Noah Kochanowicz

This is the raw stream of consciousness I experienced. Every time listed is the real time that I started typing the sentences that followed. Only some formatting changes and light proofreading were made after the fact.

I'm procrastinating. Ironically on taking my first pill. In a previous post, I alluded to me having ADHD. I didn't officially have it when I wrote it but I knew it was coming. I had been seeing a therapist specifically for this diagnosis, over about three sessions for nearly two months. I went on my walk to Montreal and somewhere east of Kingston I got the email with a preview of my test results.

It's now 10:45am, I was supposed to take the pill first thing this morning but I wanted to write about it. I got a new computer last night and for whatever reason, every other system I had in place to write about something wasn't good enough this morning. I ate my breakfast, had a coffee and then messed around with my computer for about two hours.

Last night wasn't a great sleep, I was thinking about taking this pill for the first time. I've read about other people's experiences on this for several months now. I'm equal parts nervous (mostly that it won't work) as I am excited (that it will work). People have described it as putting on glasses that let you see the world as other people experience it. I'm excited at the prospect of sitting down and writing not requiring me to have hours of build up to get going. That a five minute chore won't require me to spend two hours refining my todo list to be the most optimal. But I'm nervous that it will do none of that.

It's now 10:47am and I'm writing this because of a story I was told about during a high school literature class. I tried looking this up, I thought it was some beat poet like Ginsberg but it might have been Hugh MacDiarmid's *A drunk man looks at a thistle*. I'm not sure that's what it was, high school was a long time ago and I also didn't pay attention very well; overall I'm a pretty unreliable narrator here. Either way, I'm still writing because I wanted to document the experience.

It's now 10:52am, I've taken the Concerta out of the bottle and it's sitting next to me now. The pharmacist said it could take up to 30 minutes to kick in. It's late enough now that I'll probably have trouble getting to sleep before midnight.

It's now 10:57am, I still haven't taken it. At this point I'm having an ill-advised second coffee and will take the pill with it. While the water is boiling I took a moment to pet my dog. She's being very cute right now. She's always cute. But she's also cute right now.

It's 11:01am, my coffee is almost finished. I have a todo list with 14 things on it. I'm still on my sabbatical so I could just do none of them. But two of them are writing this post and taking the pill. My baseline would be that maybe four of those items get completed. My baseline is that the twenty odd unread messages on my phone would stay that way until guilt has built up enough to reply. I'm nervous that the baseline will continue to be my everyday. The pill being next to me but not being taken is a sort of Schrodinger's cat. If I don't take it, there's hope that it *will* work. If I don't take it, I haven't killed the dream that it will work. But if I do take it and it doesn't work, then what?

The time is 11:05. My coffee is done and I'm ready to see what happens.

It's 11:06am. After a long pause holding the pill in my hand, I've taken it with some water. A timer is going for 25 minutes next to me and now I wait.

Waiting

I'm imagining one of those Sci-Fi movies. Where the camera zooms in on the main character's face and it looks like they've been sucked into a black hole. Maybe it will be like that. My wife and I were reading about what happens when you take it yesterday. Impulse control is improved apparently. I joked that we should go to my favourite stores and see what happens. Would I be able to go to IKEA and *not* get a hot dog? Could I just *walk by a Best Buy*? I'm sure there's efficacy to these drugs, but surely they don't make you super human.

It's been almost 4 minutes now. It's 11:10am. I look over to my dog's food bowl and see that it's empty. She usually doesn't eat until the evening when she starts to get hungry, maybe grazing a bit through the day. I could easily fill up her dish but instinctively I added it to my todo list. Will I be cured of that idiotic process of putting off such a simple task. The mere act of adding something to my todo list takes the same amount of time as actually filling up her dish. But the *effort* feels so incredibly different.

It's now 11:13am. If I hadn't done so much procrastinating I would have probably been feeling the effects by now. Or maybe I am feeling the effects now? How will I know? Do you know? Does that worm hole effect really happen? I have that thought often. Not the worm hole thought. But if I had just procrastinated a little less, not no procrastination, just less, then I could have been casually walking to my meeting with someone instead of sweating because I'm trying to catch a streetcar I definitely won't make.

It's 11:16am, I'm gonna go pet my dog.

It's 11:18am, my dog had been pet, I also filled her dish. I'm not feeling any effects, that was more just me wanting to do something instead of think while I wait. What if I do feel different but it's not a good different? Like something that's sociably better and more productive but less creative? This is a brain that invented the renowned *Balls of America* where you boil macaroni in Coca Cola instead of water and then deep fry that with hot dogs, cheddar cheese and wrap it in bacon. Imagine if the world didn't have that?

It's 11:25am, I go on to Reddit to check what should be happening. Most people are saying it can take up to an hour for it to kick in. But the only way to tell is not from an altered state of consciousness but a shift from "I should do this" to "I should do this" and then going an doing that thing. I'll try that when my timer goes off in five minutes. How do I know it's not just placebo, though? My first test will be to cook. I have three meals to make, it should take less than 4 hours from start to finish.

It's 11:30am, I do feel different. It's subtle. I feel like I do after I get a really good night of sleep. I think the best way I can describe what I feel is like when you've been struggling with a stuffy nose and and then all of the sudden you're finally able to blow your nose and it's cleared up. It's like that but with my brain. Something feels like it has smoothed out.

After

It's 11:33am, I'm going to start tackling the cooking.

It's 12:02pm, I just did a lot of the prep work I needed to complete for cooking. I diced up 4 onions which normally would have taken me over an hour. Every half an onion I probably would have stopped and gone to work on something else like scrolling Reddit or doing some cleaning. Even coming back here to start typing something. I would say I pushed through, but it wasn't even pushing. The thought of not wanting to be chopping the onions went through my head multiple times but I kept going.

I'm noting my internal dialog being a lot less noisy. Random thoughts were coming but not sticking. Really the thought that was going through my head was just strictly related to that task and nothing else. Not even thinking about the next thing I need to do. The thought to go on Reddit just popped into my head, but it wasn't strong enough for me to actually open up Reddit.

It's 12:06pm, there's a lot of cooking left, going back to that.

It's 1:32pm, I'm getting to the point in cooking where there's 3-5 minute periods of waiting. My brain wants to do something else, but it's relatively easy for me to not do that thing. I'm aware that if I start doing something else, like checking my email or event returning to this writing that it would be enough of a distraction to derail me for more than 5 minutes. It still take the conscious decision to not get derailed. I consciously decided to return to this writing because it's been a while and I have to wait for a few things to finish anyways. But the effort required to keep moving is substantially less.

There's a red dot on my email app, I know there's a new email to look at but it isn't driving me insane to just leave it there. It's been there for at least 30 minutes (I have to return to my laptop to check the meal instructions) and I've been able to leave it there without it consuming me.

It's 2:42pm, I noticed it starting to wear off about 30 minutes ago. I didn't realise how much it was doing to calm me down. Every now and then I have a thought about something in the past that happen that makes me upset or angry. I had those thoughts pop up a few hours ago, but they just went away. Now I'm starting to see it impact me again.

The last bit of food is in the oven and will come out in three minutes, I just need to wait for everything to cool now so I can put it away and clean up. I'll eat in the meantime. The unread email notification is starting to bother me now but I'm still able to resist the urge to check it though it takes more effort.

It's 2:49pm, I've plated myself some lunch while I wait for the rest of the food to cool down. I emptied the dishwasher while I was waiting for my meal to be done. It took me around three minutes, normally I would have only done a portion of it and left the rest for later.

It's 3:56pm, I sent a couple of emails I've been procrastinating on, but the effort to send them was noticeable. I now need to put away the food but it is hard to get up. One thing I noticed when making the food is I didn't put on any music or a YouTube video. I wanted to, but I didn't do it, I was able to resist the urge.

It's 4:08pm, I'm feeling slightly shaky, like I've had too much caffeine. I think the focus part of this is getting close to wearing off. Starting to feel closer to my baseline again.

It's 4:36pm, the dishwasher is running, there's still more cleaning to do, all the food is put away. I'm still overall above baseline.

It is 5:44pm. I decided less than an hour ago to do a marketplace deal in Scarborough. This put a deadline on me getting the kitchen cleaned up which motivated me to get off my computer. I believe the effects of the drug have completely worn off now. I am on the train now to Scarborough, leaving at the last possible minute.

Next

Starting to cook always took some effort, this definitely helped getting me to finish cooking and clean up without a real deadline. But I have bigger challenges that I'd like to test next.

  

It's 11:57pm, Finally posting this. It's 12:04am, landed on a title -- good enough.

I’m going to do a post when I get home as a recap of my trip/how-to guide for walking from Toronto to Montreal. 

It’s honestly bittersweet to have achieved this goal. I’m proud but I’ve been running walking towards this goal since April and it’s been in the back of my mind for much longer. I need to find a new challenge. 

For now, I picked up a Rubik’s cube in Montreal and am learning how to solve that. So far, after a full day I’ve gotten it solved once. 

By far, the most unsatisfying thing about this is you have no idea, by that picture, whether I even scrambled it first. 

This is a shorter one, here on my last day of walking. I like to wave to people in the country. 

Mer and I went PEI a bit ago and we had a Jeep rental car. Jeeps have the “Jeep Wave” where you give a small wave to other people who are also driving Jeep Wranglers. What a thrill!

As I’ve been walking on the side of the highway, I’ve made it a point to wave to people, especially those who give me plenty of room. 

Here’s who were most likely wave or nod back:

Least likely to wave back:

All other demographics had about a 20% likelihood of waving back. 

Alright, off to Montreal!

I’ve received unconfirmed reports that people are actually reading my blog now. Given I was the only reader of my blog, never felt the need to turn on comments (nor did I look into it) but they’re on now!

To make this worthy of being a full post, here’s a picture of the chicken McNuggets I’ve been noshing on at the beach.

I’ve eaten at Tim’s a lot these past two weeks for breakfast. It’s not my first choice, unfortunately it often winds up being my only option in a lot of the places I find myself in. Smaller, local places either don’t open early enough or there literally isn’t one on my route around breakfast time. It also allows me a consistent (but very mid) breakfast, a spot to charge my phone and a pre-walk washroom break. 

Thankfully I’ve been able to have a lot of great, non-chain lunches and dinners. 

With that out of the way (oh, also, fuck JK Rowling) I’ve been able to make some observations. 

Every Tim’s has a gaggle of older men who just kind grunt at each other when one makes a quip about a current event (often political). They gather really early. I’m usually at Tim’s by 6am, the gaggle is fully formed by this point. I’ve witnessed the formation of the gaggle precisely once and it was majestic. 

It starts with two people sitting at separate tables. Then one person joins one of the two tables. These two people are close to each other (neighbours, cousins, old friends etc.)

The odd man out will join the group by making a comment on something they’re talking about and eventually join to form the gaggle. Most gaggles are 4-6 men. This gaggle is usually in its final form before 6, which is why it was such a rare occurrence for me to witness it. 

Regulars at Tim’s also follow a pretty common pattern. You won’t see all of these types at every Tim’s, but you can pretty easily collect them all. 

This is a non-exhaustive list. A similar thing could be written about local pubs, but it’d be less interesting. 

I’ve spent a lot of my training energy with our dog on tricks that are pretty useless but make for good party tricks. One recent one is “secret”. I hold my hand up to my ear and have her put her snout in my hand, with her nose pretty much touching my ear. 

It’s a pretty easy one to do, you just start by putting a treat in the hand and eventually you take the treat out of the hand and give it to her after the “secret is told”. 

As such, I’ve become very accustomed to the sound of sniffing directly in my ear.

On Tuesday night, I found myself in Brockville, at St. Lawrence Park. A really lovely municipal park that offers camping and a great view of the St Lawrence river. 

The tent I have is very small, which means I have to leave a fair bit of stuff in the vestibule

A few hours into my sleep that night I heard an intense sniffing sound. I first thought I was dreaming of Mabou. But it was far too real, far too loud. I turned my head and spotted a raccoon within petting distance, just on the other side of the mesh of my tent. It took every fibre of my being to not pet the raccoon. 

For reasons that probably relate to exhaustion, I left a closed ziploc bag of dried mangoes in the vestibule. 

I tried shooing it away with my voice (and again, I want to underscore, despite desperately wanting to, I did not pet the raccoon) but it didn’t move away. Finally I turned on my flashlight on it and it reached its paw to grab the mangoes and scurried away. 

Later in the night I would get up to find that the ziploc proved too much for the trash panda. 

I went back to sleep, finding comfort in  the rest of my food being tucked away elsewhere. A few hours later there were two raccoons intensely sniffing on either side of the vestibule. 

There was nothing for them this time. But still I see my old friend popping its head in the vestibule. I shine the flash light on him and this little shit takes my sunglasses. 

I scrambled to bring my Tilley hat into the tent, afraid now that the raccoon was going to try to complete the look. 

I found the sunglasses in the morning, covered in slugs. I was able to shake them off but it was covered in some kind of residue and didn’t have time to clean it off. 

The next morning I popped by a Circle K to grab some aviators. Was able to wash off my other sunglasses thoroughly in my hotel on Wednesday night. 

When people are surprised to learn that I don’t like camping, might I remind them I’ve never had mangoes stolen from me at a hotel. 

I aim to walk at least 5 kilometres a day without my earbuds in to allow myself to be alone with my thoughts and just listen to nature. 

But being alone with my thoughts is a terrifying experience so here’s what I’ve enjoyed listening to save myself from that. It’s mostly podcasts, I can really lock in with a good podcast going. 

”The Chosen One” - Search Engine

Goes into detail about whose genitals are selected to be the lead image on their corresponding Wikipedia page. Lots of other great episodes from Search Engine. 

A CBC call in podcast where the hosts and guest compete to figure out the “big five” things of a given category selected by a random person who called in. Pick any episode, they’re all great easy listens. 

“NSL” - Darknet Diaries

Good true crime (for nerds) show. This episode was about National Security Letters which the FBI uses to silence people/stomp on constitutional rights using a vague excuse of terrorism. 

also

Featured on NPR’s All Songs Considered podcast. Some good bops. 

On Thursday, I had one of my longest planned walks between Belleville and Napanee going through Mohawk territory

The last 5km, after leaving Deseronto were real rough. I had four blisters on my toes and I was pushing through it. Starting and stopping is usually the worst part. Once I get moving I generally don’t notice it and can get back to a good pace after about five minutes. 

Friday I woke up and it was just too much. I had another 30kms planned to get to Kingston. I tried to push through but just couldn’t feel confident that I’d be able to do that for six hours. Walking through the middle of nowhere. No options to bail halfway through. 

There’s a bus that runs direct from Napanee to Kingston. I pulled open the page, went to book and then closed it. No this is fine, I have to keep moving. I’m walking to Montreal not bussing. 

I kept moving on a trail about a kilometre from my Airbnb and came to the same pain conclusion. I sat on a big rock and wanted to cry. This felt like giving up. I haven’t done a challenging thing since I immigrated to Canada. To see a challenging thing through to the end is just something I don’t do anymore. 

I booked the ticket and walked a bit further to get breakfast near the bus stop. I lost the battle but I can still win the war, so to speak. I’m determined to not make this another hobby or interest that succumbs to my ADHD induced disinterest. 

At that Tim’s, I had my coffee and took whatever paper material I could find to start reworking my plan. 

I know my limits better now than when I started. I put together a new plan which allows me to walk a bit less each day, aided by a few local bus routes to give my feet a break. 

My rest day is over now in Kingston. Getting to spend that with my wife meant so much. We happened to be here for the 10th anniversary of the last Tragically Hip concert. It was an amazing break. Quality time well spent. 

I’m getting to Montreal the hardest way possible. But now I’m doing it with a new plan, renewed energy and a new pair of boots. 

I’m lying here in this little world I’ve built. Everything around me carried on my back for over 100km now. I’d love for some more room to spread out, but it’s all the space I actually need. 

It keeps me free of the bugs, gives me privacy from the other campers. Later tonight I hope it will keep me sheltered from the rain. 

I’ve long felt a certain safeness in small spaces. Opposite of claustrophobia, though I wouldn’t describe all small spaces as safe. How you can feel like you have just enough in just enough space. Nothing more and nothing less. Like an astronaut packing their necessities. No rockets required. 

I feel that now. This part of camping I don’t mind. 

Look at how beautiful this is!

Still not a fan of camping. Back hurts and a bad sleep. Thankfully only 20km of walking today. That will put me a stone’s throw from Belleville!

I need to get a new pillow and sleeping mat. The cheap ones I picked up a few years ago really aren’t cutting it. 

The blisters are also getting to me today. Just spent a good hour in a nice park in Brighton trying to get those fixed. That park had public washrooms, picnic benches, lots of shade AND a water bottle refill station. 

Honestly, today hasn’t been great. It’s felt the loneliest, hottest and the biggest struggle, despite it being such a short walk today. 

Yesterday was a really great day. I had briefly befriended a garbage man. Two different cyclists who were bikepacking and a pair of runners cheered me on. I had miss calculated my route and originally thought I’d be passing through a town in the middle to get water. Unfortunately, I wasn’t. Thankfully I found a public beach on Lake Ontario and got to use my water filter for the first time and take a dip while I waited for the Aqua Tabs to do their thing. 

Had a nice break at a nature reserve too

Shout out to “The Royal Crown” pub I stopped at in Colborne. Excellent food and cold Steam Whistle on tap. The bartender, upon hearing about my trek, offered to fill up my water bottles.