adhd king of side quests
Jun. 15th, 2025 04:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
taotieI love a good side quest; in fact, as someone with frenetic ADHD, it can be argued that side quests are my main mode of experiencing daily life (especially now as I'm gainfully unemployed). In the past month I've notched off the following:
(These bullet points make no grammatical sense.)
This is just what happens when I don't have the structure of a job or schooling to gird my days, and I used to really fret about this, feeling as though my weeks or months off were wasted with nothing to show for it, but to be honest, I think I prefer it this way. I feel freer, happier (and I do have the financial privilege not to worry, for now). A little structure is good, but I find that structure also deeply stultifies me -- so much of my busy work or academic career has been limping through time "trying to get through it," and any time I have actually managed to finish a creative pursuit during this time, it is because I actively shirked work to do what I wanted instead. Work/school is only useful insofar as acting as the dreaded leviathan that I procrastinate with joy, and otherwise, with the limited energy I have, it drains me.
The further we descend into end-stage capitalism, the more desperately I flail at ways to make me feel human, or alive. I suspect I am not the only one. May all of our days be filled with such wondrous and free-wheeling exploration soon, without needing to cede anything in return.
- ran around the city picking up organizational furniture, plants, and a sewing machine off FB marketplace
- made a couple of different types of kimchi, embarked on a brief week of Korean culinary adventures
- related: got back into learning Korean again
- got back into zine-making and am exploring formats outside of the 8-fold
- am trying to get back into book-binding as well
- started futzing around with coding my personal website again (of which this blog is a single component)
- dashed around the city visiting and helping various friends
- created two Twitter side accounts for different hobbies/interests
- am conceptualizing a return to filmmaking (small-scale, experimental)
(These bullet points make no grammatical sense.)
This is just what happens when I don't have the structure of a job or schooling to gird my days, and I used to really fret about this, feeling as though my weeks or months off were wasted with nothing to show for it, but to be honest, I think I prefer it this way. I feel freer, happier (and I do have the financial privilege not to worry, for now). A little structure is good, but I find that structure also deeply stultifies me -- so much of my busy work or academic career has been limping through time "trying to get through it," and any time I have actually managed to finish a creative pursuit during this time, it is because I actively shirked work to do what I wanted instead. Work/school is only useful insofar as acting as the dreaded leviathan that I procrastinate with joy, and otherwise, with the limited energy I have, it drains me.
The further we descend into end-stage capitalism, the more desperately I flail at ways to make me feel human, or alive. I suspect I am not the only one. May all of our days be filled with such wondrous and free-wheeling exploration soon, without needing to cede anything in return.