long break from it and want to get back into it because it marries my love of sewing. Prop making is pretty rad but very expensive and confusing to me but something I'd like to hone my skills on as well.
• Board games are a big part of my life and I own A LOT of them and hardly ever host anyone at the house anymore to play them so they are collecting dust. I don't want to get rid of them but it might be time to start pairing down on my collection and focusing on 2 player games with really good reviews. I'd like to host a potluck game night sometime before the end of the year but unsure of how feasible that will be with the complete house declutter I'm currently working on.
• Video games are an on and off love of mine truly. I have to really like the game to want to play it but it's hard to find cooperative games where I can I play with friends instead of randos. As for solo games, they just can't be too unforgiving on the controls starting out or the puzzles be too hard or I'll get discouraged and back out and never play again. Although I have every system at my disposal and nearly every game on the older systems, I tend to stick to Switch, Steam deck and PC.
• Learning, I have a lifelong love for learning and expanding my knowledge so I do take online classes for sites like Udemy, Coursera and Domestika.
• Along the same lines I'm saving up to be able to go back into my master's program and start taking classes again so I can get my diploma finally. This is a slow process but hopefully worth it in the end of it all.
• Japanese is my second language and I say that in the most loose way. I have been off and on learning Japanese since I was in high school. I want to get to an N3 level so when I visit Japan finally I can go to the countryside and speak to the folk who live out there and hear their stories and navigate around.
• Lastly, Folklore and Myths are especially important to me because they are what I want to eventually write a book about including around the world stories, told first hand. This ties into my affinity with traveling as I will need to do a lot of it to collect all the stories I need to create a comprehensive book. But this is a far off aspiration that I just daydream about from time to time and keep an eye open for dying cultures and get sad about the oral history we're losing because of the state of the world. I hope someday doesn't turn into forever and I can make this dream a reality in my lifetime.
2. My favorite things are mostly wrapped up in my hobbies but a list of things that make me happy include: foxes, mushrooms, music, all animals, specifically cats, dogs are ok too, moss, nature walks, forests with tall trees, wildflowers, spider flowers, lotus flowers, lavender, juniper bushes, rosehips, baking, sailor moon, lego sets, fresh notebooks, noise canceling headphones, a made bed, moon flowers, creeping jenny, ferns, fallen logs, astronomy, nerdy stuff, manga, geeky things, computers, coding, hyperfocusing, going for a drive, my mom, my best friend Kenny, Booties, Zelda, Loki, pink, black, cat eyeliner, fancy events, wine, craft beer, cider, carbonara and that's all for now.
3. What is this blog even about? I've thought about a theme or whatever ties this whole fever dream together and it is really just going to be a mash about how I live with my neruospicy brain, progress on projects (accountability), and discoveries I make through researching. I will likely get in a groove and alter the structure over time and everything will fall into place eventually. For now it's going to be a chaotic, beautiful mess.

So that's it for this edition/into entry. I will try to update weekly but they might be shorter posts if I'm going to do it that frequently.

Kudos.