ADHD, a Lifelong Struggle (2018)
I was somewhat recently diagnosed with ADD and the diagnosis has truly changed my life. I, for the first time, in roughly 12 years of writing software professionally, am able finish a project enough to open source it-- and I am days away from being able to do so. It feels insanely good. Like something I&#x27;ve only dreamed of as silly as that is, and I don&#x27;t even care if folks use it (it&#x27;s not that good), but it&#x27;s the fact I have even been able to do so...<p>For years when I would sit down to work I would go into an endless loop consisting of roughly three-four websites, almost back to back, where it was driven by muscle memory anytime something distracted me. I would almost like &quot;wake up&quot; finding myself in this endless loop.<p>On good days, I would look like an insanely talented and driven engineer, on bad days, I would look like the laziest piece of shit folks could know. It wasn&#x27;t by choice, it wasn&#x27;t because I was trying to &quot;cowboy&quot; or &quot;rockstar&quot; a single fucking thing, it&#x27;s because that&#x27;s how my attention span worked (or didn&#x27;t rather).<p>&quot;Smart and lazy&quot; is almost an insult to me now, because its a moniker put on folks who are probably having trouble with something and &quot;lazy&quot; is rarely positive (even when its supposed to be). It kept me from believing I might have ADD for years despite tons of signs.<p>The downsides are of course that people don&#x27;t believe you, or judge you for it (I switched pharmacies because they were treating my like shit when I would go to pickup my ADD meds)... but the upside, as the author said, is you have a life back you didn&#x27;t know you were missing. You can choose to read a book, watch a movie, program, etc. you&#x27;re not longer just forced into a vapid reflexivity of the world around you.