For years, I thought I was just “intense.”
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!When something caught my interest—whether it was the perfect shade of nail polish or the entire Adobe Creative Suite, I couldn’t let it go. I’d spend hours learning, testing, tweaking. Not out of obligation. Out of obsession.
Then came project management. Because I couldn’t just have ideas; I needed gantt charts, risk matrices, stakeholder communication plans, and fishbone diagrams. For fun.
That led me to human resources, and eventually learning and development. And every platform, protocol, policy, and people skill in between (did I mention I’m also I certified professional development coach)?
I have always chalked it up to being “curious” and “adaptable.” It turns out what I actually had was unmedicated hyperfixation with a LinkedIn account.
It got results, sure. But it also got me deep in cycles of over-delivery, burnout, and the sudden inability to focus on anything not lit up in neon in my brain.
I didn’t know I had ADHD. I just knew I could teach myself almost anything—if I was obsessed with it. And I couldn’t fake that obsession, even when the task was urgent, important, or literally in my job description.
Learning about ADHD later in life is weird. You don’t just get answers, you get a highlight reel of your life through a completely new lens. Suddenly, your so-called “overachieving” starts to look a lot like coping. All the late nights, the spreadsheets with conditional formatting that no one asked for, the deep dives into obscure topics, the beautiful and unsustainable sprints toward expertise. It wasn’t just work ethic, it was survival. And honestly? I’m so proud of the career I built… but I wish I had known;
- Why I could run circles around complex challenges, but struggle to return an email.
- Why I could storyboard an eLearning in a single afternoon, but forget to eat lunch three days in a row.
- Why I sometimes poured my entire attention into someone or something… like a song I couldn’t stop playing on repeat.
If you’ve felt that too… if your life has been a string of high-impact achievements taped together with caffeine and last-minute miracles… maybe you’re not “just quirky.” Maybe your brain’s been playing jazz while everyone else hums elevator music. And that’s not a flaw. But it is worth understanding. Because once you see it, you can start building a life that works with your brain, not in spite of it.
I’m still intense. Still curious. Still learning new tools like my internet is about to go out. But now I pause. I rest. I structure things so the wheels don’t fall off the moment the dopamine dries up.
Also, I’ve stopped pretending I didn’t just spend 45 minutes researching whether nail polish “needs to breathe.” (It doesn’t. It’s dead keratin. But I’m still a little obsessed… Andrea Rouse, MBA, CMP, PMP and Sophia Beyer-Bush I know you know what I mean!)
