How Dark Souls taught me about my ADHD

If you've played it, you know. Dark Souls is hard. You die. A lot. And somehow, you keep going back. Dark Souls and ADHD have more in common than you'd think.

Remember the bonfire

In Dark Souls, a bonfire is where you rest. When you die, you wake up at the last one you lit. You lose the souls you were carrying, but you keep your level, your gear, and everything you learned.

That's the part that stuck with me. My words for it: remember the bonfire.

Small changes add up to daily habits, and even if you have a shitty day, you have the skills and the knowledge from your last run.

A bad day is not a reset to zero

With ADHD, a bad day can feel like losing everything. The streak is broken. The plan fell apart. The voice in your head says you're right back where you started.

You're not. You wake up at the bonfire. You still know where the traps are. You still know which door leads where. You're a little better than you were the last time you walked this road.

The bonfire in my system

My system works the same way. A job stays open until I say "that's that". If I drift, or the day goes sideways, it's waiting at the same step. My notes remember what I did, what I decided, and what's next.

So I never start from nothing. I start from the last bonfire.

It's even one of the eight rules I gave my assistant. Rule seven: remember the bonfire.

Small changes add up

Nobody beats a boss on the first try. You learn one pattern, then another. The small stuff stacks.

Habits work that way too. Five minutes to open the day. Five minutes to close it. One bite at a time. None of it looks like much on its own. Run after run, it adds up.

What to do next

Think of your last bad day. Write down one thing you learned from it, one thing you'd do differently next run. That's your bonfire. Rest there, then go again.

This is my own experience, not a doctor's advice. The kit is the bonfire I come back to every day.