ADHDifference

S2E14: Screenwriting, Redefining Success & Embracing ADHD + guest Steve McCleary

• Julie Legg • Season 2 • Episode 14

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Julie Legg chats with Kiwi screenwriter, actor, and pro wrestling commentator Steve McCleary, best known for his work on Power Rangers.  Steve reflects on his late ADHD diagnosis, tracing the thread from misunderstood childhood behaviours to the clarity that came in adulthood. He shares his pure joy for plot dynamics, his love of the creative process, how he’s redefined success, and how understanding his neurodivergence has reshaped his approach to writing, perspective, and living fully. 

This conversation is a must-listen for anyone exploring diagnosis later in life, those in creative industries, or anyone seeking permission to love what they love, unapologetically.

Key Points from the Episode

  • Steve’s journey to adult ADHD diagnosis
  • How childhood trauma often masks neurodivergence
  • The "brake pad" metaphor and the crash of coping mechanisms
  • Why Power Rangers was the perfect ADHD job
  • Inside the world of ADR, monster voices, and hyper-creative TV writing
  • Wrestling, dopamine, and finding your tribe
  • Managing distraction and burnout with intentional creative rituals
  • Redefining success and choosing joy over judgement
  • Encouragement for newly diagnosed creatives navigating ADHD 

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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 lineup of brilliant guests bringing their lived experiences, insights, research, strategies, and resources. And of course, along with a healthy dose of humour and humility. Whether you're neurodivergent yourself or just curious, there's something here for every curious brain. Let's dive in. Today, I'm joined by Steve McCleary, a Kiwi screenwriter and actor whose work on Power Rangers sharpened his skill for story, character, and bringing big ideas to life. Over nearly a decade, Steve worked across multiple seasons, contributing to everything from writing and ADR scripts to casting guest roles and even jumping in front of the camera himself. These days, he continues to bring that same creative energy to new screen projects and his regular gig as a pro-wrestling announcer and commentator. Welcome to the show, Steve. Hi, it's great to be here. [Thank you for having me.] You're most welcome. You've had such a creative career and I can't wait to ask you all about that. But I'd like to start with your own ADHD journey. If you could tell me about your undiagnosed younger self and what inspired you to seek an assessment as an adult. 

STEVE: I love my undiagnosed earlier self. He always felt like an outsider. Him and I have that in common. I don't think I've had a real long period of time of feeling at ease at any point in my life, and there was never any explanation for that. I've always felt like I was in a state of, you know, "Oh, I've probably done something wrong. Oh, maybe I'm doing something wrong right now. You know what? I'm probably about to do something wrong." And that sense has been with me my whole life. And there was nothing to assist with where I grew up. I never heard the word ADHD. I first heard that when I was in my 20s, so it was either completely unknown or no one was talking about it around me. And so I was very much introverted. I spent a lot of my time in my room writing, drawing, creating. I discovered comic books far too early. I discovered horror movies as well. And I loved everything about them, all the different aspects of different characters and adventures and I think the explosion of like massive universes, deeply fascinating to me. So, I just wanted to create my own. So, I was just sitting there the whole time just like writing things, you know. Somewhere I still have a collection of drawings and all these things from this time period where I'm just like "Oh, this character can do this and he'd be friends with this person and oh no, his weakness is this and he can't stand this." And I was just doing this non-stop. And yeah, and I, but I mean I had friends obviously. Wow, that didn't sound confident. I annoyed all my friends all the time. I wasn't a class clown but I was well just annoying because I obsessed about things, because I got excited about lots of stuff but not just for a moment. Like I hyperfocused on them for such a long time and no one else cared that much about anything. So, I was very annoying to them, but, I got a lot of long-term friendships because there was something in my brain that, I was right about a lot of stuff, silly stuff. Like, I knew where conversations were going before they happened. But I just had some intuition. I didn't know where I got it from. I didn't know what was causing it. I just knew that my brain was constantly giving me lots of information, different paths. That was often very helpful because it yeah, it gave me insights that no one else around me seemed to have, but it also told my mouth too many things to say and I would often pick the wrong one. So, I was constantly offending people, and then I'd be confused because I didn't know why I said it. I'd be like, well, that's actually not representative of me in my brain, in my head. And thus began a long period of not being able to trust myself with the things I would say and how I could act around people. And it's always possible that a diagnosis could have happened. Again, I don't know about the facilities at the time period, but everything was overshadowed by my upbringing. The environment I was in was not ideal. My I had a dirt poor single mother, a single mother who had a lot of psychological issues. She was committed twice. My grandmother was really the one who stepped in a lot of the time to help me. She was incredible. She was my rock. But my core home life was very problematic. So, you know, it's hard for someone to go, "Oh, there might be something..." I'm going to use how people would have said it back then. "Oh, there might be something wrong with this kid, when the kid's mother believes there's aliens in the backyard," she called them moon men. That's the kindest thing that happened in my household growing up. And so all the emphasis went to that. It was always like, "Oh, it was because he grew up there." It's that trauma and the inability to separate that trauma from who I might just genetically be prevented me from understanding myself growing up as an adult. I was in couples therapy once with a partner and we're trying to sort out issues. The second the therapist heard some of the stories from my childhood, that was all he cared about. He was just like, "Oh my god, well, you know, we can't escape our childhoods." And he just focused entirely on that. So even when I sat in a room with people who had all these degrees and all this information, no one, no one was coming close to it. And so I've had a lot of failed relationships and I'm to blame for that because I was always searching for who I was, but I had no guideline. I didn't have much. My grandmother passed away. I didn't have anyone kind of older than me really assisting me and helping me through things. There was no one to give me guidance. So I just bumbled my way through life and obviously I feel like yeah, there's a lot of situations in which it's like "Wow I wish I could have avoided those." But I didn't have the toolkit to do that. And it was before Covid, was just before Covid and my coping mechanisms for how I got through life, which I didn't realize not everybody needed, those coping mechanisms were starting to fail and I was struggling. And my partner, who's my partner right now, she was... she loves researching things, very much likes to get to the bottom of stuff and she said, "Have you ever been tested ADHD?" She didn't know anything about it at that point, neither did I, but she'd seen something. And I was like, "No." And honestly, I didn't... I knew basically nothing. I'd seen it mentioned in movies. That was it. And so she was like, "Well, let's do this quiz." I got it from an official institute, it was still a quiz. And my first instinct was like, sure, because I've aced every quiz because multiple choice? I always know why a thing is trying to ask me a question. I know what it's trying to get out of it. I know what answer will create a result. That's easy, until I did this quiz. And as I was taking the quiz, each question I was like, this is weird. There is only one answer to this. That's strange. Have they made a mistake? And about halfway through, it started to click for me. And I was looking at her face and going, she does not connect with my answers at all. She does not think that's how she thinks. And I was pretty rattled by the end of it. And so yeah, then I had to make an appointment, see a psychiatrist. And I still tried to not learn anything going in. I did not want to affect it because I know how my brain works. As I said, it's always all these pathways are happening in me all the time. And yeah, and so I go into this thing and I'm talking with him and he.... I still, he's asked me all these questions and I don't know why. There was one that got me in the middle of it where he just, he was just like, "Hey, what happens when you're standing at a crossroads and you're waiting for the light to go green? Anything interesting?" And I'm like, "Yeah, that's infuriating. Like as each passing moment goes by, I feel rage." And then I clicked at that point as well. I was like, "Oh no." And by the end of that session, I realized that all these things across my life that I've been trying to understand, I was like, "Oh, this one must be caused by this. This is caused by this." It's like, I have misophonia. I can't stand hearing people eat. All these different things across my life were one thing, just one. And no one had been able to tell me. And it was overwhelming. And then he looked at me and he said, "Okay." He said, "You've scored very highly, very highly on a lot of these things." And he said, "People either get diagnosed as a kid or as an adult." And he was like, "Do you want to know why they get diagnosed as an adult?" And I was like, "Uh, yeah, because I'm here." And he was like, "Well, your coping mechanisms have started to fail, haven't they?" And I was like, "Yes." And he goes, "Yeah, it's a brake pad, and you're hitting that brake pad in your life to try and fit mainstream society, the way that everyone else lives, the way you're "supposed" to act, and it's getting harder because you've worn out the brake pads." And then he says the words which spiraled me. He was like, "By the way, there's no replacement brake pads. You need new coping mechanisms. You need new ways to be. You basically need to understand who you are and adapt your life because of it." Which then began a month of self-reflection which I understand has happened to a lot of people. And every time that someone in my extended group reveals that they've had a diagnosis I go to them as quickly as possible and I say "Look you the odds are you're about to have a month of self-reflection and it's going to be really rough. But here are ways to guide yourself through it." Because no one told me and suddenly I spent an entire month reliving everything in chronological order that I've ever done. Things that I thought I had nothing to do with, I realized I did. And I had no peace. There'd be a moment I'd sit down with a book and suddenly my brain is, you know, on TV shows when they start and they do a recap? Suddenly it was like I was having "Previously on Steve McCleary. Do you remember when you were 14 and you used a British voice around the British transfer student and she got angry at you? Whoops. That sucked, didn't it? That's awful. You should remember that." And this just kept happening. It was all these things. "Remember when you hit on this person? Turns out I didn't like you. That was embarrassing." Did... like constantly ask myself, did I do something wrong? And a lot of the time I was like, "Oh, I did." I didn't know that. I thought I was doing my absolute best, but I wasn't. And a lot of it I just I wasn't aware of. And so that was a time, you know, when you learn that the diagnosis is very much the beginning of the journey and everything follows it and everything gets better. You find all these different ways to get through life. But that those first steps are hard. But without those, we wouldn't have ended up down a path in which my partner was diagnosed as being autistic, which was a surprise to her, less so to me and everyone else but very much to her. But that would not have happened without mine. It flowed on from it because she witnessed my journey and then began thinking about her own. And then her son since then diagnosed with ADHD as well. And there's no way that would have happened without mine because I was already picking up things in him but I didn't know. So once I had my own and so he was able to get diagnosed. That has changed his teenage years. He's 16 now. That's made such a massive impact because hopefully, and I'm seeing evidence of it already, he has some of the toolkit that I didn't have and that's all I would want, you know. I would give anything to time travel back to my younger self and just give them that. Like, "By the way, it's this," you know, and so hopefully he has that and that will make a lot of things easier in his life because he knows how to compensate for the things he's great at and the things he's not so great at. 

JULIE: That is such a journey and thank you so much for sharing that, Steve. I relate to so much of what you've said, including the weeks upon weeks of retrospectively looking at everything. I completely get that. I remember laughing and crying at the same time and lots of "ah that's why," until it settled down slightly and now I don't retrospect so much. It's been a couple of years and I'm okay just to look at the present now and look slightly into the future. But yeah, I've assessed my past to the death and it's time to move on. But thank you and gosh, what a journey. Absolutely. And I'm so glad with your newfound knowledge that you were able to assist and help those near and dear to you. And you're so right. It's those tools. Those tools that we never had as young people ourselves. Thank you. Steve, you're an actor and a pro wrestling commentator and a screenwriter amongst many creative things that you do. You've said that no job has ever fit your flavour of ADHD quite like your work on Power Rangers. What was it about that environment that suited your brain so well? I'd love to hear your stories. 

STEVE: It's so many things. It was such an incredible time in my life. It'll be a touchstone across my entire existence I believe. For nobody that's ever worked in TV, there are so many elements to it, which you can guess but it's like you know there's every single step all the way from the conception of a show to the actual production. So many levels and that means there's lots of opportunities. You know, I always get this back to front because I'm not a details person which is going to probably sound funny with everything I'm about to say, but it's like you know we like routine but hate structure. I can never remember which way that goes around. TV is fantastic for that. There's constant deadlines, but there's opportunities and everything is malleable. And I have a lot of in inattentive qualities. Did I just say that right? Basically, it's I get distracted a lot. I'm terrified of being distracted in this conversation and going off on a tangent. So, if I suddenly start talking about a completely random thing, it's like he's forgotten what he was trying to say. And so I worked many jobs. I had many. I worked many seasons on Power Rangers and many different jobs during that and it was an environment that allowed that to happen. And so like there were times where obviously I was working on plots and structures. I was naming characters. I was at one point tasked with trying to create comedy beats for episodes because we used to have a lot of comedy in the show. And so on a certain day, you know, I'd hand in a document with a hundred different like "Maybe this could happen moments" of like, you know, "Maybe they get attacked by bees." And you know, it was like big long lists. And you know, having a brain that allows you to sort of if you can get into the right mindset, suddenly it's like, cool, I'm getting inundated with information all the time anyway, so hopefully lots of it's useful. And I helped with casting at one point. I was casting a lot of the guest people. So suddenly my brain thrived in being able to greet all these different actors coming in and then reading against all of them and then testing them and taking the best choices to the producer. All these different aspects of the job were fantastic, but nothing beat doing ADR. And for again for people that don't know, and pretty much nobody knows about how ADR worked on Power Rangers, normal ADR is the extra recording you do of like background noises. You know, it's like, "Oh, a plank didn't fall over here where it should have. Let's put that noise in." Or maybe there's crowd noise, there's murmuring, you're in a restaurant, you need that noise. That's a normal TV show. On Power Rangers, ADR is probably, I would say, at minimum 35% of the show. Because most of the time the lead characters, the Power Rangers, are in their suits wearing helmets. And the villains are all monsters. So they're always in suits. So most of the time the writers when writing those bits would put placeholder dialogue in. You know, not bad dialogue, but it would be just generic dialogue. The monster is going like, "I'm going to destroy you, Ranger." And it's like, "Also, get me my plot device." And so what would happen is that file, the original version of that file would get given to me and the ADR process would begin, which I get happy just thinking about it. And they'd come in and they'd say like, "All right, here are some studio night notes on the first cut," just some things they might want. "By the way, we had to trim whole sections out of the monster scene, so you're going to need to write the dialogue from scratch. Also, could you add in this plot thing that we forgot to do in the script here?" This probably to an average person probably goes like "Uh like how do you even start doing that?" But for me, what a pleasure to unravel that is. I know that everyone has their own different version of it. I at least I've come to see some people call it a jigsaw, some people call it a painting. It's that idea that in a moment you have everything laid out in front of you. And if your brain is on your side that day, it's incredibly useful. You're like, "Oh, I see every thread. I see everything." For me, it's the story tree. That's how I always called it. It's just a big tree. The main thread is the trunk and there's all the branches. Those are all the potential things. So, I sit down, you know, with a script that has all this potential in it, all these places I can go and it's like, "Oh, you've got a page and a half. Okay. And you've got these characters and they all need a certain amount of times they need to talk otherwise why are they there? Oh, okay. And in this shot you can see they're definitely talking but this person isn't." But you need to get a narrative across and that's very difficult you know in comparison to a normal scene where you just like I'm going to write this thing. This what thing happens and this thing happens and this thing happens. It's like no, I had to construct it based on what was visually already in front of me. That's thrilling as you can probably hear in my voice, but what was wonderful about it from the actual structure perspective is that it would change on the day. So I could sit down and if I didn't feel like recording anything, I could do some editing on the video. I could work on the script. I could write all the dialogue I was going to do and just play with that. But if I was feeling creative and I didn't want to type on the keys, then I'd do all the voice recording. Which I would, you know, I would speak all these monsters and I do all this stuff because then I have to take it to the other writers and the producers to see if it works. And so it's an incredibly unique job and I loved every aspect of that because I could always change what I was doing. But the end result, I had a deadline, so it was always good. I'd get there, it was fantastic. And that also led to other things. I did voice overs for the show as well. I portrayed several monsters, and it was a very surreal experience because I walked into the actual official recording booth and they're like, "All right, you probably don't know the lines too well but it'll get played in front of you." And that was how I learned that the actors got my dialogue played to them because suddenly I was in the booth and my voice boomed at me and I went, "No, I know the lines," because I'd recorded that line 50 times myself. Incredibly wonderful experience, a versatile experience that I think you know for ADHD people like we often have quick wits. We have fast thoughts, sometimes too fast. An environment like that in a TV show can benefit you incredibly because of that. 

JULIE: That sounds absolutely amazing and definitely it would make you want to go to work every day if you had... it sounds like an amazing play space. You know, you get to play all day and full of ideas. Wow. Yay. That's awesome. Well, you have had, and still no doubt will still continue to have, a very diverse career. What's firing you up creatively right now? 

STEVE: Well, I can tell you it's not the sitcom that a group of writers and I worked on for a year because we were asked by a production company to make a broad comedy. And then in the end they were like, "You know what? Bit too broad." So that's like, it's like you spend a year working on that and then you're like, "Oh, all right. Never mind." And that's all good. 

JULIE: How do you feel about that? How do you feel about that, Steve? Because from an ADHD perspective now you've got names for things and you can... how would you express your thoughts around that? 

STEVE: It is what it is. Did I experience a lot of the rejection sensitivity? Yes. But then you do every time you answer studio notes of any kind, whether you're already working at a place or you're trying to get you know something of yours picked up. And that's always something that's very tricky because people are giving you notes and they're probably not writers and they don't actually know what you're trying to do with a story in the scene or down the road. And so, you know, no one likes taking notes, especially if the note is, you know what, we don't actually want this. But a lot of time what you have to do is look for the note behind the note, which is the whole like, why did they say this? And I think it's that comprehension which gets you through, which kind of connects to a lot of other things in life, is the more we understand each other, not just our own actions, but the actions of other people... The more we understand all of those things, it allows us to process those emotions more cleanly. Comprehending what they're saying and your own reactions to it are pretty much the way you get through all of those things. 

JULIE: With that little project no longer on your horizon, is there anything else you're working on at the moment? 

STEVE: Yes, there is a spy show which I can't talk much about. It's based on a book that's about real historical events in New Zealand. The other creative and I have been pottering away on this in the background for about 15 years. Initially, initially just as a short film, we were like, "Oh, this would be good." And we had an idea for a film and a script and everything. And then we revisited it a few years ago with the thought of it being a feature. And the production team we have has pivoted to, at least at this point, is wanting a TV show. And so it's been shot around a bunch of things in Melbourne. Some things sound good. One of the sentences that was sent to me in an email was, "You know what, we're hopeful to start pre-production in February." But that is very much one of those... that we live in the reality where there are a billion things that can go wrong. Like I'm not expecting that to happen. But you know I'm hopeful and so you know we've been working on that for a long time. That's the main thing and my hope is that if that show can happen then I'll get to work on my passion project which is a lot of comedy and horror because I grew up loving Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel and shows of that nature. I love horror and I love comedy. And so my hope is I have a side project which just sits there and in a pitch deck waiting for me to get enough success to actually be able to go, "Oh, I can pitch this this this this project that I love because I'll feel safe enough by that point because I will have done enough." That concept in your head that you know is sometimes a detriment. "I'll have done enough. I'll have done enough." And yeah, so yeah, those are the main things. That and the pro wrestling which I do on a regular basis. Not the pro wrestling itself. My god, I would break. But announcing and commentary. Yeah, I mean pro wrestling saved my life as well. Like it was there when I was a kid, as an adult. It's something that I tell a lot of people about if they're ADHD, autistic, anything like that because I know a lot of the fan base of pro wrestling is. And they're drawn to it because every 15 minutes you get new people walking out. You get different music. You get different pyrotechnics, different costumes, different styles. Maybe someone's a giant, maybe someone does flips. And if you don't like it, the next people come out 15 minutes later and you get different people. And then sometimes there's story threads that go on for years at a time and you pick up on those and you're like, "Oh, oh, that's nice. That connects to that. That's great. Oh, these little threads." And so it's something it's like it's a weird, it's a weird thing. It's a niche thing, but at the same time, it's something I always recommend to people. And I was just in Perth watching WWE and I stood in lines with people and I just struck up conversations with them and they're revealing like their neurodiversity to me. They're just talking about all these different aspects of their life and I'm like, "Man, there are so many of us around here." And it's just, yeah, the spectacle of that kind of thing and all the different variants in it, I think very appealing to people. And obviously to me who likes announcing those things and doing commentary and telling those stories all the time is it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. 

JULIE: And how long have you been commentating? 

STEVE: Over a decade. Wow. Yeah. I took a few breaks because as with most things, you get to a point you're like, I've done.. I feel like I've done it all. I I don't know what else there is to do. And then but then yeah, but I always return to that. I always outside of everything else, when you can sit there doing commentary and tell stories about the characters you're watching, the moves they're doing in the match with sometimes they have a flow as well. It's like, oh, they're working on someone's arm. They're trying to, you know, or their character journey over a year. But doing it on the fly and that sparks like you know a lot of the time it's like I feel like I don't have dopamine, I have nopamine. It's like you know there is serotonin happening in my brain but when I'm doing that job it's everything's firing. I am so alive in that moment. And yeah and so I always recommend people to come along to wrestling but also get involved. If there's a local wrestling thing near wherever you live and you're looking for a creative outlet and there doesn't seem to traditional ones, try wrestling. There's all there's a lot of different jobs you can do. It's very surprising. 

JULIE: That is great advice and perhaps some of our listeners will look more into that. So, and probably see your face or hear your voice while they do so. Steve, is there a particular strategy mindset or a ritual or a tool or anything you do that helps you stay balanced and productive through all your creative projects and endeavors? 

STEVE: Distraction is definitely my nemesis, and so I have to take advantage of every tool that I can have. I use my lead in time. It was one of the first things I learned about after my diagnosis was the concept of lead in time to a task. And I was like ah, that spoke to me. So I make sure that I'm not getting interrupted by other people. My brain is allowed to process it. I trick my brain into thinking it's naturally thinking about the work I have to do, on its own. Just little bits. Just little bits in that time period. I make sure I have headphones in but only with music that I know really well. If I have lyrics I've never heard, that's distracting. And so I make sure that that's comforting. It's blocking out external sound while giving me comfort in my ears. And I use that lead in time. And then I'm realistic. I just have to be realistic about what I can and can't achieve. I think I don't know if it's the same for other people. I think I've got about four hours of productivity in me. I can work faster than a neurotypical person, and so it evens out, but I spend that initial time leading myself in, then a focus time period and then lesser tasks towards the end to make sure to avoid burnout, which to me never feels like it gets talked about enough. Like people will talk about how hard it is to motivate yourself to do a task. Well, a lot of the time the reason for that is burnout because you overdid the previous task or the last time you worked on something. And so those are the main things that I do for myself and it's very much just self-care. It's and also it won't work without it. But like yeah, it's... just try and make sure that I've created the environment. And a lot of writers will call it kind of kooky. They're like, "Oh, there's no such thing as writer's block and oh, you should be able to just sit down, just begin typing." And it's like, that's great. Cool story. But for me it's very much create the environment that's going to work for you, acknowledge what you can and can't do and just be realistic about it. But I definitely recommend music. 

JULIE: That sounds... that sounds great and I think, as you said, something you're familiar with that almost becomes a theme song that you're familiar with and it gets you into a space and a routine in a kind of a way. You're right. I'm a big lyric person, so I'd be diving off in my mind trying to work out what's hidden, the hidden story beneath it all. 

STEVE: And I make I make dozens of playlists as well, like lots of playlists that fit the vibe of whatever I'm working on. Nice. Very important. Like I can't... it's important that I stay in the genre. If I'm doing a creative work, I can't like if I suddenly watch a murder mystery when I'm supposed to be doing common comedy, I'm ruined. Like I would be just thinking about who done it. And when I worked on that sitcom I talked about earlier, I spent an entire Christmas period only watching sitcoms in the background just to make sure that the cadence, the bounce of dialogue and the way the structure worked became natural in the background to me. So that's also something I recommend to creatives is that, you know, if you're struggling with that kind of distraction thing and you want to stay focused on the vibe of what you're doing, just immerse yourself in that. 

JULIE: You said you've been fascinated by the idea of success and how hard it can be to actually feel successful, and that kindness and empathy are values that you hold very close. So, how does your understanding of success, how has it evolved over time and what does it mean to you now? 

STEVE: It's been one of the hardest things I've reconciled over my life. I've never felt successful. I've never experienced what I think other people do. So, I just assumed I never was. Again, that idea of like, oh, once I've done this, it'll feel like I've done the thing. And that would never happen to me. And I've come to terms with that. I understand it a lot better than I used to. Because I have... I've crossed off bucket list items that I had when I was younger. I got to play an alien on Power Rangers. Because a previous actor got Covid and it was in makeup. I spent 3 hours in makeup. I go out there, I do this over-the-top kind of just like American announcer person going, "This is fantastic. What a great thing that's happening here right now." And you know, just over the over the top thing. And at the end of that, a spaceship shoots a laser. I explode. So on set I got to step away and they put in explosives behind where I was and then they matched me to it. So I had to stand in front of the actual explosives then step out and then they blew up the area and then eventually I got to watch myself explode on screen. I don't know how many kids have that on their bucket list but I did death on screen. So I've done things like that. There's I know, there's moments in my life that I'm like oh this is great. This is cool. I always felt like there were parts of my brain that were just constantly telling me like, "Oh, you know, you could have done better or you didn't do enough though. You could have done so much more." Just constantly putting me down. And there was something that my old workmate said to me, and it was that there are people that would do anything to have your job. When I had that job, Hasbro cancelled it. But when I had the job, yeah, there were people that do anything to have it. And that those people, a lot of them were emailing me and this was their dream. And reality is never like what a dream is like you know, it's still work. You know you're doing these wonderful things and interacting with fantastic people but it's still work. But I realized that if I didn't look at those things as being successful, I was essentially being disrespectful to all the people that this was their dream. Because if I wasn't getting the most out of it and I wasn't, you know, never boasting, but sort of going, "Hey, this is a wonderful thing I did," then I'm kind of telling them their dreams don't make sense or that they're not worthy." And that I mean that didn't work with how my brain works. Like everybody deserves to at least have a chance at their dreams or to feel that their dreams are valid. And so I've learned that success means lots of different things. I may never feel it per se. And it is a journey, but I acknowledge that I've had success at time periods, and I'm very grateful for all of those things. And when it comes down to it, it's because my brain wants to attack me a lot of the time. It wants to offer up too many options and a lot of them are negative. Which is why I always tell other people because I struggle with it myself is that you have to be kind to yourself. Yours is the only face you look in the mirror every day. You look at yourself and so if you're not being kind to yourself, who else is going to be? 

JULIE: I loved actually, you've got a beautiful life motto and it is "I love to love things," and I just grin from ear to ear because so do I. So do I. I'd love you to share why that mantra is so important to you and how you exercise it. 

STEVE: Oh man, I mean it's the best thing like life is for living. And when there's a chance for joy, I think people should jump for it. And I haven't always. And that was part of my journey as well. Like a lot of people when I was younger, I'd make fun of things I didn't understand or that I didn't like or I wasn't into. I didn't take into consideration that hey, those other people just like that thing, like why am I trying to take their joy away? That doesn't make sense. I don't want my own joy taken away. And that ability to sort of flip those things and always ask like what would happen if it was happening to me? And I realized I was denying myself a lot of joy simply because, you know, I wanted to make fun of other things or I was worried about how other people would look at me. And that is just no way to live. Like, you know, like I'm a dork. I'm a big dork. And that's who I am. And if I'm not being myself and showing other people who I am, then what is the point of being myself? Because again, I'm the one looking in the mirror all the time like, and I want to, you know. When I was in Perth, it was one of John Cena's last matches. He's a big wrestler, big action star now on in movies and TV. And myself and my friend both went in full John Cena gear. And as it turns out, like 90% of the audience because find your tribe. Find the people that also want to just love things and love it with them. And that is just like the best feeling that you'll ever have. Like I don't believe that anyone sits on their deathbed and is like, "I wish I'd made more money. I wish I'd been crueller." I mean, maybe a couple of people, but in general, what we want is to be surrounded by the people that we love, that we love, that they love us, too. And to think about those experiences and the moments in which you felt joy. And I think we deny ourselves of it and you know, we get concerned about regrets and a bunch of other things. We're always going to have regrets, but you know, you can always have joy as well. And so I yeah, it's one of the most important things in life to me. And I think we all need more of it. 

JULIE: For someone who is in the creative arena, who has recently been diagnosed with ADHD and perhaps is struggling with the ADHD label, what would you most want them to hear? 

STEVE: Not let labels define you. I think is top of the list. I've always struggled with labels. I sometimes I identify with them, other times I don't. And I think that's real life. Life doesn't have a plot. There's no linear path for a lot of people. You know, they say you're supposed to do this at this point and these other things at other points. There's no plot in real life. And so for me, the advice I give other people, especially when it comes to creative industries, is don't focus on the idea of that financial success. Focus on the creativity. That's why you're drawn to it. Focus on the personal aspect. You know, to say it again, you're the face you look in the mirror. So, write for that mirror. Write for that. Perform for that. Do that. Because there will always be people that are better at you at some things. But there are things that a person with an ADHD brain, it can be a gift. And there are things that you specific things that you can bring that no one else can. So don't bring something else. There's an old adage that I've taken through most of my life which is accentuate the positives, hide the negatives. And when it comes to creativity, there'll be aspects that you're maybe not good at and maybe you don't want to upskill at them. You can obviously, that's the traditional advice. "Just get good at everything." But for me, what I want to say because I don't think it gets said enough, if you're really good at writing pros, but you don't like writing dialogue, cool. If you're a writer, don't write dialogue then. Like, follow the thing that you're drawn to. Do it well because that's what's needed. Like, you're the only person that has that voice. So, don't worry about labels. Don't worry about other aspects that might be bringing you down if your brain's attacking you saying like, "Oh, you know, I don't know how to do this thing and I'm not interested in it. Oh, so I won't do anything in this realm." No, just do the thing. Just do the parts you like and feel the success in yourself from just having done that thing. Even if it doesn't, you know, go anywhere, just enjoy that process because all creativity is worth it in the end. Yeah, there are a lot of people out there doing things. So, just bring the part that they don't have, which is you. And if your brain gets hard and you feel like the world is coming down on you because it's very easy to feel judged a lot of the time, I constantly feel observed. I don't like being the center of attention. I feel like everybody has bad things to say about me and they're all happening in my head. And my grandmother when I was being raised, she had one quote that she would say all the time and doesn't work for everybody, but if it helps, she simply said, "Don't let the bastards grind you down." It was funny as a little kid to hear that quote, but along with all the other ones that I kind of live my life by, it'll pop into my head sometimes. And sometimes those are just the voices in your head. And it's like, hey, don't let them win. Like, follow the creative path. Have a wonderful time. Like that's more important than literally anything else. Have a good time. Be kind to yourself. Be kind to other people. I don't think there's anything better we can do. 

JULIE: Yeah. Wow. Steve, on that note, what a way to end. I just like to say thank you so much for your time today. It's been amazing hearing your journey and your insights in the creative arena and it's been a joy. So, thank you.

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Julie Legg

Host
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Jel Legg

Co-host
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Steve McCleary

Guest