j-caits-cheverst

what is it even doing

  • they

i like to vibe and also to eat cheese


hello! my name's jason. i'm still very much in the executive rehabilitation part of having ADHD - we're post-coping-mechanisms, post-diagnosis, post-medication-start, and now firmly in the relearning-how-to-interact-with-my-worldly-dependencies part of the journey.

i have been consistently flailing for purpose for somewhere north of twenty years and i am still not very good at it.

current projects include, in descending order of how much work i've actually done on them...

  • Tasker, a prosthetic executorium to do all the remembering and organising that i, with all the self-compassion in the world, am woefully bad at.
  • Scrantree, a recipe app that breaks down all the executive walls around cooking your own food.
  • The Errant Thread, a historical fantasy set on the Troad in 1000BC.
  • The Woman With Abaddon In Her Head, a modern fantasy.
  • The City...
    • ...on our Shoulders, a sci-fi novel.
    • ...at Night, a sci-fi novel.
    • ...of Fortune, a sci-fi rom-com.
    • ...in Flames, a sci-fi whodunnit.
    • ...at War, a tactics / deck-builder video game.
    • ...and the Void, a sci-fi novel.
    • ...between the Stars, an online collaboration game.


I cooked for the first time in a long time yesterday. It was just a kit meal, a box of sauces and spices and tortillas where you provide the other half of the ingredients and you get spicy chicken enchiladas out the other end, but I did it.

I haven't made anything more than noodles, sandwiches, or microwaveables since I got my official ADHD diagnosis (and that was nearly two years ago, and I've only just drawn that link). My memory is trying to remind me of a time in there that I tried, but if I recall, I experimented a bit too hard and it was awful.

Oh, I tell a lie, I've made cupcakes when my son wanted to make them and they turned out okay two out of three of those times.

But for me, or for my family?

ADHD is full of these moments. I'm simultaneously proud, surprised, happy that I've broken through this invisible wall, whatever it was, and started cooking again. But I'm also feeling utterly weighed down by the guilt of having depended on my wife to make dinner for us for the best part of two years, and not even realising until now that that was what I was doing, or that was how long I had been doing it. And that guilt stands a reasonable chance of closing up the hole in the wall.