This week I met with a client, came home fired up, and sat down to do what I always do: wrap up a report, answer emails, and get some social media posts out into the world.
Except my keyboard had other plans.
Every time I tried to capitalise a letter, the Shift key sent me straight to Enter. A social post went live before I’d finished the sentence. An email to a colleague shot off half-written. In Word, I leaped to new paragraphs I never intended. One attempt at a capital letter deleted everything I’d just written.
I ended up typing emails in all lowercase just to get them out the door. I gave up on the report. I abandoned the socials entirely. What should have been a smooth, productive afternoon became a battle with a tool that was supposed to help me, not sabotage me.
This morning I went hunting for a replacement. The old keyboard hadn’t lasted long, perhaps twelve months. I’d bought it online, not that cheaply, but it was a copycat brand rather than a trusted one. It worked well for a short time, then betrayed me completely.
Usually, I only replace a keyboard when I’ve rubbed the letters off the keys through constant use, and that takes years. The faulty keyboard has been the shortest-lived of them all, and the most disappointing.
It made me think about my older, trusty branded keyboards. Over the years they’ve developed glitches. Crumbs under the keys. A sticky space bar. A letter that needs an extra firm press. But they’ve always been fixed by a good clean and a reboot. They’ve earned my patience because they’ve earned my trust.
Our ADHD brains are a lot like those older keyboards.
We live surrounded by messages that tell us our brains are the cheap copycat. That we’re faulty, disposable, in need of replacing with something newer and shinier. The wellness industry sells us quick-fix hacks, rigid productivity systems, and motivation built on shame, all promising to “cure” our wiring. They work for a short time. Then they betray us. They delete our progress. They post our vulnerabilities before we’re ready. They leave us typing in lowercase, diminished, making do.
Your brain is not the copycat. Your brain is the trusty branded keyboard that has been with you for years. It gets crumbs under the keys. It develops quirks. Sometimes the capitalisation doesn’t work the way others expect, and your paragraphs go in directions nobody anticipated.
That doesn’t mean the whole thing is broken.
A good clean helps. For a keyboard that’s compressed air and a soft cloth. For a brain that’s rest, movement, nourishment, and honest connection. A reboot helps too. For a keyboard that’s powering down and starting fresh. For a brain that’s sleep, stillness, and the radical act of stopping before you burn out.
The copycat keyboard got thrown in the bin this morning. It didn’t deserve repair. It was never built to last.
Your brain deserves repair. It was built to last differently, not defectively. It has earned your patience because it has earned your trust, through every workaround, every late-diagnosis revelation, every moment you kept going when the world told you to give up.
When someone offers you a shiny new system that promises to fix you, pause. Ask whether it respects your wiring, or whether it will leave you typing in lowercase, half the person you are.
Clean your keys. Reboot when you need to. Keep typing in full sentences, in your own voice, capital letters and all.
Want a space where your wiring is the trusted brand, not the copycat?
The Dandelion Clock is a monthly membership for late-diagnosed women with ADHD who are tired of systems that break down and ready for ones that fit. Every month we gather on Zoom to explore a topic like time blindness, rejection sensitivity, or rest without guilt. Each week you’ll receive “This Week’s Seed,” a short email with a practical prompt, plus a workbook you build on through the month to create your own personal manual.
No hacks. No shame. Just a community that understands your keyboard is not broken.
Founding members join for $25 a month. The doors are open now, and I’d love to see you inside.