Today was my first day taking Vyvanse. It took about 2 hours to kick in, and about 3 hours to fully feel. The Adderall XR was faster. It would take about 30 minutes to kick in. I liked that more because it felt like I was getting a better jump on my day with the faster kick-in time. It also wouldn’t last as long, so it would be easier to wind down at the end of the day and fall asleep. Adderall is also cheaper.

But now I’m sitting here realizing I don’t have to do anything. I can do whatever I’d like, but I don’t have to do anything. Maybe it’s because my fried dopamine receptors are finally getting the hit they’ve so desperately been craving. Without me even having to do anything, really. Everything feels good. I feel calm and content. Maybe I’m finally finding peace. Maybe I’m becoming enlightened. Or maybe I’m just high.

I’ve been feeling lost because I don’t have a bigger purpose in my life now that I’ve published Lead to Unite. It feels like everything I think I need to do is to just make money to pay rent and buy things — not because I actually care about doing it. It’s a compulsion. But I avoid going through the motions on these mindless tasks because I don’t see the bigger picture. I don’t have enough clarity. I don’t see the context within which all of this is taking place. I don’t see the story arc.

*****

Until my mid-twenties I had always been a basketball player. My only real purpose in life was to get buckets. But as that went on, and I began playing at higher levels, the playing became less and less an authentic expression of myself, and more and more an expression of whatever the coach wanted me to be. I was losing myself in this thing that had always been the cornerstone of my self-identity. And then I got the concussions. And then they said I couldn’t play anymore. And then I got depressed. What now?

I was lost and confused. I decided to become a personal trainer because that’s what my brother was doing. I didn’t have much experience in anything (much investment in anything) aside from playing basketball. I always enjoyed the weight room and sports performance training. Plus, I already had a foot in the door as that’s what my brother did. But as my identity fell away from being a basketball player, my love for lifting weights and training my body (and, therefore, helping other people train their bodies) began to wane. There was a growing divide between who I was and what I was doing.

But what else was there to do? I was so programmed to do what other people wanted me to do — my teachers and professors, my bosses, my coaches. I had all but lost any ability to decide things for myself. I looked with such envy at the people who knew who they were and what they wanted to do with their life. How could they know such impossible things? How could I be more like them? I seemed to have been born and raised for one purpose: playing basketball. And now that purpose was gone. Who was I without this? Just an average Joe in an oversized body.

*****

And then I started writing in order to put everything I was learning about habits and behavior change into a cohesive framework. I called it The Self Made Method. The problem was that it wasn’t very creative. And I didn’t know how to write. I didn’t know how to look at something for myself. I only knew how to repeat what I had read or been told by other people. I could see the patterns for how everything connected, but I couldn’t look at something new and fresh. I always felt like I was just regurgitating what I had read or heard other people say. As a result, the writing was always dead, dull, boring, and detached. The conceptual framework was always badass, but the writing itself never struck a chord in a way that I ever wanted to spend much time doing. It was just so blah. Who wants to sit there repeating everything that’s been said already? It was always more fun to do the creative work — finding the connections and putting the framework together.

That’s why I jumped so hard on the paper I was assigned in grad school. It was an opportunity to put the biggest, baddest framework together that I could possibly think of. The framework that’s in Lead to Unite.

But the writing was still boring. I was still just saying things other people were saying, but combining them in a way that was unique to me and my understanding. I thought that was enough. But it never is, is it? You have to learn to express for yourself. You have to break free from the diluted voice of consensus and, instead, find your own.

I was burned out from writing and in need of something new. I was realizing how fake I sounded by trying to write as if I were a professor, repeating the things everyone else was saying as if I really knew what I was talking about. But one can only hold such a façade for so long before the foundation begins to crumble.

And after the event with my wisdom tooth surgery, and the ensuing infection, everything came into perspective. Driving to the emergency room, as my throat was closing up, I saw it. I saw how everything in my life had been driven by the desires of other people. How I had spent all this time repeating what other people thought was good, never taking the time to critically evaluate it for myself. Never giving myself permission to open up and express. To share all the things I secretly desired to share, in all the ways I secretly desired to share them.

All of it unconscious, too, until that moment.

It’s like I wasn’t even aware of the possibility that I could say something authentic. I was so programmed into the mindset of the system I was in. I would see other artists and creators opening up and expressing their thoughts and feelings, and it’s like they weren’t even speaking the same language. Like the actual realization that I too could create like that hadn’t even crossed my mind. It was always something for other people. This looking and seeing and creating and doing — this living — was always for other people. The thought that my life was my own and I had the freedom to live it in whatever way I wanted . . . that wasn’t even something I could consciously process it was so foreign to me.

In reality, I just had to stop repressing these desires and give myself permission to be who, deep down, I knew I wanted to be. I had to allow myself the freedom to live my life however I wanted to live it. I had to realize, accept, and fully embrace the fact that this life is mine and the purpose is to live it as well as I can, by my own standards. My happiness is my own responsibility, and, therefore, everyone else’s happiness is their own responsibility as well. I had to give up the feeling of being responsible for the happiness of other people, and once I did that, I was free to take back ownership of my own life, deciding for myself how I want to spend my time here, knowing that, at some point, it’s going to end, and no one has any idea when.

*****

So now I can do both. I can put frameworks together, and I can express in whatever way I’d like. Whatever I think is cool, and good. Whatever is completely authentic to me. That’s where the real value comes from anyway, isn’t it? Because who can be you but you? When you decide to be your most authentic self, you’re bringing something to the table that no one else can be. From there it’s about practicing, getting better, and learning to express yourself in a way that only you can. Sharing your highest values for the benefit of other people.

For me, it was about getting to the point where I’m dialed in on creating this stuff — where it’s become my highest value — and striving to make a living and build a life doing it. That’s what has given me purpose again. My whole orientation switched from basketball to writing. Toward doing this as well as I can, as well as it can be done. Toward letting go and allowing things to happen. Toward collaborating with the unfolding process, rather than fighting it. Toward making the transition from degenerate writer to professional creator.

​What else is there to say about stimulants?