Seasons

Strolling around YouTube a few days ago, a video crept across my recommendations feed and I took a few minutes to give a listen. The creator, Erin Isabella, an artist, talked about some AD[H]D-adjacent topics, namely creative interests, societal expectations, and balancing out a brain with too many interests to reasonably manage.

I'm making reference to the first section of the video (from 1:41 to 7:43) which is what really struck a chord with me -- the concept of working in "seasons".

As a scramblebrained ADHDer, my interests wax and wane throughout the year. It's something that has always frustrated me. Like, why can't I stay on the bandwagon of <current interest>? It's why I feel like a bit of a generalist or a jack-of-all-trades, because I am good at a lot of things, but rarely do I feel that I am the best at anything. I'm always going wide across many subjects and passions and interests but never going terribly deep on any one.

When you're talking about your career, and you're at a point where many organizations would expect you to be an expert in a specific technology, it's not often that I can confidently say that I am. Unless, of course, we are talking about more general skills and concepts that are more universal and applicable to most of the innumerable sub-topics. It's the difference between "full-stack developer" or "DevSecOps" and "embedded Rust developer" or "Linux system proamming".

Should I specialize? Or, should I just be happy where I'm at, exploring my current interest, living fully in that season? I do wonder, but I at least feel validated in doing the latter now, so I can set down that sack of guilt-bricks.

Creativity

Along the same lines, I also took in another video about the radicality of just being creative. Something seemingly so simple, but Amie McNee argues that it is revolutionary, political, and essential for personal development. Not just for professional or amateur artists, but for would-be and wouldn't-be artists. True for all of us, innate to our humanity.

It's so difficult to be creative in this age of dopamine dosing and culture of indulgent consumption. The fascination and fear of generative artificial intelligence overtaking, supplanting our own human faculties of imagination and creation. I found her message an inspiration and part of the reason I went ahead with creating this blog, going down that road again.

As Amie points out, "we need your art" -- share your thoughts, your ideas, your findings, and your creations.

It could be just the thing that someone needs.