TLDR: Don’t give up on you. Also, I blather on about myself.  Listen to the song at the end if you don’t care about that. Srsly.

Giving up on myself has always been pretty easy, but I started working on selfishness for the most recent chapter of my life to get my head right. It has taken more than a year to get the fuzz out and start to actually make progress, as I have shared a little of.  It has cost me…a lot. People, Things, and places are gone to me that were very important to me at one point. And they all had to go before I drove myself to death and madness. I was pretty far gone during the Panini.

I barely remember the conversations and tribulations it took to get out of Arkansas, as I didn’t believe it could happen. Even now, I sometimes wonder just how big of a mistake I made fixing my mind, but time will tell. And on the dark days, I feel like they are juxtaposed, and I don’t know where or who I am.  I have tools now to come back without as much artificial help and so I have been plugging along, day by day, taking care of myself.

Still, there is always the danger of going too far to one side or the other, so one needs to prepare for it in advance. Once I discovered I could set a monitor on that balance and fix it when it strays, it made focusing on other things easier. When this song hit, it got me thinking about moving back to a balance, specifically when I heard this: 

If you’ve been lost and lonely, ashamed to be alone with only you

With no one left to lose, if it’s the last thing that you do, Don’t give up on you.

Powerful stuff.  It just clicked.  I need to start rebuilding now.  Gotta get back up to full fighting weight, and it’s a long fucking climb.  

So, I still need to practice self-care and remove some of the things on my schedule where possible so I can – with more hate than I can express – focus on money-making and my future.  I must once again engage with the capitalist hellscape and earn some cash. I am bound by certain oaths that limit my money-making options, but I am sure I can earn again. The big question is: how do I do it without burning myself out again? 

To start, I need to be ruthless in my negotiations to get the accommodations I will need to do the best job possible without hurting any individuals.  I won’t make the mistake of giving loyalty to a company again, as I plan to only invest in people. And, to only give them access to the time I am being paid for – nothing else.  Salary is just implicit, government-sanctioned slavery.

Ahem.  Sorry.

While I do this, I also need to make sure I am still serving others as much as I can.  That is where I get the biggest dopamine hit – feeling gratitude for having served.  I don’t want credit or fame.  I would love to have others’ gratitude where it is deserved, but serving is the purpose, not what others can give me for it.  

I previously had an issue with over-committing and being seen as unreliable to some and amazing to the few that I actually got things completed for.  Now I know it is the ADHD that made that happen, I can adjust and hopefully correct those issues.  I will be trying to complete as many commitments as I can remember, but I am sure some are forgotten.  If you read this far and I have promised you something that you feel I have missed, please let me know and I will do my best to complete it.

Enough rambling.  Thanks for the few of you still listening.  Enjoy the song, if you haven’t already. 

Live Long and Prosper.