How My Mental Health Affects My Blogging Output (Or Lack Thereof)

(Photo by Marcel Strauß on Unsplash)

One thing you’ll notice about my posting on the We’re the Moyes blog — if you look at the dates on the posts and also the gaps between them — is that the only thing you can really count on from this blog, and really from me in general, is inconsistency. I am consistently inconsistent.

This isn’t a commentary on my mental health; it isn’t an explanation of executive dysfunction; it isn’t even an excuse for not writing. It’s just something that happens, whether I mean for it to or not. Then again, maybe it IS a commentary on my mental health, after all. I’ve started noticing a pattern related to when I post and when I don’t.

You’d think that the days when I manage to post on this blog would count as my good mental health days, but not all is as it seems on the surface. Usually, I manage to post on the blog only when something big/important happens, or when I’m avoiding working on something else, for weird procrastinator reasons that don’t even make sense to me.

A thing you may or may not know about me is that I live with several mental health issues, including ADHD and I struggle often with severe executive dysfunction.

Many adults have executive dysfunction of some kind; it’s a broad term that means any significant disorder or impairment related to problem solving, planning, organizing, attention, motivation or self-regulation. You might have even heard of a few disorders that have significant executive dysfunction as one of the major symptoms — ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), for example — but these are all just generic examples of mental health issues that involve executive dysfunction.

The thing about executive functions (and executive dysfunction) is that they’re not always obvious; they aren’t always immediately apparent when someone’s executive functions are working as they should or if their executive functions have hit dysfunction junction and ground to a halt. These days I’m trying to be very deliberate about paying attention to my mental health by tracking how many posts there are on here (and then noting how long those gaps between posts are) because sometimes there isn’t much rhyme or reason as to why I do or don’t post. There isn’t always a good reason at least; there isn’t always an explanation.

However, I’ve noted that I only really concern myself with focusing on this blog (and trying to make it take off) when I’m procrastinating on my other projects because I’m feeling burned out and unable to make progress on them. In essence, this blog is mostly functioning as a pressure release valve for me. When I’m stuck in my writing, or in a rut with PA work, or not vibing with Waitr as deeply as I usually do, I always seem to turn to this blog and pour a big burst of that high-pressure, high stress energy into this blog until I feel less pressured and more human. It feels productive, even if it’s not technically the thing I was supposed to be focusing my productive efforts on at the time.

I’m not entirely sure why my brain handles stress and burnout in this way, but I suspect it has something to do with my executive dysfunction issues.

What about you? Have you noticed any interesting behavior patterns in your own blog or other hobbies?