My ADHD work-life balance – not!

Everyone rambles on about how much we NEED a work-life balance.

You’re neurospicy, balance doesn’t exist!

You’re either hyper-fixated or napping. Is there anything in between?

I was talking to a friend last week about my path to where I am now and it’s a long, winding, twisted path…

Here goes…

If I had never made a stained glass kitty on a friend’s kitchen table, I would never have needed to learn how to make a website.

A friend, who was a webmaster, told me he wouldn’t do it for me. He said I was creative & could figure it out – he promised to help. 😉

After I had the website done, I had to figure out how to market my work… soooo, down the rabbit hole of SEO I went. This was back in early 2001ish…

Which also dovetailed into selling my glass at shows… 1 particular annual festival became a second home to me. I met a lot of my dearest friends at that event & keep in touch with many of them still.

During the festival days, I learned to spin fire. That hasn’t really led to much in my business, but getting to spin fire with my best friend, on the beach on Cape Cod, during a partial lunar eclipse… that’s the good stuff!

Eventually, that led to being able to create in stained glass full time. The day I got the order for some of my glass windchimes to be installed in an indoor garden in Hong Kong, I think I danced for hours!

until…

I had my first baby. Babies & lead solder don’t mix well, so the glass studio had to be shut down for a bit… have you ever researched home birth or unassisted childbirth? It’s fascinating! LOL

My two youngest babies were born at home. We chose to have midwives, but my firstborn was impatient and arrived a few minutes before the midwife.

I had my SEO skills sharpened to a nice, accurate point… I was super excited the first time I found out my website ranked #1 in Google for, “stained glass dragon” & “stained glass Celtic knot”! I started helping other business owners do their SEO as well.

Somewhere in the midst of that, I went from “only a vendor” to helping organize & run the festival. At one point, we were trying to trim costs for the event, so I spent a weekend learning how to code in Pearl just enough to be able to put together an online registration form.

A bit later, I separated from my husband & needed to expand my income to take care of my 2 boys & myself.

Add in a LOT of late nights working, single momma style – everything from marketing to website design to transcription to content creation.

I hired a coach! I knew I had a ton of skills, but putting them together in a cohesive package was beyond my current skill set, so I found someone to help me get things organized.

Content creation became its own full-time career, but it definitely wasn’t my passion…

So, I spun that into focusing more on helping business owners grow their businesses in ways that also gave them a chance to live their lives more peacefully.

I chose to work exclusively with “creative” business owners. That’s one way to describe the ADHD people I adored so much! Unintentionally surrounding myself with people who I just understood and who understood my twisted ways of doing things.

I hired another coach & another coach. Working with people who had already done the things I wanted to do. Shortcut! LOL

Throw in collaborating on a best-selling book… I got to see my words in print alongside Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra & others.

Somewhere in there, I had my second baby, got my bachelor’s degree, started unschooling my children, and spent 4 years being the primary caregiver for my ex-mother-in-law, who was dialysis dependent due to kidney failure.

A few years ago, I packed my kiddos up & moved 600 miles away from everyone & everything we had known and set off on our current adventure.

As long as I have my laptop & internet, I have my business! That’s allowed us to travel & spend time with the people we love, sometimes on a whim! Although, I have to confess, when we went on the cruise, I left my laptop at home and took lots of naps!

Here we are!

Of course, there were highs and lows. Colossal failures & massive celebrations along the way.

There are things I tried that I’d never do again. Companies I wrote sales copy for because I needed to feed my children, not because I enjoyed writing for them.

Because creatives have to create to survive, I learned acrylic pain pouring… my house is filled with paintings I’ve enjoyed making & I got to sell a bunch of them as well.

Was this the easiest, most efficient way to create a career? Nope!

Would I change any of it… maybe… but really, no – it’s all led to the point where I get to spend my days talking to amazing women who are taking on the world while learning how to allow their ADHD brains to work their magic!

I probably would’ve been a bit more specific in choosing coaches who worked with ADHD… translating and adapting neurotypical language and methods can be a bit exhausting.

Sooo, the next time someone tries to tell you that work-life balance is important… just smile, nod & go check out the shiny thing that caught your eye while they were talking!

When you’re ADHD, everything in your life contributes to your work & everything in your work contributes to your life! If it doesn’t, you might want to consider changing that!

Know you’re headed in the right direction, even when you can’t see it… and if you’d like help getting there a bit faster (that’s about 20 years of adventures up there), then reach out! I’d love to see if or how I can help you.