1 Comment

The Buddhists have talked about practicing forms of compassion including self-compassion. I never quite understood the platitude until somewhat late in life... I had to expand upon it further into:

* we don't make mistakes. We made the best decision we could with the information that was available to us at the time.

and much later:

* we're not lazy. We did as many of the things expected of us with the energy that was available to us at the time.

Lots of ADHD management turned into energy management, sort of like in the simple model used in The Sims... do all this planning and maintenance to make sure your various status bars are all green precisely when your Sim jumps on the school bus or runs off to work, and success will follow... otherwise... failure.

I appreciate one of your earlier storytelling advices about letting the audience know something the characters do not, both as a way of building tension and providing dramatic foreshadowing. I'm still working on ways of shoehorning that mechanic into my storytelling, but that kind of little white lie by omission (to an imaginary person, no less) doesn't come naturally!

Expand full comment