It’s kind of incredible that it’s been a year since I last posted anything. Well, a year and 4 months if you want to get technical. I apologize for the absence. I would blame my ADHD, but I don’t think it can take all the blame. I’ve finally gotten medicated and have been for the last year and a half.
That length of time also represents a majority of my hiatus. I think with the added ability to focus, the reality of the world has hit me a little harder. We’re still in the middle of an ongoing pandemic and, I think I’m just tired. My writing career really stagnated, and frankly it became difficult to read things after I stopped writing. It kind of sucks to see people thriving when you’re struggling so hard. I want to enjoy other stories, but I just really feel exhausted all the time.
On top of that I started being that person who does too much for their job with very little reward. And now that I have that reward (I got promoted!) there’s not a lot of time for other things.
In the past year I’ve been using Dungeons and Dragons as my outlet for creativity. And ultimately just like writing I overburdened myself with that. I have anywhere between 2-5 games I’m running and at anywhere between 2-5 games I’m playing in.
The good news is that 2 of the D&D games are a homebrew campaign that I hope to one day turn into a campaign setting! The bad news is that we only play every other week and this game could easily go on for years. So It’ll be a long time before the story is done.
Anyway, the short version is yes I have bad books that I’ve read recently but I haven’t had the energy to fully rip them to shreds dissect what frustrated me about the story and how the author can improve. I’m still sitting on Crave part 2 because I just frankly haven’t had the time to put that all together yet. I think I just got so depressed while working on it?
I’ll be honest there’s another layer to this. I learned about this fun part of ADHD called RSD! Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. It basically means the idea of disappointing someone, offending someone, upsetting someone, disappointing myself, not living up to someone’s expectations, etc, can cause me physical pain! It can also make me have a panic attack or other fun things like not work on something because what’s the point, it’s just going to disappoint someone! Or upset someone! So it can make critique very hard to give and very hard to receive. Crave was a lot more popular when I was initially working on that review, and now I think with distance I can quiet that annoying voice in my head and just get my very hilarious and thoughtful critique done!
I’m trying to be more confident, is it working? I’m also trying to be open and honest about my ADHD and its symptoms, including RSD, because it can be very difficult to manage even if I am medicated. I’ve learned that RSD has more or less guided many of my paths in life, including the decision to make my own publishing company. It’s kind of fascinating now that I look back on it.
Anyway, here’s Wonder Wall.
DNF Diaries 