ADHD's Christmas Morning Effect

I wish I could explain this level of excitement that only comes bundled with ADHD. I'm pouring my coffee feeling like it's Christmas morning, and I get to play with new toys. The trigger? New tasks in my to do list.

It's not the normal to do list though, it's my hobbies to do list.

Today I've thought of some things I could do on the blog, of some IDEs I could try, and the desire for trying these things is nearly as hard as when you're a kid in bed, eyes wide open, eagerly waiting for the morning to come to open all the gifts under the tree.

This feeling has driven me to do some things that sound like no sane person could find the motivation for. Like making a spreadsheet a 8am on a Sunday, still in bed, to try to figure out the selling prices on eBay for items on a local auction. My reasoning then was that I could bid for a lot of photography kit, use it for a bit, and sell it on eBay for a small loss or small profit, and essentially get to enjoy that kit for free.

That was a good enough idea. I did that, and it worked out. But the wildest part is the motivation about it. The most fun part was the spreadsheet, because it came with this thrill, this excitement around something new about to happen. Searching for the auction items, what a rush! It felt like a treasure hunt.

Today while I was in the shower, I thought that I could download the Cursor IDE to try to build very quickly a prototype for a certain app idea. My opinions about AI coding can be summed up as "it's okay, sometimes" with a list of caveats that it's not worth getting into right now. In any case, going back to my original point: this tool, which I've already known about for ages, suddenly feels very exciting.

There are many things about ADHD that I dislike, but having about 20 random Saturdays and 15 random Sundays every year when I get to relive the Christmas day excitement is not one of them.