“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”
— Seneca (via Semisonic, because sometimes ancient wisdom hits you through 90s alternative rock at 2 AM and you just have to go with it)
Right now, I’m Schrodinger’s cat. Neither fully in tech nor fully out. Neither completely burned out nor entirely recovered. Neither purely digital nor entirely analog.
The famous thought experiment was never really about the cat. It was about the genuinely mind-bending weirdness of existing in multiple states simultaneously until someone bothers to check what’s actually going on. And I’m starting to think this superposition isn’t a bug—it’s a feature.
(Yes, I’m applying quantum mechanics to my existential mid-life crisis. We’ve established I’m not entirely well.)
The Great Unravelling
Five years ago, if you’d told me I’d be contemplating a departure from the tech world that had become my entire personality since I taught myself frontend development at ungodly hours during rolling brownouts while also being a stay-at-home parent, I’d have laughed. Then probably cracked open another energy drink and gone back to arguing with some particularly stubborn component.
The signs were there, of course. The way my stomach would clench every morning when I opened Slack. How I’d stare at sprint planning invitations with the kind of existential dread usually reserved for dental appointments. The growing realization that I was spending more mental energy managing my ADHD around work than actually working.
But burnout doesn’t knock on your door with a formal announcement. It’s more like fog. You’re walking along normally one day, and then suddenly you can’t see your own hands, let alone where you’re going.
Living with ADHD in Tech
Living with ADHD in tech is like being a jazz musician forced into a classical orchestra. Sure, you can technically play the notes, but something essential gets lost in translation. All those things that make ADHD brains brilliant (the pattern recognition that borders on supernatural, the ability to hyperfocus until you forget to eat, the way we see connections that escape everyone else) suddenly become liabilities in environments designed for neurotypical consistency.
I spent years developing increasingly elaborate workarounds. Pomodoro timers set to seventeen-minute intervals because twenty-five felt like medieval torture. Color-coding systems that would make a rainbow weep. Task management apps I’d enthusiastically adopt for exactly one week before abandoning them for whatever scrap of paper was closest.
The irony wasn’t lost on me: I was building sophisticated web applications while my own internal operating system felt held together with digital duct tape and an alarming amount of caffeine.
Working with ADHD Time
ADHD attention operates in seasons, not schedules. There are periods of intense focus when I can work for hours without noticing time exists, and periods when even simple tasks feel like trying to solve calculus underwater.
For years, I treated the low-attention periods as problems to be solved. I’d fight them with caffeine, guilt, and increasingly desperate productivity hacks. But stepping back from conventional employment gave me space to work with these natural cycles. When my attention is scattered, I handle administrative tasks. When I’m hyperfocused, I dive into complex problems without the interruption of meetings or artificial time boundaries.
This blog will reflect those seasons honestly. Sometimes you’ll see bursts of daily posts; sometimes there might be weeks of silence. Rather than treating inconsistency as failure, I’m learning to see it as honesty.
Impermanence as Teacher
Buddhism talks about anicca, this idea that everything is fundamentally impermanent. For the longest time, I fought this truth like it owed me money. I built elaborate structures to create the illusion of permanence: detailed project roadmaps, five-year career plans, perfectly organized codebases I was convinced would outlast the heat death of the universe.
(Spoiler alert: they didn’t.)
The pandemic took a sledgehammer to whatever illusions I had left. Companies that seemed unshakeable crumbled. “Mission-critical” projects got quietly shelved. The industry that prided itself on disrupting everything discovered it wasn’t immune to being disrupted right back.
But here’s what I learned while watching my carefully constructed professional identity dissolve like sugar in rain: impermanence isn’t the enemy of meaning. It’s what makes meaning possible.
The moment I stopped trying to build something that would last forever and started focusing on building smaller things that mattered right now? My relationships got deeper. My adversarial relationship with my ADHD brain became more like a slightly chaotic collaboration. The quality of my work actually improved, which nobody saw coming.
Digital Gardening vs. Digital Factory Farming
Traditional blogging feels like digital factory farming: content churned out at industrial scale, optimized for algorithms that change their minds constantly, designed to capture attention rather than nurture understanding. The pressure to publish, build an audience, and monetize immediately turns creativity into productivity theater.
Digital gardening offers a different metaphor. Gardens aren’t harvested all at once. They’re tended over time with patience. Some plants take seasons to mature. Others offer immediate gratification. The gardener works with natural cycles rather than forcing growth.
This space will be a garden, not a factory. Posts will grow organically from genuine curiosity and lived experience. Some will be polished essays; others will be half-formed thoughts I’m still working out. The connecting thread won’t be some artificial niche or personal brand. It’ll just be authenticity.
Instead of optimizing for engagement metrics and viral potential (selling your soul for imaginary internet points), I’m optimizing for genuine connection and authentic expression.
The Art of Non-Forcing
The Tao Te Ching talks about wu wei, this concept of action through non-action. When I first encountered this idea, it infuriated my achievement-oriented mind. But years of wrestling with ADHD taught me that sometimes the harder you push, the more resistance you create.
The same applies to recovery from burnout. The more I pushed to figure everything out, to optimize my exit strategy like some technical problem, the more stuck I became. Only when I stopped pushing and started paying attention to what was emerging naturally did any path reveal itself.
This doesn’t mean passive resignation. It means aligned action. Working with the natural grain of your life instead of constantly fighting against it, which turns out to be significantly less exhausting.
Recovery isn’t about returning to a previous state. It’s a fundamental reimagining of what’s possible. The old patterns and structures aren’t broken things needing repair. They’re compositions that served their purpose but have reached their natural conclusion.
This requires patience I’m not used to. In tech, we iterate quickly, ship fast, fix problems as they arise. But recovery operates on biological time, not digital time. It requires the gardener’s patience: planting seeds without knowing exactly when (or if) they’ll sprout.
Creating Sustainably with ADHD
Here’s what I’m learning actually works for creating with ADHD:
Attention as renewable: Instead of treating attention like a finite resource, see it as something that can be cultivated through proper care. Take breaks before you need them. Switch projects when your brain craves novelty. Honor your natural rhythms.
Interest-driven learning: ADHD brains are wired for interest-based attention. Follow the trail of whatever genuinely fascinates you right now. This leads to more engaged writing and content that’s valuable because you can tell when someone gives a damn.
Flexible systems: Every system needs to accommodate hyperfocus sessions until 4 AM and scattered days when coherent thought feels impossible. Let things bend without breaking.
External memory: Writing functions as external working memory. Capture thoughts and connections your ADHD brain would otherwise lose, then return to develop them when attention cooperates.
What This Space Will Become
I don’t have a grand vision for this blog, and that’s intentional. Grand visions become cages, especially for ADHD brains that thrive on novelty.
Instead, I have principles:
Curiosity over expertise — Writing about what I’m genuinely curious about, especially when I’m not an expert.
Process over product — Sharing the awkward middle stages, not just polished end results.
Connection over metrics — Optimizing for genuine connection rather than the largest possible audience.
Sustainability over speed — Publishing when I have something meaningful to share, not on arbitrary schedules.
Integration over isolation — Exploring how different aspects of life inform each other when you stop keeping them in separate boxes.
The Cat in the Box
So here we are, at the beginning of something new that’s also the end of something old. Like Schrodinger’s cat, I exist in this superposition of states: developer and ex-developer, burned out and recovering, digital and analog.
Life isn’t a physics experiment, but there’s something useful in existing in multiple states simultaneously without rushing to collapse into a single identity. Maybe this is what recovery looks like: not a return to a previous state, but a comfortable existence in the spaces between categories. Maybe this is what the middle way means: dancing fluidly between extremes without getting too attached to any position.
The cat is both alive and dead until you open the box. But perhaps the real insight isn’t about the cat’s state at all. It’s about the box itself. What if we could learn to live comfortably with uncertainty, with multiplicity, with the beautiful complexity of existing in more than one state at once?
This is my digital Schrodinger’s cat: a space that refuses to collapse into a single identity, that finds meaning not in certainty but in the ongoing exploration of what it means to be human in a digital age.
I’m done trying to force outcomes. Instead, I’m creating a space where thoughts can grow naturally, where inconsistency is honesty, where the mess is part of the message. A digital garden tended by an ADHD brain that’s learning to work with its seasons rather than against them.
Welcome to the experiment. This is what conscious engagement looks like when you stop performing and start exploring.
This is the first post on My Digital Schrodinger’s Cat, a digital garden exploring the intersections of technology, creativity, recovery, and the search for meaning in an accelerated world. If these ideas resonate with you, I’d love to continue the conversation. Not for the engagement metrics, but because these topics fascinate me and talking about them with other humans makes them richer.