Life ADHD and Creating

I admit that I am reader of comments. I love reading an online news article just to read the comments others write at the bottom in response to the article. I especially love the irony of people call others intolerant or idiots, morons or complete crack pots and as the one person calls the other an idiot. I can sit back and correct the commenter’s spelling, grammar, punctuation, or sentence structure. I always find it easier to be the critiquer than the creator.

It’s easy for me to critique a story, a person, or a view. It’s much harder to put a logical idea, or well written story out there for others to critique, read, talk about, or share. The irony in all of this is that the point of telling my story, or writing a book is to tell people that we can all help one another in small ways and in doing so can make a real impact and positive change in the world around us. This means that people will talk about, critique my story, my writing, my views. I run the risk of being called everything from a moron to a semi-intelligent individual, an attention hog, self-involved, narcissistic (I mean I’m writing a blog about myself and my writing).

Lately I’ve paused writing to make sure I’m doing it all for the right reasons. I want to be sure that while this is my story, the purpose, the tone, the motive is right. I have also paused writing because the weather has gotten nice and I joined a soccer league and I have Life ADHD. I run around looking at everything I could do and then investigate twenty five different ideas all at once (twenty-five is only a slight exaggeration). Let me give you an example. In one month (not this month, just a past month a while ago), I applied to be in the Peace Corps, the CIA, a USAID job, a teaching position in Spain, three jobs in three different cities in the US, and was writing my book, investigated how to do Teach for America, and America Corps, took the ASVAB to see what I could do in the military, looked at how to apply for PH.D. programs, and researched how to start a non-profit foundation to raise money for scholarships for students who age out of foster care.

Out of those things, I got accepted into the Peace Corps, but my application was put on hold until I removed my application from the CIA (as a member of the Peace Corps you cannot work for any intelligence agency), learned that Ph.d. programs require the GRE, which costs too much money for me right now, and that Teach For America doesn’t accept applications until August, and I accepted the job I currently work in, and have made some good progress in starting a non-profit (that is still a fairly young idea, but if my book does well I need a business to put the money into and I would rather travel and speak to raise money for scholarships than to just line my own pockets, this actually makes a lot of sense even if I’m not explaining it well).

So what’s my point? My point is that sometimes I get so caught up in the comments that I forget to be the creator. Sometimes the comments give good ideas, sometimes the commentary strikes true and causes you to intrinsically reflect on who you are and what you are about. And sometimes, for freshness sake it is good to take a break, collect and check myself to make sure that I am not just rotely going through the motions of something I am not passionate about. I’ve realized that writing and helping others is not a job it’s a passion and it’s something I want people to see, read, experience how it impacts those around them. In that sense I am doing what I love, spending time creating what others read and what others experience, for I don’t want to spend my life reading what others create. I want to spend my life creating what others read and experience.

What are you creating?