State of the Crazy: When You Get in Your Own Way, October 23, 2023

---

I have been struggling to come up with a good way to write this post for a long time, which is inevitably made the frustration and procrastination of this post even worse. So let me get the worst out of the way and say it….

Life is constantly getting away from me and has made it incredibly hard to post and work towards my hobby goals. But lately its been worse than just life. I’ve been getting in the way of myself.

Between all of the major life events this year including but not limited to; having a baby and moving 500 miles. Everything has been incredibly overwhelming, all the way down to the day to day scheduling and activities. I’ve yet to set a consistent daily routine for myself to help which I desperately need to pursue my own hobbies, mental & physical health. I’ve started to see my own family begin to thrive and succeed in their new environments and yet I am still struggling.

Over the last several months and even years I’ve seen people self advocating, pushing themselves, putting themselves out there and not afraid to talk about their own mental health.

So here I go. I discovered late and as an young adult that I struggle with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Discorder (ADHD) along with extreme anxiety. This has been apart of my entity my entire life and has lead to me feeling broken and that something is wrong with me. You see as a female ADHD can exhibit differently than the classic jumping around the walls then boys and was often undiagnosed. While I can certainly be easily distracted, bored, and impulsive I have found that my ADHD comes with so many positives. I have learned that along with the negatives it has been crucial to every aspect of who I am and what I have called a success in my life. While my ADHD can be used sometimes as a super power it does lead to a few downsides. This includes but not limited to perfectionism and the need to understand everything at a foundational level. Also and most importantly the marriage of my ADHD to imposter syndrome.

For those who are not aware of imposter syndrome:

“It’s characterized by chronic feelings of inadequacy, incompetence, and fraudulence despite objective success. It’s hard to internalize success and genuinely hold the belief that you’re competent and capable.”

Audrey Ervin, Delaware Valley University

I never endingly feel that I am not good enough in my actions, don’t deserve the victories I have and hold myself back from truly embracing the positives I have done myself. My frustration with myself, questioning the validity of any advice I could provide other hobbyists has prevented me from being able to move forward in my goals and even posting regularly. I want to change that.

Finding My Self Care

I created this blog as a way for me to work through my personal mental health issues and create a digital journal to look back on my journey. In my life I have learned a few things that can significantly helped with my imposter syndrome. But are also things I must be diligent to continue working on.

1. Being Self Aware

Being aware that I struggle with impostor syndrome has helped me navigate what is actually true and what is irrational doubt. Although I still struggle everyday I know that a good amount of it is unwarranted concern.

2. Writing It Out

The reason I created this site is to document my journey and growth. Writing it down and going back on my thoughts and feelings of the past have helped me see how far I’ve come. Seeing how I grew in the hobby, improved my skills and tried new things brings immeasurable joy. This is the primary reason that this blog exists

3. Embrace All of Me

This I need to be better about doing. I tend to hate the “messy” stage or partial stage and get distracted and never finish my immeasurable projects. This leads to beating myself down about not finishing things and increased negative feelings. However, embracing the messy stages and documenting it out is immensely therapeutic for me. I need to do this more.

The tabletop gaming hobby has been the outlet I’ve needed both for getting out of my comfort zone along with meditative time to think about everything that has happened in my day and find a way to settle down from the hyperactivity and over stimulation.

The miniature tabletop hobby and painting has also helped in several key ways that I plan to continue.

Finding Self Expression

Printing, Painting, and Assembling miniatures is one of my favorite ways to settle down from the day and learn how to express myself in how I view the world all around me. Every day is better if I spend time to paint or work on models, I need to keep reminding myself that every time I don’t. I feel like I am better at tackling projects & problems if I’ve had sometime to sit at my incredible new painting desk.

For My Isolation

Since graduating college and “settling down” I have found myself becoming increasingly isolated. With small kids, a global pandemic, and a variety of at home jobs working remotely or being a stay at home mother to three children its increasingly difficult to interact with other people. This hobby through gaming has provided me more friends in my adult life than any other activity. It is also one of the only ways to engage with people that I see some of their most authentic selves.

I want to make sure I am capturing all the memories that I do not want to forget.

For My Kids

Lastly, I need to get out of my own way and continue on my journey here on the blog for the most important thing in my world, my kids. As someone who works on a computer I know that screens and doing things digitally does not have the same permanence or rewarding feeling as the tactile nature of the art of painting and feeling of playing games.

I am doing my best to show my children that they should embrace their passions. Explore their creativity and not be afraid to have fun, or get a little paint on their shirt. Perfect is overrated and the act of doing is just as much fun as the end result. Some of these messages I’m still trying to learn myself but they do not need to know that, yet.

My Personal Call to Action

This week I have decided to pull off the band-aid and attempt to get back into the routine of not only doing stuff for the hobby but also writing on the site. I am writing for the one day my kids want to see their mom’s personal growth and perhaps I can touch someone else out there too who stumbles and finds my ramblings.

Overall, I feel like in many ways my hobby is a direct reflection of my mental state in life. When my life becomes chaos in the hecticness of doctors appointments, sickness, repair work, jobs, being a parent etc. I feel pulled in so many directions and it visibly shows on my hobby table with partially finished projects all over the place. However, lately it has lead to a deeper and deeper rut where I can’t find time in the chaos to organize my mind and finish the projects which would make the life easier to handle. My hobby is my meditative time and yet even at that I’m torn. I feel so split in my goal at the table. Am I painting for the joy of painting, collecting or just get models on the table to play. I am feeling so lost and overwhelmed leading to a state of exhaustion. I wish I knew how to tackle it.

-myself, crazmadsci

I am ready to attempt to do what I can and begin the process of moving forward. I don’t know what that looks like yet but we are going to find out. For those of you that put up with my cathartic self lecture/teaching, thank you. Even though the community is small I appreciate every one of you.

How are you really doing today?

Crazmadsci 

---

Previous Posts