First off, for some reason the 135 second plank, the day after the flu shot, the day I played wheelchair basketball and tennis and used my arms more than ever was infinitely easier than the 145 second one I did tonight. 

I’m not sure what the deal is with that. Maybe just because it’s day 20? Or maybe the flu shot made me secretly awesome yesterday and today I am just back to normal. My arms are sore as well, my left non-flu-shot and non-tennis-raquet-ing arm more-so than my right, which I am not sure I understand. Seriously, this is the most hardcore DOMS I’ve had in awhile. (I mean, probably a good thing because that sort of means I am doing something.) Can’t stop, won’t stop. 😉

Unlike Google Word Trends and ranting, as I’ve done on the other two Thursdays this month, I don’t have a lot to say. It’s 12:26 am and I should go to bed. I’m doing a presentation with Gerry tomorrow at the Mantioba Teachers’ Society Physical Education Professional Development Day (or #MTSPhysEdDay because duh MTSPEPDD is clearly too much of a mouthful). Our session is called Play With Your Eyes Closed and it’s going to be super fun.

I may have under planned because I thought we had 2 hours and not 2.5, but we can just throw stuff around longer. Or let people go home early. I’m pretty sure nobody will refuse to go home early on a Friday, right?

Challenge Update: Day 20

Plank: 145 seconds, AKA 2:25. Ten(/eleven) days of planking to go. (And then to maintain it. Or keep improving on the planking. I’m not sure I need to plank for more than like 3 minutes though?)

Meditation: Bite Size Exploring Sounds meditation. Because at 1 AM I seem to be unable to do anything more than 5 minutes. Or 3 minutes. And I need to work on my morning meditation routine. Baby steps, right?

Neurodiversity Tree, inspired by my new blog layout for ADHD/LD Awareness Month

Sticking with the blog theme, here’s a tree I made today on Procreate for iPad.

Day 1 Challenge Update:
Plank:
 55 seconds. I could have held longer but my app counts down, not up. I’m going to use the “rest” days in the 30days app to instead see how long I can hold the plank.

Meditation: I don’t know if it counts for my yesterday meditation or my today meditation but at like midnight I did the Exploring the Breath meditation from Smiling Mind. 

Most people that know me are aware that three (and a half) years ago I was diagnosed with ADHD and learning issues primarily affecting my visual memory and processing speed. Since then, I’ve tried to engage with as many other adults with learning and attention issues as I can. For girls especially, it’s common that ADHD especially is missed, since we present differently than boys—more often we have the inattentive subtype, so we are less noticeably hyperactive!

October is ADHD and Learning Disabilities Awareness Month. You may also notice that things look a bit different around Kerri on the Prairies in celebration of neurodiversity—which is just the cool way of saying that everybody’s brain is different, whether you have ADHD, learning issues or autism… and that it’s okay to not be “neurotypical”! 

But hold up, that’s not all! A guy named Jesse d’Eça from Quebec is taking ADHD Awareness month one step further, and he and the Centre for ADHD Awareness, Canada (CADDAC – don’t get thrown off, they probably existed before all ADD became ADHD) have come together to get Canadians doing things to raise awareness of what ADHD really looks like. Challenges can be whatever you dream up: CADDAC recommends: a) Something physical—like exercise, daily b) Something cerebral—like meditation or mindfulness practice for a predetermined amount of time once or twice per day, or c) something educational, like reading or writing.

Here’s my challenge:

Planking. Opting to follow Jesse’s lead, I’m going to be trying a plank challenge for October—the app I did the initial test on today (where I made it 55 seconds… just couldn’t make a minute!) claims I’ll be able to sustain a plank for 3 minutes and 25 seconds (or 205 seconds) by the end of the month. While I understand the whole rest day thing, I’m going to try to skip the ones the app requires taking because part of the whole challenge thing is to do something every day! Unless I like, injure myself.

Blogging. Hi there, people reading my blog. I’ll be here every day in October blogging for ADHD/LD awareness month. I even have a plan for this! Some days will be longer posts, some will just be pictures, but hopefully everything will share a bit of my story of living with ADHD.
I mean, look, random t-rex pictures? Yeah, that explains my ADHD life pretty well, right? 😉

Okay and you know what, since we’ve got column A – something physical and column C – something educational(ish) covered, let’s set the bar high.

Meditation. I meditate using the Smiling Mind app. The fact that they are led by an Australian dude does not hurt the app one bit. It’s something I’ve been trying to get into a habit about, so… Let’s do this. (I’ll give myself bonus points if I can manage to get in all 42 of the remaining meditations in the Adult track ;).)

Want to support the challenges I’ve set up, and support the Centre for ADHD Awareness, Canada?
The site is quite non-intuitive, so you’ll have to go here, select your donation amount, and then search my name (Hi, I’m Kerri MacKay if we’ve never met and you’d like to donate money. Thanks! How are you?). Want to do something yourself? Register your challenge here.

And as always, have questions for me about my ADHD, the challenge, or about anything else? Drop me a comment or e-mail me at KerriOnThePrairies [at] gmail.com.