I was recently interviewed about Art RPGs and ADHD

If you’ve known me long enough, you probably know I have ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyper Activity Disorder). My ADHD has made my life a challenge in many ways, and one of which is motivation.

This is one of the reasons I am so passionate about gamifying art and supporting the Art RPG community. I see Art RPGs as a fun way to help motivate neurodivergent artists to get past their perfectionism and motivational challenges and get creating again by bribing them with virtual gold, XP, and more.

Recently, I was invited to be interviewed on the ADHD Artist Podcast to talk all about Art RPGs and how they can benefit the ADHD artist community.

I had a lot of fun chatting with the host, Sarah Guise. We talked about Google doodles, disclosing your disability at school and in the workplace, PaperDemon, and Art RPGs. Actually there’s a TON more that I feel like we could have talked about. I hope I get the chance to come on again because ADHD is one of those topics that I have passionate opinions on.

ADHD Artist Podcast Episode 12

Listen to the interview

And if you’re an artist with ADHD, check out the other episodes available on their podcast, too!

One Week Left Of My Internship

Life is good. Work is hard. It’s almost the end of summer and the end of my internship. This has been my first real experience with a real full time job. It feels great to be moving out of the school phase of my life and into the working phase but at the same time I feel a little depressed about it. Not because I’ll miss school. Far from it. I am getting sick of school! But I’ve found that having a full time job that mostly involves sitting on your butt in front of a computer all day can be quite draining. I’m often so tired by the end of the day that what free time I do have, I don’t want to spend on the computer. Which means my personal projects like ZMT and PaperDemon.com don’t get as much attention as they used to.

I still have one last year of school left. I will be working part time during the school year.

I can’t take on anything new. From now on, anyone who approaches me about any sort of project, whether it be a flash project, art request, website design, I will just have to say no. For the first time in my life I’m saying ‘no.’ I have this problem where I get really excited about projects and say ‘yes’ to every opportunity that comes at me, whether or not I have the time for it. Now I don’t even have as much time for the project that matters to me most, PaperDemon.com.

In other news, I’ve finally got my hands on some real music software. I bought Reason. I’m still trying to get the hang of it though. It’s not the most user-friendly program out there. But I’ve signed up for a workshop being held next weekend. So as soon as I get the hang of this program I can start posting more of my music.

 

Week 1 @ Google

I’ve finished my first week at Google. It seemed to go by so fast. They had a lot of new hires this week so my equipment still isn’t all available yet. But luckily I got enough of it to get started on some actual work by Friday.

I made my first submit to the Google server on Friday! That means I made my first change to a web page on the Google server. It was just a small change on the about page for Gmail. All I did was change the languages from 38 to 40 and add Hebrew and Arabic to the language list. But I feel pretty special about it. I also got to work on my first icon. I also have a meeting for my first real project on Monday :D!

I really like the atmosphere at Google. By the end of my first week I was feeling really comfortable. I no longer feel nervous or anxious. My co-workers are really nice and have been a big help in getting me up to speed on how to use the Google file systems and learning the procedures. There’s a lot of documentation I’ve had to go through and read. I sort of felt like I was cramming for a final :lol:. It’s been a challenge though because a lot of it is centralized around Unix and I only just started learning Unix a month ago.

Anyway, I just really love it there. I like the people, the food, the equipment, and the work. I just know this is going to be the best summer of my life.

 

Day 1 @ Google

Rule number one about Fight Club, don’t talk about Fight Club!

That’s pretty much how it is at Google. I can’t tell you anything about what’s going on there. That’s just how it is.

I’m very tired. I didn’t really do any work today but it was hectic running all over the place to do orientations, setting up stuff, etc.

If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go shower and collapse on my bed

 

I’m Working at Google this Summer!

On Tuesday I start my new internship at Google. I’m really excited about it. I can’t wait to meet the other interns and learn what life is like as a Googler.

I am really proud to be working at Google. My manager is the guy who does all of the Google holiday logos! Can you believe that?! That is AWESOME. I’m looking forward to working with him and learning the secrets of the Google doodles. Every time I think about the fact that I’ll be working at Google I pinch myself just to make sure I’m not dreaming.

Another Google intern sent me a link to this cool site called Gintern.net that displays all the Google intern blogs.

Anyway, the art section of my blog site is FINALLY done.

There are a lot of things I’m looking forward to learning this summer. I’m told I’ll be making a lot of icons and such. I don’t see myself as a really great icon designer so I’ll get a lot of practice and learn all the tricks. I’m hoping to take what I learn at Google and apply it to PaperDemon.com to make it easier for members to post their artwork and such. I’m also looking forward to trying out the hardware. I hear they use Tablet PCs for drawing and I’ve never drawn on one before. If I like it, I may buy one for myself. It will be nice to have a little computer to use as my sketchbook. I will be able to do watercolor without carrying around a paint set! I like painting digitally better than painting traditionally anyway.

Another thing I think I will buy is that Reason software for making digital music. The music programs I have now are so crappy. That is part of the reason why I haven’t posted any new music in the music section of my site for a long time. I’m waiting to get some better software with a better piano sound font.

Google gives free meals every day for employees and I’m hoping I don’t gain any weight.