If you have #ADHD, you are probably bitterly familiar with the Wall of Awful — the feeling when you *want* to do a thing, but you just *cannot* get yourself to actually *do* it. The thing you want is behind a wall of negative emotions, and anytime you even get close to it you get overwhelmed or panic.
My interest in electronics has been behind my Wall of Awful for years now. I've been staring at these damn things for weeks and struggling to get myself to do *absolutely anything* with them.
I literally just realized that using an Uno is a bad idea since it runs at 5 V and the LCD is 3.3 V 🤦🏻♀️
I guess it's a good thing I didn't make any further progress lol
Okay, I found an Adafruit Feather board, got the board installed in the Arduino IDE, and flashed Blinky to the board.
So now I'm back to where I was before — mainly, being kind of overwhelmed, uncertain where to start, and lacking confidence in myself lol
@malcircuit I feel so seen, lol. My real job is in embedded IOT radios, so I have an excuse.
My biggest home project was a LED pedestal that..brightens in three different colors. I have like a half dozen RaspPis and a couple Pi zero 2Ws just sitting there.
And like 3 20% complete Python projects. 😄
@hendric Yeah, that's why I'm glad I got into astrophotography. It leverages my technical knowledge, but is different enough that it doesn't feel like I'm just doing more work at home.
That being said, I still like to play around with electronics from time to time. Just seems like whenever I try to start anything I lock up. So I'm stuck in a loop where I get motivated to work on something, can't do it, and just end up thinking about it all night while sulking in frustration.
Also, do you have #ADHD and feel bad about having a bunch of unfinished projects, abandoned hobbies, unread books, etc.?
Yeah, you should stop that.
You have a neurological bias toward novelty and poor executive function. You're probably using up all your self-control to do the things you need to get done like work, chores, and errands.
As long as you aren't digging yourself into a financial hole, cut yourself some slack with the stuff you do for fun. It's gonna be messy, and that's okay.
@malcircuit Yes! I spent years berating myself (and still sometimes do), but I've found ways to mitigate my disaster to some extent and forgive myself.
I gave a 5-minute talk a couple of years ago that some fellow #ADHD folks said was helpful. Sharing it in hopes someone else finds it beneficial. YMMV.
If you have any techniques that have helped you with these challenges, I'd love to hear them.
@jack Great talk!
And OMG I loooooove huskies 
@malcircuit We meant to get a small, short-haired dog 😂
But a friend of ours had accidental pups, so we went to "just see the puppies" ...
... and came home with #LadyDuchess 😁
Maybe the best spur-of-the-moment decision of my life.
---
Here are some of my favorite puppy pics. How could we not fall in love? 😍
I feel like I have been put on blast and now visible from space...
@malcircuit Thank you for the useful term #WallOfAwful I was not aware of. I know the feeling but I don't think I have #ADHD.
I just searched the web for this term and read that it affects people on the autistic spectrum, too.
How does it relate to #procrastination, something most creative people, students and white-collar workers seem to grapple with? Is it basically the same but worse?
@chpietsch @malcircuit So much worse than just procrastination
@[email protected] the closest analogy I've heard is: put your hand on the hot stove burner. Just do it. You're physically capable of doing that, right? So just do it. Your brain won't "let you"? Hmmm, sounds fake, stop procrastinating. Except, random tasks become hot burners, like responding to that email or doing the laundry. Pushing to try to do a hot burner task feels similar to trying to convince my brain to move my hand to a hot stove.
@chpietsch @malcircuit thank you for pointing this out. Both of you. I'm in that picture.
Neither ADHD nor Autism officially diagnosed but Therapists have pointed towards autism in the past and I guess I can say I'm not bad at masking.
Need to read up on this, as I'm still trying to figure out how to fix a lot of things and "The Wall of Awful" perfectly describes A LOT of the things I've researched a lot about but never made the step to actually DO that or invest more then a halfway focused night into, incl. A lot of things that would make my job A LOT better.
This is where I first learned about the Wall of Awful
Yeah, the Wall of Awful is like procrastination on steroids. Having a Wall of Awful means there are enough negative emotions associated with Doing The Thing that it triggers your fight/flight/freeze response.
In my experience of procrastination, I can usually use logic/self-talk or a simple trick (treats, etc.) to get myself to do the thing. Dealing with a Wall of Awful takes emotional work.
@malcircuit It wasn't until I was probably 40 that I realized it isn't just "OK". It's a *huge advantage* to be continually starting new things. Every one of those projects adds some points to entries on your LIfetime Skill Tree.
The N+1th project you start is that much easier than the Nth. You get farther. Also, Project N will come up again in 6 months to 5 years and you'll make more progress again.
Think about how much better you are at electronics than you were 10 years ago. Or when you were 12.
It is such a relief to know I am not the only one, and it isn't just a character flaw!
I still remember and cherish the memory of how I felt years after spending big-for-me money on yarn and knitting patterns that sat in a bag, for years, when I finally picked up one of the projects, worked on it, and finished it. Then completed the second one! It felt amazing, and wonderful!
I still have so many unstarted as well as unfinished projects. Just ideas in head, materials saved, found, scrounged, thrifted or purchased, waiting for magic wave of umph to start or continue.
Those 2 finished projects feed the hope that some day I will pick up the unfinished, unstarted, and complete them too.
Huh, that is interesting. I am the opposite. I don't focus well when other people are around, at least other people I know. I need to be alone to get stuff done.
Part of me wishes I had known this decades ago. Better late than never, though, I guess.
Thank you. This was actually very helpful.
@murdoc That might be the Wall of Awful, or it might be that you're just bored. Kind of comes down to whether or not that tiredness and brain fog are because of negative emotions. Basically, if you are getting tired because you're putting a lot of mental effort into suppressing the bad feels, versus getting tired because it's just not interesting.
The point of the Wall of Awful is that you actually *want* to do the thing — as in, it's not a chore or another thing you would ignore if you could.
@murdoc That's a common ADHD problem, and part of the issue with my hobby. I want to be able to mess around with electronics, but that usually requires me to do a bunch of stuff I don't want to do, like reading docs and being frustrated when things don't work.
The strategy I hear the most often (and what I'm trying at the moment), is to break things down into as small of chunks as you can. It's easy to get overwhelmed thinking about doing the entire thing. Make small, easy to achieve goals.
@malcircuit @pathfinder Entirely relatable. I, too, also have, among other things behind my Wall of Awful, electronics projects lying fallow.
And I enjoy electronics now. It's the dealing with powering them that sometimes makes me frustrated but that's neither he nor there.
@gregly I have a box with 6 square LED matrices (and a few of the aforementioned iCEBreaker FPGAs) with the intent to build an LED cube, but buying that stuff was as far as I got. That's definitely a sore spot to think about.
God, now you got me mentally inventorying all of my failed, stalled, or unstarted projects lol
That's why I've been trying to figure out this LCD thing. It's a small project but I'm hoping it might loosen up the mental rust enough to get the wheels turning again.
That's a strategy called "body doubling"
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