Thoughts on ADHD & Goals for 2026

It’s January 10th. By now, odds are you’ve already fallen down on some of your resolutions. To that end, I want to talk about two of my goals that I can almost guarantee were more delayed than yours are, and the takeaways I have from them. When my boys were born, I set a goal to earn my black belt and write a book by the time they turned five. They’re sixteen now, almost seventeen, and I finally reached both of those milestones - a mere eleven years later than I planned.Let’s unpack that.In hindsight, the black belt goal was ambitious, but realistic. The book goal was naive at best. Please indulge me for a minute while we play “Storytime with Mr. B”. I had been training in Kempo for a little less than a year when my boys were born. I don’t remember what belt I was, probably orange or green, but I went to the dojo a lot. As long as grading permitted, I was still a teacher at the time, I spent about 10 hours a week there across four days. By the time they turned four, I had earned my brown belt. And there I would stay for the next 12 years. So what happened? Around the time the boys turned four, my career as a teacher ended and I had to rebuild myself. I ended up exploring ADHD coaching and pursuing a second Masters in Counseling. At the same time, my mom fell very ill and eventually passed away. Oh, and my car burned down. It was a lot to absorb, and eventually led to me leaving the dojo because I didn’t have time for it. No regrets, though, because that road eventually led me to where I am now. And I am both better at my ADHD work than I was at teaching, and find it more fulfilling. In June of 2018, the dojo lost one of its members, and I attended the funeral. Which led me to reconnect with Master Phil, my instructor, and return my training. By the time I had knocked the rust off, and ranked up to just below black belt, COVID hit and the world shut down. Taking class over Zoom and in parking lots without the ability to actually interact with each other doesn’t make for the best training. Things were mostly back to normal by 2022, and told me I should prepare to test for Black belt at the end of the year. I did. But in March of that year, my son’s OCD spiked and by July he would be in McLean Hospital’s OCDi Jr program, coming home that October. Thankfully, it worked and he got better. But the whole experience left an impact on our family, and I spent much of the rest of the year managing the lingering effects on his twin brother while also helping to care for my dad who was sick at the time. (Eventually, everyone got better, but I was pretty burned out.) And so, I told Master Phil that I wasn’t going to be ready for December. It broke my heart. He told me not to worry, and that the Black Belt test would come when I was ready. That happened this past December. It was a seven hour test. I had bronchitis. It sucked. But I passed. I had a lot of mixed emotions in the moment, mostly guilt and shame for it taking so long. But when I took that first Black belt class, I knew I belonged there.

Takeaway #1: People say that a goal without a due date is just a dream. I say a goal that you keep working toward regardless of a lapsed timeline will be reached eventually. Just keep moving forward. As for the book, mostly I was naive. I had a good idea for a fantasy novel. It’s still good, actually. But I didn’t realize how big of an undertaking writing a book is, and I also didn’t yet know that I had ADHD. It was honestly more of a dream than a goal. But then my teaching career ended, I started to move into ADHD work, and I developed the Wall of Awful model. When I presented it for the first time on a professional stage, I was immediately asked if I was writing a book. I wasn’t ready to then, I barely had enough content to talk about it for an hour, but as time went on, the concept grew. And, as you know, as time went by I also ended up pretty burned out. One thing I knew at the time was that I wouldn’t get out of