When I opened my app to check my site’s stats for the day, this little prompt popped up:

Describe the most ambitious DIY project you’ve ever taken on.

I’ll be honest, this is a hard question for me, and not because I’m like, the queen of all things DIY. I’m not even a baroness of all things DIY. The world of DIY is a mystical land with which I am simultaneously very familiar and also very much a stranger.

The truth is, I often cycle through creative interests, sometimes very rapidly! I can recall flipping through like, five different artistic outlets in one summer before finally realizing I sucked at all of them. I have music and writing already — maybe it’s what I get for being greedy with the fine arts. But one of my best friends is also a musician and writer, and they also have time to make bead art, crochet, sew shit, put together enormous puzzles, and 3D print whatever the hell they can’t make doing everything else.

My problem, as always, is my brain wiring. I’ve got the fun combination of ADHD and autism, and they love to fight sometimes.

One of autism’s defining traits is the presence of “special interests,” or things were just really fascinated by and want to learn everything about. As a child, it was 8-track tapes and parakeets. In adulthood, it’s been lost architecture and cults (I dare you to let me tell you about multilevel marketing cults for hour). Not every autistic person gets special interests like this, but it’s incredibly common and definitely marked my experience growing up autistic.

That’s just one of the ingredients in my particular brand of brain soup.

ADHD comes with impulsivity. It’s one of the main symptoms, in fact. I technically have inattentive type ADHD according to my psychiatrist, but I’m shocked I didn’t qualify for the hyperactive-impulsive type instead. The hallmarks of my ADHD have always been the impulsive and hyperactive behaviors. And when I get an impulse to try out a new hobby, I gotta dive right in, headfirst, without checking the depth of the water beforehand.

It was pretty detrimental for a while because I was blowing all my money on these hobbies I’d be into for only a week or so before giving up. There’s the thing — if I wasn’t immediately good at the hobby, I quit. I also didn’t have the patience to get good at anything.

I realize I haven’t actually answered the prompt at hand yet (which is another very ADHD thing of me to do), so allow me to list the top five lofty DIY projects my neurodivergent ass stupidly took on:

5. Boating

I’m not quite sure this counts as a DIY project because I didn’t really make anything, but it was lofty nonetheless. Do you know what all you need to safely operate a boat? A lot of shit, that’s what. Yet I ordered a whistle and high-powered flashlight and lifejackets, all for the little inflatable boat I bought while we were living on the lake. How many times did I actually use the boat? Exactly once. It was a magical time, don’t get me wrong, and I wrote a song about the experience, but that song basically costed me $600. (And this is why I have credit card debt.)

4. Perfumery

I don’t know how many of you remember my witchy phase, but I definitely dabbled in the mystical realm for a while. Still do, to a lesser extent, but at the height, I was really into making my own “potions” out of herbs and essential oils. This inevitably led to me making potions not for magical properties, but because they smelled really nice, and giving them to my friends and family. I also made a lot of spell jars around this time, containing stuff that reminded me of the folks I made them for. It was kind of a cool hobby actually. I still have a lot of spell jars from that era.

3. Sewing

This was the shortest-lived of all the hobbies listed here. I went to JoAnn’s (RIP) for a small sewing kit because I wanted to alter my Chappell Roan costume to make it a little sluttier. Like, I wanted to show kneecaps. And the nice very gay man helping me suggested I also try a pillowcase. Not wanting to disappoint a fellow gay, I happily bought material to sew my own pillowcase as well. When I got home, I immediately got too overwhelmed and threw the sewing stuff behind the TV to hide my shame. It remains there to this day, and the Chappell costume remains unslutty.

2. Painting

Of all these hobbies, this one has been the most successful, if only because I’m not a stranger to visual art. I do digital art and coloring pretty regularly with my iPad, but traditional painting is a whole different beast. My college guitar professor was an incredibly skilled oil painter and I always really admired him, so I figured I’d try my hand at it as well. And I got some pretty okay results!

This painting of my girlfriend’s girlfriend turned out better than I anticipated, although she didn’t want to keep it (to be fair, what would you do with a painting of yourself??). I think I’d feel better about this hobby if I had some success selling my art, because for now it’s just kind of languishing in my apartment. I still have the equipment for oil painting, so I could easily revisit this one if I wanted.

1. Crocheting

Ah yes, the most tragic one. The one I had such high hopes for. I always imagined myself knowing how to crochet someday, probably as a little old lady sitting on a porch swing with a glass of sun tea. It was just part of how I envisioned being a grandma, and now that I’m officially an age where I can be a grandma (like, I just saw a report about a 32-year-old grandmother), learning to crochet seemed like the next logical step. So I ordered a beginner’s kit from the Woobles and well, here is the expectation:

…and result:

You can almost hear it crying to be put out of its misery. This cat potato was eventually given to my girlfriend as a Valentine’s Day gift, and I think her car ate it. My one and only crochet attempt, lost forever.

Although maybe that’s for the best.