Let's make a mess

A story of ADHD, shame, and creativity

Picture this: it’s a beautiful morning, and you just finished making yourself a cup of coffee. The sun is rising slowly and filling the space with a gentle glow. You open your journal to locate the thoughts you wrote down last week to explore later. You get cozy at your desk, load a fresh sheet of paper into the typewriter and begin typing.

One hour and two pages later, you read what you have. It's not bad, but it could be better, so you make a few notes in the margins, utilize your red pen, and try again.

and again...and again.

The draft is changing, morphing with each round. With each chunk of words you remove, more rush in to fill the space. The main focus of the piece is slipping further away, and your enthusiasm slowly dissolves into dread as you realize that this might take longer, and be more challenging, to complete.

You hoped to have something to publish two days from now, but you can't predict whether you'll be able to keep working on it. There's no guarantee you'll finish in time…

What do you do?

a. panic and rush through it

b. work on something else (and risk running into the same issue)

c. skip posting this week and hope nobody notices

d. give up writing forever (okay, maybe that’s extreme, but still relatable, yeah?)

(this was me a few days ago while working on this essay)

My mother told me…

“You could be an artist” my mother would tell tell me, her eyes shining brightly.

“We can sell these” she said holding up a few of my sketches.

“You could draw tattoos or be a sketch artist for the police” she said while looking at a profile I finished.

These were some of the comments that came my way as a teen.

Unlike the many artists and creatives who were taught to deny their dreams because it wasn’t “realistic”, I grew up in a family with talents as vast as they were astonishing. Some crafts were treated as hobbies, some were sold at yearly craft fairs or booths outside the house, and some made over $70k per work of art. Metalwork, jewelry-making, caricatures, painting, sculpting, chainsaw carving, hand made cards, scrapbooking, crochet, knitting, sewing, baking… everyone had a talent - at least one craft they’d honed - and I wanted to try everything.

I was provided materials, encouraged to practice, given pointers, and participated in group crafting sessions at family gatherings. I was always observing, always learning or experimenting with something. With most things I attempted, I got really good really quickly, or I worked at it until it felt satisfactory to me.

“I could create for a living too,” is what I gathered from these experiences.

But when there wasn’t someone cheering me on and guiding my attention, I was left wondering whether that was actually possible for me.

Some brains work differently

The way my brain hands me pieces of information as I write that I wouldn't have otherwise known were connected, feels like some kind of strange magic. Like a small army of creatures live in my brain, zooming through a maze of equally small filing cabinets and sending me connections through old mailroom pipes that use suction to deliver documents from a lower floor. Sometimes it feels less orderly, like following a trail of breadcrumbs into the woods, or a series of clues for an unsolved mystery. Sometimes it feels as chaotic as working on a jigsaw puzzle with a well-meaning toddler who hands you one loosely relevant piece at a time (after putting it in their mouth).

My process is one of discovery, meaning I uncover what I'm thinking, feeling, and what I most want to say through writing it down. It's why I journal almost daily, and why I take the time to review what I've written - a practice that has served me better than talk therapy. Outside the bounds of my diary, my writing process takes the form of a chaotic dance between "dumping" and "refining" - fervently scribbling down all the thoughts and ideas that come to me on sticky notes or index cards to sort, order, and connect.

I have my ADHD to thank for my ability to process and connect information so quickly, however, it’s also the reason I struggle to write and publish consistently - or at least in the timeframe I provide for myself. The dark side of "everything is connected" is that it means "everything has potential", a mindset which often leaves me paralyzed with decision fatigue, unclear what to prioritize, what to cut, or even where to begin.

Cleaning is not intuitive

There are moments when it seems the phrase "just in case" is permanently etched on the inside of my skull. It's why I have boxes (yes, plural) of empty mason jars, I'm convinced I'll eventually find a use for while entirely ignoring the box of canning supplies next to it - because what if I might need them for something else?

I struggle to know what to let go of, when, and why it matters, which occasionally grows into borderline hoarder tendencies.

As I write this, my bedroom looks like one of the photos used in "I Spy" books, and for those of you unfamiliar with what those are, it's a series of children's books that are just images of messy spaces that span two pages with a list of items to locate - sort of like “Where's Waldo”, but with less repeating patterns.

I was always good at visual puzzles.

As a teen, my bedroom was a minefield of abandoned sketchbooks and incomplete craft projects - a testament to both my desire to create and the lack of focus (or patience) required to follow through. I knew where everything was, and when I didn't I could scan and easily find what I needed amid the clutter. My space was a mess, but as long as there's not moldy food or trash, I was fine with it - my mother on the other hand was perpetually unamused.

Eliciting the help of her sister, they would un-make my mess while I was away, but instead of coming home and feeling relieved or grateful for the change to my space, I felt disoriented and panicked.

Where were my projects? What happened to the partially crocheted beanie I left under my bed, or the friendship bracelet I left on the nightstand and finally had the energy (and interest) to finish… It was like a reverse burglary. Instead of a mess being the evidence of trespassing, it was the lack of mess and the newly printed labels on the drawers in my closet she insisted I use.

“Where are my projects?” I would ask after searching through all the drawers and finding nothing.

"I threw them away" she said nonchalantly.

"what, why?!"

She waved off my reaction.

"You weren't going to finish them anyway, you'd already moved on to a different thing"

My mother was familiar with my start and stop tendencies as well as my penchant for getting distracted by a new craft medium and abandoning the previous interest almost as quickly as I had learned it. But I still felt betrayed, and I hated that the option to finish something had been taken from me. She thought that throwing away what was less likely to be finished would help me to better focus on whatever I was currently doing, and while I do focus best through removing options, there’s a balance that needs to be struck between clarity and my need for variety (to avoid burning out on something).

She also believed I wanted organization as much as she did, and to be fair, it did seem that way at times. Whether lining up books on the shelf by size and cover color, spending hours restacking family DVD collection in alphabetical order, or hanging my shirts by color, cut, and texture, I loved sorting things.

But using drawers - even labeled ones - was a losing game. Cleaning my space for me, and removing what she believed wasn’t necessary to keep meant I was never taught how to do it myself, or create a system that would help.

For a long time, I believed finding the "right" system was the answer. If I could just find something that worked for me then maybe I could keep my room clean and create all the things that called to me - because the process of editing is just another form of decluttering and cleaning.

With this mindset, I’ve spent the last five years drafting the first of a 3-part fiction series about halfway before getting stuck deep researching character arcs, balancing subplots and side stories, plotting structures, tone and pacing... every little thing to do with writing.

I didn't trust myself to get to the end on my own, or to make something good enough to have been worth the time and energy invested.

Each time I rewrote this novel (a total of four times now), I would get up to about 70% completed before inevitably getting distracted with trying to “fix” something, or thinking I needed to research some more to make sure I was doing things right (aka - good enough). Breaks that were intended to last a few days turned into months passing without me so much as thinking about the project.

When overwhelm takes over and fades into disinterest, it’s easy for my attention be stolen by something that doesn't feel as difficult. I wanted to prioritize my big dreams around writing, and I wanted to feel capable of creating the kind of structure I was convinced my brain needed in order to write and publish in a consistent way, but finding or forging a system that works for me longer than a few days or weeks has always been challenging.

Swiped from Orion Kelly - “That Autistic Guy” (on YouTube)

Let me just add here that I'm not a “plotter”, and the many times I tried to write like one ended in confusion and frustration. I spent years testing and experimenting with writing advice from others, but because of how my brain works, I've struggled endlessly to understand it or to apply it consistently. Routines, steps, stages, and checklists were all made to no avail, and it got to the point where I nearly gave up on writing.

Why was something I loved feeling like such a demand on my energy?

Your mileage may vary

It might be clear by now that there are moments when I'm not the biggest fan of how my brain works. There's so much I want to do and say, but it feels like my ADHD won't let me.

Between getting sucked into YouTube videos about writing routines, feeling the urge to write but unclear where to begin, getting excited by a shiny new idea or a "better" way to do things, losing interest for reasons unknown even to me, suddenly remembering an important task I was supposed to do, or giving up the moment something feels “too hard”, it can feel like there are a million barriers between me and a completed version of...anything.

Sometimes my mind is simply elsewhere and trying to wrangle my thoughts is like herding stray cats, and sometimes there's more to contend with than my ADHD.

So much executive function is required for drafting something of quality. There are so many decisions to be made and so much mental energy required that sometimes even something I love (writing), can be draining.

Living with multiple chronic illnesses requires me to be very selective about how I spend my unpredictable yet frequently limited energy. It often feels as though I’m prepped and excited for a day of adventure, only to realize I don’t have enough gas in the tank to get me to every stop I want to make. I have to let go of a few things and decide what feels most important - which in itself is a tiresome process, turning a good day into a series of annoying compromises.

I can work on a draft for Substack or I can do a load of laundry and shower.

I can make progress on my memoir or I can have an hour-long phone call with my friend who moved to the other side of the country.

At the moment of writing the last draft of this, I was waiting for water to boil, and it took my housemate coming into the kitchen and commenting on how low the water was for pasta for me to remember that I was planning to cook something. Most days I’m lucky if I remember to feed myself at all (protein bars are life savers, literally).

It's on those days that I begin to wonder whether I'm "cut out" to be a writer, whether I "have what it takes" to get through the suck and arrive victorious on the other side.

Swiftly to follow are thoughts like…

“maybe I'm not doing this right"

"I just need to try harder"

"I need to stop being so lazy"

"I can't quit now, because if I don’t finish this then I'll never have a published book or something to show for the effort I put in and it will all have been for nothing - wasted time"

and then,

"nothing I do will be good enough anyway...what's the point?"

The shame of the past comes rushing back and flooding my mind as a torrent of spiraling thoughts in my own voice.

What if it IS good enough?

Another thing that keeps me from completing and sharing things is thinking there’s always something to improve…and thinking I need to improve before I share what I made. This lack of self trust or being able to identify when something has reached a point of being “ready to share”, is something that gets me stuck in an endless cycle of revising, refining, and tweaking.

—

My mother threw away the first painting I ever made for her. I walked into her room and excitedly handed her my completed work of art. She beamed at me, and told me she loved it. Satisfied and full of pride, I walked away to go grab something. When I returned a few minutes later, I could clearly see my painting crumpled up and sticking out of her wastebasket.

Tears welled up faster than I could think.

Why did she throw it away, I worked so hard on that… surfaced in my mind, followed by, Why did she lie about liking it?

One of us - I don’t recall who at this point - made an effort to pull it out of the trash and smooth it out.

When confronted, she said she threw away my painting because she thought it made her look fat (which for her was a terrible thing). She explained that she saw my art and thought “I’m ugly” which baffled me, because my intentions was to express to her that I thought she was so beautiful that I wanted to paint her.

I walked away from that exchange feeling empty and thinking that maybe it wasn’t a good enough rendering, that I needed to improve my skills so she could see what I did.

But under the surface, I internalized that nothing I made was worth the effort and energy unless she approved of it. Basically, if the result wasn't good enough, then it was a waste of time, regardless of good intentions. Thus, at the tender age of four years old, my inner critic was born.

—

In all my research in attempts to improve my writing as an adult - or simply be more consistent - I was never exposed to the realities of writing, or to the struggle that refining something and working towards a vision can be. I assumed that I would be able to sit down and draft something, and get to a satisfying end product quickly and cleanly, and when that didn't happen, I thought there must be something wrong with me.

For so long, I had been stubbornly resisting the awareness that as a person who’s built and operates differently, I needed to approach things differently. I wasn't willing to work with my brain, yet got frustrated when things didn't go how I wanted or expected them to. I believed I should be able to just work efficiently, and was holding myself to standards that might be achievable to a neurotypical and able-bodied human, but I'm neither of those things.

With all this pressure I was placing on myself, with all the fear and pain of being rejected for what I made and hiding behind research and procrastination, I had forgotten that art - the process of creating - can be messy, and that the mess was actually half of the fun. The lack of restriction, the feeling of being taken on a joyride by characters you supposedly created (why do they never do what you want?), mixing paints, practicing new notes and chords, finding your voice...

Art is not a noun - it's a verb.

We are not artists, writers and creatives when we have a finished product, something to monetize, something to teach others, or even something to share... art is not defined by the act of completion, but by the act of creating.

Regardless of whether you have something to show for it, the process of expressing yourself or bringing something that didn't exist into form - at any stage - is a beautiful thing. You don’t even need to be good at what you do (although I understand wanting to). It's not that striving for a personally defined kind of excellence in a craft is a bad thing, it's that when you focus so much on the outcome that you forget the very reason you began creating, it begins to lose all meaning. When all you feel is obligation and pressure, you risk losing the passion for what you once loved.

Learning to fall in love with the process, no matter how winding or challenging it can be, or how long it takes me to finish something, is a feeling that still eludes me, but I don't think it will forever. In the meantime, there's no need to compare myself to what I see other people doing, or to make assumptions about how easy or challenging their process of getting there is. It's okay that it takes a little longer for me to get my bearings when refining a draft or manuscript, and it's not the end of the world if I miss a deadline or two for publishing on Substack.

I'm learning, slowly but surely, to not expect so much from myself or my art, which serves only the purpose of coming into being, of helping me to understand myself better, and perhaps to facilitate healing. Life is messy, and I am messy, so naturally, my process of creating is bound to be a bit messy.

The best thing I believe anyone can do for their art and creativity, is to release expectations and notions of perfection, and reconnect to the child within, to the curiosity and joy of experimentation, to the release that comes from channeling and transmuting something and...

allow yourself to make a mess.

a reminder I made for myself using my typewriter and a brush pen

---

PS: Thanks for being here with me

xoxo, 🌿Rowan