To all my friends, family, coworkers, and whoever else might be listening: I’m making this public post to share what’s going on and what I plan to do. I’ll also be sharing this with people who are impacted by what I’ve decided and what it means for them.

TL;DR: Without ADHD impacting my ability to manage my priorities, I’m going to need to reprioritize. I’ve promised a lot of things “very soon”, but now I’m being realistic. So I’m giving up trying to do everything now and will honestly assess and communicate what I’m realistically able to do — and when I’ll be able to do it.

How I Got Here

A couple months ago, I underwent eTMS treatment to address issues in my brain such as PTSD, ADHD, depression, and anxiety. Now that my brain has been treated, I am dealing with the aftermath of having a brain that functions differently, particularly in relation to my ADHD. It was not diagnosed until later in life, and now I need to overcome the adaptive strategies I developed over the past 50+ years.

ADHD makes me super interested in all sorts of things, and I end up jumping headfirst into new and exciting projects without even considering if they’ll eventually overwhelm me. It’s been a never-ending cycle for years: feeling totally swamped, giving up on everything, and then getting overwhelmed all over again. It’s a wild ride, let me tell you. If you want the full story, check it out here.

ADHD medications helped me with some distractions, but not all. However, they didn’t really help with my tendency to get overwhelmed and freeze when faced with too many options. eTMS changed that. Now, instead of freezing, I can choose something to do, hopefully the most important task, and actually get it done. It also helped me become more realistic and question if I can really do everything I think I can.

Now What?

So now I’m trying to manage all the commitments I’ve made to myself and others during the past few years. I still want to accomplish all those things, but I realize now that I can’t do them all within the timeframe I promised. (By the way, people with ADHD brains struggle with estimating time accurately!)

I apologize if my previous response wasn’t what you were looking for. Let me start over and provide a neutral version of the rewritten content:

I’ve come to the realization that I let down many people, including myself, by not following through on commitments I’ve made. This is usually due to setting unrealistic expectations upfront. While I can’t change the past and the mistakes that brought me here, I’m determined to take control of the situation and make amends moving forward.

What Does This Mean For You?

Right now, I’m making a commitment to:

• Reach out to each person or group by the end of the week.
• When I reach out, reiterate my understanding of what I’ve committed to, and what my realistic timeline will be for it, or if I won’t be able to follow through on that commitment. Hopefully the latter case won’t happen much, if at all.

I’m committed to reaching out by the end of next week. So, if I have committed to you and you haven’t heard from me by Sunday, October 1st, you have permission to contact me and ask me about it. And if you need to make adjustments because of this shift, let me know. My misfiring brain made commitments my synchronized brain can’t keep, and I completely understand if some folks need to get things done in a different way.

As far as commitments I made on this blog: I said I’d be following up on my eTMS treatment, and starting a podcast about my eTMS journey. This is one of the commitments I’ll be looking at this week.