Changes are coming to HWTA, plus a little rumination on embracing the unpredictability of neurodivergence.

Almost two years ago, I got the ADHD diagnosis that both changed and explained my life. I was 38.

My search for a diagnosis came at the end of 2022, my first “year of becoming comfortable.” That’s the name I gave to the beginning of a revelatory journey of discovering that, as a fat woman who was never going to stop being fat, I did not have to live with pain, punishment, and self-blame for being the way I am in either body or brain. Not only did I not have to live with discomfort, I realized, I didn’t have to facilitate my own discomfort.

This did not, of course, prevent me from trying to optimize and perfect the new! and interesting! process of becoming comfortable — effectively making it uncomfortable to try to be comfortable. Almost as soon as I identified the many and various ways in which I had been punishing and berating myself for being myself, I decided they all needed correcting — and all at once. The result was a no-winners competition in which I was the only participant. I identified the things that made me more comfortable — moving my body, spending time with my pets and husband, writing things I cared about, drinking fancy teas (with my fiber supplement!), taking my vitamins, wearing clothes that made me feel not just good but fabulously beautiful — and created a system in which I tracked whether I had done all those things every single day.

I could do all of those things every day for a short while. I could do some of those things every day for a long while. But I could not do all of those things every day, indefinitely. And so I declared myself a failure. What’s even the point?, I wondered, disappearing into another season of depressive couch-monstering, scolding myself for not finding my most comfortable self in every endeavor, all the time.

If you have ADHD or other kinds of neurodivergence, especially if you’re a later-diagnosed person like me, you’ve probably experienced versions of this: Discover a new idea, decide it’s the best thing ever, and commit yourself so thoroughly to it that you burn yourself out on the thing almost immediately.

The depressive couch monster’s demand for consistency and perfection killed a lot of my joy for things (seemingly) unrelated, even as I told myself I was committed to making myself comfortable and was no longer going to hold myself to impossible standards. (Turns out: “don’t hold yourself to impossible standards” is an impossible standard, itself.) The couch monster’s victims include the fiction project I was (and still am) incredibly excited about, but which fizzled in the spring. (I promise it’s coming back soon!). I began working on a book pitch that literally only exists because of outside accountability to my incredibly enthusiastic agent.

Practically the only thing I have done regularly of my own actual volition for the last few years of freelancily-hustling-alone is publish Hard To Believe It’s Only Tuesday, my weekly abortion news roundup.

Today, I come to y’all to announce that I am sunsetting those roundups. Take heart: I am telling y’all this not in a spirit of couch-monstering defeat, but with the genuinely joyful news that I have some new, exciting stuff going on, supported by a reoriented perspective on how I live, work, and play.

Next week, I’ll start a new full-time position with Reproaction, where I’ll lead the opposition research team at a nationally focused, all-remote organization supporting the reproductive justice and abortion rights movements. I could not be more pumped about this work; I’ll be joining colleagues from past iterations of my career while meeting new folks and tackling new challenges that draw on the many strengths and skills I’ve cultivated as a journalist and activist. I want to dedicate my best brain and best time to the new gig, and frankly, I’m more than a little burned out on abortion news roundups. I thrive on novelty and do my best work in team-based environments, and I’m excited to see what comes out of that. (Haters beware 👻.)

I’m sure you’ll still see my byline in various places, including in a for-now-secret project that I’m incredibly the fuck excited about but can’t share details of yet. I will absolutely continue writing regularly here on Home With The Armadillo, though y’all are probably in store for somewhat different content than I’ve previously published. Expect more personal essays, critical takes on pop culture, and random ruminations.

In starting a new chapter, I’m trying to make myself open to a thing that I’ve come to recognize, but been reticent to accept, that has been true about me for my entire life: I operate cyclically, not consistently.

Or perhaps it’s better put this way: I operate consistently cyclically.

I am not a person who can do everything perfect every day. I can’t tick every box all the time and stay happy, productive, and fulfilled. Instead of seeing this as a failure in the eyes of capitalist hustle-culture, I’m trying to understand this as a value-neutral reality of the way my neurodivergent brain works. I do things for a while until I don’t; I pick some things up again later, along with other interests and habits that run on the same unknowable schedule. I am great at taking on new challenges, exploring new spaces, and trying weird shit. I’m a flexible, creative, and dynamic thinker.

Those are my strengths, and I can’t imagine myself any other way, even while I’m new to accepting that I wouldn’t — indeed, I can’t — swap those qualities out for perfecting the Seven Daily Habits of Highly Effective People, or whatever. I can do the things that people do to manage, or even exploit and optimize, neurodivergence — blessed be Our Lady Vyvanse — but I can’t be somebody I’m not.

I’m writing this late on a Wednesday evening, with a belly full of cabbage soup (made by my husband), a whiskey-rocks at hand, and the dog hollering at baby-laden possum mamas skittering down the alley behind our house. The ~ metrics people ~ would tell me to wait to send this until tomorrow morning, because that’s the best way to ~ optimize views ~ and ~ catch new subscribers.

But I want to send this news now, while I’m thinking about it. I want to send this news now because my ADHD brain is excited about it right now. And I’m (trying to be!) done doing stuff only because somebody else says it’s the right way to do it.

I’m trying, still, to make myself comfortable.

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