Dear readers,
When I said I get insanely creative in October, I wasn’t joking. At the same time, this an ADHD-flavored creativity, which makes it very fleeting. This post is my attempt at capturing it: Halloween, falling leaves, chestnuts and all the things that excite me (or not) in the fall!
If you are a Medium member, read this piece here to give me that sweet reading time.
Here we go!
Fall is a special season for all ADHDers. After a cozy summer of not-so-many obligations, we are back to our busy schedules and with it back to our ADHD symptoms. Here are three ADHD symptoms that come back to life in this beautiful season.
The crux of ADHD (Attention Hyperactivity Disorder) is that it makes it hard to control where your attention goes. What this means in practice is that we end up directing our attention only to the things that we perceive as fun, and completely ignore anything that is not fun. We are always one step ahead looking for the new fun thing, and when we have found something fun, we just cannot let it go, until something better comes along. This relentless search for “fun” can lead to some absurd situations. Here they are!
1. Back to school/job/work is scary!
Some of us don’t need scary Halloween costumes to get spooked out. Life is scary enough.
If I gave a neurotypical person a task to complete the sentence “Going to sleep is ___” or “Schedule is ___”, I’m pretty sure the word “scary” would never cross their mind. Mundane things like going to sleep are pretty normal and uneventful for most people. For ADHDers, however, sleep is usually boring.
The preparations before going to sleep like brushing your teeth are always the same. Every day. The same thing. And in my case, if I don’t fall asleep fast, I start getting anxious about not falling asleep.
And there is nothing better to spark up your anxieties about falling asleep on time than knowing you have to wake up early for school/job/whatever work. The worst ADHD chain reaction is when you keep postponing going to sleep (because you don’t like it), end up going to sleep super late, then realize you will sleep very little, and start getting anxious about not being rested tomorrow. Yup, schedules ruin everything.
But no need to worry about me, dear reader. Even though I hate going to sleep, and continuously postpone it, I usually fall asleep just fine. You might even say that it’s all in my mind. I get it, it’s all because I find it boring.
“This fall, my ADHD seems even worse”, is my typical mirror conversation. But lurking beneath this struggling ADHDer is a creative spirit waiting to be unleashed.
2. Get inspired and then forget about it!
There is something about this season that makes me very creative. Every walk and every moment in nature feels so special. “The leaves have such pretty colors, the wind is blowing, things are beautiful…” such atypical thoughts for my ADHD brain.
I lean into this beauty because I am inspired. I want to preserve it. But before I can put anything creative into motion, I am painfully reminded of my short attention span. Most of my ideas will be forgotten forever, or live perpetually as drafts, never to be touched again.
This is the truth. My ADHD makes me forget things as fast as I can remember them. In a cruel twist of fate, ADHDers are insanely creative (looking for novelty I guess?), but rarely have the perseverance to materialize their ideas.
However, there is a glimmer of hope in all of that. Some of these ideas stick in our minds for long enough that we give them some credit for existing. We think about them, maybe we even find them humorous, and then we decide to act on them!
By creating this comic, I think I have tapped into another strategy that can fuel ADHD creativity instead of stifling it. I allowed myself to draw a fast sketch of my experience without even checking back the actual photo I took. I took advantage of my passion for the humor of this story and made it about that. The beauty of the tree might not be realistically or artistically represented, but the idea of beauty is there.
When you have ADHD, most often the easiest solution is the best one, because that is the only one you are prepared to do. I know I will not sit down to draw that tree but I can make something funny and cute instead.
However, the attitude of doing something halfway or not the way you imagined can be extremely difficult for ADHDers, because more often than not, we are victims of an all-or-nothing attitude.
3. All-or-nothing attitude
As we said in the beginning, ADHD is all about looking for fun and avoiding things we dislike. This also applies to food in my case. I either love or hate certain foods, there is no middle ground. And while some of this could partly be due to sensory sensitivities often found in ADHD and other neurodivergent conditions, it is also because I look for stimulation in food. I either find it or not. I do not find it in raw onions.
The love for certain foods is further exacerbated when they are not available all year round or when they don’t grow where I live. Why? Because it feels so much more special and unattainable. In this case, chestnuts are only available in the fall (everywhere where they grow I think?), and as such, are my number one desired food.
My obsession with roasted chestnuts and chestnut purée became a bit of a gag in my family. “It’s just a food” they would say, or “I like chestnut purée because it’s sweet”. They don’t get it. What I love is the pure chestnut flavor and I am obsessed about it in proper neurodivergent fashion.
If you live in a country where roasted chestnuts or chestnut purée are not common, please try them sometime! Thank me later!
Thank you for reading!
If you liked this, click like and let me know about your favorite or less favorite things in the fall!
Until next time,
Ana
Fall is beautiful for sure. I love the changing color of the leaves and enjoying a cozy outdoor fire pit cooking sausages, making baked potatoes, etc. These are some of my favorite Fall activities.
When you mention that doing the quick sketch helps, I can recommend the video “finished not perfect” by Jake Parker. This way you keep building all these wonderful essays and drawings and see that you are building something and its making echoes every day
thank you for sharing your thoughts , have a great day!