Samhain approaches, that time of held breath, liminality, not quite here but not quite there, either. A time where it is said that movement is easier between worlds, where permeability reigns, fluid, soft, grasping. Timeweavers dance across realities, journeys start and end from both sides of the veil. For those who listen, for those who speak a language that is never heard, for those who tiptoe into the night.

I think a lot about balance this time of year. Where everything has seemed either/or, it is now blurred. Surety is shifting and my mind feels it stronger than ever. For a brain where everything smudges together all of the time, coloured by layers of possibility and thumbprints scattered across synapses, this time of year is a time where I feel myself melt into the season, into the landscape. Into the energies that have carried me along this far.

I try and strive for balance, but balance is effort. It takes planning, muscle, tension to exist on that thin line between too much and not enough. Between light and dark. In the long, looping cycles of life, balance is always off. Save for a few pinpoints hit, in my experience, entirely by accident, I am always pulled one way or another. Immersed in joy, or immersed in apathy, or all of the minute divisions in between. Feeling each moment in my universe soul, with all parts of my being, beginning, end and the times that have no measure. Why should we strive to counter moments with their opposites? Why is the goal a perfect symmetry of experience?

The cycle of the year waxes and wanes with regularity, and I see the balance in light and dark, in summer and winter, in the eternal battle between oak and holly. But what for those who walk one side or the other? For those who are pulled by the deep, relentless energy of everything, everywhere. There is not just this, or that, or a perfect divide. Minds are messy, lives are messy. And mess is wonderful, relentless, and full of potential.

I’m embracing mess and the possibility that ‘unbalance’ is where I naturally come to rest. A mix of quiet and stimulation hasn’t really worked out for me. In fact, my mental rest is in doing, in movement, in beats and thrums. My brain sings to itself, and when left in silence creates its own relentless cacophony of colour, of half formed thoughts, feelings, glimpses and fizzing connection, as those who also belong to the tribe called ADHD will well attest. This year has brought introspection. It’s taken a while for things to settle but this year seems to have been the year of ‘what if’? And so, in celebration of this lightness of spirit, of this curiosity, just maybe, although the earth turns steadily, I entertain the idea of humming to a different frequency. A kind of weighted balance, one side rising higher than the other. Do I need to bring more balance into my life – or do I actually need less?

I’ve tried to incorporate more down-time this year, as university pressure mounts and my workload increases. But as much as I’ve embraced rest, internet-free time and stillness, I’ve not found myself feeling better. In fact, what seems to be helping is accepting the vibrancy that doing brings. I’m realising it’s not a balance between busyness and rest that helps me process and restore. It’s busyness…. and more busyness. Busyness in a different form. Tactile movement, creating, foraging, walking, making. Moving. Learning. Testing out just how much additional stimulation this ADHD brain needs to function optimally, and finding fun ways to embrace that. I’ve spent the last decade consciously making myself stop, slow, think and rest, sometimes forced by illness, sometimes in choice. A time of stillness to facilitate that deep, deep soul processing, and I needed it, viscerally, truly. Now I’m at a place where experimentation seems more achievable. And so, as the nights draw in, I feel this is actually a time for more. Where I’d usually be turning to hibernation, I feel drawn to exploration, instead. More, but different. Let’s see where it leads.