I run three companies, have won several awards, work out almost every day, but more importantly, I can finally say that I live a peaceful and fulfilling life. A few years ago, I was an exhausted gaming addict who didn’t even dare to open his own mail. Here’s what happened. The kid with the headphones is me, around ten years old. I spent years escaping into games, because real life felt too overwhelming to face. Later the games became festivals. Every weekend: party, drinking, numbing. Every Monday: flat, anxious, useless. From the outside it looked like fun. From the inside it was mail I didn't dare open, a room I couldn't keep clean, 15 minute tasks I procrastinated on for months, and one word on repeat in my head: lazy. The bottom photos are the part I almost didn't post. The numbing. The version of me that eventually burned out completely, sitting at his desk at 2am wondering what was wrong with him. By then I'd spent over 30K on courses and programs to fix myself. Finished none of them. Now the right side. The gym, almost daily. The water tower is my office. I rent the top floor and work there with my brother and my best friend. The purple one is the T500, an award for tech entrepreneurs here in the Netherlands. I am traveling the world. I don't show you this to brag, and before your brain says "good for him": my life is not perfect. I still have ADHD. I still lose my keys, I still overcommit, I still have days where nothing works. So what changed? Not discipline. I still have almost none. Not an app or a planner. Those all worked for about nine days. Not the diagnosis, and not the medication. That's a story for another day. What changed is who I believed I was. On Monday I'll tell you exactly what I mean, including something I found in my old school reports that I had zero memory of. And maybe your left side looks nothing like mine. No gaming, no festivals. Maybe yours is quieter: the to-do list that makes you want to cry. The anxiety before opening one email. Being exhausted at 3pm after a day of doing "nothing". Overthinking every conversation afterwards. Procrastinating on exactly the things you care about most. The fear of being judged if people saw the real state of things. Calling yourself lazy while what you actually are is overwhelmed.

What a mistake coming back to help my sister. Apparently I owe her half of the 200$ she gave me for cleaning her house for a mnth n taking care of her hurt cat. Im so disappointed in my sister in all ways..and if ur child can not sleep at 11pm u do not start coloring with her n entertaining her u let the 4 year old cry n let them wear themselves out they are not babies anymore and they can manipulate every situation if u let them. Ugh ready to be back in Saskatoon where normal thinking ppl are lol

Just traced my good days and my bad days back to their first domino, and it turns out the difference was one word: expectations. My best mornings start with no plans and nobody expecting anything. Now I finally know what I'm actually building for.

Section 2 of the Operating Manual just explained my evenings to me. The scrolling and the ice cream were never a discipline problem, they were my nervous system grabbing the fastest relief within reach. And the one night I truly felt calm turned out to be a prescription I had written myself without noticing.

I am currently trying to fill in an Autism form for my youngest daughter. It’s so difficult to remember things from years ago, so much has happened since. We have found videos that we took when she was a baby until the age of 5, it’s so cute to watch. It hasn’t really helped to fill in the forms though!