I have struggled all my life with undiagnosed ADHD. Part of it is because I’m AFAB, and ADHD tends to present different in people Assigned Female At Birth. Part of it too, was racism. Because I’m Asian, there was this pervasive belief that “Asians don’t get learning disabilities.” Even my own mom would say things like that and she’s my Filipino parent.
As a result, I was a mess. My grades were fine, but that was because school was a refuge from what I was going through at home. The 3.5 GPA I brought home wasn’t good enough for my Tiger Mom but that’s a perfectly reasonable GPA to maintain when I was missing so much school and only turning in homework when it interested me. It didn’t help that I was only putting in what I felt was the bare minimum to pass. At least that’s how it looked to my mom from the outside. If I’d had access to a better support system, including medication, I easily could have brought home that 4.0 she coveted so much. But my undiagnosed ADHD got in the way.
Not to mention the inability to focus, which has gotten worse over the years. I never had one or two knitting projects at a time, I had 30. I wasn’t reading one book at a time, I was reading a dozen. Writing projects? I’m afraid to open the program I store my documents in sometimes there are so many to choose from. Because of this hardly anything gets done fast.
And the distractions. Nothing helps the distractions. Even with everything removed from my desk to avoid temptation, in a quiet (or music filled) room with no one around to interrupt me, I find a way to do it. Being forced to work at the kitchen table surrounded by people who devalue my work makes it that much harder because it’s not remotely an ideal workspace.
I’ve tried so many tips and tricks offered over the years. Some have worked better than others but ultimately fell short of the mark. Caffeine doesn’t really affect me, though sometimes it can help my focus.B vitamins do nothing. Setting timers reminders helps a little bit sometimes. The only thing that ever really helped was keeping a rigid schedule, but my health shattered my old routine and it’s been hard to piece together a new one.
The fact I’ve released four books and have my next three lined up for release hopefully by the end of this year is nothing short of amazing, considering how much I’ve struggled to get anything done. The only reason Savior got done as fast as it did was because of hyperfocus. But stress, personal and societal, has killed my ability to regain that focus.
As a result everything fell apart. My carefully balanced house of card collapsed, and I’ve been in a tailspin since then. Struggling with unmedicated ADHD on top of everything else meant that the little I might have been able to get done was beyond my reach. My word count, once at 2,000 words a day, became 200 when I could manage to sit down and actually open a Word document. 200 words a day is still 200 closer to my goal, after all, it was just the lack of ability to focus and pick one project that was doing my head in.
But finally, someone listened. I got my diagnosis, and my doctor has started me on a medication to treat it, and I’m slowly crawling out of the hole I’ve been in since releasing Savior in 2023. It’s not much right now, because the medication can only do so much. I still have to find a routine that fits into my life as it is now, and I still have to sort through the problems 2024 dumped in my lap, but at least one hurdle is down. It’s such a small thing, but as I spend more and more days sitting down and writing my 200 words, it gives me a sense of normalcy, that too shall pass. And that makes all the difference.