I’m super-excited to tell you guys about a new, unfiltered video podcast I’m starting: Piles for Miles!
In this video, I go over:
- What the project is (doom pile explainer vids)
- How the idea came to be (hint: new impulse hobby!)
- Why perfectionism has been my downfall (and what I’m doing about it)
If you’re more into reading, the FULL TRANSCRIPT is below the video:
What is Piles for Miles?
Piles for Miles, Episode 0 transcript. Thanks for tuning in to a new type of productivity content for procrastinators!
Hi, I’m Dani Donovan. It is October, which is ADHD Awareness Month, which I’m currently attempting to rebrand: #ADHDUnderstandingMonth. Because I really think that people with ADHD deserve to feel understood. They deserve to understand themselves and be understood by others around them.
That’s what I’m aiming to do here, through a series that is going to essentially follow me around my house and explore the areas where things pile up. Then I’m going to sit in the mess and talk through:
- Why things pile up there
- How ADHD impacts that tendency
- What it looks like on a regular basis
- What I’ve done about it in the past
- What I’m going to try to do about it next
Along the way we’ll find some different shame release things. (It’s gonna be great! It’s pretty good. I would watch it, and I am picky, so.)
Anyways, I am excited, because today I did wanna do a little bit more of a deep dive on what the series is, and why it’s worth watching, and where it came from.
So I’ll start with where it came from, which is: for a while I’ve wanted to make perfectionism content, like ADHD and perfectionism. I have found that when you are a super perfectionist, there’s a tendency to not want to ship anything until it’s perfect.
I had this StruggleBusters podcast, which at its core was aiming to do a similar thing that I’m doing now. But what this series is gonna be is a bit more freestyle:
- A video podcast
- Unscripted
- One shot
- No editing
- No watching it before I upload it
I will color correct it, upload it to YouTube, and watch it later. I’m keeping everything in. (It’s just bloopers! It’s bloopers in the middle of the actual thing.) Not scripted isn’t for everyone, but I think especially my people with ADHD are able to follow me.
I’m doing this now during this super busy month where I’m also finishing the digital Anti-Planner. It’s like, what if I:
- Started my blog
- Sent actual emails out to my email list
- Started YouTubing
- Finished the digital Anti-Planner
…all in the same month?! (Also, I have a lettering project.) You know what? Let’s go! What better way to rip the perfectionism Band-Aid off than knowing I can’t give 100% to any of these things, because I’m trying to do too much too fast? My expectation is not that they’re gonna be perfect. They can’t be perfect.
During the series we’ll be talking through different areas of my house and different piles, like:
- Laundry
- The bathroom and self care
- Dishes and counters
- Doom piles of all sorts
The reasons why they get that way, I think, are very similar and relatable.
Back to the backstory: I didn’t end up making that perfectionism content. As for the StruggleBusters podcast I’ve been working on, I made it too complicated, wanted too much, and then it was too much work, and then it got dropped. There’s been so many things that have led to this moment. I wasn’t expecting what actually happened. You won’t believe what happened next!
The Michaels impulse purchase that started it all
So I was at Michaels, and I have gotten better about impulse purchasing things. (Better, not perfect. Better!) Then I saw this book (which I have since decluttered, so I don’t have the book itself, but I kept the thing that came with it. A book that came with a book!). It was on graffiti highlighter lettering, and it says “great cool street art style illustrations.” (I didn’t do very much of this.) There was one tutorial in here that shows you how to make this Spice lettering. I followed along and made the same one (oh, hopefully you can see it, ’cause I’m not editing this), and that was pretty fun.
It also had some stuff about different kinds of alphabets, so I made my name a few different ways. Then I decided, “Hey, I’m going to make names for my stepson Colin and my husband Josh.” (One, Josh is always trying to make money. Colin wanted 6 7 in his name.) Later we were watching The Great (huzzah, if you’ve seen The Great), and I started doing my own, kind of looking up on Pinterest what cool graffiti looks and styles there were.
Then I got this bad boy (which is great because it’s smaller than this, so I can do smaller drawings). The first one I did was this ADHD, ’cause I wanted something short to be able to fit in here. I go, “That’s pretty cool!” I didn’t know what to do next, so I did another one. Before I knew it, I was making a whole series and realizing this is super fun, right?! I get to play with markers and highlighters.
The thing about this is that I do lettering sometimes, but I get caught up in the pencil sketching part of it, and trying to perfect the pencil sketch, and then liner it, and then color it.
I didn’t do that with this. Because of the way that graffiti is drawn, you have to start with the color underneath it and then you draw on top. It mentions sketching, but I skipped straight to just:
- Put color down
- Start drawing with a marker
- Color with more markers
No pencils, no sketching needed. I did that with the first one. I did it with the second one, and I’m like, “Okay, I can freehand this! It’s not gonna be perfect, but I can freehand it.”
Then I realized how important freehanding these actually was. Because, again, I’m such a perfectionist that I don’t finish stuff. The fun part is coloring and picking what colors to put together, and I never get to that part. This way I was able to skip all the bullshit at the beginning and just get to the good stuff.
That’s when I realized, yeah, this is key! Me starting with coloring. It’s imperfect, right? Because it’s permanent, and I can’t erase it if I mess up too bad. So sad! I gotta move on. I can’t be stuck in a loop trying to make something look right. You gotta go. Which was really liberating.
Exposure therapy for my perfectionism
I really liked doing these, and I had the impulse of, “Oh, I should make these drawings into stickers. Maybe people would like them as stickers or merch or something like that. Oh, I could scan them and instantly monetize them. Scan them and put them into Procreate, and then I can make them digital.” These things I was making with markers, I’ll pretend these are the sketches, and then I’ll go make the real ones. I’ll go make the actual perfect ones that people would buy and put on their Stanley Cups, whatever it is.
But then I really realized that’s the opposite of what we’re going for. If I do that, it’s gonna take a lot of time for it to look more like AI made it. I think people are looking for something human right now, which is one of the reasons why I am doing no cuts, no edits, no producing, no skipping the mess-ups. That way you can see the mistakes.
This is exposure therapy for my perfectionism, so hard! Both of these things: the highlighter graffiti and the filming. Same thing with taking photos, right? I have chipped-ass nail polish. I used to do this thing where I didn’t wanna take product photography or any sort of thing until:
- My nails were painted
- I had makeup on
All of these conditions that I set on myself to make something actually happen.
What was I saying?! Oh no. Perfectionism. Hmm. Poof, just like that. (Haha, I always call it etch a sketch brain. It just resets.)
Anyways, I’m sure that I was making some kind of point (maybe). But the ability to create something and have it ready to go and out in the world, because you have lowered the bar, has been insanely helpful! Because it’s about the content. It’s about what happens. Which is why I’m really excited. That’s sort of the backstory, right? Of perfectionism.
Shoving the mess out of frame
(Oh wait, almost sorry. Not sorry.) I made these, thought to myself, “No, I don’t wanna take it into Procreate. I’m just gonna leave it imperfect,” and went to go take pictures to put on Instagram for ADHD Awareness Month, aka ADHD Understanding Month.
While trying to take pictures of my hand holding the sketchbook with a background, I was moving stuff out of the frame in order to take a clean picture. Then I went to go take another picture of a different drawing, and I moved stuff out of the way. I stopped, and I went, “I’m doing that thing that you do on Zoom calls where you just shove everything out of the frame.” (I think there’s a Smartwater ad that does this well.) Shove everything out of the frame and make it look like you’re tidy, and everything in front of you or beside you is dirty or messy.
I was doing that with art pieces about ADHD. I’m like, I’m crafting these images. I’m saying, “Oh, I’m doing this anti-perfectionism thing because all we see are highlight reels,” and it’s like, I’m still trying to make a highlight reel.
So I decided I’m going to take photos of these lettering pieces in front of piles in my house, or areas that are messy because of my ADHD brain having a difficult time with maintenance of all sorts. Living space maintenance is very high up there, ’cause everything seems optional, ’cause nothing’s gonna fall apart if you don’t put stuff away.
I took pictures of all this stuff, and I was like, “Sweet! I’ve got 14 (I think 14) different pieces.” I did them kind of in advance, because I wasn’t planning it for ADHD Understanding Month. I was just having fun. I was just making graffiti. Then when the actual month approached, I went, “Oh my god, I don’t have a plan. I made stuff early. Who is she?!”
Why I’m not editing these videos
Anyways, I took the pictures and wanted to make a plan for when I was gonna post them. Then I realized that I wanted to make:
- Longer-form YouTube videos
- A blog post
- An email that goes out to link them together
But I knew that I didn’t have time. I felt like I didn’t have time to shoot 12 or 14 or however many videos. That’s too many. It was like, what could I do to get the content out there? The answer was genuinely: cut the editing process.
I love talking! If I don’t have to script anything and I just get to yap, that’s easy. It’s my favorite thing to do. Free flow. I know that not watching it back is the only reason, the hard rule that’s keeping me from going, “I’ll just change this. I’ll just change this.” It’s If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. If you give a perfectionist an edit (haha), they’re gonna want more edits!
It’s been great. Now I’m filming these videos in front of these piles and talking through:
- How it feels to be around them, emotionally
- What is in the piles, and how it ended up there
- What behavioral tendencies are leading to it
- What we can try, or what I have tried
Yeah, I’m not fixing these videos. I’m not doing things to try to pretty it up. Because part of ADHD understanding is being able to see yourself and relate.
I see other ADHD content creators making videos on the cures, how to do this system. (I’m the same way. Let me just put that out there.) I have, “Here’s my brain hack for this.” You don’t necessarily realize, when you save all those to collections, that those people don’t do that all the time. They figured out something that worked for them for a while, and maybe they bring it back out. But it’s not necessarily a permanent thing.
So I’m sitting here in this mess. “Who are you to give me advice?” But it’s like, I’m coming at it from a peer, from a friend standpoint. I don’t have all the answers. I just know what’s worked for me for a little bit, and that seems more realistic.
A shout-out to your abandoned hobbies closet
All of this happened because of an impulse purchase from Michaels. It was like a 15 or 20 dollar book or something, and it came with a couple highlighters too. (It was kind of cool.)
Granted, okay, I had some lettering chops beforehand. It wasn’t like I checked out this book and instantly was able to do professional-grade lettering. I had materials already:
- Tombow markers (if you haven’t seen , they’re very fun! They’ve got dual tips.) them
- A pack of Copic markers
- A Sharpie
- Highlighters
It’s all stuff that I already had, which is the best kind of ADHD hobby.
I know it can be a lot harder when we buy a lot of supplies, because we feel like we need to get everything right now. Because while I’m on a purchasing sprint, might as well (’cause god knows I’m never gonna come back and do it later). “I gotta knock it all out one time while I’ve got the energy and the motivation.” More stuff, more stuff, and it shows up, and I’m either too paralyzed about the stuff to actually do it, or I’m over here doing it for three months. That’s about the length of a hyperfixation hobby, where it’s all I do, and then I don’t do it anymore.
Typically. It just goes to show, in the past, right? I was like:
- “I’m gonna do chalkboard lettering,” and then I stopped doing that.
- “I’m gonna learn calligraphy,” and I stopped doing that.
I get from a beginner to a novice and level up in that way pretty quickly. But going from novice to expert is a slog. You gotta want it, and I never wanted it that bad. At that point I’m like, “Okay, this has been fun! This has been real. Peace!” Like speed dating hobbies.
But I found that because those things were all still in the illustration category-ish (watercolor was also one of those things), I can kind of mix and match hobbies, so they can build off of each other. Now I can do a graffiti style that I learned from this book and pair it with a brush lettering style that I learned from Skillshare in 2013.
I just wanted to make sure that I give a shout-out to everybody who’s got an abandoned hobbies closet, because you never know where it’s gonna lead you!
A clean house doesn’t make you a better person
I’m really excited for this series. I’m really excited for people to look at real places by real people, especially people that they maybe look up to, or see as successful. It’s like, here is my dumpster fire of a life. Guess what? It’s fine! I’m fine! You’re fine! We’re fine!
If I can normalize it a little bit. Because having a clean house does not make you a better person. I’m gonna say that again: having a clean house does not make you a better person than a messy person. You can be messy and have the biggest heart, and you can be clean and be an asshole, right?! You can be messy and be an asshole. You can be clean, you can be nice. (Don’t get me wrong, there’s people of all sorts in all categories.) But there’s really, I think, a stigma, ADHD or not, with being messy.
Again, there’s a difference between:
- Doom piles and hoarding
- A cluttered environment and an unsafe environment
Knowing where that line is matters, I think.
But there’s a certain level of self-acceptance of, “I can’t focus on everything at once, and I’m focused on this, which means I’m not spending my time and energy maintaining this system.” Or I go through phases where I do maintain it, and then I let it drop off, and I’m gonna try something else. There’s not a time where everything is going right all at the same time. Nobody’s operating at 100%, 100% of the time. That’s not real, right?!
I’m just excited to have some real realness. Some actual feelings and tips that are not brainstormed in advance. I just turn on the camera and start talking. Haha.
So anyways, that’s my project. It’s probably not as satisfying to not have a conclusion wrap-up, I imagine. In conclusion: I am making a series about my doom piles and lettering. You can follow me @danidonovan and @AntiPlannerHQ. Don’t forget to like and subscribe, and hit that bell. I’m a real YouTuber! (That was a Pinocchio joke.) Okay, I’m Dani Donovan. I don’t know how to end videos. Bye!