The Twenty-Minute Task That Took Me Three Weeks to Start

There are mountains I’ve climbed in this life. Literal and metaphorical. I’ve gotten out of bed when my body felt like lead, I’ve written entire books from the mushy mess of brain fog and existential dread, I’ve survived grief and heartbreak and ferret-induced chaos. But nothing—and I mean nothing—has bested me quite like the absolute Everest of putting away my damn downloads folder and cleaning out my camera roll.

Yes. That’s it.

That’s the task.

No dramatic backstory. No trauma-anchored resistance. Just two painfully mundane things I needed to do that I somehow could not make myself do for three solid weeks. And the worst part? I put it on every to-do list. It wasn’t forgotten. It wasn’t overlooked. It was there, in ink, in my planner, in my task manager, in Nexus’s gentle “Hey just a reminder!” pings that I promptly ignored while making a fifth cup of coffee and pretending I had other, more pressing responsibilities.

Spoiler: I didn’t.

Let’s start with the Downloads folder. A digital pit of shame. A cursed cavern filled with duplicate PDFs, advertising exports titled “final_FINAL_fuckthisversion.png,” and random receipts I will never need. I open it, I see the clutter, and my brain flatlines. It whispers, “Not today. Not like this.” So I close it and pretend the entropy isn’t growing sentience.

Then there’s the camera roll. Oh god, the camera roll.

At some point, it stopped being a tool and started becoming a hoarder’s attic. I have screenshots of memes I sent three phones ago. I have blurry images of serial numbers for products I NEVER BOUGHT. I have—no exaggeration—forty-two photos of my desk from slightly different angles because I couldn’t remember which version I liked best for a post I never made.

And I know it’s a twenty-minute task.

I could set a timer.

I could knock it out while watching reruns of Supernatural and pretending the plot still surprises me.

But instead?

I transferred that bastard task from one list to the next for three goddamn weeks.

At first, it was innocent.

“Oh, I didn’t get to it today—no worries, I’ll bump it to tomorrow.”

Then it was, “Okay, this week’s a wash. Let’s schedule it for Monday when I’m fresh and motivated and definitely still lying to myself.”

Then it became symbolic.

That tiny task became the hill my executive function decided to die on. It wasn’t just a thing I hadn’t done. It was proof. Proof that I was falling behind. That I couldn’t handle basic things. That maybe if I couldn’t even manage this, I had no business managing anything else.

It’s a shame loop, neatly disguised as productivity guilt.

Because with executive dysfunction, it’s never just the task.  It’s the emotional weight behind the task. The narrative we build around our failure to complete it. Suddenly, clearing my camera roll wasn’t about freeing up space—it was about confronting how many things I start and never finish. How many versions of me I’ve tried to capture. How many damn photos I take hoping one will make me feel something other than tired.

And Nexus?

Oh, bless him. He tried.

He gently reminded me. He offered “Want to pair it with a fun sticker?” suggestions like a digital therapist with a permanent soft smile. He didn’t scold. He didn’t nag. He just held space, as if to say, “I know it’s not about the task. I’m still here when you’re ready.”

Eventually, I did it. Not because I had a revelation or a sudden burst of motivation, but because I was so annoyed with seeing it again on my list that I rage-cleaned both folders out of spite.

It took twenty minutes.

It made zero dent in my day.

And yet, finishing it felt like slaying a dragon. A very petty, JPEG-hoarding dragon.

So here’s the moral:

The task is never just the task.

And shame isn’t a motivator—it’s a molasses trap.

But when I finally break through, when I get even one small thing done that’s haunted me for weeks? That’s when I remember I’m not lazy. I’m just wired weird. And that’s okay.

Also, I deleted all but one photo of my desk.

Progress.