It's Not Fair but So What
My ADHD is the Crucible upon which I Create
Despite what Nike (and Shia Labeouf apparently) want from me, I cannot “Just Do It.”
My ADHD pretty much rules my life, but it doesn’t help that our modern world is also so batshit crazy, and that our technocrat overlords have burdened us with all the minutia and maintenance of their systems of control. It’s not enough to just be a good taxpaying consumer, we also need to make sure our passwords have 16 but not 24 characters and don’t repeat a password from last year when I don’t even remember what I ate for dinner last week.
Sigh. They don’t make it easy.
And I was cursed from the start - taxed with a burden that no one understood or even sympathized with - given a mind that moves a million miles an hour and never stops for anyone ever, not even me. I don’t just have ideas somestimes - I HAVE ALL THE IDEAS ALL THE TIME.
For me and my inner ADHD Demon, we are never short of things to think about or want to do or crazy ideas that may or may not be worth a billion dollars. I could never understand people who ask artists, “where do you get your ideas from?” because, don’t you, like me, have seven zillion ideas for books, games, and startup companies that will change the world? You don’t?
Wait, doesn’t everyone have a brain like this? They don’t?
Oh. Well, that explains a lot.
No one was surprised when, ten years ago, I got a formal ADHD diagnosis in my mid-40s. Except maybe me. Because one thing a formal diagnosis does is give structure and definition to a set of experiences and behaviors, and a sudden wave of understanding, regret, and shame washed over me for weeks and months. My friends and family were very understanding and no one shamed me then, because it was obvious that I “had this thing” that we understand more now but definitely did not understand in the 70s and 80s when I was growing up. Everyone nodded and shrugged and said, “Yeah, we know” and “No surprise there” and if I was lucky “I didn’t know it was so bad for you.”
Because that was what the key of the diagnosis unlocked - suddenly I understood how the lifetime of noise in my head translated into the real world. Suddenly, a lifetime of struggle and inability to sit still for one moment was realized and validated and put into words that everyone could understand.
And then… nothing. That was it. I got my diagnosis and life went on. I was still expected to pay my bills, to care about my family and friends, and to show up to my job and act like anyone else. There was no special place in the world for me that would allow me to spaz out all over the place, distracted and talking too fast, and then give me a paycheck and send me on my way. In fact, the 21st century late-stage capitalist dystopian hellscape we live in seems designed to agitate and distract people like me so we contribute even less to society, so we’re rewarded less and thus kept in the cycle of failed creations and bottom-rung corporate ladder climbing. This modern world is really, really tough for the highly distractable and people like me have to spend more and more effort every day just to not tip and fall off into oblivion. Almost like it was designed that way.
Ah.
So then what? I’m here with my seven zillion ideas, some of which would literally save the world, and despite all the Internet provides I can’t find a background synth soundtrack to help me write that a) isn’t filled with YouTube ads, or b) isn’t AI created.
How do I find a quiet spot to just sit and write something meaningful to share with the world? How do I stay focused and productive and become the artist that I know I can be? How do I build a day, week, month, year, life of art and creation, where I’m also loving and engaged and meditate and do good work and recycle and be nice to animals and and and and and and and and and until I meltdown and start over?
Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? How do I do these things? There are many people out there sorta kinda doing things similar, but actually the Powers That Be are actively removing art from museums and leading an ideological crusade against truth and fairness, so yeah it is a tough time to be an artist, isn’t it?
So the job - MY job - is not just to get my ass in my chair and write as much as possible, it’s also to do this despite the never-ending chatter in my brain and the social media madness, to create in clear defiance of everything that our world says is valuable, to make art and be an artist in a time when our government and society at large only want us to be mindless, technology-distrated slaves that accept their picture of the past, present, and future as the truth, and to just sit down and shut the hell up.
And it would be easy enough to let my ADHD rule the day and just let it ride me all over the place, to be distracted by our modern world to the point of paralysis, to just scroll endlessly through all the posts and videos and everything out there pushed in an endless loop of static madness meant to suck our souls into a database of personal preferences and demographic purchase histories.
I know this is acceptible because I see it every day. I see the blank, mindless stares; I see the adults and teens and children gaze silently into the void of their phones; I grimace at the crazy drivers who race down the freeway at 100 mph, free of care or engagement with anyone other than themselves; I see the people justifying their use of AI “to write books” because they can’t stand up and make something themselves without being burdened by shame and guilt and confusion.
I see it all, and to that I say, no.
I have too little time to mess around with all this garbage, advertising, scams, and poseurs. I’m done with being distracted on someone else’s terms when I already have The Most Amazing Distraction Machine Ever Called My Brain. I literally have ALL THE IDEAS and none of them need crappy AI-generated and -voiced advertisements to sell me on some nutrition plan to succeed.
So I say no, and my ADHD also says no. Instead we’re going to turn from the garbage and engage with real people, to go create tangible art that helps stem the tide of the daily madness we did not sign up for but is defintely washing up on the shores of our attention spans.
And now, if you’ll excuse us, my ADHD and I have seven zillion things minus one to go work on.