Self Investment

After stepping aside for 5 weeks, I was back in my warm and cozy office at Scalia Law School as Director of Design & Web Services. I needed some catching up to do, but my colleagues had done an exceptional job of holding down the fort while I was away on snowy mountains skiing, snowboarding, or teaching. While my office job works my brain, my outdoor job works my body.

I spent my evenings driving my kids to their activities or tuning up skis and snowboards for customers. Then I spent some late nights working on freelance web design and development. If I had no client work, I would work on my self-initiated projects. I worked with my wife on HaH! Chili. She made our product. I made all of our marketing materials from our website to the bottle label to social media promotions.

I advised type designers on Vietnamese diacritics. When I didn’t have any gigs, I churned out Vietnamese typographic samples. I keep myself busy. I consider myself a hustler, but my wife thinks I have ADHD. I brushed her off at first, but I had been thinking about what she said. She might be right. I couldn’t shut down my brain to sleep until I exhausted my body and mind.

I haven’t been able to stay still. My state of mind has always been in constant elevation. In retrospect, it all started with my professional career working in the web industry. Being a web designer and developer, I have to constantly come up with new designs and keep up with the latest technologies. Then it spread over to my personal developments. I read to improve my knowledge. I blog to improve my writing. I ski, snowboard, and skate to improve my physical and mental health. I always feel the need to improve myself with whatever I am involved in. I don’t need to make tremendous improvements overnight. I practice my techniques and hone my skills one day at a time. As long as I am better today than yesterday, I am improving. I play the long-term game.

Maybe I am overdoing it, but I don’t think that’s ADHD. I think of it as a self investment.