After a long break from the gym, I’m back under the bar at 55 — and the thing that surprised me most wasn’t how much strength I’d lost. It was how honest the whole process is.

Most people think about their next tattoo. I’ve started thinking about the whole wall — and that shift changes everything about how you choose what goes on your skin permanently.

Every task you do carries invisible overhead that nobody warns you about. Understanding that overhead isn’t weakness — it’s the first step to actually managing it.

Getting tattooed for the first time at 52 wasn’t about rebellion or a midlife crisis. It was about realizing the person I’d been protecting my reputation from never existed.

A diagnosis doesn’t change who you are. But it does change how much energy you spend pretending to be someone else — and that’s where things get complicated.

Getting diagnosed with AuDHD at 55 doesn’t just explain who you are, it forces you to grieve who you might have been. That’s a harder thing to sit with than any diagnosis.

Getting diagnosed with both autism and ADHD isn’t a contradiction—it’s finally understanding why your mental hardware has always felt like it’s running competing programs simultaneously.