Inside me, there are two wolves

This post is the script for the Podcast Episode “Inside Me, There Are Two Wolves” which was posted to my YouTube channel on 19/12/2025. The content of the episode might be slightly different in places.

I have been struggling with making content for a long time. For years, I didn’t understand what the problem was. I wanted to make content. I came up with ideas for content. My OneNote book was the home to a media empire across niches, genres and platforms. But whenever the time arrived to make something, I couldn’t.

I would look at the OneNote notes for help, and what I got was anxiety. A brain that said, “This is all too much, I want to do anything but this.” And so it didn’t and did something else, or it would try to fine tune the OneNotes further until it worked.

I didn’t understand what was happening. I had made content relatively successfully for a long time, both as a video game reviewer for a tech blog and with some videos for my own tech YouTube channel.

So why was I suddenly experiencing this block? Was it burnout, just a lack of inspiration or something else?

What I didn’t realize was that I had been sabotaging myself with all the detailed notes and dreams of a media empire. Inside me, there were two wolves, and they were fighting.

These two wolves are two different parts of my diagnosis. I am officially diagnosed with autim and in the past few years I learned that I likely also have ADHD, because I started to notice that specific behaviours weren’t explained by autism.

Both those parts of my brain like the idea of making content. They agree that it would be cool if I could do it and make some money while doing so. But the problem is that they both have different, opposing needs when it comes to making content. Their approach to making content is incompatible.

Back when I still managed to put out content regularly, my process was fairly simple. I was writing for one blog and had one YouTube channel. Whenever I had an idea and the energy I would start making content. This was often a spur of the moment thing. I had an idea , or I was given a game to write about, I would write my blog post or create my video and publish it.  It was crude but the process was simple and it worked. Things got done.

However, at some point the Autism Wolf in me wanted to get involved. I was probably in a period of time where I had too much free time, and I started thinking. Autism Wolf decided that if I wanted to make money, I was probably doing it wrong. And if there’s anything Autism Wolf hates, it’s doing it wrong. It would rather do nothing than not doing something in the most optimized way possible.

So my autistic self took over and started to try and “do things properly.” I started to think and overthink and started thinking about niches, posting things in the right places. My Autistic side started to structure how things should be done and created concepts, structures and imaginary processes. It kept doing research about what platforms to use, what tools would be the best, which schedule we could follow to create content on and ita lso went on tangents about completely hypotheticals, such as “How will we structure a company if we start making money with our content? What will the taks implications be?”

The result was OneNote book full of concepts and lists and tables. YouTube channels and domain names for hypothetical content I could some day make. Things kept snowballing and things were constantly added because Autistic Wolf was afraid of missing something.

While the autistic part of my brain created this complex structure to “succeed” it set me up for failure. After all, the autistic part of my brain has never done anything truly creative in my life. The burst of energy and inspiration to do so always came when the ADHD Wolf was active, and he wanted to do things his own way.

ADHD Wolf says “No”

When I wanted to create content, I was in another mode. A mode where I saw the structures and the possible channels I could create content for and was overwhelmed. I didn’t want to choose between five YouTube channels. I didn’t want to figure out the best way to make a video or didn’t want to read a document on what platforms I have to post to. I just wanted to do a few things: Take an idea, work it out, do my best to create content that felt acceptable and publish it. Posting to social media was optional; I would already be near the end of my battery if I arrived at that point.

Things reached a point that whenever I felt in a creative mood, I was smothered by the theory and rules of a part of me that loved making those things up. Since that lead to anxiety and half an hour of struggling to deal with the excessive rules I’d created for myself I would usually quit because it was torture and start doing something else like playing video games. Since I wasn’t making any money from creating content I felt like the anxiety wasn’t worth it and I let the creative energy flow away.

This has been going on for years, but I didn’t understand what was happening. I thought I wanted to make content so what was going on? Why did I feel anxious when I didn’t cover every angle but also when I’d covered every possible angle? What was going on in this brain of mine?

It wasn’t until this year that it clicked in my brain. I learned that you can both have autism and ADHD and that some of the aspects of both diagnosis can violently clash with each other like they did in my case.

When I studied myself the patters were obvious. There was a part of me that liked to design everything and play 4D chess with myself. A part that was addicted to planning. And then there was the part that had to execute these plans. And that part hated the todo lists, schedules and schemes I had come up with ealier.

I have a todolist for work that consists of several items. There is a “Start of Day “ list that contains at least twenty items. It covers every step I should take to start my day. I could simmer in that list forever. But when it comes to checking off items the ADHD part of me takes over, and that part at best ignores those todo list and all those rules and procedures. The ADHD Wolf just wants to be given a goal and some instructions and it will figure out the rest along the way.

Once I figured out that there was a clash of fates when I was doing actual paid work I realized that I had the same problem when trying to create content. A conflict between the thinker and the doer. While working, I had little choice but to “kick things in gear”, which isn’t always simple. But when the ADHD Wolf takes over and start doing things his own way, work is done and problems are solved. It might not happen in the most perfect way and sometimes a step might be skipped once or twice so we have to trace back, but things get done.

I was thinking about creating content again, when I started to wonder why I always got anxious while creating content. It’s not that I can’t write anymore. From time to time I’m asked to write about five minutes worth of content, and I always manage to pull it off. But it usually happens in two parts. First I gather my resources and try to figure out the content. Then I struggle to put anything on paper because the energy isn’t there. And then a while later I have this sudden burst of energy and I just start writing and suddenly I’ve got a perfectly fine piece of content in front of me.

The process is simple. I have a topic, I have a goal of meeting some requirements and a time goal, and I write until I’m doine. It’s a simple process, like my process used to be when I wrote blog posts and created videos.

That’s when I realized why I am anxious when creating content. Because the ADHD Wolf in me wants to create, but the Autistic Wolf has created such a complex structure full of things to consider, that the ADHD Wolf would love to ignore. But there’s just too much to ignore, and it tilts.

Once I realized this I understood what needs to happen if I want to create content in the future. I need to find a way to simplify my process(es) and go back to the basics. Basically, what has to happen is that I need to find a way to tune out the Autistic Wolf. While some level of structure is nice, it’s doing too much and it’s sabotaging the creative process. A process that the creative brain could live with would be “Take idea about (topic), create content about (topic) and post to (channel about topic). Post to social media of you still have time.”

And therein lies the trap. The Autistic part of my brain is already trying to convince me that I can’t just have one channel. That I need seperate channels for different topics because otherwise I can’t do things properly. That I need the structures and brands and niches because otherwise it will never work out. Even as I’m writing this, the Autistc Wolf is yelling that I’m not covering all scenarios properly if I don’t do i tand that I won’t create any content that way.

That’s the ironic part of it. The Autistic Wolk is so obsessed with doing everything the right way and covering every ground, because “otherwise we’ll get nowhere” that we’re not getting anywere. Anxiety creeps in and no content is made. The endless notes in OneNote aren’t serving a purpose and they’re not helping us finetune anything because there’s no content being made and no processes are being followed because my ADHD Wolf would rather play a video game than to deal withthe bullshit I came up with when in my “planning everything to death” moments.

Saying that I need to tune out a part of my brain is easier said than done. Most of the time spent in “creative mode” is assigned to doing my actual job as a developer, and I find it easier to live in lala-fantasy land where I come up with bullshit structures and concepts after work when I’m tired. And it’s not like I can stop showing up at work because while I’m not the world’s greatest developer it sure as hell is more lucrative than being a failed YouTuber.

So what is the solution? I haven’t fully figured it out yet. I think that dumbing things down might definitely be part of the solution. Ignoring the schemes my Autistic wolf has come up with and just create content for 1-2 channels which is “good enough” and slowly get better and just enjoy making things.

I think that it also helps that I now more or less have acknowledged why creating content failed for me recently. That there’s conflics of interests going on in my brain that I have to take into consideration.

I hope that it’ll help me tob e a little more creative in the coming weeks and months. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to wrap up this blog post slash video because the Autistic Wolf is yelping that I need to figure out what three channels to post it to. And I already know that if I don’t figure it out in the next two mlinutes it won’t be published at all.

We’ll meet again the next time when ADHD Wolf wins the fight with his evil twin.

Until then, good luck and have fun.