I'm not as good at the metaphysics as Polly, but about halfway through your letter I was like "this would be me if I was living his life," and it was a bummer. But what's wild is, I didn't choose my life at all - I got fired right after I bought a house and had to make something work, so I rented out rooms and I started my own non-profit and I worked part time at the library because a friend needed someone to type numbers into a spreadsheet for 2 years. And then, my parents both got sick so I moved them into my house and I started taking care of them. And then, I was in too much pain psychically because I realized my physical house was JUST TOO SMALL and the place we were living was TOO DAMN HOT so I moved myself, two very disabled seniors, and two insane dogs 2,000 miles away to a small city where I knew ONE person. And I bought a second house AFTER I DID BANKRUPTCY, and now I rent part of it out. Like - this sounds CHAOTIC and yet....my unhappiness is transient and it is not the deep emotional pain and exhaustion you are describing that I do remember from working for someone else and never catching up on my to-do list and never having food in the fridge to cook.
I think Polly gets at something obliquely that you need to look at square in the face: too much of your shit is about keeping up with the millenial joneses. I used to go to fancy restaurants, in the best cities in the country. I had so many frequent flier miles I took a free flight to a three week vacation to Africa. I put a trip to Argentina all on credit. I knew all the memes, I saw all the prestige shows, I was SO ONLINE that I felt like I was actually in a community with like...actual famous people. That is the millenial Joneses and IT IS NOT GOOD. It's normal to not go out to eat. It's normal to move to a place that isn't a big city so you can afford a house that will help you feel secure and not more precarious. It's normal to make less money than people on TV seem to make, and have old furniture. It's normal to be and feel boring. Social media has done a lot of bad things, like you know, but are you off of it? Get off of it. All of it. Don't know the memes anymore, don't get the jokes on twitter or x or whatever. Being cool online is stupid, and anyone who makes money off of it is just grifting until the music ends.
Two things that seem extremely concrete to me about you: First, you need to physically care for something or someone. You need to be a babysitter, or get a dog (maybe you have one, I don't know you didn't say), or help out with disabled people. Literally nothing is more grounding for people like you and me (I've decided we're the same) than getting the hell out of your own head and your own needs and just carrying a heavy toddler who is falling asleep and also crying home from the park in the heat because you didn't plan well enough (because of the ADHD, you see) and having it still be fine and just cutting up some carrots for them to snack on when they wake up.
Second, you need to figure out how to work for yourself STAT. Polly also referred to this but I think you need to see it as your only option for A. Anxious, depressed, ADHD brains who are creative and get overwhelmed and shut down by other people's nonsense need to be in charge of our own shit. And most of the time that means you don't make a lot of money. And you trade the stress of always being afraid of being fired for always being afraid more work isn't going to show up. But that's stress you can DO something about. You can be creative, you can pivot, you can figure out what people you are serving with your business or organization need and you can build it, better than someone else who doesn't have a whirring brain and won't sit down and bang out some weird ideas with Claude. I've gotten SO MUCH BETTER at doing my job and leading my organization and developing new services since I could take all my swirling random ideas into an unending conversation with a robot who remembers my own thoughts better than I do and also tells me to stop pussy footing around and build the damn things already.
Move out of the city, delete your accounts, start a business, and babysit. Bing, Bang, Bong.
"My very firm conviction is that I thrive when I follow my gut, improvise, and allow intensity to guide me."
I'm extremely with Polly here: forceful contact with reality is the way forward. Repeat the sentence above to yourself every day until it starts to feel true. Take your job out of the A position, and slowly start pulling up on the gas there until it starts to feel safer and safer. Start by using the moments of time you're getting back to do exactly what Polly says: vigorously pursue experiential intensity. This can start with things that feel boring, random, or have no through-line (exercise is a great suggestion). As you do this, you'll start noticing where your nose is taking you. A through-line will start to emerge. And by then, the through-line (and your plans, where you're headed, how you're going to make it all work) won't feel nearly so existentially scary to you, because you'll be living from a place of curiosity, improvisation, and joy. F that job.
Rooting for you, rooting for me, rooting for all of us.
This is faaaantastic advice, especially for people with an ADHD diagnosis. Having a brain like this is like having a dog. A tired dog is a good dog. A bored dog is a sad, anxious dog.
Also, you know what makes me feel depressed? Like, really really depressed? STIMULANT MEDICATIONS. If I take my Adderall or Vyvanse regularly for more than two weeks in a row, I start hating everything about my life. It's definitely a genetic/chemical thing for me because it happens every time like clockwork, and it happens every time like clockwork to my college-age son.
LW, you might be in this category!! Some chemicals that feel helpful in the short term feel SUPER BAD in the long term. If you have been on stimulants for a while, give yourself a chemical reset. If you still smoke pot on the weekends or drink regularly, stop that too, because those are mega depressants.
Personally, I had good results swapping the stimulant medication for a microdose (micro!!!) of magic mushrooms twice a week, extremely dorky youtube exercise videos, and volunteering with ADHD/Autistic kids.(These kids are never, ever boring.) I did those things for about two years and felt like I totally rewired my brain.
Nowadays, I'm off all substances and I'm really doing creative stuff that I never thought I would actually accomplish. Like Polly says, sweating your ass off, trying a bunch of random stuff, and getting in over our heads with something we care about is the best stimulant.
I know it seems scary to rawdog life and care deeply about stuff, and it yeah it IS scary. It's terrifying. The terror is part of what makes it work.
I'm not as good at the metaphysics as Polly, but about halfway through your letter I was like "this would be me if I was living his life," and it was a bummer. But what's wild is, I didn't choose my life at all - I got fired right after I bought a house and had to make something work, so I rented out rooms and I started my own non-profit and I worked part time at the library because a friend needed someone to type numbers into a spreadsheet for 2 years. And then, my parents both got sick so I moved them into my house and I started taking care of them. And then, I was in too much pain psychically because I realized my physical house was JUST TOO SMALL and the place we were living was TOO DAMN HOT so I moved myself, two very disabled seniors, and two insane dogs 2,000 miles away to a small city where I knew ONE person. And I bought a second house AFTER I DID BANKRUPTCY, and now I rent part of it out. Like - this sounds CHAOTIC and yet....my unhappiness is transient and it is not the deep emotional pain and exhaustion you are describing that I do remember from working for someone else and never catching up on my to-do list and never having food in the fridge to cook.
I think Polly gets at something obliquely that you need to look at square in the face: too much of your shit is about keeping up with the millenial joneses. I used to go to fancy restaurants, in the best cities in the country. I had so many frequent flier miles I took a free flight to a three week vacation to Africa. I put a trip to Argentina all on credit. I knew all the memes, I saw all the prestige shows, I was SO ONLINE that I felt like I was actually in a community with like...actual famous people. That is the millenial Joneses and IT IS NOT GOOD. It's normal to not go out to eat. It's normal to move to a place that isn't a big city so you can afford a house that will help you feel secure and not more precarious. It's normal to make less money than people on TV seem to make, and have old furniture. It's normal to be and feel boring. Social media has done a lot of bad things, like you know, but are you off of it? Get off of it. All of it. Don't know the memes anymore, don't get the jokes on twitter or x or whatever. Being cool online is stupid, and anyone who makes money off of it is just grifting until the music ends.
Two things that seem extremely concrete to me about you: First, you need to physically care for something or someone. You need to be a babysitter, or get a dog (maybe you have one, I don't know you didn't say), or help out with disabled people. Literally nothing is more grounding for people like you and me (I've decided we're the same) than getting the hell out of your own head and your own needs and just carrying a heavy toddler who is falling asleep and also crying home from the park in the heat because you didn't plan well enough (because of the ADHD, you see) and having it still be fine and just cutting up some carrots for them to snack on when they wake up.
Second, you need to figure out how to work for yourself STAT. Polly also referred to this but I think you need to see it as your only option for A. Anxious, depressed, ADHD brains who are creative and get overwhelmed and shut down by other people's nonsense need to be in charge of our own shit. And most of the time that means you don't make a lot of money. And you trade the stress of always being afraid of being fired for always being afraid more work isn't going to show up. But that's stress you can DO something about. You can be creative, you can pivot, you can figure out what people you are serving with your business or organization need and you can build it, better than someone else who doesn't have a whirring brain and won't sit down and bang out some weird ideas with Claude. I've gotten SO MUCH BETTER at doing my job and leading my organization and developing new services since I could take all my swirling random ideas into an unending conversation with a robot who remembers my own thoughts better than I do and also tells me to stop pussy footing around and build the damn things already.
Move out of the city, delete your accounts, start a business, and babysit. Bing, Bang, Bong.
"My very firm conviction is that I thrive when I follow my gut, improvise, and allow intensity to guide me."
I'm extremely with Polly here: forceful contact with reality is the way forward. Repeat the sentence above to yourself every day until it starts to feel true. Take your job out of the A position, and slowly start pulling up on the gas there until it starts to feel safer and safer. Start by using the moments of time you're getting back to do exactly what Polly says: vigorously pursue experiential intensity. This can start with things that feel boring, random, or have no through-line (exercise is a great suggestion). As you do this, you'll start noticing where your nose is taking you. A through-line will start to emerge. And by then, the through-line (and your plans, where you're headed, how you're going to make it all work) won't feel nearly so existentially scary to you, because you'll be living from a place of curiosity, improvisation, and joy. F that job.
Rooting for you, rooting for me, rooting for all of us.
This is faaaantastic advice, especially for people with an ADHD diagnosis. Having a brain like this is like having a dog. A tired dog is a good dog. A bored dog is a sad, anxious dog.
Also, you know what makes me feel depressed? Like, really really depressed? STIMULANT MEDICATIONS. If I take my Adderall or Vyvanse regularly for more than two weeks in a row, I start hating everything about my life. It's definitely a genetic/chemical thing for me because it happens every time like clockwork, and it happens every time like clockwork to my college-age son.
LW, you might be in this category!! Some chemicals that feel helpful in the short term feel SUPER BAD in the long term. If you have been on stimulants for a while, give yourself a chemical reset. If you still smoke pot on the weekends or drink regularly, stop that too, because those are mega depressants.
Personally, I had good results swapping the stimulant medication for a microdose (micro!!!) of magic mushrooms twice a week, extremely dorky youtube exercise videos, and volunteering with ADHD/Autistic kids.(These kids are never, ever boring.) I did those things for about two years and felt like I totally rewired my brain.
Nowadays, I'm off all substances and I'm really doing creative stuff that I never thought I would actually accomplish. Like Polly says, sweating your ass off, trying a bunch of random stuff, and getting in over our heads with something we care about is the best stimulant.
I know it seems scary to rawdog life and care deeply about stuff, and it yeah it IS scary. It's terrifying. The terror is part of what makes it work.