"Hello, Is This Mic Still On?"

So, yeah. Haven’t written anything in a while …

Wait, scratch that. I write every day; it’s just garbage! In fact, it’s more like I haven’t published anything in a while. I’ve had writer’s block since October last year, and everything I’ve written of late has made me question whether today is the day I will start writing prompts for ChatGPT or Claude in hopes of sparking an idea or catching a glimpse of my former writing.

But here I am, still raw-dogging life (without AI). These are artisan blogs made the old-fashioned way — through misery and humiliation!

A few updates, good and bad:

The Bad: I’m still trying to figure out my memoir. It’s nowhere near finished, and I feel completely defeated over it. I’ve been stuck for months on an overly long chapter about my second hospitalization in Los Angeles, and it’s making me question whether my life is interesting enough for a book. Mostly because I barely remember the hospital stay (or any of my stays except for the first one), despite it being the longest at almost 3 weeks, and it having a motley cast of characters. It’s also hard writing the early chapters because they’re about a time in my life when I truly hated myself. It’s unpleasant!

The Good: Come August, I will have been in a relationship for four years, my longest romantic relationship in life. The previous record was less than three years. I was single for two decades before meeting the boyfriend. I may be almost 50, but in dating years, I’m around 25; I’ve had so little experience. This, of course, is my own fault, as it did take me a long time to trust my own judgment again after picking a slow-talking karate thug in my 20s as my future ex-husband.

The Bad: This job market? Horrid. Worst I’ve ever seen it. Half my friends don’t have jobs despite being smart and ambitious careerists. Some have pivoted to writing books. Others have pivoted to consulting. I pivoted to both last year. The book is hell, but the consulting? Not so bad!

The Good: Did I mention I started doing media consulting for nonprofits and other brands? That’s actually been challenging (in a good way) and even fun, although I had about five meltdowns trying to set up my LLC in New York while figuring out how to pay myself through it. But I did it! Congratulations to me. (If you have any communication needs, shoot me a note!) Also, it’s not lost on me that I can manage a budget and a P&L from my C-Suite days, but I almost died trying to deal with LegalZoom, Bill.com, Intuit QuickBooks, and the State of New York.

The Bad: That man is still president, and his administration is still administering.

The Good: After nearly 50 years of white-knuckling it through life, I was diagnosed with adult attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder, and the medication has been an absolute game-changer.

I’ve gone untreated my entire life, and have suspected I had it at least since 2007, but was worried about how the medication would impact my bipolar disorder. Sometimes ADHD meds can swing people into mania, and I didn’t want to risk my sanity for a struggle I thought was manageable. But I talked it out with my doctor after reaching a breaking point. The breaking point was writing my book. I’ve been on sabbatical, aka off work, aka “unemployed,” for more than 18 months, and stuck on the chapter for almost as long. It’s crushing me emotionally. So I went to my psychiatrist, and he assured me that on a low enough dosage, it shouldn’t impact my mood swings.

Now, post-generic Ritalin, I can’t believe I was out there, deep in the struggle, surviving on pure adrenaline and caffeine to get things done for the entirety of my adult life. I had a lot of coping skills I’d picked up to mask it — like writing everything down, keeping a detailed calendar with alerts and reminders, putting certain bills on autopay, and using outside pressure and guilt to fuel my performance. It just barely worked for exactly 46 years until I left my job and couldn’t seem to finish my writings or, quite honestly, get anything done in a timely manner. This has historically frustrated everyone from my close friends to my family. I kept waiting for “the spirit” to move me, but “the spirit” was probably exhausted, burnt out, and couldn’t cope.

The spirit is back now, because what I thought was an intangible, invisible life force was simply my brain finally getting, on the rare occasion, enough rest to function. The medication stopped the dysregulation, and now I feel blessedly normal. No brain fog. No fight-or-flight exhaustion. No burnout. No racing, overlapping, “manic” thoughts. It’s wild. I’ve never had a medication change my life in such a radically positive way with no real trials or tribulations in the form of annoying side effects.

For example: I thought GLP-1s were the best drugs I’d ever taken before ADHD meds, but you do pay a price for those in the form of digestive issues and nutritional deficiencies. The third best drug was Abilify, my mood stabilizer that I treat bipolar II with and broke my cycle of hospitalizations (but caused me to gain weight like most bipolar medication), and the fourth place winner is Prilosec, which is great, except I can never stop taking it because it has ruined my stomach acid levels forever. Whenever I try to wean myself off of it, the GERD comes back 10-times worse than it ever was. But the ADHD meds don’t have much of a downside, other than I might switch to an extended tablet that lasts all day, rather than the small dose I’m on that lasts about 4 or 5 hours.

In conclusion …

I’m hoping that, thanks to the ADHD meds, I’ll be able to read and write again without wanting to bang my head against my laptop. Which will be really helpful because … I’m bringing back The Black Snob, and I’m going to need all the stable brainpower I can muster to focus on redeveloping and relaunching the brand.

For those who don’t know, The Black Snob was my popular politics and pop culture blog that I published from 2007 until 2012. It was an Obama-era sensation that paved the way for the career I would go on to have in television and digital media. Almost every opportunity I got after 2010 was from The Black Snob. I loved it until I didn’t because I had no “work-life balance” when I wrote it, often updating the site 6 times a day, 6 days a week. But I’m older, wiser, and more patient with myself. I think there’s a way for me to dedicate myself to The Black Snob without burning myself out so badly that I give up blogging and most public writing for more than a decade.

So stay tuned! Because “I’m still here,” still standing and still strong! You can follow my journey to relaunch The Black Snob, among other tales from my life, on this Substack, Threads, and LinkedIn.

So give me a follow and let’s get at it!