Goals I would have if I wasn’t in therapy
- Run a sub-4-hour marathon
- Publish a zine monthly
- Post to a blog weekly or daily
- Publish essays in legit publications
- Complete NaNoWriMo every year
- Exercise every day in some way
- Be the best teacher ever
- Write all my curriculum from scratch
- Run complicated projects and class activities without issue
- Complete a PhD (or two) in statistics
- Or at least learn statistics on my own and enter Kaggle or other competitions
- Crochet 3 cardigans for myself
- Put on a creative multi-media art show/experience
- Become a sexologist
- Become a well-recognized and respected sex writer
- Actively participate in anti-oppression activism daily
- Never fail at anything
- Coach volleyball
- Write and teach an original data science course for high schoolers
- Tutor on the side
- Sugar without any consequences and safety issues
- Write a fantasy novel that changes the genre
- Read all the books in my house right now
- Do all of this with no costs to my relationships
- Oh yeah, for sure DM a D&D campaign in a completely homebrew world
- Publish data analysis and research without getting a PhD
- You see how these become more and more unhinged?
- Less within my control?
- Directly contradictory? (See #10, #26, #30)
- Get PhDs in disparate disciplines and bring their methodologies together in a totally brilliant and novel way that revolutionizes the way we build knowledge bases and impacts thinkers for generations to come.
- Author a popular smut series and make money on ebooks.
- Okay okay… OKAY!
These dreams have to live somewhere coz they sure as hell don’t fit in my house.
It’s called being a “multipotentialite” (Emilie Wapnick).
Peace Itmi says, to succeed as a multipotentialite:
- Have a cohesive mission/framework/belief system/idea
- Go ahead and do it all now
- Prioritize
- Outsource what you can’t prioritize
(She is so cute! And peppy!)
Peace, baby, you got the ADHD*. Me, too, baby, me too.
Big ass asterisk on the armchair diagnosing of online personalities. Not a doctor, not qualified. Just a neuroqueer who is sus of your energy and vibes.
To succeed as an ADHD, I says:
- Prioritize
- Lower your expectations (an anti-perfectionism measure)
- Automate or outsource the boring shit
- Exercise (the worst and truest advice)
- Spend time in the woods
- Tape a sign to the inside of your front door that says “Keys / Phone / Wallet” (try a bright color or change the color when you start ignoring it)
Eh. Same thing. EXCEPT! I am in constant struggle against my desire to do literally everything and yet maintain low expectations.
This is not my first dream big dream list rodeo.
Learning about time has helped. It creates less rush to do it all. I can do some of it when I am 30! When I am 29! When I’m 80!
So do I continue riding the wave of my special interests? I do more but with less direction and less “production.”
Do I care to produce my interests in a way that is consumable? Recognizable and recognized? Do I bid for views and affirmation and legitimacy? Or do I continue to be illegitimate?
Can I be happy while pursuing legitimacy? Or does that spoil the anti-perfection, anti-capitalist ethic?
I have friends who are also multipotentialite and they always seem to weave their interests into some kind of external validation and accomplishment.
I used to do that! I was so good at doing that.
For me, I am proud of many things that are not recognition-based. That I did incidentally on the road to accumulating accolades.
I won a speech contest in college because I abandoned all else and rabidly worked my script and presentation. I won $$$! But my pride stems from doing it even tho I wasn’t confident I would be any good. And putting deep effort in but being genuinely dispassionate about the score at the end.
I was thinking yesterday – Danger, Will Robinson! – that I am actually an expert at many things, compared to the average person.
I am not grandma-level elite at crocheting but I am pretty dang good at figuring out patterns and producing quality pieces! (Okay, they’re often not finished but!) (Altho one holiday I did make everyone and their neighbor a scarf in a November haze of hyperfocus and work-avoidance.)
I learned how to cut hair from tutorials on YouTube and I did my own and my friend’s hair and it was good! My friend: “Cutting hair is your secret skill.”
Not actually, tho – it’s learning skills from YouTube.
Okay – truth bomb – I am using this blog to procrastinate on school stuff I don’t want to do. But it’s also in line with everything I care about! So hard to deprioritize writing because it’s an inherent good in my mind.
Do I over-explain and over-tell and not show enough? I think ‘tis a fair critique. I shall endeavor to do better.
Love and the ghost of gifted “potential,” Jordie