long days, short nights—this is about my apartment, actually

09 Apr, 2026

It isn't even summer, how can it feel like the days last forever, and yet the nights are over before my head has even hit the pillow?

I feel tired all the time. It's not fatigue, and it's not (entirely) burnout. I work a full time job, in an office, and I go to school (just barely) part-time (3 classes a semester), I try to have a social life/hobbies, and I have to do chores, like laundry, and dishes, and showering, and remembering to eat.

Those last ones are partially a joke and partially the hardest part of "being a people," as we like to say.

I accidentally conned myself and my roommate into cleaning the kitchen yesterday, and that was good. It made me feel good. We had a nice dinner and because I had gone to the supermarket the day before, I ate breakfast this morning, and drank coffee, and even remembered to go back into the house to grab some left-overs for lunch.

I still had to grab a quick bite and a coffee to eat at the college dining hall before my class this evening, because otherwise I was going to keel over. I was semi-present through the lecture and mildly helpful to my group during the group work portion of the class.

I thought about going to the library after class, but I realized that what I want, more than anything, is to lie down and sleep. I can't entirely afford to do that, so I made myself a chai latte (from the Oregon Chai premade stuff, with some oat milk in) and I'm writing this post while sitting in our (clean!) brightly lit kitchen, because maybe I'll be able to pull it together here in a way I haven't been able to do when I try writing/working/living in the...:

• living room (on the couch, or even the other couch)
• the sun room (on the third couch)
• my bedroom (on the bed, there aren't other options, at the moment)
• the office (at my desk, standing or sitting, regardless of seating configuration).

My roommate and I love to reconfigure our furniture. We chalk it up to ADHD brain; one part desire for stimulation (a puzzle, combined with physical activity), one part desire for The New!, one part the endless quest for the Perfectly Optimized Spacial Experience. Of course, all of these desires are somehow simultaneously perfectly aligned in the short term and yet entirely incompatible in the long term.

I bring this up, because I currently sleep in the back bedroom. The back bedroom is on the corner of the house, on what we can loosely describe as "southwestern facing," because it's an acceptable approximation of the cardinal directions involved. Most importantly, I live in the northern hemisphere, so it tells you that it gets WONDERFUL AFTERNOON SUNLIGHT ALL YEAR ROUND. Truly, this is its most inspiring characteristic.

I don't want to spend (too) much, or ideally, almost any, time in my bedroom. The bedroom is for sleeping. And changing clothes. And other things that must be done (approximately) alone and with the door shut.

I'm very bad at sleep hygiene, and my limited experience with it has been revelatory. ADHD brain does not like going to sleep. But the body can be tricked into learning that "lie down in bed" means "become unconscious" regardless of what the brain might believe. I have a fair amount of difficulty with falling asleep, and have developed some difficulties with staying asleep. (One pattern I have noticed is that if I fall sleep unexpectedly early—say around 9 or 10 P.M.—without having done the entire pre-bedtime routine; brushing teeth, peeing, making sure I'm in sleep clothes, turning around 5 times before lying down¹, etc. I will often awaken around midnight in the throes of a full-blown panic attack. It is, without a doubt, one of the most singularly unpleasant experiences I have had the displeasure of encountering and I really wish I knew where the brain-body continuum learned that trick so I could get rid of it forever, presumably by reciting the evil incantation backwards to remove it.)

All of this to get to this small point:
We have a plan to make the back bedroom (with the wonderful light!) into the office, and I will return to my old bedroom (where I slept when we first moved into this apartment, along with another friend), which is towards the front of the house and has three (3)—yes, THREE—doors leading into/out of it. One door connects to my roommate's bedroom (the rooms share a wall), one leads to the tiny front hall, and one leads to the back part of the double parlor (aka: the dining room). It's a lot of doors! It's a very strange room!

But it's much smaller, and it would therefore serve my purposes of "place for sleeping and changing clothes and other things of that nature to the exclusion of all other activities" quite well.

Meanwhile, if the office is in the back bedroom, with the wonderful light, and the space, so much space, the three (3) desks we already have in the office and intend to keep having in the office will fit much more reasonably. Also, we are planning on moving the futon couch (that's the third couch, currently in the sun room) into the office, so that there is a. a cozy place to sit and b. a much nicer guest sleeping area available.

(But already, surely you can see how much Stimulation©®™ the ADHD brain can extract from the prospect of rearranging the furniture. Just thinking about rearranging the furniture can keep me occupied for several weeks.)

However, to achieve this project, it is not enough for us to have tidied and cleaned the kitchen. To achieve the (sunny! delightful!) office space of our dreams, we have to clean the current office, and my bedroom (the back bedroom, the future office), and then make a plan for a day to spend pulling furniture apart and moving heavy objects and trying not to destroy the door frames and lintels inside the house.

I've finished my chai latte now, and I've written all these words. But I am still very very very tired. I think I will have some grapes and then brush my teeth, and pee, and get into sleep clothes, and turn around five times before lying down, and I will sleep.

Tomorrow I'm going to wake up, and I'm going to make coffee and eat breakfast, and make a sandwich to take with me for lunch. And then I'm going to go to the library before class and try to do any of the many tasks that I must complete (other than laundry, and dishes, and showering) in order to successfully "be a people," as we say.

#adhd #personal