Progress Report - Week of 2024/09/01

Hello, all!

I go into this progress report knowing two things: That this is a weird time to write a progress report, and that nobody in the world aside from me knows that I usually post progress reports on Sundays. Saturdays would make much more sense, since they're the end of the week, but I take Saturdays off. . . which means I should rightfully do them on Fridays, huh? Maybe I'll switch that in the future, maybe I won't.

Anyway, the reason I'm releasing this meager progress report in the middle of the week is because I know I haven't done one in a while and figured you all deserved an official update, because there has been a decent bit of work happening, even if nothing is being finished. Just to be clear, I'm still nowhere near happy with the amount of time I've been spending on work in the average week, but improvement has been steady and noticeable. My doctor added a second drug to my ADHD treatment regimen that is supposed to specifically enhance focus, and since a lack of focus was the biggest problem I had with my current medicine, I saw that as a reason to be optimistic. It took about two weeks to kick in, but now I think my brain is at a point where it can be trained to get back into a consistent work schedule.

So, practically, what does that mean? Well, I'm not a doctor, but here's what it feels like is happening up in my head. Let's say you've presented me with a task to perform. You say, "Bryant, I need you to write a review of Kaiju No. 8 and post it on Youtube when you're done. That's your job for the next two weeks." Now, there's nothing wrong with that task. Producing a review in two weeks is totally doable. You could even throw in writing and recording a sponsorship segment, and it would still be a completely manageable task. However, if I'm not taking any medicine to treat my executive function disorder, that task becomes impossible. My brain floods itself with a deluge of chemicals that tell me that sitting down at my tablet to write a script is physically painful. It's the worst thing since unsliced bread. Doesn't matter how excited I am about the project or how many good ideas I have. Brain Says No. That's it. Some days, there are fewer chemicals than others, and I can force myself to write a paragraph or two before Brain pushes me into a locker and steals my lunch money for even considering that I might be willing to make it engage with Work, but typically, there's no chance. I'll spend the day sitting around knowing that I should work, wanting to work, and being almost physically unable to. It's pure bullshit, and I hate it.

Enter medicine! There are great ADHD drugs in the world that make this problem instantly go away. I can't take them anymore, but they exist! Adderall? No problem, boss. I'm neurotypical now! Load up that totally legal anime-based streaming service and show me some Kaiju. I'll have the script for you within the hour, and you can decide which of these three covers of the OP you like best. Vyvanse? Not as good as Adderall, but still perfectly functional. I'll get the script done in a day or two, record the OP after that, spend a day polishing and recording the script, then audio edit, and spend the whole next week making the video. But both of those meds are stimulant medications, and one of them already tried to kill me, so those options are out. What's left? Nonstimulant medications, and those are. . . different. In my experience, nonstimulant medications. . . well, first of all, they don't work at all. Qelbree does nothing but make me unfathomably sleepy. Welbutrin irritates my stomach. No improvement in motivation, attention regulation, or focus. Often, they'd make things worse. Now, I'm on Strattera, and while I can't say it's not working, the effect is nothing like the stimulant medications I've tried.

Strattera doesn't make me feel any inherent motivation to do the things I need to do. It puts them on the to-do list and lets me sort out whether or not I want to prioritize them. This is an enormous improvement from being unmedicated, but it's also something I've never had any experience with before. Without medication, those tasks were possible in the same way that it's possible to stab myself in the gut. There's nothing physically stopping me from doing it, but the brain resists any attempt to fulfill the command. The brain resists a lot. With Strattera, the brain doesn't resist the orders, but it doesn't give the orders, either. If I happen to sit down at the computer to write a script, I can. If I don't, then I don't. And while that's still a problem, it's a problem that I can overcome with effort and mental adjustment. I've never actually had to train myself to work before. I've either been incapable of doing it (and so I didn't do it), forced into doing it (by a deadline), or motivated to do it (by stimulant medication). Being unmotivated-but-still-capable is brand new to me, and I'm naturally having issues getting used to it. Some days, I sit down, work on the script for four or five hours, and then go about my business. Other days, it starts to become a struggle about an hour in, I'm not getting anything productive done, and I decide to put it down for the day. And sometimes, I wake up late, or I get caught up in cleaning, and I never get around to breaking out the tablet at all.

All this to say, I'm on my sixth draft of the Apothecary Diaries script. It's currently 800 words long, and I think this is the one I'm going to stick with. The plan is to work on it today, finish it tomorrow or Friday, and edit the video throughout next week, posting in the middle of the month. Naturally, I expect I'll stumble a bit in the execution of that plan, but I am getting into a groove and starting to produce real results again, even if those results are slower-going than any of us would like. It's going to take time before I'm consistently working six five-hour shifts a week again, which is about where I need to be to release a video every two weeks while keeping up with Patreon rewards, but things are much improved from where they were a month ago, and they'll hopefully only get better from here. I'll keep you posted!