A Question I Can’t Answer
Someone asked me yesterday what I’ve been up to.
Not in a checking-in way. In the normal, conversational way people ask that question. What’s new? What have you been working on?
I didn’t have an answer. Not a real one. Not one that felt truthful.
It’s not that I’ve been doing nothing. It’s that I’ve been doing everything.
Today alone — and it’s not even 2:00 in the afternoon — I’ve spent 30 minutes playing piano. Another 30 learning Spanish. Took the dogs for two walks. Hit the gym. It was leg day. F*ck leg day. Did a significant amount of testing and coding on Project Broken Mirror. Worked on a state-wide cybersecurity project proposal. Missed two meetings. On accident. Reached out to a few friends I haven’t spoken to in a long time — because I sort of forgot they existed. Spent some time planning to teach the next CvCISO-1 cohort, which starts July 6th.
And a half dozen other things I’ve already lost track of.
This is a normal day. This is every day.
I’m 55 years old. I’ve spent decades inside complex systems — cybersecurity, leadership, organizations, technology, people. I’ve founded companies. Written books. Built programs that serve tens of thousands of practitioners I’ll never meet. I’m competent. I’m experienced. I get things done.
And I cannot answer the question “What have you been up to?”
Not because I’m hiding anything. Not because I’m being cagey. Because when someone asks me that question, my brain does something that is hard to describe unless you’ve lived it.
It doesn’t give me a summary. It gives me everything. All of it. Simultaneously.
Every project. Every idea. Every half-finished thing. Every person I meant to call back. Every tab that’s still open — literally and metaphorically. It all arrives at once, in no particular order, with no particular priority. And the part of my brain that’s supposed to sort that, summarize it, and hand back a clean answer to a simple social question — that part doesn’t work the way it does for most people.
So I say something vague. “Busy.” “A lot of stuff.” “You know, the usual.”
And the person walks away thinking I’m either hiding something or not interested in talking to them. Neither is true. My brain just doesn’t answer the question their brain asked.
This is ADHD.
Not the fidgety, distracted, squirrel-chasing version people joke about. The real thing. The one where your brain is running six lanes of traffic with no merge control and no off-ramps. The one where you can hold a deeply complex problem in your head for hours — the architecture of a distributed scanning platform, the structure of a 15-chapter textbook, the dynamics of a statewide cybersecurity initiative — and still forget a meeting that started ten minutes ago. Not because you don’t care. Because your attention is not something you direct. It’s something that happens to you.
ADHD is my superpower. It’s also my curse.
It’s why I can build things that matter. It’s why I notice patterns other people miss. It’s why I can hold sixteen threads at once and actually make progress on most of them. It’s also why I miss meetings. Why I lose track of people I genuinely care about. Why answering a simple question can feel harder than building a security program from scratch.
I’m not writing this for sympathy. I don’t need sympathy. I have a fantastic wife, the best executive leadership team on the planet, and a life I wouldn’t trade for anything.
I’m writing this because I know I’m not the only one.
I know there are people reading this who have also said “Busy” when they meant “I literally cannot summarize my life into a casual response right now.” People who have walked away from conversations feeling like they failed a test nobody else knew was being administered. People who are genuinely good at what they do and still feel like they’re scrambling to keep up with themselves.
I see you.
And here’s what I’ve learned, the hard way, over 55 years:
You don’t owe anyone a summary. “Busy” is a complete sentence. The people who matter will learn that your chaos is not disorder — it’s how you work. And the people who don’t get it were probably going to misunderstand you anyway.
Also: write things down. I know. I know. Everyone tells you that. But seriously. Write things down. Not because it fixes anything. Because it gives you something to point to when your brain won’t hand you the summary. A list is not a personality. But it is a life raft.
BTW, I suck at writing things down or I forget that I wrote it down. I can give the advice, but living it is a struggle.
So if you’ve asked me “What’s new?” and I gave you a short answer and changed the subject — I’m sorry. It wasn’t you. It was me. Literally. My brain, specifically.
And if you’re someone who has done the same thing to other people — welcome. You’re in good company. We’re not broken. We’re just running a different operating system.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a piano to play, a dog to walk, a state to secure, and a meeting I’ve probably already missed.
