#adhdcreativity

Emily Dickinson, F1644B

Today, tiny is motes and moats.

Hey guys, it’s me again with another blog/ramble/word vomit about ADHD. This time I’ll be talking about perfectionism.

In my life I have always loved making music. In different ways, like performing pop songs or listening to music. And for some reason, I have an obsession with trying to make the best song I can, I’ve had it for years now. And I’m not improving. Each time I have partially or fully finished a song, it never lives up to my standards.

I have always enjoyed being creative. It has always been something empowering me and my self-esteem and confidence. I have coded, made YouTube videos, the music thing of course, Lego stop-motion, you name it. I loved the extreme focus I got from it, feeling productive, and a finished end product I could be proud of.

But lately, maybe even longer, I have had difficulties being creative. Because everything I make seems to not be good enough. When I was young, I knew my work wasn't the best thing ever, but for some reason, I didn't care, whilst I was also improving all the time. I could shake the perfectionism off. And nowadays I don't even dare to perform one of my songs to anybody, because deep down I feel that they suck, that they don't live up to whatever it could be. My songs are underwhelming, I thought. And not just my songs, I could mean everything I ever made whilst being creative, so also my Lego stop-motion videos from when I was twelve years old, to my coding-related videos from when I was fifteen.

Now I was a little bit distracted while I was typing this blog, and looking at my code-related videos. And something, which honestly has been a thought which has been popping up lately, is the fact that when I watch the videos, I realize that while I was making it, I also was never 100% happy with how it turned out. It could always be better. But I knew that, maybe because of impatience for publishing the video, I never wanted to make it bigger/more complicated then I could/should have made it. I was never completely satisfied with a video, but it was always 'that'll do'. There were always things I noticed, even after uploading, which could be so much better, but I was able to let these things go.

And I never remade a video. I kept my curiosity for the code by experimenting with new updates to it, and wandering off in real life mentally also gave me a lot of inspiration. And I saw that inspiration everywhere. I was not focused on being the best I could, yet I was learning so much but I was focused on having fun and doing my thing. And the fact that it was a simple but big hobby I took so much enjoyment from, allowed me to take off the pressure of it and basically just fuck around. And I felt good, because results were still made, I got a lot of recognition for it, and I could express my creative spirit.

There are no roses without thorns. If you look long enough, there's always an imperfection to be found. Nothing is perfect. If you listen long enough to your favorite song, you will also find imperfections. But you are able to enjoy it nonetheless, because you don't give those imperfections your attention. You mind the beautiful, you mind the good parts of it. And you let the lesser parts go.

Here's another example: famous site rateyourmusic.com is a resource for music lovers over the world to categorize and rate their music. I go there a lot to discover new music. I'm gonna take a look at their top 100 highest-rated albums.

The highest rated album is OK Computer by Radiohead, a British alternative rock albums from the late 90's. It foreshadows 21st century life with its melancholic and downbeat mood and downright depressing lyrics. I love this album. But I never listen too it too much, because it's, as with the lyrics, downright depressing. It's lovely for when I'm in the mood, but when I'm not, I can't stand it. And I always skip Fitter Happier, and I can't even remember like 2 songs from the C and D-sides. In other words, I can appreciate this incredible work of art for what it exactly is: imperfect.

There's always a different way to look at things. At least two sides. Chris Martin from Coldplay could be overly sentimental, or super romantic. Guns 'n Roses is powerful, loose music, or it's aggressive, disturbing and obnoxious. Every White Album has its Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da, but also its While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Kraftwerk was either an incredible act with radically new synthesizer sounds in the 70s, or an incredibly weird act which made music which seems dated now. Newton was either a genius, or a nerdy virgin.

I could even apply the principle to this blog post. I should redo the way I started writing, because I seem to be repeating so many things. Not even in the first part of this blog post. But I let that go, because my post holds the message and it's good enough.

So to finish it off, how does this relate back to ADHD? Because, another imperfection could be that I keep on talking about general virtues instead of actual ADHD symptoms, but that's because everything is tied together. That's also one of my biggest beliefs, everything is tied together in a way we can't understand yet. There's a reason why you decided to go to Tumblr today and you are reading this sentence right now. Maybe because you are bored and you don't feel like doing your homework. Maybe because you are procrastinating your school work, and maybe I'm unconsciously projecting my own situation in the last example because I'm trying to escape from a big problem which I'm confused about. Or maybe I just made that up for engagement ;) (No I absolutely did not)

Wow, I completely derailed the previous paragraph. So, a main symptom of ADHD is directing your focus. And if you have trouble doing that, then you will automatically have a harder time being happy and being grateful for life, and not focusing on the bad things, and thus, accepting that the art you make is imperfect, and (ouch this hurts to write) it always will be.