Half-Finished
I’ve spent most of my life starting projects only to half-finish. If I were to write a memoir, true to me, it would end only halfway through, probably in the middle of a sentence.
My room is filled with half-finished projects: half-knitted scarfs, half-sewn embroidery, half-edited videos on my laptop, and half-written stories in my journal. It used to frustrate me to no end.
A project that I would begin with insurmountable passion would subside like a passing thought. My tunnel vision would give way to distraction.
I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was 8-years-old. An odd diagnosis that I would write off and continue to ignore for the next 13 years. In no way, shape, or form have I ever presented as a hyperactive individual, if anything I’m the opposite.
So, I continued on like “normal” accepting the moments in which my mind wandered as a side effect of my lackadaisical affect. Eventually, the wandering became harder to ignore.
When I could no longer focus long enough to finish my assignments in college, anxiety overtook me. Anxiety gave way to depression and depression gave way to feelings and thoughts that shouldn’t have been allowed to enter my mind because…I was “normal.” These things don’t happen to normal people.
I let my thoughts tear me down because I couldn’t fit the mold or match the pace of my classmates who didn’t seem to be struggling in the same ways I did. That is until, I kid you not, I watched a TikTok.
In said TikTok, the narrator described a different type of ADHD as in, there are more than one (and yes, I fact-checked this video and it was legit). That would’ve been useful info Doc. In fact, there are three different types of ADHD: hyperactive, inattentive, and impulsive. I have the mind-wandering inattentive form of ADHD.
My brain is not “normal,” so naturally I wasn’t fitting into the mold. My half-finished projects were a physical manifestation of what I was trying not to see, what I was doing my absolute best to ignore. Thankfully, I’ve gained more perspective since this discovery.
“Normal” doesn’t exist. The normal we so ardently try to adhere to, in an attempt to fit this imaginary mold, is nothing more than a man-made concept. We aren’t exact copies of one another so how could we possibly deem one specific subset of people as “normal”? You couldn’t possibly.
The only normal thing about humans that I can think of is our body temperature.
It’s unfortunate that this misplaced concept of normality continues to interfere with how many people view the world. I’m all too aware of the stigma that latches on to people that can’t fit in this make-believe mold. I mean, we all try. Some of us are just better at pretending.
Looking back on my failed attempts to fit in, I can clearly see what was going on. So, being that I’m working towards helping my brain work better, I wanted to honor the time I spent on these half-finished projects. So, below is a gallery of half-finished things that will remain as such.
(This blog remained half-finished for most of April. I started on April 4th and I didn’t finish until April 21st.)
On the far left, you will be able to observe the wrap I’ve been knitting since 2018. I don’t even think I consider this “half” completed but I’m not really good at fractions so I’ll go with that as my excuse.
In the middle, you’ll see a bunch of granny squares I started to knit out of old yarn to make a blanket that I also started in 2018. As you can see, I’ve made a lot of progress on both…
The last thing is an embroidery project I started in 2020 that I’ve neglected to continue but I think this one is the most complete out of them all. I’m pretty proud of that fact.
If you didn’t know, I have a YouTube channel now. I mean, I kind of have a YouTube channel now. I don’t really do much with it, for obvious reasons, but this was the first video that I wanted to publish. In the end, I never finished it because I didn’t want to spend a bunch of time on effects, transitions, audio, etc.
So, this blog post is an excuse to place it here unfinished. What a sacrifice I make for my art…
As a person who values privacy, I will do my past self a favor and not photograph the endless half-written pages in my journal. There may be some embarrassing material, like say a song I wrote when I very tired, that I’d prefer stays hidden. Or, maybe, accidentally set on fire.
I’ve also written a ton of books, in my head. Instead of actually being real books, I like to do this thing where I think about it and only write down one sentence and then never look at it again. I call it the “professional procrastination” aspect of being an unpaid hobby writer that isn’t really professional but still procrastinates like it’s part of my “job.” Bottom line is, there are so many but I won’t reveal what they are on the off chance that I actually do something with them (I don’t give away my genius for free, and by genius I mean ideas that should be questioned further.).
And this last picture is all of the books that I have started to read but have not finished.
Also, less important, you can kind of see the very random bookmarks that are placed in between the pages. One is an instructional pamphlet, one is an Apple gift card, and the last is an empty tea bag container. Anything can be a bookmark if you want it to be.
And here are a few things I wrote down in my notes, that are kind of finished but probably shouldn’t be. I shall put them in quotes to make them appear more eloquent and important than they are.
“Ya know I gotta say, the men that live in my head aka imaginary scenarios with celebrities I will never meet are much preferable to real live men. Because in my head they can be ducks because it’s part of a larger plotline (you were supposed to make that mistake, I planned it!) and in real life, they’re just actual ducks. ”
“You know that feeling when sleep drugs are supposed to be working but instead fuel a sad song writing session in an English accent, because American can’t write for shot but maybe she cannae. I have sad voice notes to prove i”
“Welcome to Applebee’s, a place where we’ve got more chill than our own chilli... Wait this Applebee’s not chili’s....where the apple shaped bees are a plenty I feel high ”
That’s the end of my tour. Thank you for taking a brief walk into my brain. Hopefully, you took something away from this, aside from, “Chloé needs to get some sleep,” which I’m pretty sure is my takeaway.