Oswyn's Musings

Note: This post is from months ago. It just took me a long time to finish it.

The subject I want to address is the advice you will get before you have your diagnosis. You will get it afterwards too or advice that sounds a lot like it.

You just have to try harder. You just have to focus more. You just have to <fill in the blank>.

I guarantee you that everyone single neurodivergent person is already trying as hard as they can to succeed with whatever their condition is. My therapist talked about this during one of our first sessions. “You just have to try harder. What does THAT look like?” and then made a face like he was constipated.

Every single day, I am trying. There is no day that I go into work and say, “Today, I am just not going to try.” My intention is to be do the best I can. Some days, my best is pretty good. Some days, my best is not that great. I should say it is task by task though, not day by day. If I have remembered to drink, pause, refocus, reread the thing several times, recalculated the thing several times, eat, do some breathing exercises, etc, then I probably do that task pretty well. If various things worked against me and I didn’t do those things, then that task may not be done well.

You will see things like hyperfocus for people with ADHD. Some advice claims it is a super-power. It is not something someone can command to happen. It is something that just happens. If you are lucky, you can hyperfocus on the thing you want to hyperfocus on. But most of the time, if it happens, it is not what you want.

At the time I started this post, I could feel when my medication started and when it stopped. It is a good part of any day, but it is not the whole day. The thing you need me to do might happen after my medication has worn off.

You will be given advice to use a planner, to make reminders, to use an app, etc. Here is the challenge. These things might work sometimes, or they might not work at all. One of the biggest challenges for anyone with a mental health issue is they have to somehow “fix” it. You have to use the tool you have, which needs something to make it work well, to fix itself. You have to learn to recognize your own triggers, hack your own brain to respond to those triggers, then develop habits. Professionals can give you a lot of insight on what may be happening but ultimately, you have to do all the work. With ADHD, sometimes you do things on impulse. You have to accept that the thing didn’t happen the way it should have that time and move on.

Many mental health issues come with memory issues too. Now, you have to hope that your logical functions reach the same conclusion each time you do the task. If 5% of the time you don’t, it will be noticeable. How many natural 1’s do you roll in a gaming session?

The point is, every one with mental health challenges is trying. They are trying really hard. They are trying to understand themselves, their condition, and what techniques will work for them. And if they stop working, they are trying to do it all again.

One of the things I have been very interested in of late in education on mental health. Obviously, mental health professionals know about mental health but there are other professionals who should have a surface level knowledge of mental health conditions. From my point of view, HR professionals should have a cursory knowledge but I am finding that they do not. By extension, supervisors should have a small amount of knowledge about mental health, because HR should be educating them, but they do not. I want to change that.

One of the ways, I want to change that is by giving first hand experience on my journey. This is not about me. I mean, I do like to talk about myself, but I am the vehicle in this case. I am not trying to get people to feel sorry for me or feel any particular way about my experience. I am using my experience as a example that hopefully gives you insight to others. The unfortunate part is my knowledge is limited and mental health conditions affect people uniquely. It is my hope though that my experience is not atypical and can serve as an example.
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One of the areas that I think is largely lacking is understanding what it feels like to be on medication. I have been on two but I am pretty self aware so I wanted to discuss what those medications feel like.

I was first put on an anti-depressant, nortriptyline. It was a low dose and I was not put on it for mental health reasons. I was on this medication from January 2024 through August 2024. The first thing I noticed is that my inner monologue got very quiet. This was good because my self-talk was very negative and causing me problems. My brain started singing to me. This was also good. Or at least, it felt like it.

I felt that I didn’t want to be seen. I wanted to be quiet. I was in some ways, blissful. Things didn’t bother me as much. Given how my work suffered, some things should have bothered me more but they just didn’t. It was not that I was unaware of events. I was aware. They just seemed more transient.

My wife did comment that I didn’t seem like myself. For reference to something later in the piece, I didn’t feel different between doses of the medication. I didn’t feel different while on it.

At Pennsic, it was rough. I had posted already about the heat and how my brain felt. I very much felt like Detritus. The hotter it got, the dumber I felt. I made poor decisions. I could noticably make better decisions when the sun started setting and it got cooler. I don’t know if this was a side-effect of the medication but it drove home that something was not right.

I posted before and I will repeat, I miss how I felt on that medication. I felt peaceful. I don’t want to not be myself but I did like how I felt on that medication.

Fast forward to December 2024, my work life was getting worse. I had gone back to therapy and I was starting to get tested for conditions. I had a sinus infection and I started taking Sudafed for it. I felt I could focus more. I talked to my doctor and started taking Adderall.

I can tell when the Adderall starts. It is about 15 minutes after I take it. I become more serious. My pulse quickens. I tense up a bit too. I imagine it is what a Mentat must feel like when they take a hit of juice. I feel like I should go to work and I start thinking about how I will tackle the day. I have a better chance of seeing errors and correcting them. I can edit my work before I submit. I can spend longer on any given task. Before all of this, I would often have music playing but on Adderall, I will forget to turn it on. Then around 3:30 pm, I can feel it wear off. I play loud and angry music on the drive home. By the time I get home, I am tired. The “‘real” me comes out but he is too tired to joke or do much of anything.

Other things too. I have often been itchy. I scratch my head a lot. Not when the Adderall is active. I trip over my words a bit more too when the Adderall is active.

I don’t like how I feel on Adderall. I am not sad but I am not happy. I am doing my work, as well as I can. With Adderall, my work is better that without. I don’t take it on the weekends or if I am off work. Most Saturdays, I am really tired. I want to nap. It is only on Sunday that I feel like myself. Only to start up again on Monday.

This post is a collection of thoughts and partial blog posts that I haven’t published. For the last year, I have been suffering through a mental crisis. Part of that crisis included the intrusive thought that no one wanted to hear from me. Hence, why I didn’t post these thoughts. I don’t know that people do want to hear from me now, but I do know that I want to put these thoughts out there.

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I last posted about Pennsic and how it was a mixed bag for me. Several things have happened since then.

Mental Health
I got some negative feedback at work and I really needed to come up with ways to improve. I have moved back and forth between how do I improve and whether I should just find a new job. I don’t want to but I am not sure I can perform the way my boss wants me to. I have applied for other positions and we will see if that goes anywhere.

From January 2024 through August 2024, I had been taking an anti-depressant. I think this was part of my problem during Pennsic. I stopped taking it when I got back. Becky says I am happier. I miss how my brain felt on that medication though. It probably didn’t help my work situation but I felt calmer. I was quieter. I wanted to be smaller, if that makes sense. For instance, I didn’t feel I needed to post my thoughts because I should take up less room. I didn’t sing as much, though my brain was singing to me. It lessened my negative self-talk. But it wasn’t treating the right problem. In hindsight, it was easier to not worry about situations and to enjoy the lack of motivation on the anti-depressant.

I started going back to therapy. I have had three therapists now since January 2024. I really liked the one I started seeing after stopping the anti-depressant. I think we made some real breakthroughs.

I had always believed I had a bit of an idyllic childhood, especially compared to the horror stories I heard from other people. I no longer believe that. If my childhood was so good, where did all of this anxiety come from? Self doubt? Need to for approval? It sucks being in your mid-fifties learning that you were f’ed up as a child. But we are worked through it. One side benefit, perhaps the only side benefit, is I am pretty self-aware. When you doubt everything, you examine everything. I generally know my motivations.

The main reason I went to therapy though was I started having work problems. Most of it was a common refrain from my previous supervisors, I need better attention to detail. In my previous position though, I could get away with less focus on details. Things I wrote went to a small group of people and anything that was wrong could be easily and quickly fixed. In my current position in Human Resources, I don’t have that luxury. Any coping mechanism I had, didn’t work anymore.

While I did have a bit of a honeymoon period, my supervisor retired and I have a new supervisor. I have worked with them for many years but they are new to the position and understandably, they have different needs and a different style. The honeymoon period was quickly over. Every error was devastating and proof (to me) that the nay-sayers were right, I can’t do this job.

I worked on more coping mechanisms and started taking some assessments as I worked in therapy. I worked on my grief over my parents, my grief for whatever trauma I had, my negative self-talk, and my lack of motivation. Things I had said I enjoyed, I labeled as obligations – obligations that I did not want to do anymore. There were times I was angry at specific people for no specific reason.

Another big issue is my fear that I will eventually develop dementia. My father wasn’t to the point where he forgot who I was but he did have trouble remembering his grandsons. He believed at one point that my wife was dead. He forgot events and had a personality issues due to what seems very much like dementia (I am not privy to his medical records so I don’t know for sure). It is something I still worry about. Is this my fate?

On the work front, September was bad and full of mistakes. October was better but in fairness, I didn’t have any major tasks. November seemed okay at first but there were some big mistakes again. In early December, I had a minor cold so I took some sudafed. I could focus better. Feedback I was given didn’t feel like a smack down. As I said, I developed some new coping mechanisms with my therapist and they were starting to become habits. After taking another assessment, my therapist was prepared to state that I had ADHD. I probably had it for a while. It is mild, comparatively. But looking at some of my issues, I think it fits. I do fidget, tapping my foot, or I have a piece of velcro (for some reason) at my desk that I will twirl around finger. But I really struggled to see spelling or grammar errors. Even reading the document multiple times (all at different times), I would literally not see the error. Numbers would appear differently if I look at them again later. I would not necessarily remember if I did something already.

Perhaps most telling is when I told my youngest about the diagnosis, he said “well duh.” I laughed. He was very supportive though. I guess I did something right 🙂

I am now on a low-dose stimulant and I see improvement. Time will tell if my supervisor sees improvement, but I do. I can focus more consistently throughout the day. While my spelling has always been bad, I have less difficulty managing words that match my spoken vocabulary. I am feeling my motivation returning.

I posted on Facebook that it is exhausting to have to fight with your own brain all the time. It still is, even with the stimulant, but I am seeing things starting to turn around.

Just for reference, things I have changed to improve are: the stimulant, I rely on Outlook reminders for a variety of tasks, I had too many notes in too many places so I changed how take notes, and where I keep them, there are checklists and procedure documents that I reference, there are a ton of email folders, and I use AI to check for spelling and grammar. I will occasionally ask it to make my writing either more professional if I am communicating about a policy or something that will need to be enforced. I also just learned that I can ask the AI to list what changes it made to my original writing. That helped so much. Large blocks of text are very hard for me anymore.

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Motivation and hobbies

I backed off from a lot of hobby stuff. I will admit, I did start up World of Warcraft again. It is familiar. I am basically playing a solo game with it but it is nice to revisit content I loved and see the new content. But I backed off the SCA. I backed off brewing. I backed off vinegar. My D&D campaign was coming to an end anyway but I was not obsessively making new characters with the 2024 Player’s Handbook (trust me with is a red flag). I did basically nothing for Yule. I craved time that I could just do nothing. No obligations and no expectation.

I am starting to feel like I want to do something. There are some events I do want to go to and I want to see all of my friends. Oswyn at least doesn’t have mental health issues (I think). But Oswyn, like many of my characters, is a mask. But I want to put it on again.

After Maidens, I am looking forward to Better War. I have ciders that I need to mix and a class to put together.

I am not sure what SCA events I will do after that. I want to go to some gaming cons. Maybe even Gen Con. I would just stay at home and drive over though. Pretty sure I don’t want to do all 4 days. I heard about some other smaller cons that friends have enjoyed.

I think I would like to try my hand at sewing again and try thrown weapons so more.

And maybe, it is time I did more bardic.

It has been a while since I wrote. I have gone into and out of therapy. My motivation is still mostly lacking. I am on an anti-depressant that has a good but strange effect on me. So a lot in a the last few months.

I still don’t think I have figured out what being a Laurel means yet. I enjoyed the retreat and I felt somewhat motivated after that. I have tried to teach a bit as well. I taught at Maidens and at the Atlantia University Winter session. It is a bit deep subject class and I am just not sure if it is serving the purpose I want it to. I think it is important. I will try to teach it at Pennsic.

I do want to work more on the Apple Tunic and possibly something else. I was gifted some lovely trim and I would like to have something to put it on.

Gertie’s health is a bit of rollercoaster. She is better than she was. But now all of the other body parts are complaining as she re-learns to use long dormant muscles.

This past weekend was Better War Through Archery. I normally am very excited for this event. I didn’t have any alcohol based class to teach. I did pay my respects to the vigilants and they all well-deserved their honors. Mostly though, I sat around and didn’t do anything. Not very laurel-like really.

I am really hoping to get apples this year.

Work is going well. I might get a promotion soon. My boss greatly appreciates me and what I do. That is a high point of my days now.

This anti-depressant means I have a constant stream of music in my head. Mostly it is pretty good. I don’t really have my inner monologue telling me how wrong I am or how I have been wronged by others. My body is more used to the medication now so the initial “buzz” of it is worn off but it still has a pretty good effect on my mood. I occasionally see old thoughts surfacing but they seldom have the strength to stay around long. It all gets washed up in the music.

I don’t know what the next thing is. I am wrapping up vinegars. I can’t really do my hot glass anymore. I want to sew but I can’t seem to get over the activation hump. Nothing new has excited me yet and that is an unusual state for me.

I was thinking about motivation because of my lack of it. But that is not necessarily true. It is my source of motivations are out of balance.

I attended the Laurel Retreat this weekend and I am pretty energized right now. I actually feel like I should and can do things. But often after work, I don’t feel energized to do things. So what is the difference?
After work, I am tired. I have a high stress job. But it is also one where several people are looking at what I have done and they have opinions. My boss sees the totality of my work and she reminds me when I have made a mistake that it is just one mistake and reminds me of the things I did well and right. But my work is seen by others. They don’t see the totality of my work but because they have power and influence in my workplace, when they see my mistakes, I feel they overreact. It is de-motivating and exhausting.

In the SCA, I often feel motivated. The people I surround myself with are supportive. They like me, they think what I do is interesting, and I sometimes serve as an inspiration to them. And they are inspirations to me. They generally don’t see my mistakes because I can choose whether to show the mistakes to them.

In RPGs with my non-SCA friends, I feel motivated. We are sharing an experience. (I am often the DM). Sometimes, what I am creating is not as good as it could be but as long as we are having fun and building together, it doesn’t matter. Mistakes happen but sub-par campaign experiences can be built on, ignored, ret-con’ed, and more to make them into good campaign experiences.

Having written this, it seems my problem is there are some people in my work life whose opinions matter to me but their opinions feed my brain weasels. I don’t know that I have a good way of addressing that problem. But if I can get out from under that stress then perhaps, I can find motivation when I get home from work. As it is, I seek enough solace so I can grid my loins for another day.

Yesterday, I met with a new therapist. I felt it was time to go back to therapy for a bit. November through December was extremely stressful for me. It was mostly work-related but I also let negative self-talk take over, stress ate WAY more than I should have, and my sleep has gotten even worse. I am not sure that was possible.
Even though, most of my stress was work related, I felt I had unresolved issues and maybe talking to someone about them is a good idea.

I hope to also work on my lack of motivation to do the projects I said I wanted to do.

I will likely write more here as my journaling outlet. I won’t be posting those to facebook automatically though.

I had this thought last week. There seems to be an extrovert bias in much of our culture. Let me explain.

Last week, I attended a seminar for our local Human Resources group. It was a good seminar but there were some things I thought about on this subject. We did one of those typical icebreakers; write your name down and give an adjective for each letter. The goal, the speaker said, was that this was a way to help those who are more shy brag on themselves. Similarly, I was prepping with a speaker at my work and he had some icebreaker type questions he was going to use with the group. I did say out loud to him, “I would not want to share that information if I was there.” I see this when I was in Purchasing too. Sales people were always trying to establish a personal connection by looking for or assuming my interests.

There seems to be a bias towards sharing information. Which is weird when cyber security is telling us over and over to NOT share information. There are many reasons a person may not be willing to share information and I think I found mine.

I was bullied a lot as a child. I moved around a lot so I was always an outsider. I had “weird” hobbies by the “normal” standards. I don’t share information because it is not safe to do so. Anything that made me more “weird’ was just fodder to be bullied some more. Add overreaction from parents or authority figures, and I kept even more information to myself. I think this reason holds for many of my friends. Sharing information leads to trouble or abuse. How will someone use that information against me?

Another example was a coworker asked me “doing anything exciting this weekend?” I think an extrovert thinks this is an innocent question. They want to establish a connection or learn something they don’t know. I spent a while trying to think, “what would this person think is exciting?” I was also thinking, “let’s say I am into something fringe. Perhaps consensual non-monogamy or BDSM. Does this person really want to know that? Do I really want to tell them that?” (for the record, I am not into either of those things; pretty vanilla in my weirdness.)

There is an argument that “perhaps you will form a connection with this person if you share.” For most of my hobbies and interests, if we have those in common, we likely already know. Things like TTRPGs, SCA, and various subcultures are small groups. We likely already have met in those environments and know if we have that in common.

Since part of my reluctance to share is a trauma response, I am a good chameleon. My accent shifted as we moved so I fit in better. I am a middle aged, cis, white dude. People think I am conservative or at least politically similar to them. I am not. I am pretty liberal, further than most would think. Shortly after the 2016 election, a coworker said to me in the hall, “I bet you voted for Trump.” It was asked in a way that the expected answer was an enthuastic yes! “Why would you think that?” I said with disgust.

I will wrap this up with the thought: a space is safe only if the people it is supposed to protect think it is safe. Saying “this is a safe space” doesn’t make it so. This applies to any and all groups. It is better to say those words and mean them than to not say them but still, the person being protected has to decide it is safe. It is a bit like a rescue animal. Until they are ready, they will stay in their kennel or whatever. They will try small things to see if it is “safe”. Only after several attempts and trial and error, will they decide it is safe to come out and explore something else. You can’t rush safety. Same with people. Safety may be offered but it is not safe until the other party says you earned it.