JULIE: Welcome to Season 2 of ADHDifference. I'm your host, Julie Legg, ADHD advocate, author of The Missing Piece: A Woman's Guide to Understanding, Diagnosing, and Living with ADHD, and an unapologetic doer of many things. This season, we're turning up the volume with a global line-up of brilliant guests bringing their lived experiences, insights, research, strategies, and resources. And of course, along with a healthy dose of humor and humility. Whether you're neurodivergent yourself or just curious, there's something here for every curious brain. Let's dive in. In today's show, I'm turning the tables on someone you've heard plenty from in Season 1 because he was right here co-hosting with me. But this time, I get the pleasure of interviewing him. Jel's career has been anything but linear, and that's what makes it so fascinating. He's been an electronics engineer, a web developer, a musician, and now a music producer. Along the way, he's quietly contributed to everything from space satellites to super-cars while building websites for major music labels in London. Diagnosed with ADHD at 55, Jel says it wasn't a surprise, but it was a moment of clarity. Suddenly, decades of creative intensity, storytelling, and reinvention started to make a whole lot more sense. Welcome back, Jel, but this time as my guest. [Hello.] Now, you were diagnosed at 55 after a career full of invention and reinvention, music, and anything else you put your mind to, quite frankly. What was it like to finally receive that ADHD diagnosis?
JEL: Yeah, it's life affirming, life changing, all the big words you read about. Yeah, so it was a career of split in two really. Half of it very high-tech engineering in aerospace, lots of research and development. Some of it in defence, super-cars, very clever involved stuff. Not that I'm clever, wasn't particularly a brilliant engineer but it was very involved and very, very sort of intense, the kind of engineering where you had to get it right and it couldn't go wrong. In the second half of my career from about 2000 I got involved with web design and web development just when it was taking off. So that was a fresh exciting new industry to be in. And throughout the whole lot right from the age of about 15 when I learned to play an instrument. I've been a musician in bands and eventually a music producer owning and running a recording studio throughout all of that. So finding out I was diagnosed in my 50s explained my entire career and why I chose things. Even going back to my childhood, the hobbies and interests I had, which I was pretty obsessed with. Things like... like a lot of boys in the 70s in Britain, I was into model railways, which is building worlds, massive worlds, and it was pretty big. I sort of took over the whole roof of the house. But when I joined it all together, the interest that were there in the model railways was the wiring, and the construction, and the problem solving. And the challenges, and the upcycling things from the local tip that dad used to take me to regularly, stripping down televisions and old radios and extracting parts. And when I joined the whole lot together right up till today, I realized it's all about problem solving. And my brain has to just keep going all the time. It can't do mundane, boring things. And for me personally, and that's been things like playing sport. Even though I've played some sport in my life, cyclic, repetitive things that don't move forward, it explained why I can't do any of that.
JULIE: I was just going to ask you with your diagnosis, did it liberate anything within you, knowing?
JEL: Yes, it made complete sense of who I am. And not just the past, but the present, and the future and every aspect of what I now do in my daily life. And what I intend to do as I grow older, even older. What I will accept doing and won't accept doing. Even as simple things, as I've not actually worked in an office or a factory or a laboratory or anywhere like that since about 2000. So what's that, 25 years even working with people in a physical space? I can't do that. But I can work with vast networks of people at a distance, but it has to be in my own space, in my own time, which is usually pretty unsocial or for a long time is very unsocial, but always, always focused on deliver by this time on this day. No ifs and no buts. And so I would always deliver often before. But a crazy... even if it means staying up all night doing something, that's fine but it has to be at my pace and my time. So liberating in so far as it made me realise why I seemed really antisocial and unable to work with people. Even though I am a social person and can get on fine with everyone and anyone pretty much, except people who don't interest me. Well, that's another story. But you know, it's pretty big stuff because you know, it's rendered me unemployable in the normal sense for a quarter of a century. And I understand why now. But not unemployed. Unemployable in the sense of "Go to this space and start at 9:00 and leave at 5." But not you know... always earned my money. I've always been independent, but that's big stuff from a career viewpoint. That's huge.
JULIE: I was going to ask you too about album number three, Unmasked. Now, that was written around the time or shortly after your ADHD diagnosis. Tell me about that writing process and what the album's all about.
JEL: Yeah, that was... it felt like that concept album. That's a real 70s thing, even though apparently it's making a comeback. But it felt like I needed to write an entire album about ADHD from different angles. A bit of a cathartic process, although I can't say any of it was negative or self-reflective in a negative, miserable kind of way. It was a lot of... it was celebrating ADHD, celebrating having ADHD, celebrating understanding that I have ADHD and understanding life. And observational stuff. But yeah, it just felt like a whole album needed to be written about it, but not to wallow in ADHD. So I'm quite into clever. Clever. That's sounds big-headed. I'm quite into... obtuse isn't the word. Double meanings in writing. So something can be absolutely about what you intend it to be about, but it must be written in a way where someone else can take a completely different meaning. And it might be double, that's singing about a love affair or a girlfriend or something. So it's not too narrow and too obvious.
JULIE: Now the third album all about ADHD. But of course, the albums prior to that you were undiagnosed ADHD. So there must have been an element of ADHD right throughout your [absolutely] writing which has been going on for absolute decades. So when did you start out as a musician?
JEL: Well I started learning when I was about 14. The train sets gave way to... a friend of mine who lived in the same street in England as me who discovered bands like AC/DC and Black Sabbath. And of course he put on an album by Black Sabbath and I listened to it. Never heard anything like it. And just thought, "Oh my word, that's a... what is this?" And it just clicked with something inside me. So it wasn't long and I was picking up a guitar and then you move on. You know, it's like they say, don't they? The day you discover someone, girls or boys or whatever, and there are moments in life when you just make that next step into adulthood that you know. Or I guess at some point in life there's a moment when you pick up a baby and think I'd quite like one of these and so you move into that next stage. For me I picked the guitar up and then that was it you know, my childhood got left behind and I went into that space. So by I suppose well at 15, in rubbish bands at school. By 17-18 doing quite okay actually. So you mentioned that, you ask about the songs about ADHD, but what happened with the fourth album is I wanted to collect together all the songs that never made the first three. And several of the songs on there were written back when I was about 19-20. And it became obvious that the ADHD themes were there all the time in some of the songs written over 30 years. And so while it's not an album about ADHD, I guess it's like if you any kind of creativity, if you write books or keep journals and diaries, when you look back 30 years, you're likely to see all of the signs there and how you relate to the world and so on. And so I've had it in music. And now I listen to those songs and there's just a huge sense of connection with my younger self.
JULIE: Just talking about connection and interconnection, I want to go back to some of your career paths. As we said, it hasn't been necessarily linear, but you seem to have a lot of interwoven interests and also I know that you're deeply into self-learning. Can you see how ADHD has played a part in both of those?
JEL: Yeah, because you know with ADHD there's lots of elements, isn't there? We all respond, we all have different aspects of it. It's not one-size-fits-all. In my case, it's a strange blend of hyperfocus. So when I learn something or want to learn something, I'll get right to the heart of it and really understand it and then move on. But everything is connected. So I've got this strange thing. People say you either have a creative side of the brain or logical side of the brain, but mine are completely yin and yang, in balance. I have both sides. I can tap into each and they talk to each other all day long. So I can be the logical engineer and I can be the creative turning things upside down and trying to take an imaginative approach to something. But yeah, it's just that depth of wanting to find out how everything works and it's what I call holistic thinking, the macro thinking of looking down on everything. How is it connected? Because everything is connected. So, you know, a little a skill you learn from one area of life often applies to another. And it's almost like there's just too much to learn in the world. That's my brain. My brain says, you know, I want to learn everything. Because in some of these jobs, I would learn about things I'm not interested in. Like I know backwards how a car works. I dabbled in cars when I was younger, like most young men do, you know, rebuilding engines and things. I've got no interest whatsoever. None at all. But I've learned all about this, you know, and I learned motor racing. I learned about how everything works and what's involved and the history of it. But I'm not interested. I can tell you how spaceships work and I can tell you about a lot of things about space exploration, but it's not a subject I'm interested in. It's just... but it all does get joined together somehow. And these days, I'm an avid news reader, current affairs, politics, economics, you name it. But history's the big one because it's that warm blanket that just joins everything together. Everything from Victorian engineering to space flight, to the history of toys, to ... It's silly things. Music of course, the history of music, why do we write music the way we write it? Where did my music come from which is different to someone else's and so on.
JULIE: Now music has been a huge part of your life, was there ever a time that it wasn't?
JEL: Yes, although ironically you could say it was but wasn't at the same time. After I did an album, I guess early 30s. I was really learning production and studios and I'd built a studio and it was pretty intense for a couple of years. And at the end of it I burnt out and not burnt out in the whole of life but that level of intent in that area I completely burnt out. I couldn't listen to music anymore because if someone play a song, I couldn't just enjoy the song. I could hear.. what instrument was that? How was that mixed? What's the EQ curve on that? Oh, that's an interesting sample. I know that's synthesizer. So, it ruined the ability for me to listen to it. And it lasted about four or five years. And the only way I got back into it, and I don't know if this is an ADHD thing or not, there were only two types of music I could slowly start to reintroduce. One was very simple punk music, very badly played punk music because it almost didn't feel like music even. It was energy, but it wasn't music. Not the kind of music I've been producing, even though I like punk music. And the other one was I started to listen to a lot of classical music, Brahms, Mozart and so on. Stuff so beyond my ability to compose, comprehend, understand, play. So, two extremes which I felt were very similar because they were both helping my ADHD brain realign and find a way back into something. So now I still probably would list those as two of my favourite types of music. One for its pure raw simplicity and energy and one for its incredible emotional complexity. And so I now try to find this space in the middle of the two.
JULIE: Now tell me about your current passions or creative projects. What are you interested in at the moment? What's turning your head now?
JEL: Well, it's pretty much a continuum of everything I've done and, in a way, reverting back to my childhood because I do believe for me personally, I'm 59 coming up. I have... I'm very determined to maintain that youthful brain inside here. That excitement and energy for life and ADHD for me, not for everyone I appreciate that, but for me that it's a great motor a great driver to keep me youthful, that excitement. And so two things really driving me at the moment apart from life in general, which I'm blessed living rurally which is a lot of nature so that is just a really good medicine, a good medicine. A lot of peace and quiet, a lot of not being around people and the world and all the everyday stresses. But two things, music, which now I think I reached a point where I've just got my thing, my vibe, my style. It's an easy process. And so it's just opening up a channel for that kind of creativity. And now I'm dreaming and planning to go back into my youthful hobby back to the beginning. Sad as it sounds, building a model railway. But it's actually a model world. It's actually all of the incredible range of skills. It's every it's art. It's engineering. It's imagination. It's not to play with it. It's not that simple. It's... and I have read a lot recently and been fascinated by some extraordinarily famous musicians and music producers who are passionate about model railways. Pete Waterman for instance of Stock Aitken and Waterman, is a very famous producer from the late 80s-90s, passionate. Rod Stewart of course, Sir Rod Stewart, one of the biggest private model railways in the world and he quietly reveals that he spent his entire life building it on tour, parts at a time. Jules Holland is a very famous British musician and so on. And it even goes up to, story has it Neil Young and the late Frank Sinatra and so on. But you know, I can see that huge connection between rock and roll and ... oh well, there you go. That's me.
JULIE: Well, Jel, I think that you should talk to your wife about taking over the garage, just on the side. Just see what she thinks. [Yeah. So, I will certainly be doing my best.] Right. On ADHD friendly strategies or tools that support you, what is one tool or a habit or a system that genuinely helps you work with your brain rather than against it?
JEL: Heavens, there's more than one, but for me it's all about environment. It's always being in the right environment for your brain and working at your own pace and yeah, not being pushed around and told what to do by people who... Yeah, being inspired by people and meeting people's expectations and making people happy, that's great. As a service industry, I love doing that. I like making people happy. But you've got to do it in in your own time. You've got to create your own space and you've got to defend that space like a castle and your time like a castle. And that's how I work and that's me and own it. And the older you get, I think the more empowered you become to own that. It's hard to do perhaps when you're younger and I appreciate that. Other than that, write lots down, make notes for yourself. Here's a big one. And the only way I survive life is if I think something needs doing, like put the bin out, you know, something mundane, the bin has to go out because it gets collected tomorrow. If I don't do it at that exact moment, I'm guarantee I'll forget to do it. I guarantee it's 100% because my brain's gone somewhere else. So it's you've got... back to what I just said really is if you can control your timetable and your environment then you can act impulsively which doesn't always have to be a negative thing. Sometimes that impulsive behaviour is how you get through the day. Or write it down and got a list and tick it off but that's far too... I'll lose the list. I'll lose interest in the list. I'll go somewhere else. So impulsiveness is a good friend. Impulsivity can be a good thing if you harness it for yourself. You'll save an awful lot of grief.
JULIE: Absolutely. Strategies of course don't work for everybody and even if there was a book of strategies probably they wouldn't work for you necessarily. Even with the best intention things don't always go the way we plan. So yeah stick with the strategies that work for us. Yay. I like this.
JEL: Yeah, I yeah, I could come up with a dozen strategies, but they won't work for other people and I don't even stick to them myself. Dieting's been a good one over the last year. I've stuck to that. That I don't know why, that just... I think it's that old adage, replace one habit with another. It you know, it takes three weeks to learn a to get a habit. And so, you know, it's surprising how much you can achieve when you think you can't achieve it on strange things like that, but there you go.
JULIE: So, tell me about that weight loss journey for you.
JEL: Unbelievably easy. Just I don't know why so easy. It was just I guess it's the engineer in me, the logical part of me, you know, that you know that tried. You tried to lose weight by dabbling around and fiddling around, adjusting the little button there and tighten the screw there. It doesn't work. There comes a point where you say this is not working. Strip it down. Back to basics. Start again. And so simply sat down, and calories in, how many calories should I have? Oops. You know, an engineer report said way too many calories. Cut that out. Cut that out. Cut that out. Replace it with that. And she'll be right. Okay, it's something I learned from engineering and you know you look at when you're young, looking at a wise engineer they said "That'll be fine. That'll last. That'll work." You know. It could just blow up or break. "No. I know." And so later on you apply that and you just repeat that process. And a year later, hey presto. Boom.
JULIE: So tell me the result of 12 months is... ?
JEL: 31 kilos and no exercise. Never been in a gym in my life. Like to move around but and you know yeah when I was younger I was more energetic. But no, exercise no.
JULIE: I do think though looking after a hectare of property is exercise in my books.
JEL: Yes I yeah I.. it's backbreaking. Cutting down trees and grass, and cutting grass and yeah pretty backbreaking.
JULIE: Well congratulations, that is awesome, awesome, awesome. Now for a parting insight, my last question for you today is: for someone out there who's just been diagnosed perhaps later in life and wonders, is it all too late? What would you like to say to them?
JEL: I would absolutely 100% say with force and conviction, no, it's not too late. The past is a foreign country. It's gone. But the present is all you have and the future if you're lucky. And once you're diagnosed, it should be a great relief. It should be exciting. It... there's a whole bunch of emotions. Of course, it can bring some sorrow and sadness of things that could have been different if you known a long time ago, but it's never, never too late ever. And with it, you move forward and make the most of the time you've got to enjoy it to be your best life. That's it really because you get one shot. You don't get two shots at this. And so you just got to move ahead and enjoy it. And yeah, I think it becomes like a bit of armor in a way. And it becomes your friend. It really becomes your friend. It becomes who you are. Knowing yourself is probably one of the most incredible things you can do in life is find out who you really are, and it's part of that. So there you go.
JULIE: Well, on that note, Jel, thank you so much for being my guest today. I really appreciated your time and hearing your journey. [Welcome.] Thank you.
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