However, I constantly question whether or not that is my "calling." I feel that programming games for eight hours a day and putting myself in that box for life is leaving too many other things on the table, ideas I want to express in other ways. If I just programmed with most of my free time and played games or something with the rest until I died, I would find something fundamentally wrong with my personal choices.
The issue is that without a dopamine-adjusting substance, it really feels like there is no way out of that loop. And I can't even deny that I'm succeeding at the programming thing, in a way that so many people can only dream of doing. But the art that I say I want to do requires Adderall at a certain point for me to make tangible progress, and the other kind of art doesn't. One has a limit of however many hours the drug lasts, the other has practically no limit except my ability to stay awake.
By now I understand the feelings of the people who say they can't program for more than X hours a day. I find it hard to do anything besides programming that requires deliberate effort for more than a few hours a day.
I feel that ADD isn't even a disorder indicating a deficit of attention, instead it's such that the attention is tightly bound to things that you don't get to choose. I kind of got lucky in my case, in that I legitimately enjoy programming and do want to finish the project I "want." But then there are other things that I want, that I tell myself that I want to scream at the world at the top of my lungs one day, but never do. I believe it would be the saddest thing if I passed on that opportunity. I only have one life.