I’m at the tail-end of a ceremonial shot of Jack Daniels. I’m celebrating.
This past week, I’ve figured out a structure for my book, and the start of the order of content and how to make it marketably different from most of the non-fiction offerings out there.
I want my book to be profoundly literate. I want it to be the best thing I ever write. It has to reflect all I’ve accomplished so far, and all I’ll accomplish in the next two years, as I finish this life-change dream I cooked up in the fall of 2007.
Whoa! Holditaminutethere! What book?
Right. When I decided I wanted to change my life, I also promised myself that, if I got even halfway where I dreamed of getting, I’d write a book about my journey. Continue reading
Category Archives: Specifically Steff
Why I Love My ADHD
I’m going to be writing more about ADHD over the next while. I started last week with this posting here.
Seems to me too many people are all shame-filled about their ADHD. What the fuck is that about?
Here, take your stereotypes and shove it. Know what my ADHD doesn’t make me do? It doesn’t make me run around like I’ve had 42 coffees and have been mainlining coke and adrenaline, all right? It doesn’t mean I freak out on people. It doesn’t mean I can’t have a conversation with you. It doesn’t mean I can’t get to appointments punctually. It doesn’t mean I can’t be an awesome employee.
What it DOES mean is, I have organizational challenges that negatively impact my life and leave me predisposed to feeling overwhelmed and constantly daunted by the life in front of me. But that’s biochemical. Continue reading
In Which Steff Talks About Her ADHD
I found out last Friday that my company’s letting us work from home when the Winter Olympics rolls into town in a couple weeks. My office is in the thick of Olympics Central in downtown Vancouver, between the major “live event” locations and all the sports stadiums. I was already having panic attacks about getting to work in what planners suggest will be the same volume of traffic influx daily as THREE Superbowls would generate, with possible two-hour waits just to get a train. (I died a little inside when I heard that.)
But working from home? Like, omigod. Discipline will be tough, but a deadline is a deadline, and my work has tangible starts-middles-finishes, with daily deadlines, since I watch television and caption it for a living.
My biggest struggle I face right now is not my weight; my weight is partially a byproduct of my ADHD — because ADHD causes problems with maintaining a routine or even achieving one, but also makes me prone to becoming hyperfocused on whatever I’m doing at any time — like eating.
Because I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD for well under a year, it’s been a massive learning curve — Continue reading
From There to Here
In 2007, I spent 7 months working for a toxic employer.
By the time I left my job, I was close to the highest I’ve ever weighed, at my most negative and always whining, feeling sorry for myself, and feeling pretty hopeless about everything, especially about writing, which I’d been sucking at for nearly a year at that point.
I quit that job, even though I was always taught leaving a job in less than a year was a crime I’d be judged heavily for. I realized one day in August that, if I didn’t leave, it’d be the end of any Steff I ever knew; I was approaching the negativity point of no return. Continue reading
Bittersweet Winter Mornings & Their Longings
A little after waking, a furiously beautiful sunrise lit my little part of the world up. Red, red, red, as far as the eye could see. Fire on the horizon, exploding across the cottony clouds that spread west over the Pacific.
Some shivers, some cold toes, but it was worth heading out to stand on my balcony and marvel over nature, if even too briefly.
I’m reaching my winter tether’s end. My sanity is tattered, my resolve weakening.
I want Spring. Continue reading
Cashing My Reality Check
Whew. Here we are. January 4, 2010.
I’d given myself a good excuse not to write this morning: “I don’t feel like it”; but now I feel like I need to put some stuff down. Not for you, not because I said I’d try to write 10 pieces on Getting Shit Done in 2010, but because I just need to say a few things to myself, for myself. You’re just the fly on the wall.
I’m genuinely daunted by all I know stands before me this year. I’m scared as fuck about what it is I hope I will have accomplished when I’m standing on this date come next year. Continue reading
My Memories of Christmas
I’m enjoying the feeling of Christmas more than I have since I was a kid. I’ve gained a lot of distance between the loss of my mom and how much I tied her to the season. I still do, but in a different way.
Now I find myself reflecting on holidays over the years, and thought you might enjoy hearing some of the tales. In no particular order…
Continue reading
Things to Remember This Christmas
Since 1998, I’ve had every kind of Christmas imaginable. Lonely, magnificent, rich, broke, injured, healthy, in love, out of love. Had ’em all.
I was raised to believe in the magic of Christmas. We’d have a houseful of people singing carols, Dad would make his famous cardiac eggnog, the house was full of decorations and laughter, and us kids would even have visits from Santa, who brought every child there a gift. It really was magical.
When my mother died in 1999, I was pretty sure Christmas would never feel that Magical again. And, yeah, I was right — it hasn’t. But my life isn’t over, and “dreams” don’t always have to be big, flashy, and involve a credit card. Sometimes they can just be about getting back to the heart of what made your life wonderful and good once. Continue reading
Flirting Fail: In Which Steff 'Fesses Up
At the tender young age of 36, I find myself having to learn infinite new things because of the ways in which I’ve changed myself over the last two years, after a lifetime spent insecure, unhealthy, and fat.
One of those things I’m gonna have to learn now? Flirting. Truth be told, I’m a pretty terrible flirt as a result being fat and completely lacking in pride for my last couple decades.
I’ve faked it really well over the years, thanks to the marvel of online dating. Continue reading
6 Decembre 1989: Remembering a Formative Tragedy
I was 16 on December 6th, 1989, when gunman Marc Lepine stormed into Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique, an engineering school.
When the blood had spilled and screams for the 14 dead women faded into muffled tears, it was found that the gunman had left a note explaining his actions — he’d wanted to kill feminists for making his life so much harder, thanks to quotas and changes in hiring practices.
I don’t remember where I was when I’d heard about the killings, but I remember slowly growing aware of what happened and why. I remember the confusion I’d felt as as a 16-year-old and the anger and fear this massacre opened in me.
In 1989, things were pretty “advanced” for women already. We had the old soul sisters Annie Lennox and Aretha Franklin belting out that “sisters are doin’ it for themselves,” and movies like Baby Boom were showing that women no longer felt they had to have a man in order to make a “family” work.
I knew I could do anything I wanted to — that being a female really didn’t mean much anymore. Or did it?
Then, all my naivete changed. Continue reading