SUCCESS: How I Learned to Stop Yelling at Myself for Hating Mornings

I finally became the person I needed back then.

Image created by the author.

Last week I wrote an article in response to Denise Kendig’s Knock ’em Out Challenge, asking you which of five old article ideas you would like to read. In a surprise last-minute upset, this is the winner, receiving more than twice the votes of any other.

I’ve done most of the things a man in my culture is supposed to do.

I did ok in school, raised a family, started businesses, served in the military, given speeches, earned a degree, written a book or two, taught classes, played sports, danced a tango, worked construction, fired a gun, rode a horse, juggled machetes over an orchestra pit during the waiter’s gavotte in a production of Hello, Dolly… the usual stuff.

It’s a solid list. But those ritual gateways also did me a disservice; after all, a person who could do all of those things couldn’t have anything seriously wrong with them, could they?

Even now, with a half-century of life behind me, when I have serious medical opinions telling me that yep,there’s been something a little bit off the whole time, I still ask myself: how the %$#@ did I do all that if I was also dealing with undiagnosed ADHD?