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I sat down to work over an hour ago, with the intention of getting custom chain ordering set up in the shop. Simple enough.

So I logged in and went to create the first shop listing, only to realize that I really needed to create a Jewelry category first, so the listings would have somewhere to go. No problem. Oh, and while I’m at it, I should add it to the two menus, so I don’t forget this time. And while I’m working with menus, let me get the Nail Wrap menus fixed – they’ve been off for months. And while I was working on that, a Facebook alert came up – a memory about an old painting, which reminded me that I’ve been meaning to update the Painting galleries for MONTHS now, so maybe I can just knock one of those out. I mean, I was prepping file structure for the Color Commentary and Flash Fiction galleries earlier today, even though I’ll need to go find all the images and all their names and such, which is a few days of work, so let’s just do the new pieces, On Being Human, for now. There’s maybe 10 or so in there. Only, crap, I forgot, all the text for each painting description is wonky, and that’ll take me a day or two to write and style properly, so let’s just get the image grid set up, and I’ll hide and save the descriptions for later. But first, I have to go find all those images… and crap, I forgot that I need to export one from Lightroom still. And now all the thumbnails are the wrong size, so I need to go regenerate those too, and hope that works. WHY DOES IT FEEL LIKE I NEVER GET ANYTHING DONE?! Why am I so unproductive? I must be so unmotivated next to people who actually accomplish shit.

Only, it’s not about motivation, and I know it.

I’m plenty motivated. I sat down to work, and I worked for hours today. I work every. single. day. I may not have much to show for it, not on social media, not in my own mind, but I do work. I AM motivated. I’m juggling multiple businesses, and then a slew of personal projects, and nothing has died yet. (Unless you count the pumpkins, and I’ve got nothing there. They hate me.)

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It’s not motivation. I’m plenty motivated.

It’s not a lack of ideas. I have more than I have time. More than I could get to in my lifetime.

What I struggle with is attention span. Case in point, above. I know it too. I have conversations with myself about staying on task and focusing and NO WE ARE NOT CHECKING ALERTS RIGHT NOW and I get seriously pissed off when people interrupt me when I finally get focused because it is SO HARD for me to sit down and do what so many people take for granted – not get distracted by my own brain. I have to fight for that focus, and to have it interrupted is maddening. I don’t know if I can get it back, and there goes all that time wasted… again.

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It’s a constant war in my own head to do it. Now, I have a whole war chest of tools and skills that I use to get stuff done, that I use to function. I clear all the alerts, and shut down all sorts of things. I turn off sounds, and put the same song on repeat at full volume so there is no audio distraction. I hole myself up in some place so there’s no peripheral vision distractions. It’s strange to people who don’t live with this. It’s not easy for m either, and I’m still not living up to my own standards. I know I could do better if I could just focus without needing to run through all these other things first, and if I didn’t need to expend extra energy to make myself focus on top of the energy it takes to get whatever needs doing done in the first place.

But I can’t. It is NOT something my biology allows me to do. I can’t make my brain permanently stop running around like a squirrel in the middle of the road, running back and forth between safety and normalcy while oncoming traffic and impending failure screeches by overhead. I can control my environment, and that helps. I can employ skills that help me bring my focus back, and that helps. But I don’t get to stop dealing with a brain that runs between one side of the road and the other. That energy expenditure is part of my day to day life.

Now, there are perks to my brain working this way. I may not be able to focus like a standard brain, but I CAN come up with half a dozen ideas in a matter of minutes. I can riff of of someone else’s ideas, brainstorm, and come up with new methods and projects without blinking. I am an idea factory, and I am learning to accept, live, love, and roll with that.

It gets easier and easier every single day that I just do what I do best, the way I do it best to be happy and feel successful by my own standards. I’m pretty good at whatever I put my mind to, it turns out. (Like that Einstein quote about fish climbing trees.)

Just don’t expect me to pick just one thing and stick with it. I don’t work that way.

Thankfully, with much trial and error, I’ve found my sweet spot. It’s a bit chaotic and wild, but I’m happiest when I allow myself to work multiple projects, switching between them as needed. (My needed; not external standards dictated. That takes some practice to figure out how that works, but it’s possible to do.)

It’s not been a glorious happy fair farts magical journey to get to this point. School was absolute hell until my mother threw me into self-paced homeschooling. (Graduated early, was invited to apply to my college of choice.) I used to hate myself for all of this, and even as an adult, that hate and anger at myself for being neurodivergent. I used to feel like I was a flake and failure and doomed to be looked down on my whole life, a social pariah because I didn’t get enough done. Other people (abusive people, mind you) in the past have said as much, as well.

Here’s the thing: I’m not a flake. I’ve been painting for 5 years. I’ve been making digital art for 15 years. I’ve been behind a camera lens for 24 years. I’m still working on this website, despite having lost it twice already this year. I’m still there for my direct sales teams, even when numbers fluctuate. I’m not a flake. What I am is brilliant and curious and easily fascinated, and sometimes even more easily bored. Some people have called it ADHD, some (very kind souls) called it genius. Whatever the label, it’s what I am.

I still get frustrated that I’m not farther along or haven’t mastered the skills I want as much as I wish I had. I have painfully high standards for myself, because I know what I could be capable of, at my best. I still find myself intensely frustrated and a little ashamed when I feel that I have nothing to show to others for the hours of work that I put in.

But life isn’t about what we have to show others, is it? (Hint: It’s not.)

Alright, now, for real this time, I’m going to go get that chain listed in the shop. For really real. Hopefully. I see some alerts flashing in another tab, so maybe I’ll go check those first. Just so that distraction is out of the way.

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