Creating a blog has been something I’ve attempted for several months but I’ve had to cope with such volatility of motivation and energy that it’s been a rollercoaster.
Prior to being diagnosed with ADHD I couldn’t figure out why I’d be so up and down with whatever I invested my time, money or energy in. I’ve left a stream of unfulfillment in my wake as I trudged through life and even now, armed with the awareness of a diagnosis and a new perspective, it continues to be a common occurrence.
If something truly grips me, I can slip into periods of incredible focus and it’s often at the start of a project, an idea or an interest. It’s intense and I’ll spend whatever time I can in the day towards it, but it’s unsustainable. Imagine starting a marathon with the same velocity as a 100m sprint; exerting all your energy into making as much progress in as little time as possible but struggle to maintain that consistency as you quickly run out of momentum.
So, I sat there, writing page after page over a few days, covering typical ADHD symptoms and their presentation in my life. Several thousand words were typed with relative ease and it felt good to write with some fluidity and enthusiasm. But when there’s no planning or structure it becomes hard to keep myself anchored when problems begin to arise.
I began scrutinising the lack of structure within my posts, wondering whether complete fluidity would cause more harm than good. I started questioning how I’d order the posts and how I’d create a blog around my own timeline that was both easy to read and enjoyable. Before I knew it, I was writing with the weight of too many problems that overpowered me because I didn’t have the structure in place without ripping it all up and starting again.
Riding the wave of dopamine has often meant diving into things without planning because I chased the satisfaction in that moment and wouldn’t get it from taking my time and adopting a more measured approach. So I didn’t plan, I didn’t account for any potential issues, I didn’t even try to explore the wider world of blogging to gain insight and awareness of what to do and what not to do.
And it wasn’t long before my motivation tanked and I decided that I wasn’t good enough to write a blog before deleting everything that I’d wrote.
It’s a bit of a paradox; being all-or-nothing but producing nothing at all.
As with many interests through my life that I’ve dived into at breakneck speed, I’d argue that it’s that impulsive need for satisfaction that feeds into the urge to bypass the nitty-gritty of planning, adjusting and building structure. It’s helped me to understand why a drive for stimulation and reward at the earliest point is not only a significant factor in some of my behaviour and choices, but an overpowering one.
As another example, my laptop holds a 45,000-word document from 2022 when I decided to write a book on my life. In the space of an evening I got the idea, sought affirmation from my partner and began writing. No plan, no research, no sleeping on it. Instead, I launched straight into writing at a time where the thought of potentially having ADHD never crossed my mind.
I became burdened with similar obstacles which stacked, aggravating doubts about the quality of what I was writing and whether anybody would even care. I was left to rue another all-or-nothing project as my motivation dwindled and my hectic journey left me lost in a spaghetti junction of chaotic thoughts. I’ve been back a handful of times to try and ignite that spark again but it didn’t come, instead I mourn the demise of another idea and another block of time spent on a project left unfinished.
Perfectionism can be a curse too. Striving to consistently produce the best paragraph possible, the best sentence possible, even the best word possible often means I get stuck and continue to fixate until I can find a way around it. I guess that full-throttle approach contributes too, and leaving the scorched earth in my wake after destroying a number of pages shows I could never have truly been happy with what I wrote.
As I sat down lately to revisit the idea of writing a blog I gave some time to thinking about why I keep going down this route to dissatisfaction and what I could do to try and remedy it. I came to two choices; becoming more organised and calculated in my approach or push the perfectionism aside and write in a way that affirms my often scattered and unbridled approach.
I might have deleted several blog posts after running out of interest, but my worries about perfectionism and rigid structure are – for the time being – sidelined. My blog isn’t authentic if I’m systematically trying to disguise a very real challenge I face. With that in mind, and with a bit more awareness about some of my stumbling blocks to productivity, the shackles are off.