Journalism and ADHD

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When I started in the newspaper business, I had never heard of ADHD. No one I knew had heard of it either. It doesn’t care if you’ve heard of it or not; it still rages when it wants to. I had a well-earned reputation of being a little flaky, a little out there. I worked hard, but there were days when strange things would happen.

I might disappear for a few days, and not really understand why people were upset. You can get away with that in college, but not in the real working world.

In my first year out of school, I burned through three jobs at three newspapers in Tennessee. I don’t think ADHD was the real issue there.

I wrote a story about that, and you can read it here.

It did cause me a lot of issues early on in my career. Later on, I figured out how to harness it a little better. ADHD and journalism actually go together pretty well once you get them lined up right. The chaos of a newsroom is good for me. Some people get stressed in that environment, but to me it was always calming. I could relax and be chaotic right along with the natural chaos that was there.

ADHD was a big elephant in the room for me for many years. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it was there. Once I learned a little more about it, I was able to tame the elephant and learn how to ride it.

I think that can happen a lot with ADHD. There is growing psychological studies showing it is not an illness at all, or a bad condition at all. It is just a different way of seeing the world, a different wiring.