Weird AF Brain, Still Figuring It Out

Health note: This is a personal reflection, not medical advice or a diagnosis. Attention, anxiety, compulsions, and pain can have many causes; a qualified professional can help with persistent or concerning symptoms.

I stepped away for two days to visit a friend’s house, and the entire time, my brain convinced me that this brief pause would cost me dearly.

Writing-wise, stretching-wise—all of it. The funny thing is, getting back to my desk and opening my laptop wasn’t actually the hard part. It was the anticipation of slipping up. The constant worry running in the background.

And as it turns out, my body didn’t forgive me for missing even a single day either. At 3:00 a.m. on the night I skipped my routine, I woke up in full pain. It’s truly baffling. I’m not out here lifting heavy weights or doing high-impact cardio—nothing that puts crazy strain on my frame. It’s literally just a handful of floor stretches. It is wild how a few simple movements can be the exact line between waking up painless and paying for it in the middle of the night.

While I didn’t write a single word during those two days, I did immerse myself in two audiobooks: The Hound of Rowan by Henry H. Neff and C.S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew.

I’ve read both of these books before in print, but hearing them as audiobooks completely changes how you experience the story. A narrator’s voice can totally shift the mood. But even with a great performance, my brain did what it always does: I zoned out.

This happens to me in every single medium. I’ll be reading or listening, and at some point, my mind just drifts off into another galaxy. The audio keeps playing, or my eyes keep tracking words, but my brain has left the building.

With audiobooks, I can hit the 15-second rewind button until I find the exact spot I lost track of. But with physical books? I’m usually too lazy to flip back, and frankly, it’s almost impossible to figure out where I was when my focus decided to evaporate.

It sounds ridiculous, but it makes me wonder what my brain is actually doing. Is it ADHD?

Looking back, I feel like this focus-drift is something I’ve always had. Over time, missing details or feeling like I was falling behind caused me to develop anxiety. And then, as a defense mechanism to manage that anxiety, my brain built up OCD tendencies—tight routines, constant tracking, and overthinking every tiny slip-up.

The human brain is weird af. It builds all these elaborate coping loops and survival tactics in the background, and half the time, we’re just sitting here trying to decipher what on earth it’s up to next.

I am trying to understand the pattern which is definitely there. One missed day becomes emotionally louder than it should. Coming back should be simple, but it does not.

Maybe that is why the 80% thing helped. It gave me a way to come back without making the missed days into evidence that I failed. Two days without writing does not erase the writing. One missed night of stretching does not mean I am hopeless. It does mean my sciatic nerve may file a complaint at 3 a.m., but still. It is not a moral failure.

So maybe the goal is not perfect routine. Maybe the goal is return. Miss two days. Come back. Miss one stretch. Do it the next morning. Zone out in the audiobook. Rewind.

I think I am slowly learning that consistency is not the same as never missing. Consistency might just be the ability to return without turning the pause into a funeral.

And honestly, that is still hard for me. But I am trying. With writing, with stretching, with audiobooks, with my weird brain and its elaborate defense mechanisms. I am trying to give myself the grace of that 80%.

The 20% missed is acceptable.