I was born on May 21st 1969, today 39 years ago. Oh my, that is so hard to believe, 39 years. How time flies. Normally I dread my birthday, because it usually means that another year has passed and I have not accomplished anything that I wanted to accomplish. Not so this year, this year I can look back over the past year and know I set out to do certain things and have accomplished them!
That’s a great feeling, you know, accomplishing things. Not just talking about them or wishing for them, but doing them, making them happen, creating reality.
Why did it take me so long? That’s not so easy to explain. I have always felt like I should be doing ‘something’, but I could never place my finger on exactly what I should be doing. It seems to me that I was reaching for something and I did not know what I was reaching for, therefore, naturally, I never reached it. When I was diagnosed with ADHD, things changed for me, something clicked in my mind and I started to see things differently, feel things differently, as well as understand things differently – all for the better. When you go so many years of your life doing things on impulse and seemingly uncontrollably and not know why, it can wear on you, it can bring you down. Diagnosis brought with it a type of liberation I never expected to feel in my life. Sometimes, just knowing ‘why’ is powerful.
The last few months I have had some extreme pain in my jaw and it bugged me, but I knew how painful it would be to remove the offending tooth’s infection, so I kind of just let it go. It got worse and worse and before I knew it I had a big lump under my jaw and I started to think I had cancer, a tumor. Finally, on Monday, I had the infection extracted from my mouth and it was oh so painful, but the lump went away in just a day and my mouth feels so much better now. ADHD can’t be cured like that, it can’t be extracted, but understanding it, the ins and the outs, provides power over something which had power over me, because I just didn’t know why I did what I did.
This year on my birthday I am doing something different. I am looking at the past year and viewing my accomplishments and they are very profound for me – I am taking them in and enjoying the moment. I wrote and published a book about my life growing up with undiagnosed ADD, how I learned to cope and how I managed to succeed in spite of the confusion in my life, depression and PTSD. I created my blog online ‘ADDer World’ and have published over 200 articles in that time – this is important because prior to these publications I had never, never finished any writing for myself, on my own, in my entire life! In the last year I have met so many wonderful people, people who have ADHD, people who are related in some way to ADHD, and I have met many other wonderful authors and prestigious doctors all over the world who are treating ADHD. Lately, I have had the pleasure of talking to some very influential people who are concerned about ADHD and how to treat it. On my birthday last year, I did not imagine any of what I have accomplished.
Today, on this birthday, I have a great vision for the next year and part of that vision started a little over a week ago when I created the ADDer World community for anyone related in some way to ADHD, either you have it or know someone who does. By the way, please visit and join! I know why I have had problems and the more I come to terms and understand the way my brain works, the better I become. Heck, I see myself going before congress and discussing ADHD with legislators! That’s not quite that far fetched at all, but I am not going to write everything I am going to do or work towards, I am going to work towards my goals and take them as they come and hopefully help others along the way. That is my ultimate goal, which is to help others realize their potential and that ADHD is not a term for ‘the end’, there is so much more to having ADHD and just because there are some traits that don’t necessarily lend themselves to an ‘easy’ way, that doesn’t mean they are all bad and cannot be utilized for creating wonderful things.
Have a wonderful day! And thanks EVERYONE!
~Bryan
