Dispatch #4: Built for Patterns, Optimized for Chaos

May 10, 2025

I love order and structure. I crave it, seek it. It’s where I find comfort and peace.
I love variety and change. I need it, search for it. It’s where I find energy and joy.

These are the voyages of the AuDHD mind.

Its thus-far 40+ year mission: to seek out new experiences… and then get incredibly pissed because the course got changed by some daft ensign at the last minute. Plus, the sound of the engine room went from soothing to sounding like a blender full of screws at full tilt.

To quote the great philosopher of our age, Patrick Star:

“The inner machinations of my mind are an enigma.”

I never felt so seen...

First, some of you may ask, “What is AuDHD?”

It’s a portmanteau of Autism and ADHD, often used by those of us who live at this intersection. It’s also my particular flavor of neurodiversity: part order, part chaos, all me.

Imagine having a brain that wants a detailed five-year plan. But at 2:17 AM on a Tuesday, it wakes you out of a dead sleep to inform you that you have a new hobby and you need to research it. Now.

It’s like having two operating systems running simultaneously: one built on strict routines, the other fueled by novelty and chaos. Both competing for the same resources, running the same routines, and expecting an optimal outcome.

Living with AuDHD feels like hosting two guests in your brain. A neurological odd couple.

One wants everything alphabetized, catalogued, and sanitized before breakfast. The other one just walked in the door with a bear wearing a tutu because, hey, we might need it later.

Some practical examples? I thrive in uncluttered spaces. I need them. An empty desk, a made bed, a tidy room with the quiet mental hum of nothing out of place. Just thinking about it makes me feel zen.

And yet… my ADHD would like a strong word with the manager of this stodgy dump.

It would like to scatter an entire bag of miscellaneous cables, screws, and stress balls directly into the center of my sanctuary and then wander off to learn particle physics or how to make artisanal soap.

I love building Lego sets… there’s something deeply meditative about snapping each piece into place, watching order emerge from chaos. Seeing design spring out of squares and right angles.

But I can’t start until every piece is laid out by color and shape. The autistic part of me demands it.

Meanwhile, the ADHD part of me has my eye twitching while sizing up that one weirdly shaped translucent piece in bag 3, constantly asking, “I wonder what that does… what do you think that’s for… we should read ahead!”

It’s exhausting. And, at the same time, weirdly beautiful.

Because here’s the thing: while these parts of me are constantly at war, they also collaborate in ways I never expected.

My ADHD makes me hungry for new ideas, new skills, and new puzzles to solve. I devour knowledge like it’s a survival mechanism (probably was, evolutionarily speaking).

And my autistic brain? It catalogs, organizes, and connects that chaos into patterns, frameworks, and insights that surprise even me sometimes.

It’s not always harmonious. But when it clicks? Damn.

When novelty meets structure, when curiosity meets clarity? That makes both sides of my brain light up like a Griswold Christmas.

AuDHD isn’t just a tug-of-war. It’s a forge. The tension between the two doesn’t just pull, it fills the moment with energy. With a spark.

A constant stream of raw material flows into my mind to feed my insatiable curiosity. I am always learning, always listening, always exploring. This feels as natural to me as breathing... and being cut off from it just as jarring and terrifying as drowning.

Then there’s a part of me that catalogs, connects, and refines. Hammering it, turning it, forming it... until the noise becomes shape. Chaos becomes meaning.

That combination means I might pick up on something others miss. I can see patterns in chaos. I can separate a thread from a tangle.

I can hyperfocus until the world falls away.

And… sometimes, in that silence… something beautiful emerges.

Living with AuDHD can be chaotic. It can also be powerful.

Because when the chaos finds structure… and the structure embraces change… what gets created is something uniquely weird, entirely unexpected, and occasionally… kind of brilliant.

It’s like catching lightning in a bottle.

And then labeling the bottle… and wondering “Did the Phoenicians use bottles? I wonder how they made them?”

Because why just catch lightning when you can also study the jar…