Sorry for spam. I'm high on my ADHD meds

Last week, I got excited about something I’m building at work and sent a sneak preview to three different chats. It’s an onboarding form that’s supposed to replace dozens of other forms we use.

In one of them, I asked, “do you think all this would actually help?” and then “or just like it to keep my ♥️ from breaking?” and the heart didn’t work; it came out as “:haer”, and I sent that twice.

They replied in caps that it would help immensely. I hearted that and just kept going. Get rid of all the outside tools we use; have everything in one place, all connected and talking to each other. A client fills out the form, the CRM record gets created, and the folders and tasks go to the right people. Partners upload their photos there instead of to a shared drive, and AI tags them; eventually, AI does the social posts too. And then this one:

my vision here is an Agency Factory floor where things are on conveyor belts, humans are quality checking, but not doing the actual stuff, and coming up with ideas for improvements

Nine minutes of that. Then:

sorry for spam
I’m high on my adhd meds

They said they were digging the spam. The other two chats got the same preview and no sorry.

I have ADHD. I take Ritalin, three doses, about four hours apart, starting when I wake up.

There’s this line in How to ADHD by Jessica McCabe that I highlighted a while back:

Ninety percent of the ADHD experience is saying two things on loop: “I’m sorry I got distracted” and “I’m sorry I forgot.”

Mine are more like sorry, too much and sorry, I forgot. I tried to figure out which one I say more, and honestly it’s about even. That chat was a too much one. The “forgot” ones are like a message I left on read for days recently, then said sorry. Or the follow-ups I promise on calls, those just sit there until someone asks again.

The calls are at night for me because I work US hours from Pakistan. On the calls, I force myself to sit still and look attentive.

The same book has a line about that:

So we learn to mask our ADHD behaviors and do what’s expected of us—be quiet, sit still, pay attention—when we’re in public. We pay the price later—melt down, feel exhausted, stare blankly at a wall, or scroll through social media for hours just trying to recharge.

That’s me on the calls. After the last call ends, though, I don’t stare at a wall or scroll. I keep working, and I can’t stop. I keep building stuff until I physically crash.

My WHOOP says my median bedtime over the last 30 days was 8:32 am. A lot of that is the US workday. I don’t know how much of it is me not stopping.

Anyway this got long. Sorry for the spam.

~ aq