Picture this scene: I (Steph) arrive back in Maine after 3 weeks visiting family in Michigan and my hobbies have been neglected during my travels. My garden is mostly fine because I had a wonderful friend come over and water it as needed. My indoor plants are a little thirsty but hey, that can easily be solved with a bit of water.
THE FAILURE
In an ADHD manic episode, I tried to complete all my tasks for my hobbies in record time, even though I was back to work and needed some rest time post traveling. My theory was that I will rest when they are all done and I would be back on track.
Unfortunately, I messed up.
One of my summer hobbies is to take my monsteras outside, repot them (if necessary), and make sure they are in a good spot for the summer sun.
My mistake: I didn’t take into account that the next day was going to be record temps/UV. Also, I didn’t make sure their location would be an acceptable amount of sunlight and I had major sunburn on my monsteras.
Denial + anger
I saw the monsteras the next day (after a full day of 102° temps + high UV) and saw my mistake. 1/2 of my monstera leaves were in direct sun most of the day.
This isn’t always the end of the world, but usually your plants need to get slowly used to more direct sun to not get sunburnt.
I was in the denial stage for about 1 minute until I switched into anger. The anger stage was directed at myself because why would I do something so stupid? I have had monsteras for ~6 years and been doing this process yearly since 2020. How could I have been so stupid?
Bargaining + depression
I was pretty upset at myself the rest of the night. The next day I moved on to bargaining. You could find me outside multiple times a day looking at my plants saying “I thought it was worse than it was. Really it was only like 50%, that isn’t too bad, right?”.
Then came depression. Depression mostly consisted of my imposter syndrome coming out and telling me I clearly don’t know anything about monsteras since I fucked up so bad and that there are a bunch of people who take care of monsteras and have plant rooms with perfect humidity and they are growing amazing.
Acceptance
Finally, I hit acceptance.
I realized that I am not the type of person who wants a perfect plant room (no offense to people who do, it is just not my style). I love that my plants have life and that they get to go outside in the summer. I love connecting with my plants and that is why it hurt so bad to mess them up.
Also, I am wildly stubborn and prideful, and I am WAY too hard on myself. Why do I need to be perfect at a hobby? I do it because I love it. Just because I “failed” at one of my hobbies, doesn’t mean I don’t know anything on the subject, it means I am tired and human.
All of this rambling and story-telling to say: even if you are a master at something, you can still mess up at it and it is not a moral or intellectual failing.
I don’t know if anyone needed to hear that, but I definitely did and I am appreciative of my brain for hitting the acceptance phase and helping me find patience and love with myself even in a place of despair.
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