Project Juggling & Anxiety – My experience

Lately, I’ve been experiencing so much project overload, but I also do not want to stop my current pace. Whether it’s at work, which takes up a lot of my mental energy, or when I get off work (from one job to another, rather), I’ve jam packed myself. When it comes to having ADHD, it makes things all the worse.

You see, I want to do things. I see something I love, I want to do it. I want to do art, I want to write, I want to make videos, I want to make music, I want to sing… you get the point. I wish I wasn’t like this, but it’s sort of like collecting skills. I see something shiny, and I want to do it. I want to create that stuff too!

However, trying to create my own thing in every avenue is simply impossible. It cuts into everything else. You know the saying–a jack of all trades is an expert at very few. I’m starting to notice my pace for improving art, for example, is extremely slow because I can’t practice due to lack of time. How can I bother to balance everything, therefore?

Well, for one thing, honing on on what I want to do the most. I’m an author with plans for several fantasy series on my mind, but I don’t get to put as much work into my writing as I’d like. However, I see art and really want to have my characters visualized as well, so I work on that too. Then, people like my voice, so I also put work into videography for things like video game discussion. Where is my cutoff point?

Some projects I’ve picked up I needed to put on the side for now, like narration. I have a good voice for it, however my microphone isn’t the best right now, nor is my location. For narration, I would need a more sound-proofed area, because editing cannot fix everything. Then, I’ve created a to-do list, where I check off the boxes of completed parts of my projects for that week.

In terms of my to-do list, it’s helped me a lot, because I feel rewarded every time I can make checks. Hell, writing blog posts has now earned a checkbox on that list, because this is yet another project I’ve neglected. I’m trying to get better at balancing everything, but it isn’t easy–and I get little rest. This leads to increasing burnout and inability to get anything done.

People have been talking lately about those with ADHD being paralyzed and in a loop while having so much to do. I have that exact issue, which cuts into my time even further. I go over the projects I’d like to work on, then set a time. “5:00 PM. That’s when I’ll do it.” I feel guilty for not getting to it sooner, then the time comes, I miss it…and I push it back an hour. The cycle repeats. I’d get so much more done if I could both get over that and focus on one thing at a time.

Alas. I’m trying to handle it, but I have no money for therapy (nor the time!). The stress and anxiety just adds to the pot of ‘yikes’, because if I’m stressed, I hyperfixate on the smallest of things. For example, something that upset me in a video game community. Something I should dwell on for five minutes, but end up fixating on for hours, or even the entire rest of the day, which makes it so difficult to work on other projects. That’s why I didn’t get as much done this week.

All in all, it’s all super frustrating, but as they say in ‘Meet the Robinsons’, “Keep Moving Forward”.