I have been thinking about things and honestly everything is terrible. I am wondering how much I can continue to hide behind hobbies to save my mental health. Of course I am.
Take care of yourselves and do what you enjoy.
And here is a cartoon bear reading the constitution.
I think we can all agree that writing is hard. And when I say it is hard I mean that consistently writing is hard. I love writing I just wish I did it more. I recently stumbled upon my collection of notebooks from when I was writing my first full novel. Reading through them showed me that I have a lot of fun ideas I just need to get them out of my head and on to some pages.
I am currently trying to transfer all those notebooks into my remarkable 2 tablet. I am sure I could scan them in and save them as pdfs, but it has been a lot of fun reading and copying over the notes. The only problem is that I don’t write by hand very much anymore so my hand is getting so tired. It also doesn’t help that my remarkable marker pro broke so it doesn’t work great anymore.
I have a new pen thing coming so I can continue to transfer to the remarkable. And then I need to rewrite that first novel with all of my new knowledge and time.
This is the puppet I have made that gets the most use.
All I am saying is that if you are not watching Hallmark (tm) movies this Christmas you are a fool. I recommend Hot Frosty
I am a person who loves looking fancy. I love wearing ties, both bow and otherwise, nice slacks, a jacket. But I don’t want to be boring, so there has to be bright colors and amazing patterns. My dream is to own multiple three piece tweed suits. Or, I guess, that was my dream.
For the five years prior to the pandemic I wore slacks, a button up shirt, and a tie every day I worked. It started when I was doing admissions at a long term care facility and continued through a hospice marketing job and into my activities director position. But when the pandemic happened I started slipping. I stopped wearing ties, jeans became part of my routine, and sometimes I would wear a sweater with just a t-shirt underneath gasp.
Once I left healthcare I started working from home exclusively. Athliesure became my wardrobe. I wear sweatpants and a sweatshirt everyday. Fancy is gone from my wardrobe. And I miss it.
But how do I bring it back? I sit at a computer 90% of my day and I only see people virtually. So do I wear a button up and tie and sweatpants? Since I run my own company I don’t really have a dress code. And the way I look is less important than the expertise I bring to my field.
Granted I have never really cared what other people think about how I dress/look. I have always dressed fancy for me. I wonder if this is the last bit of my recovery from my mental breakdown, this interest in dressing fancy because it makes me happy. I hope so.
That has been the hardest part of dealing with my anxiety: not knowing if I am doing something because my brain is an asshole or if it is just me. And it is all me, just different parts of me.
Hopefully this is me continuing to move forward with my mental wellbeing.
For the last couple years I have lived in the world of web3… which for the longest time I (and most people) referred to as NFTs. It is entirely possible that you have not heard of NFTs but it is much more likely that what you have heard has been overwhelmingly negative. Which is a bummer because the technology that makes these magic jpegs go is fascinating. Let’s talk about it.
Non Fungible Tokens, that is what NFT stands for, are unique tokens that exist on the blockchain. To break that down further, an NFT is a work of art that lives on a giant worldwide computer with a public record of ownership. To make it simpler, imagine purchasing a physical work of art from an artist you love and the purchasing of that art work is noted in public record. If you sell that artwork to someone else, that transfer gets recorded and the new owner is noted.
I am not sure that makes any more sense. I have spent the last 18 months explaining NFTs to individuals and fortune 500 companies… and I am still not sure it always makes sense. We will come back to understanding in a bit, but first lets talk about why NFTs are amazing.
When I was first introduced to NFTs the part of them that really grabbed my attention was the way they were built to protect artists. It is really hard to make money as an artist and once your art is sold you receive no more monetary benefit from that work of art. So if you sell it for $50 and the person who buys it sells it for $10,000, you still only have $50. NFTs change that.
As the creator of an NFT you can choose the amount of royalties that you want to receive for subsequent sales of your art work. This can be from 0-10%. And these rules live forever. That means as your work becomes more popular (or you become more famous) you can continue to make money off our your work. Which, to me, seems only fair.
One of the, I hesitate to say, bad sides of NFTs are flippers. People who want to buy and sell NFTs in order to make money. These people are not interested in the art work, the artist, the community, or anything other than making money. They have told themselves that they “deserve” to get paid for purchasing art and will do everything in their power to pump the value of an NFT so they can dump what they purchased.
This is not an artists first attitude and goes against what I believe the power of NFTs to be. There are flippers who don’t think that they should have to pay artist’s royalties and have built marketplaces that do not honor the royalties for creators. This is not great, but led to some interesting community discussions around artist royalties and what artists deserve/ are owed.
I have headed off on a tangent about artist royalties… that is a discussion for another day.
NFTs are a wonderful tool for artists to connect with their fans in a new way. It is also a way for artists to continue to get paid for their work long after it has passed from their hands. And that is why they are important.
As I have stated numerous times on this blog I have a lot of hobbies. This is a problem that a lot of people with ADHD have because we get super excited about something, buy the stuff to do it, get started, and then the next awesome hobby comes along. It is a constant cycle that I have finally learned to just ride instead of trying to stop.
What this means is that I don’t get rid of hobby supplies when I stop being interested in the hobby… because it will come back around and I will regret getting rid of it. This also helps with the ADHD tax of spending money on a thing only to get bored and get rid of them.
By allowing the cycle of hobbies to guide me I don’t feel the immense guilt I used to feel when I would stop doing a hobby. I am able to put the hobby supplies away and start the next hobby with a clear mind. This also gives me a great depth of options when I start to get bored with a hobby.
My current menu of hobbies is:
making puppets
sewing
painting miniatures
playing the uke
learning the banjo
writing
drawing
synths
I am guessing that there are more hobbies in my cycle that I am forgetting. The handiest thing about the cycle is that I don’t limit when I can jump hobbies. I can spend a couple days painting minis, then pick up my uke for a mini jam session, and then go right back to painting minis.
As will most things in my life I am a jack of all trades and a master of none. Which sometimes bothers me. I know people who are experts in their fields and it is impressive to watch them work. I always dream of being an expert in something, but as I have gotten older I have realized the strengths that my multiple hobbies have given me when I need to learn something new.
I hope this helps people like me, with ADHD and too many hobbies, come to grips with how they can manage the cycle of hobbies without feeling shame that your interests are changing again.
This post has been a long time coming. At the beginning of 2021 I was working in healthcare in the middle of a global pandemic. It was super fun, as you might imagine. I have generally been a positive person, but it was taking its toll and I went to a dark place. With the support of my awesome partner I took FMLA for a month, I got help (and medication). When I went back, I was in a better place but the work was no longer for me. So I needed something else.
My brother has been trying to get me to work in tech forever. He loves and thinks that everyone else should love it. As a younger sibling of a tech genius I never felt like I belonged. I know that comparison is the thief of joy, but with a brother like Harper the comparison is strong. Prior to losing my mind, he told me about NFTs and I made a few (really dumb) NFTs on opensea. Once I left my job permanently he told me I should jump into NFTs as it was relatively new tech and it could be fun.
So I jumped.
Almost two years have passed since I had a mental breakdown and thought about ending it all and I still work with NFTs. I have been lucky to work on some amazing projects with my company, nervous, as well as work with amazing people on amazing projects during my time at V3. The whirlwind of the last two years is still spinning as I wake up everyday and feel incredibly blessed. It hasn’t been perfect, but it has been interesting.
Working in an emerging tech field has been wild. Web3/NFTs have all the problems of a new technology and peoples money. There are scams and hacks that turn people away, the market crashed and scared a bunch of people away, but the people who are building this new future are still here and they are building cool stuff.
As easy as it is to focus on how awful the year was I am going to try and not do that. Here are awesome things that happened this year.
We bought a house. In the last quarter of 2019 we started building a house. Actually the nice builder we were giving money to built it. January 2020 we put out Greeley house on the market and sold it in less than a week of it being on the market. We had a panicked month of finding an apartment in Loveland and packing, but we made it. Then the Pandemic started to be an issue. Sarah was furloughed a week before we closed and we got moved into our new house (from the apartment) a day before the world was shut down. We moved and we are enjoying our new location close to works.
We hung art. Harper sent us a bunch of fun art and we hung it up. Which has made our new house feel more like a home. We have also started making the house what we want it to be. This has been tricky because it is hard to find furniture when you can’t go to stores to look at it.
My dad is still alive. He had an infection, had to have two valves replaced, and had to have emergency heart surgery a week after his first not quite emergency heart surgery. It was insane and stressful, but the family made it through it. My dad even spent a couple weeks doing rehab at my work, which was weird. But he made it though it all and is doing great.
We got a Peloton. It is totally not a cult. We have been exercising five days a week, which is a significant improvement. Hilariously, us getting a Peloton led Harper to getting one as well. We are now PeloBros. It has been great to start getting back into shape and the classes are quite fun.
This is a little covid related. We made it through the 2020 without catching Covid. Working at a nursing home this has been a little scary. I fear catching it out in public and then giving to the elders. I also fear someone else bringing it into the community and catching it from them. I have been lucky in that I have been tested every week since the middle of march.
2021 - The year of Habits.
I am really bad at habits. Part of it is that my ADHD makes it hard, part of it is that habits are hard for everyone, and part of it is that I am real lazy. But that is what I am going to try to get better at this year. Starting good habits. A couple I am starting out trying to build is meditation, writing, and exercise. I am using everyday to track my habits. Fingers crossed it keeps me motivated and on top of my habits.
I am also trying to increase my productivity. I am trying out Owaves to track/plan my day. This has been a tricky thing for me in the past because I get distracted so easily. I am hopeful that Owaves is visual enough that it keeps me on top of my day to day.
The last thing I am trying for this year is: Hobbies. I am taking the time to enjoy my hobbies and remember that they exist for fun. So many of my hobbies, and there are a lot, are creative focused and I want to be successful at them. Sometimes I forget that being successful is just completing the project, not making money or getting recognition.
Good luck to everyone in 2021. We can make it through this together.
For the first time in my writing career I am actively trying to learn about writing. Prior to this I did a great job of reading a lot of summaries of writing teaching. I read lists and blog posts about writing, and wanted them to provide me with the road map to writing. Sadly, that isn’t necessarily the best way to learn how to write well.
I already own a lot of books on writing. I have even read a couple of them, but I have never actively tried to read them and then follow the exercises to attempt to get better. Instead I assumed that I would absorb the teaching without exercising my brain.
But no more. I just finished a book on plotting (20 Master Plots and How to Build Them by Ronald B. Tobias). Currently I am reading Steering the Craft by Ursula K. Le Guin. It is the most robust book on writing that I have ever read and the exercises should be very helpful.
One good thing about reading these books after I have finished writing three full novel length manuscripts is I can look back on those and figure out what went right and what went wrong. The tricky part is deciding if I should attempt to rewrite those or start something new.
I love all of the ideas of my first novels, but I worry that I am too in love with the ideas to effectively rewrite them. A path forward I have considered is writing short stories instead. Focus on learning how to construct a story in short form and then worry about writing a novel. Knowing me I will probably try to do some weird version that combines both of them. We shall see.
The important thing is that I am back to writing daily, though I try to take one weekend day off.
In other writing news: I am writing this on a Freewrite typewriter thing that Harper got me. There is something so nice about just writing and not worrying about spelling or other errors. Not being able to edit as I go is probably going to make me put more words to paper.
The most important thing I am doing now is celebrating the journey to story, rather than focusing on the endgame. Yay.
I have written many posts about how I am going to blog more, or write more, or whatever. But I haven’t been writing more and I am struggling to figure out how to write as much as I used to.
When I first started working in Long Term Care I wrote two novels (50k+ words), a serial (which I abandoned), and numerous other short stories. I was enamored with the idea of being an author and selling stories. I put stuff up on amazon and I sent stories off to various literary magazines. I even sent one of my manuscripts off to agents.
I think I made about $20 from amazon. Which is enough to buy some slurpees and I still randomly get change from them when someone buys one of my shorts. The various literary magazines have all said no, but one of them told me they loved my story but couldn’t find the correct issue to put it in. Which is basically like being published without being published. I have received some good feedback from agents and I have a list of agents that liked my stuff but didn’t think it was ready or whatever.
This means the only thing holding me back from writing success is me. So what’s the problem. It has been a weird couple of years. I left my job in admissions at a nursing home which afforded me a lot of secret on the clock writing time for a pretty great job marketing Hospice. But that job killed me emotionally. When I left that position to go to my current position I was suffering from compassion fatigue. I just didn’t feel anymore and I didn’t care.
I was lucky that I was only jobless for two weeks before I started working with some amazing people at a retail store. I sold kitchen stuff and chatted with people and started to get my emotions back. Suddenly I was able to empathize again. As my emotions returned I was able to connect with people and that led me to making some good friends. After a few months there I got offered my current job: Life Enrichment Director!!
This is a job that has allowed me to use all of the skills I have build over a lifetime. I spend my time hanging out with elders and helping them maintain an active lifestyle. It was the perfect job for me. But then, like an asshole, 2020 happened.
My job changed overnight. No longer was I able to do group activities. Everything had to be one on one or individual. My job stopped being fun and became work. But I still have a job. And things will get better. It is just hard that my job, that I was just starting to feel confident in, suddenly changed so completely.
What does this have to do with writing? Nothing. This is truly just a dump of everything that has been going on. I want to write more. I am connecting with my writing friends to start holding each other accountable and I am going to write more. Because I feel more grounded when I write and I have stories I want to tell.
So keep an eye out here if you want. And feel free to read my stories or buy my shorts, or don’t. I am just glad to be back putting words down and getting things out of my head.
Everyone has hobbies right? Or if they don’t they want one. Hobbies are the things that keep us sane when work sucks, or life sucks, or whatever. Having a thing you do that makes you happy is important.
One of the hard parts of having ADHD is that I am not great at finishing things. I am an expert at starting projects, probably one of the best in the world at starting things.
I am unclear if my passionate curiousity is part of my ADHD or if it is just who I am, but I am in love with learning new things. Not enough that I will ever have a bachelors degree, but I am constantly researching and learning new things.
Take those first three paragraphs and you can imagine what my hobbies look like. I have many hobbies, I rarely finish projects, and I constantly aquire new hobbies. It has taken actual will power on my part to not continue buying things for hobbies I don’t actually do.
What is great about this “problem” is that I am never bored. If I don’t feel like doing one hobby, I can jump over to another without feeling guilty or anything.
Here is the list of current hobbies that I am activly participating in:
Puppet fabrication
Minecraft
Music production
Quilt piecing
Dungeons and Dragons
Ukulele Playing
Knitting
Writing
Drawing
Each one of those branches off into its own little side branches. Which leads me to new things to research and try out.
One of the “problems” I currently have is I am in a place where I can spend money on hobbies, instead of just looking and never buying. Because of my ADHD I lack impulse control so not buying things is super hard.
Since the internet makes buying things so easy and a lot of the equipment I need to do things I am fascinated with is no longer hard to optain I have been able to explore things I couldn’t before.
Puppet building is the greatest example of this. When I first made puppets about ten years ago I used inferior materials. The good stuff was to difficult to obtain and so I made do with what I had on hand. Now I can find amazing materials that take my puppets to the next level and they show up in a couple days.
I have often thought that I should prioritize my hobbies. Pick the ones that are my favorite and focus on those. I have even read that focusing on multiple things makes you mediocre at all of the things. But I do it all for fun so who cares. Just like when I was entertaining I will be a Jack of All Trades, Master of None.
If you look at the list of hobbies that I work on and take out the games, you are left with a list that is all about visual story telling. Making puppets, making clothes, making music, drawing storyboards, and writing a story. If I would take the time, I could make a movie. I probably won’t, but I am developing the skills to do just that.
What I need to do is figure out how to make my hobbies into a Voltron like hobby. Combine them all into one super hobby. That would be so awesome. Or maybe I should just make a mascot costume.
After my colonoscopy the doc came in and told me that everything was good. There was nothing weird, or serious. He took one biopsy just to be safe. I should get the results. After that I should have a clean bill of colon health. So, good news.
Not too long ago I went to the bathroom, number 2 to be specific, and when I stood up to inspect my work I saw, to my horror, that there was blood in the water. Enough blood to make me concerned. The water wasn’t a bright red, but it wasn’t a pastel pink either.
I have had hemorrhoids in the past. And like all things that have to do with your butt, they are not to be spoken of. It is not a good conversation starter, “Hey, I have hemorrhoids.” All because it is on your butt.
Hemorrhoids, those nasty little butt hole pimples, sometimes burst. When they burst you will find blood on your wiping material of choice. It is like a cat scratch worth of blood. Nothing to worry about, but can be a surprise. As an added bonus, it will now itch the rest of the day.
But this time, the amount of blood I saw was not on the wiping material, but instead all over the bowl of the toilet. It had splattered and splashed and was disgusting. My first reaction was “What!?!” followed by a more calm, “ What the actual fuck is happening?” Immediately I made doctor’s appointment.
When I texted Sarah about it, which is a normal thing to text to your spouse, she asked, “Did you check for ketchup packets under the seat?” Because that is the best\worst practical joke. I had checked. Not ketchup.
The next day when I went to the doctor’s office to get checked out, I assumed that it wasn’t going to be fun. I had already been playing through the worst case scenarios, which in my mind involved a stranger examining my butt hole. I mean that is the worst that could happen, right?
They weighed me, I was please to learn that I was wearing eight pounds of clothes, asked me for my height, and sat me in a room. They asked me all sorts of questions about drugs, tobacco and allergies. Then we got to the fun question.
“What brings you in today?”
I had already told the lady on the phone, the receptionist, and they apparently hadn’t written it down. Do a lot of people lie about rectal bleeding to get the free finger up the butt? Internally I rolled my eyes and explained the situation.
He was very polite about the whole thing. After taking my blood pressure and temperature, he left me waiting for the doctor to come in.
I waited.
And waited.
Eventually there was a knock at the door and in walked the doctor. This was a new doctor to me, because I am bad at going to the doctor. Not anything against doctors, but I don’t go unless I feel bad. Which Rebecca the Receptionist told me was a bad idea.
The doc was a nice lady, dark hair shot with grey. She sat down on the rolling stool and started asking me questions. Diet, family history, all that jazz. Then we got to the question of the day.
“What brings you in today?”
Sighing, I explained everything again. She asked more specific questions and then said the words that everyone wants to hear at the doctors office.
“You know I am going to have to do a rectal exam.”
Not a question, but a statement of fact. The only way to get to the bottom of things was to dig in and figure it out. All I could think was a very confused “Yay.”
Because I am me I said, “Only if you buy me dinner first.”
And too my surprise she started to laugh. Not the indulgent laugh of the ticket taker at a movie theater who says “Enjoy your show,” and you say “You too.” But a belly laugh of someone who understands the situation fully.
After we finished laughing it was back to business. She handed me a thin paper sheet and stepped out of the room. This being my first rectal exam I dropped my pants and laid on my stomach on the table.
When she came back in she took one look at me and laughed again. She had me roll over on one side and took up her position near my butt. I heard the squish sound as she squeezed lube onto her gloved hand and prepared myself.
How does one prepare for a rectal exam? All I could think about was that instead of the dinner joke I should have gone with the, “But I haven’t studied,” joke. I cleared my mind. I went to my happy place. I took deep breathes.
And then I was pulled back into the present.
After she was done she threw the glove away and left giving me a chance to get dressed. When she came back in she explained that she hadn’t found anything that would explain the blood. And that I would probably need to get a colonoscopy done.
Yay.
Until then I just need to be careful and not poop out too much blood. So I am trying that out.
Dylan Reed has always been interested in a good story. Raised without a TV he spent a lot of time with books and loves reading. Dylan has been a professional entertainer, studied commercial diving, and loves random trivia. He brings all of this and more together in his stories.
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Dylan Reed has always been interested in a good story. Raised without a TV he spent a lot of time with books and loves reading. Dylan has been a professional entertainer, studied commercial diving, and loves random trivia. He brings all of this and more together in his stories.
The channel crossing happend on last sat. it kick major….well nevermind. it was a lot of fun. i was on a boat the size of my moms mountaneer with my car parked in front for length and about twice as wide for about 13+ hrs. it was quite a bit of fun. We did it we broke the world record of a dive pull sled in cold water continously of 52 miles. the dive pull record is actually 62 miles but that was done scubado with lots of breaks in the caribian… wimp. anyway a week from this saturday i should be doing my juggling it will be fun. love all but especieally sarah. what happend to the vault girls??
tomarrow is the day of the channel crossing. hopefully. i am very excited for scott and the whole kronus team. scott is going to be underwater for 10 hours and travel at least 30 miles. the sub is frickin awesome. i am now a cockpit ergonomics designer. basically that means i put all the ball valves in places that were easy to reach and the hoses do not interfere with general operations of the sub. i also got pizza. it was good. i was at scotts for a long time today and another long day tomarrow. everyone have a nice day.
sorry it has been so long since i have writen. i am having a good time but am very tired and so i am lazy. i have been spending most of my time workin and going to school. it has been fun. on sun i worked 16.25 hours at hollywood. don’t do that ever. granted i made over 130 dollers that day but still it kindof sucked. at school we have a final and it is going to be so easy. i am going to get at least and 88% so that should be fun. I am almost done and will have to move home soon. YIPEE. i am so excited. i can not wait. this weeks movie realeases are scooby doo and enough with j-lo. spider man on vid comes out nov 1st that is all
