One of the superpowers that ADHD comes with is a thing called hyperfocus.
It might actually be the only superpower, come to think of it, but as far as superpowers go, it’s a good one1.
If you haven’t been exposed to this particular bit of neurodivergence, hyperfocus will just hit folks out of the blue, usually with little to no warning or prompting, and looks metaphorically like a hawk zeroing in on a tiny woodland creature. One minute, you’re motoring along with a nice routine, and the next, you have DISCOVERED A THING AND OMG IT’S SO INTERESTING AND I WILL DO THAT THING UNTIL I LITERALLY FALL OVER WITH EXHAUSTION AND POSSIBLY BEYOND IF I CAN MAKE MY DEPLETED HANDS FUNCTION.
It often starts, for me, as ooh, I have an idea2.
Then, roughly half the time, I’ll either:
a) buy all the things I need for said idea and promptly forget about it because the dopamine has worn off before the Amazon delivery drones can get it to me or,
b) buy all the things I need for said idea and completely forget the world exists outside of that thing, because I’m literally compelled to do that thing.
It’s when I get the most stuff done, to be honest. There’s no distractions all of a sudden. All the brainweasels stop chittering and start chanting CHUG! CHUG! CHUG! or whatever brainweasels do to be encouraging fanweasels instead of negative buttheads.
It really is a superpower, too, because all of that scatterbrain’ed-ness that ADHD folks live with every day is a whole lot of energy that suddenly all goes in one direction. We do things like write an entire novel in four days, or make an entire season of illustrations for a project, or come up with a whole field guide to local ice cream or something3. We are relentless in our pursuit of whatever it is, and mere mortal concerns like eating or showering or talking to other humans become superfluous to doing the thing.
And you can see how that might start to become, y’know, an issue.
So about two weeks ago, I got The Itch™.
There was a dark market held by a local venue that J hangs out at, and he asked me if I wanted to put some of my stuff on his table. I gave him the last few boxes of The Scavenger Deck, and, on a whim, gave him a couple of my remaining Magpie Books4. And a few of each sold, which was good for my ego, of course.
But then I looked at my Magpies again, and remembered that I still have a lot of really cool vintage/artsy stuff that I’d intended to eventually bind into more books, and started looking through that stash, and…
That’s fifty travel-sized magpie covers. There are also another 27 hardback covers made from old Reader’s Digest Condensed Books5, and about a hundred A6-ish sized spiral-punched covers for quick notes if a whole book is too intimidating for folkses (with fun covers and the same mixed-paper innards). I made roughly six hundred sheets of coffee-dyed paper, about half again in RIT dyed/other dyed paper. About seventy small collages for the covers. Sewed a bunch of fun papers together to cut to size. Made pockets and tiny miniature books to go in those pockets. Started putting together a bunch of little collage bundles to stuff pockets and clip to the pages.
It doesn’t look like a whole lot of stuff in this photo — to be fair, this is only a piece of the past couple weeks’ output — but, y’all…I’ve been waking up in the morning, starting in on all of this, and not going to bed until I literally can’t do anything else. I forgot to order groceries this week. I think I might have forgotten to eat a few times.
And I bought stuff. A new sewing machine because my old one had a busted tension disk thingie. I drove to Portland and bought two paper grocery bags full of upholstery scraps6 from SCRAP7. I dug out every bit of paper I had waiting, and bought interesting pads of normal paper so I could leave lots of blank space for folks to play with…without having it just be boring blank.
This morning, I had to take a break because I found myself googling storage unit auctions and thinking about buying one for the stacks of paperwork I could use. We all have limits; this was mine. It was time to step away from the workbench for a minute and reorient myself into Normal People Time.
Which is all a long-winded way of saying, HI! I’m not dead! I’m just playing with paper…obsessively.
I’m hoping some normalcy will return this week. J’s on his way home for the weekend, then is in Canada for a week or so, then in SoCal for all of September, so…it’s iffy. I’m more likely to get lost in a project if I’m not kept grounded by other humans with a bit less…focus.
I’ll try to be more present and find some more balance.
In the meantime, I have some new papers to cut, and delivered groceries to put away.
::cringe::
“a good one” in that sort of “as problems go, at least my uterus didn’t fall out today” kind of thing. But we’re going to be positive today.
Sorry, Minnie.
Of these, I’ve only done two. I’ll let you decide which two.
More commonly known as “junk journals”, they’re my mixed-media sketchbook/journals full of Shiny.
They have the BEST covers. Vintagey patterny goodness.
I like that for covers, and the recycled nature of it sort of fits the whole junk journal thing.
Poetic, that.
We need PICTURES!!!
But falling down the rabbit hole can be so much fun and even productive sometimes.
I can't remember the last time I did either lol
Those look fun and fabulous. I keep coming up with ideas (after seeing something) and then buy the stuff for said thing(s). And then....crickets. I'm going to just blame the heat we had and that's that :)