Ramblin' & Amblin' (2026-10-17): Straight to it I've got ADHD not like

So straight to it I've got ADHD not like kind of sorta like cool ADHD but kind of ADHD there was a problem since I was a small child and made me a challenging person inside of a structured school system in the 1980s in farmland America in blue collar world and I've not not kind of sorta in a touchy-feely modern way but actually to the point where I actually had EEGs whatever and CBT therapy where I had to like concentrate on while the sensors were on my head and navigate a little spaceship through like a 3D arcade game it was actually really cool and it was a lot harder than it sounds because boy and it really did give me a sense of that I do have like a different way of approaching things and reasoning with things and you know there's times in my past where when I was seeking help for I got other diagnoses but no the only one that is stuck is ADHD because that one was verified the other one was based off of a single session and I'm not gonna put too much weight on it the thing is is that one of the interviews I did for you tastic I was with Bob Martin uncle Bob as the kids like to call them the topic of I was trying to this is that interview was during a period where I was really learning about this topic and another topic that I don't have a definitive diagnosis but I have had people in the know say have you ever been tested for autism in the most caring and loving way possible so just that is where it is um but I when I interviewed uh Robert Martin uh Bob Martin uh we talked a little bit about masks and and personas and uh I was that was heavy on my mind at the time this kind of thing I was I was aware that I was struggling um um you know I had a lot going on my life at the time um I was starting up the juketastic channel I was approaching people who like were big names um and they and they it was literally a mask because I would reason through this I used logic it's a chaotic good barbarian would say autismal uh logic that if I you've got this this thing where I'm already interviewing user group people and I want to uh have a broader audience I need to bring in uh bigger names and then put those people in um shoulder to shoulder with the people that are out leading the community who are the unsung uh leaders uh are often overlooked but um you know all of this was reasoned through and and and why I really pursued doing euketastic after that first series um and then you know culminates in me sitting down with uh uh Uncle Bob and and uh talking about masking and and his persona on stage and his persona off stage because I had seen him and just enough not seeing that we're you know having brunch on the Sunday I'm just saying that just through passing interactions and him coming to the user group and and presenting and I just like to observe people you know like I I kind of reason my way into doing euket astic as a way to talk to people that I normally wouldn't have or not a reason but uh uh Autismal logic about why uh why they don't want to talk to me before I even uh give them a chance and uh and just not knowing how to broach that uh personal um gap of I I have no idea what people are thinking none no idea you guys are all a mystery to me um and that's probably why I asked the questions what I'm asking is uh you know off off stage you know reserved professional no issues nothing I mean politics aside you know that's I'm not getting into um any of that I'm just talking about uh presence and uh um um then on stage just being a whirling dervish you know so such a showman and he and he knows it and he talked about that and I really appreciated uh that interview but it's really the uh the thing that I carried the most from that and I'll talk about this when I eventually get to that episode but uh he acknowledged that I gotten him to talk about things he he normally didn't talk about and I I had a few people say things to me after interviews that were really positive um but also revealing to me against my own desire my own narrative that I had more to offer than I realized and that um and this is a predicament of of having struggled in I think uh struggled to fit in in a structured school environment and and having to learn survival skills to pretend to be a certain way to put on a certain face to defend yourself a certain way to oh there's a nickel let me get you out of there yep there's a nickel there we go yeah I don't know if that tells you anything but uh save that for later save that for later I've got five good lucks on me um that uh that uh that uh that uh that that I know that masking is something we do even normal people when you're you're in a different context uh code shifting code change whatever that is code shifting when you're talking differently depending on your audience maybe um use a slang um with your friends but when you're in a professional environment you you might use that slang you use a different word um there's that but then there's um having a logic through what somebody is saying and what their likely emotional state is and having like reason that out that the mask um cracks under pressure sometimes not out of lack of will but sometimes there's so much going on and there's so much thought that you can't think fast enough to to do all the calculus of what somebody else's face and body language is trying to tell you and how you're supposed to tune your response to that and you don't understand why they're upset with you um or what you said um or didn't say there's a deer in front of me I'll just stop here for a second let it eat it's lunch um and then you end up in this kind of shame spiral and then it kind of becomes you go to put the mask back on again and it doesn't fit anymore because uh it's broken too many times and then you're sort of getting just anxious in that situation where you have previously had to have carried yourself a very certain way because you know that people like to be hear things in certain order that um certain level of of detail and abstraction for that conversation um bringing topics back keeping vague statements vague um I I I'm gonna get back to this to the interview um cause I'm going too far is that he uh let's keep it under 15 uh the uh the interview with oh there there's the deer again if you can see him hello so we'll walk together here and look at the deer as they talk oh there's two there's two three one two three so yeah squirrel squirrel yeah it's true but um the utastic interviews were for me a way to have a mask that let me engage with people when I didn't know I didn't know how to be normal I just didn't know how to be normal so I'm gonna show these interviews like even that one with Bob just said it was um Mr. Martin I feel weird saying Uncle Bob and I always have sorry um the um the um it was a mask that I put on and then like it was the only way I could make myself do it too to do it too as well as like if I had like really thought about what I was doing and I don't mean I oh my god did I put thought into it oh my god did I put thought into it but uh what you saw was the best I could do and I can only imagine what some people thought when they were brought into a room and they saw my rig I was um operating in maximum capacity and I didn't know how to be helped and I just knew how to just find a way to make this happen even if it was a janky bunch of lamps that I set up that I bought at at Target because I couldn't afford like the proper lamps and the whole scaffolding and all that stuff and I was like how am I going to get this there um so you you get these weird lighting effects and shadows it was terrible but it was all part and parcel I think of what I was trying to figure out I was I was you know I wasn't Tony Stark but I was in a cave with a box of of scraps um trying to figure out an identity that allowed me to justify my existence in this space and do what I thought was something interesting but it was probably there's there's there was a survival I always felt like I had to go way beyond the normal just to justify my existence in there and again this is all part of that ADHD um um um ADHD ism uh and uh you know struggles with uh structured schooling and largely you know coming out and having a career where it was mostly um self-taught or at the very least self-directed uh and always feeling that anxiety over not not not being able to accept it without the uh morals of uh of the uh people around me uh that I had to like find this way to to justify I belong to and that's what eutastic was it was just another mask that I put on to justify existing and I was curious and I just just like every person that was doing something that I could talk to I sat down and talked to um but um yeah so back to ADHD and and mass I don't know I um I've been afraid to talk about really ADHD or anything related to that even though it's caused me so much difficulty or my lifetime um even with help even with meds sometimes it even made it worse and um um there's no one single anything uh but uh I fear I can't be any worse every interview I'm on I'm on right now I'm a nervous wreck and I when I get nervous I as you probably figured out I talk too much I'm going to turn around because there's people coming on the trail there um so I get nervous and I talk too much and I'm very direct and and I will sometimes struggle to come up with a a question back to somebody because if I had a question I would have said it um so when I'm presented with different questions yes uh could I possibly articulate them now without us being here for a month um and also just sometimes at the the interviews right now uh with jobs I'm I'm I'm this is rambling and ambling either you you're here for me to talk too much or not um that's cool but um with AI again um talking to places and it feels like a lot of companies still are operating as if they're like just learning about AI and there's others that are um I think they believe that they know a lot about it not that I'm saying I'm a genius but I think that there's a little overestimation of our own abilities here but then there's most of them though feel like they're still operating in the old paradigm uh there's it's gone sorry guys um I uh I'm not super jazzed about it either but you know I didn't choose for it to be this way um so it it feels weird you know and also getting interviewed for a senior like a staff position and then getting a coding exercise by a uh senior developer who's got I don't know eight years experience and this is not a knock I know I was doing stuff at TicketsNow that I'll talk about um another time at eight years roughly of of experience um as a senior so I'm not knocking that I know that it's possible but there is a depth of experience that seems really odd to be giving that specific test to a uh a senior staff engineer um in the age of AI where I've seen what I can do with AI and uh I know what's going to be expected because there's no way businesses are going to figure this out if they're still haven't gotten there yet um and I know that the uh cheap token economy is is finite and that it's going to have its day but there's enough out there that it's it's not going anywhere and it's not going to get um less you know look at the cloud look at the push for cloud look at the push for microservices um you know there's going to be people working it all the time um so yeah it's like some places it feels like it just hasn't hit them yet it's an owl and um they're asking now I've led and I've been a senior software engineer I've been a lead engineer I've been technically an engineering manager um I say technically because it was mostly a contractor's team and uh and one employee um and uh and it was a short engagement but uh I've gotten I've been through all levels of being a software developer through to software engineer uh I fancy myself sometimes but I know how little we are actually truly engineers um in the software field uh based off of pretty extensive working experience with a broad range of people um yeah it feels like there's something coming and that uh people aren't adapted to it just yet and I worry that it's gonna hit them real hard but in the meantime it's made it pretty frustrating and going back to you that ADHD thing and and and directness and that possible autism thing I don't know at least traits enough that people have said it in independent but um reliable contexts um that I've also experienced bringing information too soon to people who weren't ready for it um and that being a pattern in my life um and then I get frustrated and a or a change of behavior and it's just not aligned with the group mindset at that time or what the expected status quo is and you know maybe that's why I always liked punk rock like minor threat out of step um but uh yeah just that isn't proof enough of my ADHD that I started off talking about ADHD and then I talked about Bob Martin in interviews and why I was doing interviews and then about the particular interview I did with him and talking about masking masking and then ending up on a digression talking about uh frustrations with interviews where that uh um that masking doesn't always work because what my mask was tuned to uh we're gonna hold on here we're gonna just walk by hi just recording a video not recording you guys just have a good one but uh okay I'm giving them a second to get past uh but uh the uh the uh the um default defensiveness uh being used to talking too much being used to uh having to uh self edit um was tuned for a way that um is out of sync with where I think some folks are and that's why I think I feel it in particular as a as a um very acute disconnect in some groups where I'm because I'm not necessarily as hung up on on uh the social cues and things like that I'm just looking at a little bit more of the abstract problem and the connections inside of it I've been told I'm a mapper not a packer um but uh I'm trying to do a little self acceptance here so pardon me if I'm um propping myself up a little bit here I'm boosting myself a little bit a little bit to uh accept that yeah I'm seeing things and there's times where I see things that other people don't see and then I've had enough people come to me weeks months years later and say it worked out the way you said it would in the sequence and timeline you described it in and the problem is is that that usually comes not when everybody's ready to hear that and then I would get frustrated and again be out of alignment with with where the people are with me and then that mask that allowed me you know to at least function before was cracking a bit and under stress under frustration some some of some of it self-applied because I would make um I would take it very seriously because and I wouldn't see what the more subtler um reasons why the response wasn't what I expected it to be so I learned a lot but it put me in a cycle that's uh where I kind of lost my calibration for um finding a way back to a way back to the way people talk when they've are interviewing you and they this is their uh yeah they've been doing this for nine years but it's their first job out of college and they just kind of stayed there for the entire time and what I've seen is in people like that that I've worked with where I've been through the arc of my experience with them is that sometimes they are just oblivious is not the word I want to use and ignorant is is is not in the um negative sense but you know to not know is to be you know ignorant and to be um oblivious you know same thing they don't operate at a at a level um and they're used to looking at everything so they have they're they're tuned in to their specific thing and they kind of tune everything else out um because it just never arises for them um you know they've never had to go through the interview process they they know the anxiety of of uh being on unemployment uh because at will states will just jettison you for whatever reason and you can say whatever you want and i know that i've probably not helped myself a few times but uh i'm also have no i have no none zero zero regrets for any of the reasons i've ever left a company there's times where well i should say in the last 10 years um there's times prior to that 10 years i'd say where um the market was a little crazy and not every idea was a good one um but uh this last 10 years has been um i'm good i'm good with where i'm at there's uh there's um a cost and a price to you know learning what your money tastes like um um sometimes that that money arrives in a fist um but uh i've tasted it and uh i'm not trying to loosen myself up with some people's hero i'm i'm boy am i not uh the uh the point is is that i don't know how much of that came from ADHD or autism or anything like that i don't know how much my justice sensitivity or uh my um rejection sensitivity um came from but before i had a diagnosis i just didn't like myself i just didn't like myself and i didn't think it was i thought i was always a problem i was i was but not as much as i thought i was and a lot of it was just because i just couldn't figure out what everybody else was doing or why why why what i was doing they didn't understand um you know i've had certain experiences in my life now that uh have let me see things in a broader picture but i know that just being able to say yeah i have ADHD i probably have at least i display autistic traits and it's it's been it's been a burden at times i don't know i don't like it when i hear people say it's a superpower because it's not and i i think that um it's kind of like the x-men you know they were the mutants they were different but it didn't always work out for them and it was usually a huge hassle i feel isolated um and and when you don't know you and you don't even have a word for it you just think it's you but so i don't like when they call it a superpower but then again why would i have done eutastic why would i even be doing this video right now why would i have done a lot of the things i've done that were not so bad i don't know alright thanks bye