The Dreams Are Loud, but the Doubt Has a Megaphone

 

Some days, I can taste my dreams like they’re cotton candy at the fair—sweet, sticky, a little messy, and disappearing faster than I want them to. 

Being a full-time pop culture writer, novelist, mental health advocate, and creative entrepreneur? Oh, I feel it. 

It’s so vivid in my head I could storyboard the movie adaptation right now. And then—bam—I get ambushed by the very loud, very persuasive voice in my brain that insists I can’t actually do it. It’s not that I don’t have the passion. Or the ideas. Or the proof that I can in fact create things that connect with people. (A few viral pieces and some kind comments are taped inside my mental locker for emergencies.) 

But this is the tricky thing about being neurodivergent: my brain often treats “you’re doing something different and exciting” as code for “you’re doing it wrong.” It’s like my mind is a haunted house where every room is filled with doubts dressed in costumes of past mistakes. 

And rejection sensitivity? Oh, it doesn't just whisper. It rents a megaphone and hosts an all-night anxiety rave. 

But here’s what I’ve learned—on the days I do the thing anyway, despite the noise? When I push through the fog and hit publish, or keep writing the story even when my brain is snarling “this sucks”? 

That’s when I win. 

Not always with applause or success I can measure—but with the quiet, stubborn victory of not letting fear be the boss today. 

The truth is, I’m probably never going to fully silence the doubt. But I can learn to recognize that it's not a prophecy—just a symptom. A side effect of living with a brain that processes life on hard mode but also sees connections others miss. And if that brain can dream in Technicolor, maybe it can keep going long enough to finish the movie.