Lindsay Guentzel (00:19):

Welcome back to Refocused, a podcast all about ADHD. I’m your host, Lindsay Guentzel, and if you’ve been listening for any amount of time and you’ve been paying attention to what’s been going on the last couple of months, you know that we’ve been kind of taking a little break since about mid-February. We’ve been re-airing some of our favorite conversations from Refocus, Together 2022, which was a project we started to share a different person’s story every day throughout the month of October, which is ADHD Awareness Month, and it was the perfect time for us to take a break, I’ve got to be honest. We kind of hit this moment where I had some surgeries coming up, my health was so-so, we were trying to figure out the next path forward for the podcast, and I’m really, really glad that I listened to my managing editor, Sarah Platanitis, when she said, “Let’s just take a break.”

(01:16):

And it’s very hard. If you are someone who loves what you do and you love the people you get to do it with and for, it was very hard for me to say yes, to agree to that, and we are going to continue re-airing some of those episodes next week and probably into mid-April. I had told everybody we had new episodes coming in April. I’m technically still holding to that. We’re going to probably have some new stuff coming right around the middle of April because I do have another surgery coming up in early April, and if I’ve learned anything this last year, it’s that I just really need to give myself time to heal. And again, going back, it is not easy. It is not easy to slow down and to rest and to be okay with it, right? We’re so hard on ourselves and we have spent so much time feeling bad about ourselves for stuff that we didn’t understand, and now we get to kind of give ourselves that grace.

(02:20):

So you might be wondering, if I’m not airing episodes today, what am I doing? Well, today is my birthday and I am someone who loves birthdays. I love your birthday, I love my birthday, I love birthdays, and I’ve missed you. I’ve missed this. I’ve missed making the podcast. I’ve missed having conversations and I’ve also been in my head about doing this. So right now, it is literally 7:45 AM on Monday, March 18th. I thought that I would be up much earlier. I’m not sleeping very well. I’m getting about four hours of sleep most nights, but last night’s sleep was a gift. It must have been a birthday gift from the gods.

(03:06):

I slept from 10:00 until 6:30, and here is the best part for those of you who have issues sleeping and you can commiserate with the feeling of, “Oh my God. I’m not going to sleep through the night,” the first time I woke up and looked at my watch. Now keep in mind, I’ve been sleeping about four hours. So that means the normal time I would do this would be about 1:30 in the morning. It was 5:00 AM. I slept until 5:00 AM. I wasn’t awake, I wasn’t roaming the house, I wasn’t panicking that I was going to feel terrible today. The first time I looked at my watch was 5:00, and so I reset an alarm for 7:00 and went back to sleep, and then when I got up, it was a little before 7:00, I woke up, I went to my favorite coffee shop, so I have a big thermos of coffee here and I got a gluten-free breakfast sandwich. Treat yourself on your birthday. And now I’m settling in to do this, and like I said, I’ve been in my head about trying to do what I would call a live podcast.

(04:10):

So I’m going to press stop on recording, I’m going to add music, I’m going to make sure that the volume here is good and that everybody can hear what I’m saying, and then I’m going to press publish, and I don’t do that. I do not do anything without a very serious edit process. Most of the time that’s because I’m having a guest on, and my job as the executive producer and the host of Refocused is to make sure that every single person who comes on this podcast listens to themselves and goes, “Oh my God, I sound fantastic,” and for a lot of people that requires editing. We all make mistakes. We have our crutches we use, our ums and our likes, and the unfortunate reality is to make a podcast that is pleasing for as many people, you’ve got to clean some of that up, but we’re not doing that today.

(05:01):

I come from a background of live radio. In fact, I did live radio on February 29th. I will link that in the show notes, so if you want to listen to it, but I went on the show that I used to produce, The Chad Hartman Show, which is on WCCO Radio here in Minneapolis, and I produced for Chad for a number of years and we got very close, and I was on air every day. I was kind of like a producer, but also a sidekick, and he so kindly agreed to have me in studio on February 29th because it was Rare Disease Day, and I have a rare disease. I have dermatomyositis among a myriad of other diagnoses I received in the last year, and that is a diagnosis that one in 5,000 Americans have. I’m just so special. And if you’ve been following along for the last year, you know that it has been incredibly hard.

(05:54):

Anyway. I will share that in the show notes. I had a great conversation with Chad where I shared some of my story, and what I appreciated the most was the last question he asked me. The last question he asked me was actually about ADHD and what has happened in this last year and how my ADHD and this new life I have as a chronically ill person, how they have come together, and I just so appreciated it because in that moment he was acknowledging how big my diagnosis was for me because it was, you guys. Being diagnosed right before I turned 35 was such a life-changing moment for me, and in the two years between that diagnosis and being diagnosed with dermatomyositis, I put in so much work. Just every day working on myself, and not because I had all of these flaws, but because there were things that I had never learned that were making life so difficult for me, and I realized I have been carrying some of those things, some of those moments around in this bag that is so heavy.

(07:14):

And so when I thought about doing a on the spot, pseudo-live version of the podcast for my birthday, I was like, “What do I want to talk about?” And honestly, I think it’s kind of going to be an episode of me airing my dirty laundry in a way that I hope is therapeutic for you, is comforting for you, is an opportunity for you to hear somebody else share some of the most ridiculous things that they’ve been holding shame onto, and I’m hopeful that by me opening up today and getting these things off my chest, one, it helps me because I’m over it. I’m over putting in this extra work, carrying around this shame stuff, it is ridiculous, but I’m also hopeful that it allows you to let go of some of that stuff. It’s just exhausting constantly trying to fit into a world that wasn’t designed for us. There’s no need for us to give ourselves more stuff to work on, more shit to handle. I’m over it.

(08:21):

And then I was in my head about having to do it live and what I was going to sound like in the morning, what my voice was going to sound like, would I be able to get it done? I have to go in for blood work this morning and then John and I are going to go to breakfast. So there is a finite amount of time I have this morning to get this done. So to stay on point, I’m going to wrap this up and get into some of those moments that I’ve been carrying around, but I’ve been trying to read more. I realized as a kid I loved to read and I loved to just dive into books. I mean, I was reading in the bathtub till the water went cold. I was reading at the dinner table. I totally connected with Linda Yi when she talked about hiding her book in her desk at the old school elementary school desk. That was definitely me.

(09:06):

So I went back to the library, I got my library card. I have been reading nonstop, and I found that I really like thrillers, especially thrillers written by women. So if that is your genre, let’s connect, because I want to know what you’re suggesting. But I started a new book last night and I had to laugh because I opened it up and the first page, the introduction to the story has a quote from Frederick Nietzsche and I will say I had to look up how to pronounce his name. Do not feel bad about that. That is something that I do all the time, looking up how to pronounce people’s names because I am pretty terrible at phonics. But Frederick Nietzsche, and it was a quote that connected to the stuff we carry around and it just felt like this perfect moment. It was like 9:30, I was cuddled up in a blanket reading this book, and this was the quote that started it, “Man cannot learn to forget, but hangs on the past. However far or fast he runs, that chain runs with him.”

(10:07):

I don’t know that there’s a more perfect way for us to jump right into today’s episode than that little thing right there. If that was not the universe telling me, “Just do it. Get it out of your way, stop overthinking it,” that was it right there. So a huge thank you to the author who put that on the first page of the book, and now let’s get the birthday unloading underway.

(10:37):

If you’re a sports fan, you know that March is all about basketball, and we had the games on yesterday and the Big Ten basketball tournaments championship game was on. It was Wisconsin versus Illinois, and we’re watching the game, and it’s actually here in Minneapolis right now. The tournament was for both the men and women for the Big Ten were in Minneapolis the last two weekends, and it brought back this moment when I was probably 23. I was working at a sports radio station and I had the opportunity to take along with a friend to the Big Ten basketball tournament that was in Indianapolis this year or that year, and they got me a press pass, sent me along with the radio recorder, all of that good stuff.

(11:18):

The Gophers were like one of the first games because they were not seated very good. In fact, that year, Indianapolis had given each team a bar so their fans could meet at that bar and watch stuff and hang out and get to know one another, that camaraderie for the teams, that sort of thing, and Minnesota’s bar was Rock Bottom Brewery, and I felt that that was very fitting, considering that they lost their first game of the tournament on day one. But what I was going back to yesterday as I was watching the tournament was being on press row, and when you’re on press row, you’re like right behind the benches or the next row up from where the players would be sitting.

(11:57):

So you’re very close to the court and a lot of times you see press on that row when you’re watching on TV because it’s just visible. So I’m there and I know, “Okay, I’m going to do this game and then I’m going to go on the radio after it’s done with the afternoon show that starts at 3:00. I’ll do a live hit from here. We’ll talk about it, all that good stuff.” The game gets underway and I’m tweeting from the press row, I’m taking notes, I got my digital camera. I mean, that’s how long ago it was, this Sony digital camera. I think it was waterproof. I think you could take it underwater. And I’m taking photos from press row and I get this great photo of one of the players just going in for this massive dunk, and I am stoked. I am just new at this internship, I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m like, “I got a killer photo.”

(12:50):

Until the game ends, of course they lose, and I go to do my live hit with the radio show and the producer comes on, and before he puts me live on air, he tells me… Oh my God. No, he didn’t even do it off-air. It was on-air. I’m fairly certain on-air the producer brought up me taking photos from press row and I had no idea that you are not supposed to. Yes, you could take a photo with your phone. You’re not supposed to use flash. You are not granted rights to take photos on press row. That’s why there are press photographers and they have a completely different credential, they’re usually wearing these, they kind of look like football pinnies, like these brightly colored smocks they put over their clothes so that they’re identifiable as press and they’re normally closer to a court. So no one told me any of this, and like I said, this was one of my first opportunities covering sports in this capacity.

(13:53):

I had been to a few things following producers, shadowing, but this was the first, you were on your own and you’re going to get footage and coverage for us. But no one ran through the rules with me. No one said, “This is the expectation of what you are allowed to do and not to do on press row.” And this is where I’ll tell you, if you’ve ever heard the joke, “There’s no cheering in the press box,” because that’s actually a thing that happens. You get press from a specific town in a press box and the idea of press is that they’re supposed to be neutral, that you’re there to cover the event. Well, if you’re cheering for a team in the press box, that’s not neutral. Anyway. I go back to this moment, I’m live on the radio, the producer brings it up. They’re like chuckling about it in a way like it’s not a big deal, but like, “Oh, God. Rookie move, taking photos from press row.”

(14:50):

And I remember just shutting down. Full-blown going into this place of, “You are such a fricking idiot. What were you thinking? That’s so embarrassing,” and I had gone into it being like, “Oh, man. I got this great photo and everyone is going to be so excited.” Yeah, that’s something that I have been really embarrassed about for a really, really long time, and here I am saying I didn’t know. No one told me. Which is fitting because the next thing I have to tell you is also another one of those it was a first time thing and no one told me. With everything that’s been going on, I’ve been trying to lean into some of the work opportunities that I have that would be easier to do with all of the health stuff I have going on, and one of those things is corporate speaking or public speaking for major events.

(15:49):

I’ve done a bunch of it in the past and I’ve been very lucky that those people found me, but now I’m in this place of wanting to pitch myself as someone you could hire to come to your company and speak to specific groups. So I say that if that is something that you have connections with or you would be interested in connecting me with the company that you work with, let’s talk. My email is in the show notes. So I’ve been putting together my demo reel because I need to show people my credentials, what I’m capable of doing and what I’ve done in the past, and the other day I was brainstorming, writing down all of the things that I never wrote down before, but I’ve done. Things like hosting 5Ks for nonprofits, or many years ago I hosted this award show for this publishing firm in the Twin Cities.

(16:47):

And I remembered when I worked for Major League Baseball, the first or second month that I was working with them, they had me host this virtual conversation at the NAB show in Vegas. And so I was in New York and the people that I was connecting with, they were in Las Vegas and we were talking about technology. This was 2012, so keep that in mind when we’re talking about what they were probably promoting at the time, but I never really added that to the list of things I had accomplished, right? I just did it and went on my merry way, and one of the reasons why was because it wasn’t perfect, and I don’t know if you guys feel this way, but when things aren’t perfect, I don’t want to promote them to other people because they make me feel bad about myself.

(17:36):

But I’m trying to get past that, so I went down this rabbit hole trying to find some information on it, and I actually found a blog someone had written about the presentation that I was involved with, and it was actually for Sony, so it was Sony’s press conference at this massive broadcasting conference in Las Vegas. So pretty big deal. And I see in this guy’s blog that there is a photo of me, there is a photo of me on this giant screen on stage with this executive from Sony, and then I’m reading the blog and it says something along the lines of, “And then we connected with the cast of the MLB Fan Cave in New York, and it proved to be an interesting interview because there were some delay issues at the beginning, and so everyone was talking over each other until we got things sorted out,” or something along those lines, which is exactly what happened.

(18:34):

No one had prepared me for the delay. No one had said, “There is a significant delay between you and this other person.” Now, if you’ve never done an interview in this capacity, how I would describe it is if you’re on a Zoom call and you notice that delay, and then you and the other person just keep talking over each other, so it’s like, “Oh. No, you go. Oh,” and because of the delay, I would stop talking and then I didn’t think, “Oh, allow him time to respond.” I then tried to fill the silence, but while I was filling the silence, he was hearing my answer, the first answer, and was then starting to respond. No one told me. So it took a couple of minutes for us to get this rhythm figured out. And I will say it threw me, it completely threw me. It threw me so hard for the rest of the interview that I mixed up the Mets and the Washington Nationals. I was so embarrassed. I felt so sick to my stomach the entire time.

(19:36):

I don’t even know if I would want to see the video. I mean, it would be interesting to see it just to see what it looked like if I could tell that I was so nervous during it. But that opening part where no one had prepared me for what was going to happen, and it just messed things up. And it was really frustrating because we are sometimes at the mercy of those around us, and I was never taught ask questions. What do you not know? What are you not familiar with? There was just this sort of expectation of you just go and do it, and for a lot of us, that then leads to these massive tunnels of shame that we find ourselves in because we are not perfect the first time and we are not expected to be perfect the first time.

(20:18):

I have a friend right now who is launching a pottery company, and so she is learning how to use the kiln and the colors that she’s using, and sometimes things are not going the way she wants to, but she’s also sharing that process, and I respect the hell out of it because it’s such an important reminder that the only way forward is to learn. But we were never taught that, we were never taught, “Slow and steady. A little bit here, a little bit there.” There are going to be moments where you are incredibly disappointed, but the end game is knowing all of that stuff so that you don’t repeat those moments. I look back at that Sony thing and I’m just like, “Okay, I didn’t know about the delay. I didn’t know what I was supposed to ask and no one told me. So if I went into that again, what were some things that I would want to know ahead of time to make sure that it didn’t happen again?”

(21:20):

My senior year of high school, I had a credit card, and no, it was not because my parents got me a credit card, it was because I was on spring break and there was a table set up for Citi Card and I filled out the application and those assholes sent me not one but two credit cards. I had a Visa and a MasterCard, and that was the start of the demise of not only any sort of financial responsibility, but also my credit score. When prom time came around, I went with my mom shopping to Marshall Fields. That’s a regional department store that we had growing up. They don’t exist any longer, they’re now Macy’s, but if you remember back in the day, there was Marshall Fields.

(22:04):

And so we went prom dress shopping, and I found this Jessica McClintock short strapless, and this is the time where everyone wore long. Long dresses were all the rage, and it was a short, strapless white dress. It hit at the waist, strapless at the top with some gold lace, and then this fitted bodice and then this poof tool skirt in white, and I thought it was so cool. It was so unique. It was something I hadn’t seen anyone wearing. No one else was kind of looking at this style, because again, everyone was going long, and I bought it. We bought it, we brought it home, I was super excited, and then my best friend went shopping to a prom pageant store, so a very, very specific store, and she came home with this stunning dress. It was perfect. It was like a green mermaid prom dress, and I was in my head about the difference between her dress and my dress.

(23:09):

Now, I loved my dress, this white dress. I still really wish that I had purchased it. Sometimes when I’m going down those internet Googling rabbit holes, I’ll look and see if I can find it on a resale site because now it’s probably considered vintage. This was spring of 2004. So I’m in my head about my dress. My friend has this beautiful dress and I go to the store that she’s gone to, and I find this purple dress and it’s beautiful. It’s long, like everyone else’s, and it’s got this iridescent overlay to it with all of this beading and this unique one little pop-up top side for the strapless dress. It was gorgeous, but I had a dress already. Didn’t stop me from buying this other dress, which was like $250 more. But remember, I had a credit card, so I was not thinking that I was actually spending money, I was just putting this dress on this credit card.

(24:08):

And you want to know what? I have felt guilt about how much money I spent on my prom dress for 20 years. I have been in my head about the difference between the $180 dress, which is expensive, yes. I’m not belittling $180 on a dress. I spent 300-and-something on it, an astronomical amount of money on a dress that I wore once, that is still hanging in my mother’s closet, and I think part of the reason why I have so much shame and anxiety around that is because I’ve been so terrible with money and I was never taught how to save money or the power that comes from saving money. I still think we are missing out on this massive group of people who just want saving money to have a dopamine reaction attached to it. Someone needs to figure out how to make saving money sexy. The problem is, that’s way easier said than done.

(25:12):

I am getting better with money. I am learning how great it does feel to pay your credit card bill on time and to not carry balances and to earn points because you are doing things the way that you are, quote, unquote, supposed to. It’s not a completely perfect scenario we have going on, but I am learning and carrying around the shame for 20 years about the dress that I bought, that I enjoyed, that I had a great time in that is still, like I said, hanging in my mother’s closet. It’s just something that it’s time to get rid of.

(25:52):

A couple of years back, a friend asked me to move him from Minnesota to Manhattan, and we were driving in a U-Haul through so many states in the middle of nowhere to get to New York City. I, at the time, was working as a freelance producer for Minnesota Public Radio, and I felt bad taking time off, so what did I do instead of taking time off was I over-committed myself and I told them that I could produce on the road as long as they gave me an internet connector so that I could connect to wifi in the car. Fine, no problem. They gave it to me, everything’s great. First day goes fine, second day goes fine. Third day I have a quick turn.

(26:38):

So the interview’s recorded at 6:30 and I have to get it ready for air in the 7:00 hour, not so dissimilar to what I am doing this morning with this quick turnaround podcast, but there was more at stake. If I don’t get this done, I can go to my blood work appointment, post it afterwards, and that’s just how it’s going to happen. It’s a little different when you’re working with live radio, you’re working with people who have very high expectations, and I didn’t get it in. I was uploading the file and the internet was not working the way I wanted it to, and the file was stalled, and we were coming out of commercial and they had to pivot and air something else because I didn’t have the recording, the interview, finished and done and uploaded to them.

(27:27):

Now, in the very long period of time that I was working at MPR, that was the first time that it ever happened, that I had missed a deadline, and I felt terrible about it. I felt just awful, and then I had to sit with my feelings in this very large, very loud U-Haul for 10 more hours in the day driving to New York City. I look back at that as this big opportunity of acknowledging that I take on too much. I say yes to too much. It has been one of the things I have learned over the last year. Prioritizing is not something that I’m good at, and if I am going to be decent at it, I tend to prioritize other people’s stuff and not my own. I should have told them that I didn’t want to work on the road. I should have disconnected from that, but I could do it.

(28:23):

There was nothing stopping me from fulfilling both obligations, helping my friend move to New York successfully and help them out with these edits, and I felt bad setting that boundary. I felt bad saying, “No, I’m not going to do this.” It’s why I’ve worked on every vacation that I have had in the last however many years, because one, I have terrible time management skills, which is a whole other problem to be discussed on another podcast, but two, I don’t know how to set boundaries, and when someone asks me for something I don’t know how to say, “That doesn’t work for me right now,” and I think there are a lot of us that fall into that fulfilling our needs, our needs for reassurance that we are important, all of that stuff, we fall into saying yes because it makes us feel good. We feel good when other people acknowledge us for the things that we can bring to the table.

(29:25):

And for a lot of us, the reason we do that is because we never got the affirmations we were looking for as children. We were never told, “You are so good at this,” or, “You are so consistent at this,” or, “You are so nice to others.” Because we were masking so much of the time, we were often only spoken to when we had done something wrong, when something terrible had happened and someone needed to point out our failures. So as adults, we are constantly looking for that little glimmer of, “Oh, my goodness. We did something right.”

(30:09):

So here I was in this U-Haul, editing something for error on a computer, trying to upload it and it didn’t work. Looking back, could have easily said no, could have easily told them, “Nope, that’s not going to happen.” The other side of it, I could have been done probably a half an hour earlier had I not been going for perfection, but been going for good enough. Again, another conversation to have a little deeper at another time. But that is one that has been sitting with me throughout the last couple of years because it’s one of the most recent moments where I let someone down and I felt terrible, and then I had to sit in it. And if you’ve done it, you know it. It’s terrible. It’s awful. No one likes it.

(31:01):

The last little ball of shame that I have been carrying around is probably the biggest, and it’s because I’m the most embarrassed by it. I’m the most embarrassed that at this time in my life, I thought that this was what I was supposed to be doing. I’ve talked a lot about how college was incredibly hard for me and the semesters that I was in, the semesters that I was focused and I had a plan in place and things were going well, I did well in school, but there was definitely more bad than good. I failed more semesters than I probably did well at, or it’s pretty close to even. So what would’ve been my senior year fall semester, not doing well. I’m not graduating. I am not on the path for any sort of leaving college with a college degree, and I’m not telling anyone about this.

(31:57):

I know my parents knew because I had been on academic probation, but outside of that, I was not confiding in anyone regarding what was going on. And homecoming came along and I was in a sorority, so we were very involved in homecoming, and I thought, “I’m going to apply for homecoming royalty. I’m going to do this. I’m going to put my hat in the ring for homecoming royalty.” Now, I’m at the University of Minnesota. There are 50-some thousand students. I also have no business submitting for homecoming royalty. Yes, I was very involved, I had worked at the school paper, I was involved in a bunch of clubs, all of those distractions that were keeping me from actually being a college student. So those accolades looked great, but what I didn’t know going into it is that I had to submit a transcript, and so I submitted my transcript with all of those failures, and I wrote out some reasons for it.

(32:57):

Now, keep in mind, I had not confided in anyone about why college was so hard for me. I was not talking about the disordered eating, the binge-drinking, the manic behavior, any of those things with anyone who would help me. But in that moment, I thought, “My God, if I want to be homecoming queen, I have to tell them why things are so terrible.” And I don’t even remember what I wrote down, but I put some things in there basically trying to make it seem like, oh, there was a reason for why I was failing out of school. I’m so embarrassed that at that moment, everything that was going on in life, that was where I was putting my energy. Here was this shiny thing that I wanted, probably for all of the wrong reasons. I wanted to feel liked, I wanted to feel important. I remember nailing the interview, of course, but I did not make the top five. I was not in the homecoming court for I’m sure the reasons that I just shared here.

(34:12):

I had terrible grades. I was not a great college student. I was not anyone that this university wanted to be promoting in that realm, but I was so connected to it. I was so hopeful. And now knowing what I know about my ADHD and my hyperfocus and my desire to be liked and to have people be nice to me, I had this weird feeling of like, “If I am nominated homecoming queen, all of the bad stuff that has happened in the past goes out the window,” and I spent so much time and energy focused on this thing while everything around me was burning to the ground, and I couldn’t see that connection. I couldn’t see what… I couldn’t talk myself out of just wanting that thing, and I honestly was a little hesitant about sharing it here because I am so embarrassed about it. Who did I think I was? Who did I think I was in that moment to put myself into that position?

(35:28):

And it feels good to share it. I imagine that there are probably some of you that can relate in similar situations of having your priorities set straight, but wow. I just… Anyway. It also made me think at the time at the university, I was seeing a therapist at the health clinic, and I don’t know how long they keep records, but I’ve actually been thinking about reaching out and seeing if they do have my records and if I could get a copy of them, because I would love, love to go back and see what I was sharing at that time and see what connects now and what I can see as undiagnosed ADHD. So sharing that as a little, when I listen back to this, I will actually write it down and remember that, oh, you should reach out to health services at the university and see if they have your files.

(36:27):

There are obviously so many more that I could point out, things that I’ve carried around, like, oh, the time we got asked to stop swearing at a karaoke bar in Nashville, and I spent the rest of the night feeling like I had just been arrested and that my parents had been called and I was 30-some years old. That’s a story for another time, because again, only can divulge so much this morning, and like I said, I am actually on a timeline. We’re on a turnaround timeline. I have to go to do blood work on my birthday, and then John is going to take me out for breakfast, and I don’t know what the rest of the day holds. Probably some reading, probably some napping, hopefully a little working if I am feeling up for it.

(37:11):

Things have been really difficult lately besides the hand surgery and just not feeling great. I have this incredibly rare reaction to a medication called paradoxical acute inflammatory syndrome, which has rocked my body, and so going into today’s blood work is one of those, “I know my numbers are going to be terrible. They’ll match how I feel. They’re hopefully tied to this rare intolerance that my body has been dealing with, and hopefully they’ll go away,” but for all of you who’ve dealt with illness, that feeling of just like, “Something’s got to give, man.” And probably shouldn’t have taken on this in this morning, probably could have just curled up onto the couch and read my book and drank my coffee, but like I said, I’ve missed this. I’ve missed you guys. I’ve missed people reaching out after episodes and just feeling like they have been seen, feeling like they have found a connection.

(38:11):

And we are going to go back to rearing some of those Refocused, Together 2022 episodes next week. We’ve got some new stuff in the works. We’re working on booking new interviews with great people to share their stories and their expertise with you. But I wanted kind of a fun little birthday challenge. I wanted a fun little., I don’t know, get behind the mic, get out of my own way, try and make something happen. So if you are someone who’s been listening for a while, or if you’re a new listener and you want to help celebrate my birthday, the way to do that, the way that would benefit us in just the most important way, take a minute when this is done, head over to wherever you’re listening, and leave us a rating and a review, and if you haven’t subscribed yet, please do that.

(39:06):

I say it over and over again because the only way for new people to find us is for us to move up in the rankings, and the way that we do that is through these ratings, reviews, and subscriptions. So the best place to do that, if you can, is through Apple Podcasts. On Spotify, you can leave a rating. But wherever you are listening, make sure that you’re subscribed so that these episodes get delivered right to you every time we release a new one. And if you’d like to drop me a note, you can do that, [email protected]. You can also find us on social media, @RefocusedPod, and @LindsayGuentzel. And if there was a story that made you feel a certain way about one of your own, I’m here. Email’s open, DMs are open. It’s not worth carrying around anymore, and if you need to get it off of your chest and you don’t want to do it in the very public way of sharing it on a podcast, please know that I am here and I will gladly take that from you and help you just kind of dispose it to the side.

(40:12):

So with that said, that’s it for today. A nice little Monday airing of my dirty laundry, airing of we’ll call it my ADHD laundry. And yeah, I’m really grateful for this podcast, I’m really grateful for the people that it’s introduced me to, and it means the world to me every single time I hear from someone and they share the same. So thank you guys so much, and we’ll talk to you soon.