AN AUTOPSY OF THE UNFINISHED: ADHD Unfinished Projects

Let’s cut me open on the table for AN AUTOPSY OF THE UNFINISHED. Let’s see what’s inside. Spoiler: it’s not a heart, a brain, or a soul. It’s the daily, grinding reality of Executive Dysfunction. This struggle is the core struggle of ADHD unfinished projects. It’s a twitching, hyperactive opossum of an idea, next to the fossilized remains of last Tuesday’s passion, all swimming in the acidic bile of Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. The RSD isn’t an emotion. It’s the permanent chemical burn in my psychic lining, the internal monologue that hears a silence and writes a three-act tragedy titled “You Are Worthless” in the space between heartbeats.

The Graveyard of Hyperfixations

I have built more altars to abandoned gods than you’ve had hot dinners. I have whispered into the void of faceless YouTube channels with the devotion of a monk, only for the void to whisper back, in the form of analytics, “LOL. Cringe.” I have scripted series on forgotten philosophy, on the secret life of trees, on the haunting of old websites. These stillborn enthusiasms are the wreckage of my dead Hyperfixations. I have folders of thumbnails for videos that will never be born. I am a digital headstone carver for my own stillborn enthusiasms.

I will never show you my face. The face is where the rejection lands. If I am a voice, a collection of words, a vibe—then the “dislike” is a critique of the art, not a bullet to the person. This is the logic. It is flawed, beautiful armor. The RSD shrapnel always finds a way in. It will critique the voice. The script. The background music. It will take “buffering” as a personal insult.

The TORRENT and DROUGHT of Motivation

Motivation? Don’t make me laugh. Motivation is for people with brains that operate on the reward system, not the impending-doom-avoidance system. This paralysis is the core truth of the ADHD experience. My “motivation” is a feral thing, caught in the headlights of my own expectations. It either sprints itself to exhaustion in one night or plays dead for six months. There is no in-between. There is only TORRENT and DROUGHT.

So this—this right here, this string of sentences you’re reading—is an act of war. It is me taking the shovels from all my unfinished graves and building… not a castle. Not even a house. A weird, leaning tower of half-baked bricks. It might fall tomorrow. The RSD gremlin is already pacing the base, chewing on the foundations, telling me this metaphor is running away from me and that I should scrap the whole thing.

But the gremlin is boring. The gremlin’s monologue is a skip-track I’ve heard a thousand times.

Welcome to the Ghost Party

This new Introvertedsoul is not a rebirth. It’s a possession. It’s the ghost of every unfinished thing I’ve ever loved, rattling the pipes and writing on the walls in the hope that another ghost out there recognizes the handwriting.

We are not building empires. We are not “launching.” We are sending up sporadic, glittering fireworks in the middle of the weekday, for no reason at all, knowing most will fizzle in the rain. But my god, the colors while they last.

If your brain is also a browser with 107 tabs open, each one playing a different anxiety anthem; if your graveyard is as populous as mine; if you’ve ever sobbed over a single-digit view count because it felt like the universe itself had spit in your tea— Welcome, Neurodivergent friend.

We’re not finishing things here. We’re romancing the start. We’re finding the glorious, unhinged beauty in the abandoned draft, the half-knitted scarf, the channel with three videos. We are collecting our own ghosts and throwing them a party where the music is too loud and the floor is sticky with what-could-have-been.

This is the project I won’t finish. Join me.

ADDENDUM: THE FACE REVEAL (An Epilogue to the Autopsy)

I lied.

Or, more accurately, the gremlin lost a battle.

Somewhere between carving digital headstones and building that tower of half-baked bricks, a single, stubborn spark refused to fizzle. It whispered: What if the armor becomes the flag?

So I did it. I showed you my face.

It’s nowhere fancy. Just a selfie. A human pixel in the vast, screeching void. The gremlin had a field day with the lighting, the angle, the very concept of being perceived. It wrote a dissertation on why this was a tactical error of epic proportions.

But here’s the secret they don’t tell you in the RSD handbook: A face is not a target. It can also be a flare.

It says: The ghost is done rattling pipes. It is now painting them neon.
It says: The art and the artist have declared a truce, and the terms are messy.
It says: This is the graveyard. I am the groundskeeper. Come dig with me.

Will I change it if someone comments? Maybe. The gremlin’s resume is long, and its specialty is post-publication edits. But for this one, crystalline moment, the fear is not a dictator. It’s a seasoning. The silence is not a verdict. It’s just… silence.

This is the new logic. It is flawed, beautiful rebellion.

We’re not just romancing the start anymore.
We’re signing its fucking permission slip.

Welcome to the party. The music is still too loud.
And now, you can see who’s screaming the lyrics next to you.

— The Ghost, Now With a Face (For Now)

If your get-up-and-go got up and went, you’re in the right desert. For more maps of this parched landscape, wander over to Why Change Is Hard for Introverts. If this helped you find a single oasis of “maybe I can,” you can buy me a coffee to fuel my next trek through the dunes.