20 Years Later...

In April / May 2006, I moved across the country to Kansas City. Sadly, the exact date is lost to time. The best record I have is a handful of emails oriented around my job search and the birth of my niece. I’ve never really treated the anniversary as a special occasion. While I have given little thought to it for many years, this year feels different. More concrete and somehow more important. Realizing it’s 20 years since leaving my hometown gives me a new sense of urgency in life. Funny this all happens to land with a self-imposed deadline to evaluate my goals for the year.

This time of year means spring. And spring’s definitely happening: a fair number of rainstorms, Fin’s planting rounds, and several nice days that make you want to grab a lawn chair and sit outside while drinking a cold beer. And, of course, spring cleaning. Fin tagged much of the house and I tackled the depression den of an office. And with that nicer weather, we’ve also been trying to get out on the town a bit more.

Fin introduced me to Darcy and Jer via one such date night outing. The show was fun and I bought a copy of Darcy’s book when I realized how close to home some of his jokes on ADHD hit. (That and I’m a sucker for getting signed books at author events…) There’s probably better self-help out on the subject, but his story has a lot of tones that ring in my life as well. Hearing and reading the book, I couldn’t help but think maybe I should take recommendations on this ADHD thing a bit more seriously. Insert DUH! by everyone that knows me. Putting into practice a few of the oft recommended ADHD management techniques seems to be working for me pretty darn well.

I’ve come across the recurring theme of “neuro-divergent doesn’t mean lazy” from multiple sources beyond Darcy’s book over the past few weeks. Hearing that hits especially hard as I struggle with my office constantly drifting toward the state of an ADHD depression den. I’ve tried so many times to fix that damn room and never realized that I was actively fighting the way my brain works in trying to get it “done.” I really internalized the boomer advice of discipline-your-way-to-results and that just doesn’t work for me.

While this post started as an attempt to update on the goings on here, I couldn’t help but chuckle as I realized the relationship to my move so many years ago. Hilariously enough, when I kicked off the predecessor to this blog in 2007, my first post was New Year’s resolutions. Ha! For 20 years, the pattern has been constant self-flagellation on my lack of discipline even as I go on to do so many fucking cool things.

Visiting my goals again, that toxic boomer shittastic thinking shouts I’ve not done anything on the goal of building physical things. Then, I realize – I cleaned the damn office into a great workspace. I put together some small lego models. I’ve got a fun wooden gears model in progress. Again, my brain rebels and wants to argue such things as “not counting.” Not big / proper / whatever. Such bullshit. That same part of me counts anything less than superhuman results the same way.

It took 20 years of random blog posts, but it’s finally sinking in that celebrating accomplishments and planning is a lot different from the self-critical bullshit I’ve done so long. Now, to figure out how to apply this same logic to building my exercise routines…

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