Genuinely ADHD

August 21, 2023

I’ve had a rough couple of days, although I managed to slog through some entries on my to-do list. It always seems to take a little longer to understand what’s weighing on my mind than I’d like, but it’s finally begun to clarify.

I hope to be genuinely myself with this blog and my presence on other social media platforms. I touched on it briefly in my first meaningful entry, Being Invisible, Being Witnessed. I could tell that putting material together to share with the world had been challenging me this past week, but I’ve come to recognize the extra difficulty my ADHD has brought to the table. I have so many ideas and interests that I’m eager to share with the world, but my disorder has been preventing me from getting anything out. I’ve been jumping through too many hoops on each project to finish anything, leaving me exhausted with nothing to show for it publicly.

I have spent time on meaningful things this week — things I want to do, where I want to put my energy — but they have been skewed as I learn what I want to share and which platform will best suit the content. Of course, I’ve spent more time than ever before on things like visual presentation and audio recording, which is a logical step as I’ve never previously tried to record myself doing anything. I had never considered sharing video before (as part of my reluctance to ‘gain attention,’ again mentioned in the last entry). Wanting to share more of my personality, and have others witness my experiences, means I need to learn these things.

It also means I need to be honest about my ADHD.

Suppose I go into a long explanation of ADHD, especially the inattentive type, and the struggles women have faced for years due to our society focusing only on the experiences of young men. In that case, this blog will be a thousand pages long. Being diagnosed and learning from such valuable resources as Sari Solden’s book (please note, this is an affiliate link) has literally changed my life. Yes, literally! One of the most hated words by all grammar-checking tools.

I must avoid that thousand-page tangent. To be specific, the primary challenge for me right now is that video content is king in this age. I’ve ignored and denied it for years — I was probably stuck on the negative association I had with ‘getting attention’ — but in 2023, there’s no denying that videos are a significant part of internet culture. 

I won’t pretend that video content is just an annoying chore to grow my audience. I watch some YouTube channels almost daily. Free video instructions are how I learned many of my now-favorite hobbies when I had no one to learn from in person. I’m self-taught in every craft other than making maille armor or jewelry! (Chainmail, as it’s commonly known.) Of course, I don’t intend to invalidate written tutorials. For the most part, I prefer those; it’s something I can print or refer back to when I’m crafting at the same time as I am watching television or spending time with my fiance, and it isn’t a good time to suddenly pop on a YouTube video. 

It’s important to highlight that some disabilities can cause people to prefer non-video content to learn by, just as some will make it preferable or necessary to learn with a video. And that’s all totally valid. I hope to combine both because I think some things are better handled in writing. But even then, those things typically benefit from high-quality photos, and even though we all have smartphones (for the most part) and those phones have excellent cameras, knowing how to create quality photo content is not as simple as just taking a couple of pictures.

All this to say, in a long-winded fashion, that trying to create video content and understanding the value of making it actually good has left me in a bit of an ADHD spiral over the last couple of weeks. 

I usually refer to this sensation as a ‘Brain Tornado,’ but there are other definitions; thoughts are coming at you too fast to process on a seemingly infinite number of topics. Depending on the situation, someone experiencing this can feel overwhelmed or paralyzed or fall into other coping mechanisms. Brain Tornados have gotten more manageable for me thanks to medication after my ADHD diagnosis, but I doubt anything could fully remove them. Unfortunately, this chemical imbalance in my brain will not go away without medication, and the dosage and effects of the prescription may need adjusting throughout my life. It requires constant vigilance and honest assessment of how I feel, and an ongoing relationship with a trustworthy healthcare provider.

Working on video content has been fun, but it’s exacerbated two of my continual problems: perfectionist tendencies about my work and the feeling that I’m not investing my time wisely across multiple projects. These are more than enough to summon an F5-level Brain Tornado of thoughts. This last week was made worse by the time-sensitive nature of what I really wanted to share: working with Tarot each day over a week. I honestly wanted to dig into my struggles in those videos, as the cards I drew continued to give me a lot to think about that was quite relevant, but I was hampered by the desire to make them “good enough” as well as “quickly enough” to share them. Additionally, I struggled to fit them to an Instagram story, and questioned if they made sense to share on YouTube. Maybe I need another platform for that sort of thing.

Thus, I entered the weekend feeling like I had a bunch of self-inflicted chores to take care of on top of what I would have preferred to do with my time. This is a recipe for disaster.

Last week’s ups and downs led to me realize that ADHD has been standing in the way of my goals, and I had not paused to give it proper attention. I need to account for it, and as I manage its sometimes unpleasant effects, I have to be open with that process, or else I will never be able to present a genuine picture of myself. I also consider it a disservice to everyone who lives with ADHD to downplay its role in my life, especially if someone has not yet been diagnosed and is mired in the negative self-talk that comes with it (what’s wrong with me? Other people do this, why can’t I?)

And let’s be real. I chose to walk away from software engineering and pursue my dream of being a published author. Part of that dream means I can still pay the bills without my fiance covering everything, and part of it means I’m looking at months or even years before a book is finally on the shelves. Between those two things and the level of dread I feel when imagining “going back into tech,” I’m hoping to build a small group of supporters on my ko-fi page, whether it’s a $5 donation or ordering a handmade beeswax candle. (The dread probably needs to be targeted with my therapist. I’ve had trauma responses before and this has been reminding me of those times.) I’ll never find any supporters if I am hiding behind a facade of implied perfection.

It’s also exhausting to pretend anything I do is perfect. Just having a regular level of confidence instead of self-deprecation is a challenge for me. Nothing I make will be as perfect as I want it to be. That’s sort of inevitable when my standard is something unobtainable. Even my favorite authors and most-loved books can make me pause to puzzle over an unclear sentence. Things happen. It doesn’t devalue the entire work. It doesn’t invalidate the emotional reaction a reader experiences as they finish the book. Perfection is a myth, and I’m the first to tell that to other people while always secretly criticizing myself.

Going forward, I will try harder to embrace my imperfect videos. I’ll learn as I do them, hopefully prove my intention to be authentically myself, and grow throughout the process. I started this blog entry as a rambling voice note and made sure to post a few imperfect videos to my Instagram story. I’m going to have videos that are too long to fit in an Instagram story, and I’m going to have to figure out the world of YouTube and possibly TikTok as a result. Not everything will work exactly where and how I wanted it to. I hope my readers and viewers understand that perfection is an inescapable curse for me. Believe me, if you see a mistake in something I have made, no matter how small, I feel infinitely worse about it than you do. But there’s a difference between learning from my mistakes and judging myself over everything. I can be genuine while becoming a better version of myself.

I’m going to work on leaving these critical standards behind. It’s part of the process that I know will come up again and again. I’m going to keep putting myself out there with content that is not ‘perfect’ but will accurately represent where I am on my life’s journey. With luck, this will resonate with some people as I forge a path, living creatively while navigating my ADHD and neurodivergent tendencies.