I'm in week #4 (of 26) of the Working with ADHD VIP club. It's a program that I signed up for a few weeks ago after hearing about it through the ADHD Weekly podcast. While I am not yet a self-sustaining entrepreneur, signing up for these mini-lessons feels right for me.
The first four lessons are:
- Learning more about and taking Omega III pills
- How to prioritize My Workload
- Five Steps to Beating Procrastination
- How to gain up to two hours of productivity a day
All four have been extremely informative and I eagerly look forward to the remaining 22 lessons.
My challenge is figuring out what do I want to do with this ever growing body of knowledge. I am dragging my feet changing to another restaurant, which must happen because I need to earn more money. I am equally flummoxed by how to focus and utilize the skills that for so long I was unable to access due to depression and the fog of ADHD.
Here are the various ideas that dance across my consciousness:
- teaching performance workshops
- event MC
- voice over artist
- yoga teacher
- music festival organizer
- creating solo shows
- playwright
- creating a national holiday celebrating secularism
- sketch and comedy song writer
- creating my own production company
I will continue on taking the weekly ADHD VIP club classes and all the while I am aware that for productivity and sanity's sake, I must narrow down my ideas to focus on 2-3 (or maybe only 1) to get something moving forward into reality.
Yep, that the most honest essay title that came to me.
I, along with millions of others, have been thinking about Robin Williams this week, about the terrible pain the brought him to the point where he consciously took his own life. I also learned today that he was dealing with the early stages of Parkinson's Disease. If you are profoundly depressed, there is little to no energy left to face anything. Doing the dishes and dealing with a lifelong illness seem equally impossible to face.
What did his comedy mean to me? Why am I so sad at his death? Why was this performer such a standout amongst his peers? The one word that seems completely appropriate is empathy. He emotionally connected with everyone around him. Williams could take the most horrible and tragic of circumstances and make it wickedly, heartbreakingly funny. His work seems to show that all of life is a tragedy so you might as well laugh (and be kind to one another).
Robin Williams seemed to possess the ability to be a transmitter of emotion. In his comedy (and elsewhere) he shared his darkest and most lonely self in a way that let people feel less alone themselves.
I think that's what truly we all want: to be less alone.
Sadly we are a little more alone because he is gone.
If there is anything that adults with ADHD struggle with, talk about, lie (lay?) in bed and reflect upon with perhaps many a tear streaming down cheeks, it's the feeling that all your potential is locked up in some overly secure fortress and there is no existent key out there to set it free. If you look up into its barred windows, you'll see this beautiful potential in darkened rooms waving arms out into the sunshine imploring, "I am here! Please set me free."
As for myself, I have spent many years in that place with little ability to access what I sensed deep within was my potential.
Things have been changing for the better for me. Slowly but surely.
I am in a good mental space, the best of my life actually. Years of private and group therapy, finding the right antidepressant with the correct dosage (generic Effexor XR - venlafaxine 150mg/day) and a myriad other efforts here and there, such as doing yoga, and eating healthily have been having profoundly good effects on my life.
It is in this spirit that I've chosen to sign up for the Working with ADHD VIP Club. This company is specifically created for ADHD entrepreneurs (Hey that's me!!). Two years ago I created a music festival specifically to challenge many of my ADHD issues. Not only did it allow me to face many of my profound organizational insecurities, it unlocked so much of that fantastic potential that has been sitting there for years aching to be released.
The short list of the my now-being-realized potential:
- Natural diplomat
- Very good public speaker
- Can get anyone excited about any idea
- Good writer
So why the VIP club now? Because I need what these two women have to offer. Now is the time to take some of my potential and create work that earns me my living.
Creating a community music festival where little money was involved was the perfect way to challenge my ADHD. Now is the time to take these hard won skills of mine and create my living.
