ADHD for girlbosses

I could not figure out what to write about today, so I did what anyone who cares about their reader base does: ask friends what I should do. My friend Aimee, who I have been texting more and more lately that I am a “tentative no” or “tentative yes” (that becomes a no) for gym sessions (often so I can write this newsletter), suggested I talk about procrastination. This amused me, so let’s talk about it.

I come from a long line of procrastinators, especially on my mom’s side. It was my destiny to wait until the last minute to get things done. I’ve never been the kind of person to turn something in early. In my day-to-day, I am fighting my natural desire to sit on the couch and watch prestige television.

I’m not a gambler. I don’t like to test fate. I am pretty cautious unless I feel like I will be successful or that failure won’t be such a hard fall. My riskiness comes in how I procrastinate — waiting until the last appropriate moment to perform. I love the rush of squeezing everything together because I will always get the thing done. Is it going to be perfect? No, but it will suffice. The times I fight my procrastinatory nature are when I’m not confident that I can win.

My eccentric and slightly evil SAT tutor was the first person to tell me I lacked focus. I never really thought about it before then. I always considered myself a driven person that always crosses the finish line, even if my technique is a bit unorthodox. My organizational traits resemble a nerdy 7th-grade boy in which things are messy, but I know where everything is. I was the type of student who carried a huge, life-containing binder in spite of my more segmented peers with purposeful highlighter varieties.

I never thought I had a problem because things always worked out for me. Today, they still do. Unless you count texting Aimee at 1 a.m. because I just now know I won’t be able to wake up at 7 for a workout. Or not using a calendar until recently. Or turning in tasks in work and school with glaring, albeit easily remedied, errors. My mom likes to say I did not previously have a focus problem, that this SAT tutor spoke a prophecy that I only started fulfilling until after she told it. I disagree.

Staying up late working on posters or movies or reports in elementary school first sparked my procrastinator fire. The rush I feel when working on a deadline is one of the closest feelings I have to a drug. Will I finish? Will I crash and burn? I do not have the time to mull over my fate — I just have to get it done. My mind is clear, and my thoughts are singular. Perform, perform, perform. I will stay up until it is done. I will revel in my lack of sleep the next day, exhale in my exhaustion, reward myself in knowing the war is finally over. Feeling vindicated when my scores come back positive.

I came of age in the Buzzfeed millennial girlboss era, where hard, endless work like this was celebrated. Female society glorified my unbalanced behaviors. I thought my power as a worker would shatter glass ceilings and rain pink pussy hats. I was deeply driven by my passions and hopes to better the world.

Unlike my interests, SAT prep was not going to push me out of bed in the morning. Slow, boring strokes on my way to my goals did not entertain me. I was not great at compartmentalizing my big prep into smaller battles, unmotivated by the fact that I still had so much time. Just by trying I was winning in some way.

I felt like I unlocked a procrastinator’s cheat code by choosing to study journalism. News is perfect on paper for someone like me: the stakes are high, and the deadlines are immediate. You’re motivated by a purpose to inform and help your community, and you get to hit that deadline drug constantly. It was not difficult to motivate myself in college with most of my classes teaching me ways to get that high.

Until it wasn’t enough of a fix anymore. The stress no longer felt worthwhile. I was working a semi-thankless job in a new place where each mistake felt like the world closing in on me. I did not see a light at the end of my tunnel, a career of low wages and isolation from those your hold close. I knew pretty early on that I had to change my career, which I’ve talked about many times in this here newsletter.

What could it be? I was so unmotivated. I grew even more cynical after days on end covering death and destruction, making even the heartwarming stories feel futile. I felt like a loser. What was I without the line of work I defined myself by? A lifestyle beyond just a job? I started therapy to talk about my family, but the malaise I felt in that department translated into my work.

Everyone’s got something going on inside. This we know. Mental illness is everywhere. This we know. I knew I was depressed, but this was a situational condition. The pandemic was also when the burnt-out former gifted kid archetype was in full force, this idea of wanting to achieve so much but being bogged down by the world around you into mediocrity. The Gen Z/millennial participation trophy mindset was destroyed by the realities of adulthood. Despite not actually being any gifted program, I certainly fit this mold and hated being such a cliche of privilege. I was wary of self-diagnosing myself with anything at all, especially when there were so many people with deeper problems than me, someone who is a self-optimizer and extremely solutions-oriented.

But I got more curious of my friends with ADHD. They would talk about their problems, and I would deeply relate. Moreover, I realized some of these problems don’t exist for everyone. I started asking more questions, especially from my female friends. As 7th grade boy-y as my organizational skills are, my ADHD-y traits did not present like that demographic all the time. Women famously are diagnosed later than men and the disorder presents itself differently than them, too.

I told my therapist I thought I might have it. A few weeks later, she tested me by asking a series of questions. One of them was if I procrastinate. Some of the questions were about being unable to complete daily functions of life, and I did not really resonate with those. I was not sure what my results would be. Upon completion, she said Wow, you’re off the charts! Wait, sorry, that’s not an OK thing to say, which made me laugh. I’m so good at test taking that I even aced the ADHD test.

ADHD has a pretty wide spectrum, and I fall on the lighter side. It’s something that’s definitely a part of me, but not something that requires intensive psychological help. Finding all of this out was a relief. I wasn’t just making something up or being lazy. My thought processes weren’t like everyone else. I’m now in company with powerful nerds worldwide. When I told my friends of my new-fangled diagnosis, they were unsurprised. I thought about how my life would have been different if I knew this about myself earlier. I think I found out at a great time.

My therapist said I’d have to go to a psychiatrist if I wanted medication. I was initially hesitant, since I don’t need meds for anything else going on inside my head. I was nervous that adderall or ritalin would numb my mind, and I’d lose my individuality. I asked my friends with ADHD about this and they just said I’m more focused, but I’m still me. This is exactly what I wanted.

I am a true procrastinator, and eight months passed before I talked to a real psychiatrist. At this point, I was a few months into my current job. A lot of my job includes long-term projects that require a lot of thinking. I found myself unable to make strong dents in these tasks, and I was frustrated that I wasn’t doing as good of a job as I wanted to. I talked to the psychiatrist, and she prescribed adderall.

Brooklyn is, like, the ADHD capital of the world, and a tough place to be in an adderall shortage. I finally found a pharmacy, and I took home my first try. The dose was pretty low, but I was really nervous. The first day I took it, I was bouncing off the walls. I not only was getting things done, but I felt so, so happy. Is this what it’s like to have a normal mind? I’m not too sure, but I know it worked. I felt the rush of procrastinating, only this time it really was a drug. But a few hours later, I crashed. Hard. Unmotivated, and worse, very sad. I remember going over to my friend Gabby’s house and just laying on her couch complaining.

I didn’t take it for a while, because I was scared of the comedown. But the need for it stayed, so I tried again and it felt much, much better. I started taking it every weekday so I could excel at work. At first, it worked great. Soon enough, I grew immune to the effects and felt that same level of laziness.

I realized I’d need to up my dosage to keep taking adderall at the rate I wanted to, but this scared me. So much of my newsgathering in New Hampshire was a story of drug addiction, of pharmaceutical companies enabling dependence that turns destructive. I’m not saying my psychiatrist was hoping I would become someone like that, but I was and still am too afraid to keep going higher. I’m lucky enough to not have an acute-enough case to do so.

I never ended up raising my dosage. I stopped taking it for a while until I felt the need yet again. I’ve sometimes felt ashamed that this is the reality of my brain and felt like I was making up a condition. But this is how I succeed. Nowadays, I pick one day a week to take it based on my workload. Sometimes I skip a week. Sometimes I take a bit more on my designated day. What’s great about adderall is you don’t have to always take the same dose at the same times. I really like how flexible and need-based it is. Now when I take it, I still feel like me, just more focused. My SAT tutor would be proud…?

The girlboss feminism of the mid-2010s has mostly evaporated aside from an unintentionally funny Hillary Clinton post every so often. The idea that Women Can Have It All! has morphed into a self-deprecating, slightly more honest approach to how the cards are stacked against the majority of us living under capitalism. However, that desire to be perfect has no sign of leaving the female psyche and has been sitting in the back corner for a long time. We worry about our image both to the world and in the mirror.

Typing out my ADHD chronicles feels a bit silly, like a celebrity talking about some really benign, surface-level issue in a way they think is world-shatteringly raw. I think in my depth I want to show that it really is not that deep. My brain works in this way that a lot of other brains do, but it could work better and satisfy me more, so now I take a drug sometimes that two medical professionals said would help me, and it does. It is not more complicated than that.

So much of what women (well, all kinds of groups, but this is the one I want to talk about) deal with not being believed and having to fight for a perfection we know isn’t real. We’ve all seen Barbie and found both merit and groans in America Ferrera’s monologue. It’s both a way that denounces and enforces those girlboss feminist ideals. It’s these things we can think about when we don’t live in a warzone and have our basic needs met.

ADHD in some ways helps me chill out and perform instead of musing on cultural norms I have no power to fix. Instead of feeling like adderall sucked away my individuality, my prescription empowers me to be the best version of myself. It gives me more time to segment between work and play, to have more time having fun with the people I love. Nothing is more important than that, except for maybe your health. I get caught up in the Bushwick social justice warrior circuit and am frustrated by it, but I remember something that both ADHD and living in New Hampshire taught me, which is to just chill out and look at the beauty around you. Being authentically myself can stove off the Internet’s social movements…for now.

I am always going to be a work in progress, and my procrastination will always be there. Now I am better at getting things done the way the girlboss feminist thought leaders intended, with a big iced coffee, a keyboard with purple keys, and The Secret to Having It All (mental healthcare).