Hi I’m Paula,
I go by Paula Jane in my Art, but my legal name is Paula Storm. Storm is my married name and now that I’m divorced I decided not to go back to my maiden name. I changed my name in the first place to have the same name as my kids and I don’t want that to change so here we are.
When I was signing the first artwork that I felt was truely my own creation I was stumped… I didn’t want to sign my married name, I didn’t want to use my maiden name so the only name that felt truely mine was my given names, Paula Jane.
As I have gotten older I have learned to accept the things about myself that used to drive me crazy.
I can’t stick to a single hobby, I struggle to stay on task, reading can be challenging. The worst is driving along listening to a book or podcast and having to skip 60 seconds back over and over and over because my mind wonders and I missed an important part… I’ve had to skip back 5, 6, 7 or more times because I skip back too far and my mind wonders before I get to the part I missed. Frustration levels can get extreme!
I was well past 45 before I discovered that this cluster of symptoms is very common. It has nothing to do with my intelligence (I always felt like the dumb one in the family) but is encompassed by 4 little letters… ADHD.
I can’t tell you how much this discovery has changed my life! My mental health, my confidence, my parenting, everything has changed since I discovered I wasn’t stupid, my brain just worked differently.
I’ve learned to harness my diagnosis to benefit my unique skills, it’s incredibly empowering.
So why a blog?
As mentioned my memory is shit, I have so many ideas that I probably forget at least 10 a day. 1 or 2 might be really good ones. Most ADHDer’s love the idea of a diary, we loooove stationary, like obsessively love it, but we never use it for more than a week or 2. Once the hyper focus wears off or we get worried about messing it up (or the corner of a page gets bent), it gets put away never to be used again. So a blog feels like a place I can store my thoughts. My favourite things… videos I loved and I can share my art and discoveries.
I can’t guarantee this blog won’t get as confusing as my brain, but as mentioned earlier, I’ve gotten to the age that I have fully accepted how my brain works and love it for its unique abilities. So if you’re up for it, let’s go!
Paula x
P.S. I just watched a few videos that were so random but very cool. I saw how traditional Gouda was made. The farms may have to shut down though because the cows fart or poop too much and instead of changing the cows diet they just want to close them down (I think that’s what they said, I was writing this…). I just restarted a video on how candles were made in the 18th century because I spaced out and didn’t take any of it in. Finally, I watched Studio Wildlife’s video on the best art advice he ever received…. Sooo pretty random lol
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