Dream Job Emporium: ADHD & The Yellow Brick Road of the Modern Polymath
You can't be what you can't see, but what if you want to be EVERYTHING you see?
One of the hallmarks of ADHD people (especially creative ADHD people) is dozens of started projects, but few finished ones. Several examples of spending a bunch of money to buy craft supplies or sports equipment or some new gadget(s).
And the thing is, we can be this way about jobs as well.
Some ADHDers bounce from job to job, and 20 years into their working life they have a resume that looks more like a Jackson Pollock painting than an orderly progression.
I went through that to a degree myself, ‘on the side’.
I thought it would be fun to talk a walk down memory lane and see how many of my readers might relate.
“Dream Job” Number One - Firefighter or Hockey Player (Age ~5 to 15)
My earliest memories of this concept are from when I had to be 10 or less. I grew up watching hockey (ah, to be a stereotype!) and I thought it was so cool. I played a lot of street hockey and I dreamt of playing in the NHL.
But my other ‘more realistic’ dream was to be a firefighter. The only rationale I can remember for this is that I knew that firefighters helped people, and that felt good and important. Why not a doctor or a nurse? I have no idea.
Besides, I was 140 lbs soaking wet even after puberty, so there was no way I was going to be able to pass the fitness test and carry a 250 lb person on my back.
“Dream Job” Number Two - Web Designer & Music Video Producer
(2000 to 2005)
In high school i’d begun learning HTML code and learning how to build my own websites from scratch. I was big into music and there were some local bands I made fan websites for as practice.
My dream job was actually two parts - making music videos and building the site they would go on.
But when I went to a college design program, this dream got shattered.
Not because I wasn’t good enough, but because at that time it was just very challenging to make a viable living from creative work (certainly not without paying your dues for several years first).
Despite dropping out of that program, I never stopped creating and producing.
“Dream Job” Number Three - Music Producer / Sound Engineer
(2006 to 2008)
I had started learning to play guitar at age 17 and a few years later I started a recording studio in my parents’ basement.
I also did a brief internship at a local recording studio, learning some things that I could apply to my own music production, and to any band I might record.
I only ever ended up recording two artists, but I still remember those sessions 20+ years later. The singer goofing around in the closet that was the vocal booth. He ended up reading a passage from one of Mick Foley’s books that I had in there.
I disbanded the recording studio before long, because I realized how much work was required (for not much pay), and I decided I really just wanted to focus on writing and recording my own music.
“Dream Job” Number Four - Video Game Designer (2010 - 2012)
In my first full time professional role in my ‘normie career’ as an accountant, an opportunity came up at one point with a top tier video game company here in Canada. The catch was that the role that was open wasn’t for a programmer or designer, it was for essentially a custodian.
I thought that just being there - being around the production team would be worth it to start. I would get to see and hear what they do and learn what skills and experience I would need to qualify for a production role later. It was the proverbial ‘getting my foot in the door’.
Sadly, I did not get that job. The HR person called me to tell me, and she said ‘the only reason we didn’t pick you was because an internal staff member recommended someone and we’re giving them priority because of the internal vouch’.
“Dream Job” Number Five - YouTuber / Talk Show Host / Radio Host
(2013 to 2015)
In the early to mid 2010s, I started watching a lot more content on YouTube. I’ve always been interested in science and understanding how things work, but the concept of ‘edu-tainment’ had not occurred to me as a thing.
Until I found channels like SciShow, Physics Girl, Veritasium, Smarter Every Day, CGP Grey, and others.
SciShow in particular had a brief run of a series called “SciShow Talk Show”, and when I started watching that I had this epiphany.
Despite being a socially awkward introvert, I wanted to connect with people. And if I got to do that while also nerding out about cool and interesting stuff?
How fricken cool would THAT be?
Of course, I was just me, I didn’t have a crew, or even a collab partner who could help me, so the furthest I made it was starting my own podcast.
On the upside, that did help me get more comfortable and confident at speaking, and was truly what showed me I had a passion for public speaking and thoughtful, engaging discourse.
I did briefly consider trying to switch into radio, but I knew radio didn’t pay well, and I already watched the music industry get flushed down the toilet by capitalism. I could see the writing on the wall for radio.
Below are some screenshots from a few years later when I actually did make some educational youtube content.
“Dream Job” Number Six - Non-Fiction Educational Writer (2014 to 2015)
I had been writing an original blog for a couple of years called “Curiosity Crossroads”.
It was the first cohesive project that came out of my multi-passionate brain, but I didn’t call it a multi-passionate project (I wasn’t that aware yet).
It started as literally just me making posts about random cool and interesting things that I found on the internet, whether videos or other articles or random facts that I learned.
It was basically my personal journal ‘things that I think are really cool, creative, and meaningful’.
I ended up doing a couple of longer curation posts where I would gather a pile of related resources about a topic and organize them into essentially a ‘very short book in blog form’.
One of these blog posts caught the attention of a friend of a friend, and that person messaged my friend, who relayed it to me.
This person wrote ‘this is honestly such a great resource! Lacey should really consider turning this into an ebook’.
The thing about ADHD passion projects is that often times, we’re doing it for the enjoyment of the doing, not necessarily to try to make something more serious out of it.
Some ADHD projects do turn into freelance self employment, but not all.
I don’t think it would have ever occurred to me to start writing structured educational books if someone hadn’t basically bopped me on the head with a sign that said ‘write structured educational books!’
But once that suggestion was made, I did just that. And one of those ebooks was so impressive, it actually landed me a freelance job as a resource curator for a website.
Below is the cover of every ebook from the whole series that I wrote. There’s your ADHD emporium right there!
“Dream Job” Number Seven - Renowned Polyglot (2015 to 2016)
In 2015 a friend of mine signed up for a beginner class for American Sign Language (ASL). She knew that I liked to learn new things, and she didn’t want to take the class by herself, so she asked if I’d want to take it as well.
I said sure.
I actually really enjoyed ASL, and if it had been easier to keep using it daily, I probably would have. But taking that class sparked me in a positive way.
I’d been forced to take 1 year of French in high school (as is compulsory here in Ontario, Canada for Grade 9 students), but I did not enjoy it and never wanted to bother with it again.
Something ADHDers tend to learn is that when we aren’t interested in something - learning it or being forced to do it is a very unfruitful endeavour.
It turned out that when I got to pick the language myself, the learning went a lot smoother, and the retention was a lot better.
That website I got hired by? Fluent In 3 Months.
They hired me specifically to help curate language learning resources.
At the time I was actively studying THREE non-native languages:
ASL, Spanish, and Japanese.
I even helped contribute to a new book they wrote for people learning Spanish.
I’ve also briefly dabbled in Russian, Mandarin, and German.
I seem to have a natural aptitude for language learning, and if I had the time, spare capacity, and ability to practice every day I genuinely believe I could achieve conversational ability in at least 7 languages (English plus the other 6 that I listed, and maybe more).
It would have to be my full time job, but I believe I could.
Heck, I’ve learned a bunch of music theory, and that itself is a language. I’ve also studied computer programming in C++, and HTML for building websites.
This isn’t meant to brag, but just to make the point.
I would honestly love to be a serious polyglot. It would pair great with my love for public speaking and being able to connect with more people. More on that later.
“Dream Job” Number Eight - Channel Producer / Media Empire Manager (2020 to 2022)
From 2017 to 2019, I mainly bounced around different projects.
Graphic design, writing, a bit of video production, a bit of music.
Leading up to 2020, the itch began to return more strongly again around podcasting and having intentional conversations with people.
I had this idea to create a new YouTube channel that would be multi-purpose. Essentially like my own version of The Discovery Channel.
It was essentially envisioned as the video version of my old Curiosity Crossroads blog. That channel became Hat Collecting.
The idea was multi-fold.
• I would do a podcast/interview series.
• I would produce educational vlogs and content.
• I would produce parodies like Weird Al.
• I would produce and host a game show.
• I would go ‘on location’ (borrowing a bit of inspiration from Mythbusters) and document the process of me trying new things and reflecting on what I learned and what surprised me.
The podcast was the only part that ever got off the ground, because I needed a team to do the rest and I never had money to pay anyone. So I had to do everything myself.
And once I realized my grand vision was never going to get beyond step one, it really took a lot of wind out of my sails.
After two years, I shut the whole project down - burnt out and quite disillusioned.
“Dream Job” Number Nine - Film Director / Producer (2023 to 2024)
I bopped around for a bit after that, not really sure what to do with myself.
Nothing had stuck.
I enjoyed doing so many different things, I had so many ideas, but the problem was always the same.
In order to realize my big ideas/big visions, I needed help. Help cost money, and I did not make enough from my day job to pay anyone enough to give me the help I needed.
So I kept starting new things, doing everything myself, getting further than I had any right to as one person doing 10 different roles solo, but ultimately burning out and crashing. Then a short break, then the next project.
A year after I ended Hat Collecting, I made a connection in the film industry and that seemed to make a lot of sense as a new direction.
I had already produced and edited lots of video. I had written fiction so I could write scripts. I had produced audio and written music for videos. I had already done most of the pieces involved in film production on my own.
So it seemed entirely plausible that I could produce films. Short films at the very least. Or a web series (I still want to do that!).
I got an apprenticeship with the Director’s Guild of Canada, and figured in 2-3 years I could work my way up to a point where I’d have made enough connections and learned enough about the process on that level to start doing independent projects.
That did not pan out, for a variety of reasons.
I was naive, honestly. Not incapable, but I made a lot of faulty assumptions.
One of the problems with ADHD is that it combines intense passion with intense impulsivity.
“Dream Job” Number Ten - Game Show Host (2024)
This was one of the shortest lived, but something I got to actually do (sort of).
In 2024 I was making a concerted effort to get more into public speaking and one opportunity that came up was to host a trivia night.
It was fun (and a bit stressful), but I realized there were other ways to scratch the same itches that didn’t box me in so much. Plus, I’m not a night person, and game show hosts (for in-person events) are pretty much all evening/night gigs.
And as with radio hosting, it would have been such a remote, pie-in-the-sky possibility to try to actually get a job as a Television Game Show Host, even if that would have been a ‘daytime’ job.
“Dream Job” Number Eleven - Puppeteer (2024 to early 2025)
In late 2024, I caught wind that an in-person puppetry class was happening here in Toronto. I had never even thought about puppetry as a thing I’d want to pursue, but the opportunity to try it first hand was so enticing.
I tried it and I enjoyed it enough to want to continue.
As with so many of the other things on this list though, it became very clear very quickly that this was not going to ‘pay the bills’ anytime soon. It was just going to be another fun creative hobby.
So, I put my media production skills to work and I made a short film with a puppet for fun.
“Dream Job” Number Twelve - Playfulness Workshop Facilitator
(2014 to 2025 technically, but specifically 2024 to 2025)
Kind of like with the game show thing, this was another form of fun, creative speaking/hosting that allowed me to connect with people and be naturally creative.
I still do this periodically, but for similar reasons as the game show thing, I shifted my focus away from intending to do it exclusively.
“Dream Job” in Progress - Professional Speaker and ‘Changemaker’
(2025 to present)
As I wrote about in my “Happy Places” blog, I realized this was one of the deepest and most persistent threads in my life.
Since the dawn of my first podcast in 2013, there has been a recurring ‘pull’ inside that has called me back to projects that involved public speaking, connecting with people, and learning/teaching. Over and over again.
Sometimes with several years gap between, but finally after 10 years I clued in:
This is what I’m meant to do.
Everything else funnels into it in one way or another.
Literally, even the music: it became the foundational piece and metaphor for the consulting work I now do around sensory issues.
This one is in progress, and once it truly takes off (as I know it will, in time) I won’t need to bounce from project to project anymore.
Public speaking allows me to connect, to educate, to entertain, and to inspire.
These are all things I have been trying to do my whole life.
I had ultimately realized what I was supposed to be doing before I figured out how to best achieve that outcome in the optimal way.
It took longer than I would have liked, but I’m damn glad I found it.
It’s what Emilie Wapnick calls “The Group Hug Method” for multi-passionates, where we ‘smoosh all our interests together’ into one project/role.
“Dream Job” Lucky Number Thirteen for me, it turns out.
Lacey Artemis (she/they) is a neurodivergent speaker, consultant, and media producer. She is the founder of Neuromix Consulting which provides sensory comfort and accessibility consulting, as well as facilitation and anti-burnout play workshops. You can find out more at www.neuromixconstulting.com.
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