The Missing Introduction/ Interrupted Again

A Degree of Difficulty is something about you that deviates from the norm, in a way that makes certain aspects of your life more challenging than they seem to others.
Most of us have internalized a value judgment on either the trait itself, our coping methods, or whatever the normative expectation is that we work a bit harder to reach.
Example: I think less of myself when my house isn't as clean as I think it should be.
Effect: Feeling like I'm failing at such a mundane expectation undermines my self-confidence, and self esteem, and the energy drain caused by that is akin to dialing up the gravity on Planet Me.
I can spend my day doing wonderful, positive things- caring for my son and being present with him, cleaning or improving parts of my home, writing, thinking, making art, and generally making progress towards the life I want for my family, but the last thing I see when I go to bed at night is a mountain of laundry, and I always kick myself for it. 

The interior monologue goes something like this:

WTF is the matter with me that I let it get this bad? Why don't I ever just follow through and finish this? All those shelves, the spacious closet, 2 dressers, and my clothes live in piles on the floor?
Now I'm pissed at myself for failing in an expectation. Which usually means I either
• stubbornly keep ignoring problem, because I'm too tired and frustrated to solve it now, or
•keep kicking myself until I sulk over to pile and find a few clean things to put away, realize I lack the energy/focus to complete task in one sitting or to my standards, so I quit after 10 minutes, and put it on mental list for tomorrow, blaming myself in advance for failing at it tomorrow too (self-fulfilling prophecy in its purest form)
•notice that some of hubby's clothes or clutter have been added to pile, and redirect my frustration onto him, mostly because I'm so sick of always blaming myself for this shit! Now he feels attacked and defensive, and I've introduced a source of friction into our limited time together. 
.............................
But if I take a step back and look at myself with compassion, the way I do for my children and friends, I can acknowledge that keeping up with laundry is more work when you have a busy family, and people with ADD have a harder time sustaining focus on things that don't provide a certain level of stimulation, and so on. I can acknowledge that this seemingly simple task is more complicated for me, for reasons that aren't just character defects.
My laundry space is tiny, inefficient, and occupies main path to garage, a very high-traffic, clutter-prone spot in my house.
It's rather ugly, and because I don't foresee having time and energy to change that, I resist being in the room at all.
My primary living space usually has toddler and two large dogs in all day, making folding of laundry during that time impractical, yadda yadda yadda.
Point being, there are a lot of invisible obstacles between me and a smoothly running laundry system. Some are large, some are small, some can be changed, reduced, or eliminated entirely, others may be immutable for now. I can squander my energy by getting sucked into a cycle of self-blame and resistance. Accepting the negative self-judgement adds weight to a task I'm already challenged by, and resisting/rejecting the judgement uses mental and emotional energy as well.

And here's where the self defeating cycle creeps back in. Other people's judgements speak up from the peanut gallery of my brain, telling me my so-called reasons are really just excuses. If I listen, I'm pretty much doomed. Feeling defeated, inadequate, like I'm the only one who can't hack this basic adult life skill, an internal chorus begins:
You should just take a load down every morning and keep up with it on a daily basis. Why do you always let it go until it's a goddamn ordeal. You should pay more attention to where you put your clothes when you take them off, that's why you end up re-washing clean clothes, you put the dirty ones on top and they all got mixed together. You always do that, why are you still doing that, you're a goddamn adult, for crying out loud! Is it really that hard to keep a dedicated dirty clothes hamper?
You forgot to change the cat litter again too, what's the matter with you? That's just gross, are you really that lazy?
And what happened to that healthy dinner you started planning for tonight? It's too late to thaw the roast now, much less get it in the crockpot. You have to do that first thing, you know? God, you're a piece of work! What was the point kf planning something nice if youre not going to follow through?
That's always been your problem, you know?
 Do you even have something quick and easy to throw together to get your family fed at a reasonable dinnertime?
Some people manage to serve dinner on a predictable schedule, why can't you manage that?
(Pause to assess dinner options, find some barely nutritious convenience food that could technically pass for dinner, start "cooking".)
Think about how much sodium/preservatives/fat etc are in these kinds of meals, worry that I'm not doing my best for my family, think about everything I know about politics of food supply and public health, judge myself deficient for not making better choices for my family.
Notice dishes in sink, feel guilty for that. Remind myself that cooking is easier and more pleasurable in a clean kitchen.
•get irritated with other family members for not doing more, or feeling more obligation. Wonder how they manage to ignore the dirt and chaos
•lash out at household members, introducing friction and hurt feelings while demanding more help
•remember that they are busy and working hard too, and cut them some slack
•start cleaning kitchen to make space to cook, realize I've forgotten to eat today, wonder why I do this to myself, grab something to hold off nausea/lightheadedness, try to remember what step of dinner plan I was on, derail back onto dishes before completing final step, bounce back and forth between cleaning and cooking, wondering why the hell I haven't finished either of them.
Get lost in thought or distracted by entirely unrelated task (hey why don't I switch the laundry over now, and launch that new resolution of folding the clothes promptly?)
Hear timer on oven go off, decide to finish task at hand first, the box said 18-22 minutes, i only set the timer for 18,  and if I don't finish this now it'll just get forgotten like everything else does...   .... .... .... Almost complete task, realize I have lost track of time when minutes affect the outcome.
Briefly panic that I've ruined a meal that was barely acceptable to begin with, assess edibility.... Salvage or start over.
Notice I haven't finished dishes yet, force myself to resume task despite high resistance
Notice dogs need to go out. Remember I'm past due for poop patrol by quite a while, get annoyed with myself for slacking on yet another domestic front. Worry that dogs will track poop in house, and I'll have to drop everything to clean that... 
Remind myself it's my fault if they do, not theirs. 
Feel bad that I never take them for walks anymore. 

 How many times this week are you gonna scramble at the last minute to pull off something you should've planned out better?
Did you mail the tax bill yet? Where did you even put it? Is it in the jumble of paper piles on the dining room table or actually filed, you know in that brilliant system you devised and kept up with for what, a week!
Doesn't the dog need to go to the vet? I remember getting a card saying she was due for rabies update...
You need that for license with township, you know, not that you managed to do that, ever. Seriously, 4 years and you haven't taken care of that?
Why haven't you scheduled the vet appointment, you scatter-brained flake?
How the hell are we going to pay for that?
Speaking of which, how did you get to be 40 years old and still so damn irresponsible with money? I thought you were smarter than that!
All your little projects that should be bringing in money, why are they taking so long? You know, a great idea doesn't mean anything if you don't follow through.... 
•pause to review all projects currently stalled for lack of time, focus, or backup— weigh the validity of the delay, blame myself for poor time management, yell at hubby when I find one I can reasonably pin on him
—add 5-6 action items to mental to-do list, without accounting for limited time and energy resources, also known as setting myself up to fail....
•realize I've let workspace get cluttered, need to deal with that before I'll make any more progress on my real goals and business plans...
Rethink decision to become an artist, remember the stable, secure job I gave up to do this.
Decide I didn't have much say in the matter, really. I was clearly cracking up under pressure of family obligations + high stress work environment, and employer was losing patience with my devolving time management skills. 

Take a moment to imagine actually making a living from something I'm passionate about, that comes naturally to me, that brings me pleasure.
Remember that simultaneous goal is managing home and family better, mentally review my performance on that front.
Realize time management skills are still necessary
Remember times when it wasn't such a struggle to be on time, most of the time.
Remember that my stress levels have been consistently off the charts for going on 3 years now, and that because time management is something I work for, not an innate skill, it diminishes under stress. Give myself temporary pass on that. For now. 
Feel surge of relief and gratitude for having so much latitude with time management for now. Wish life could always be like that. 

•Think of people I know whose homes always seem immaculate. Wish I could be more like them.
•realize those people don't usually seem very happy, and try to imagine what it's like to be them.
Decide I'm probably better off being me, because I really am pretty happy, deep down, and my life is both interesting and satisfying, mentally review evidence of this...
Acknowledge that although