Welcome, weary traveler, to the Inn of No Masking! At least I hope there’s no masking, as I’ve been trying to mask less and be myself more (whoever myself really is 🤔).
Which brings me to the point of this blog, which is processing.
Naturally, having ADHD means my mind scoots & skips all over the place, so let me back up and try to explain more clearly:
- I realized I had ADHD at 49 (my About page is my how I figured out I have adhd story).
- It’s been roughly one year since then.
- Barely 4 months after self-diagnosis, my family and I moved from Florida to North Carolina.
- The busy-ness of living in & learning about a new place occupied most of my spare time & mental space.
- Therefore I haven’t processed my diagnosis very deeply – I’ve processed fleetingly and then shoved the thoughts and feelings aside.
- We’ve been here almost a year and things are settling down, so I have more time to think.
- I need to focus and delve deeper to I figure myself out.
I need to process – so why not write about it?
I’ve been heartened with folks I’ve met on Mastodon via the ADHD hashtag
Fun fact: on Mastodon you can follow hashtags, which is a great way to find interesting and like-minded people), as well as folks in Discord servers and Instagram (the birdsite is dead to me, and I limit my time at Zuckerberg's cash cow).
Reading about other peoples’ struggles and victories with adhd has been extremely helpful for me, so maybe sharing my thoughts and feelings would be helpful for someone else? I hope so (and I guess we’ll find out).
I also need to let go
I’m sure this is part of processing but I’ve been very guarded about sharing too much about how I really feel, especially the more complicated and less pleasant emotions. Pretty sure this is due to opening myself up to people at times, and then pulling back & reconstructing the walls when I saw that it was a mistake.
I also have (surprise) a fierce inner critic, who has prevented me from doing the things that I’ve wanted to do – write comics, draw comics, make music, yada yada. (This doesn’t apply to blog posts or expository non-fiction writing, which I’m pretty fn good at.)
Starting drawing is really hard for me.
Starting writing fiction is really hard for me.
I really wanted my first post to be a How I Figured Out I Have ADHD comic, but no. In fact, that comic was written about a year ago, and most of it had been inked – and then something about it felt off and I never finished it. And I’m not sure that same narrative would work now as I have some changes in mind based on what I learned about myself via my limited processing.
And then there’s the guilt factor with how I use my time and whether that’s a benefit to my family or not.
Yeah – I have some work to do.
I’d like to indulge some of my interests
This is where the ‘old school’ blog part comes in. In the Web 1.0 days, people would blog about whatever, pretty freely. No one knew what kind of monetization was possible so people just blogged about whatever they wanted to blog about. So I’d like to bring that back, within reason.
(Hearkening back to Web 1.0 is also why I added Ye Olde Tag Cloud in the sidebar.)
I say ‘within reason’ because like a lot of folks with adhd folks, I have a wide range of interests, a few of which are mild to not-so-mild obsessions:
- Stories & storytelling, which includes movies, tv, comics, and story structure
- Mythology, my first love (also related to stories & storytelling)
- Music, not just music I like but production, synthesizers, & bass
- Art, particularly art for comics & animation
- Architecture and design
- Design in general
- Websites and what we can do with them (I still hold the belief that they even the playing field, despite giant aggregator sites trying to ruin everything)
- Entrepreneurship, because I’ve never loved the 9-5 life
- Non-traditional education, particularly unschooling & self-directed models
I’m sure I’m missing something but you get the drift.
Still, I know that a website is for you as much as it is for me, so I’ll try not to jumble things up too much (maybe music etc is on its own page, etc).
Whew – that’s enough for now!
I can probably keep writing so it’s best I stop & pace myself.
If you’ve read this far, THANK YOU! I hope the blog is interesting or helpful or just plain amusing.
This Article was mentioned on mythology.social
This Article was mentioned on arpcomics.com
Meh – the #webmention functionality adds a comment that’s just “This article was mentioned on [link to post]”And takes you offsite to read the ‘comment’. Maybe it works better on blogs but I don’t see how this is any better than #WordPress’ built-in ping functionality.
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Testing #Semantic #Linkbacks now…
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Many of these musings could have been my own Arp! Crazy how that inner critic takes us down. I can engage in those creative endeavors that feel “safe” or “productive” too and yet won’t write my book or make my art. My brain gives me every excuse. I think it’s almost as if I know I would want to dive so hard into that hyperfocus once I start, that I don’t start to avoid the interruptions my life will inevitably provide. As the kids become more self sufficient and I explore, I hope to adopt less of an all or nothing attitude about my own interests and lean into the talents that really light me up. I read today on adhd homestead that “just because I can do it all, doesn’t mean I should.” I’ve been working on this since my diagnosis. Learning to write down my intended monthly focus and the yearly words of how I want to feel help me check in when my brain wants to say yes to a little bit of everything. If I feel compelled to do it all (even that which I probably have no real interest in), I’m learning that I will always prevent a real dive into something more meaningful. I think its hard when you’ve been making so long. Being “good” was praised enough that it altered our output in the world to be mote palateble for others. At some point it just became too much for me, I was so exhausted and needed to figure out why it was all so hard. That was where I leaned into being diagnosed (after a suggestion from friends). It’s wild redefining yourself later in life, but so worth it. Glad you started the blog!
Thanks, Hemma, your perspective is greatly appreciated. The ‘should’ and ‘could’ notions seem to be pretty damn common for a lot of creatives – many of whom also seem to be neurodiverse.
The two things that have been most helpful for me are 1) Stoicism, or learning to let go and decide whether something is worth emotional energy, and 2) going easier on myself, which makes getting back on the horse a lot easier.
And I think I need to add a way to get notifications for comment replies…