Day 1

I woke up at about 6:30, after hitting snooze five times. My alarm clock only has a snooze option of five minutes, so it's really kind of pointless. I threw a banana and some soy milk in the blender and called it breakfast. My wife usually wakes up at 7, so I only get to see her long enough each weekday to say bye.

My drive to work in my 94' or 95' Chevy Lumina minivan is always a pleasure since I managed to break both the driver and passenger side door handles on a frozen morning last january. They do not open from the outside. You'd think a vehicle made in Canada would have better resistance to cold temperatures. So I have to get in through the hatchback. The heater takes about 30 minutes to heat up, too.

Work was super busy with month-end shenanigans. My job gets very complicated in the last week of the month. In most cases, we have to get as much as possible out the door to meet our revenue goals. Luckily, my supervisor volunteered to drive some jobs to Littleton, which is a three hour round-trip from Fort Collins. That helped me out quite a bit.

Everything went well and I left on time. I got home and got dinner started. Crockpot risotto tonight! This will be the first time we made this, so we'll see how it goes. It takes two hours, so even if it is terrible, we will be too hungry to refuse it. I took a shower, turned on the Jeopardy and here I am.

So here is what I hope to accomplish tonight:

• I want to start and/or finish the inks on a single page of my comic.
• I want to blog
• I want to completely clean the kitchen after dinner.
• I want to read the comic book I got in the mail today.
• I want to put the clothes that I left in the dryer overnight back in the dryer to get the wrinkles out.
• I want to make myself a sandwich for tomorrow's lunch.
• I want to pray a rosary.
• I want to get to bed by 10.

Now, you may have learned a few things about me from my evening to-do list:

I am Catholic. I have always identified as a Catholic, but have recently become more serious about my faith. I like comic books and am creating one, another recent undertaking. 

I am incompetent in doing laundry.

That's enough about me for one day. I will leave you with a tidbit of information I have learned about ADD.

Did you know that there are physical differences in the brains of people with ADHD? Here is a link to an article I found informative on the subject.

Welcome. What were we doing?

This is a project I decided to start a year ago, so we're making pretty good progress, in my humble opinion.

Let's start off with a a wiki description of symptoms associated with Adult ADD.
Individuals with ADHD have deficiencies with self-regulation and self-motivation, that cause problems with distractibility, procrastination, organization, and prioritization. The learning potential and overall intelligence of an adult with ADHD, however, are no different from the potential and intelligence of adults who do not have the disorder.

My name is Greg. I am 29 and I am an adult that has ADD. I am a high school dropout. I am a community college dropout, and I have been described as a 'loser' by some parental authorities. I am also a devoted husband, a home-owner, and a loving father to two behavioral cats. I work a menial hourly job handling the shipping and receiving at a machine shop in town that nets me about 25K annually, but my real vocation is that of a visual artist. I draw, paint, and do graphic design, with no college degree to nab me a job in an artistic industry.

I'm telling you all of this to explain who I am so you can understand where I am going. As the description of the ADD states, I am not stupid. You may think that someone who can read an entire chapter of a textbook and not retain any of it is stupid. Most teachers in my generation of adolescence would agree. I am here to say that we are not stupid. People with ADD(I drop the 'H', because I suffer from the more 'silent killer' type of Attention Deficit in my adulthood) tend to be intellectual, yet struggle with academic achievement. This means that I am smart enough to grasp concepts, but can't concentrate when applying them. I'll be talking about these things in further posts and will share some knowledge I have acquired about the physiology of the affliction. For now, let's just get into my mission statement.

I seek to gain a clearer understanding of my ADD by documenting my daily struggles and sharing what I find that works and what doesn't work to get through the block.

If you are a parent of a child with ADD, please understand that I am going to share everything with you. I sometimes drink. I sometimes swear. I sometimes act immature, but I need to include everything if I am to successfully gain an accurate understanding of this condition. I would be happy if you read the blog and used it to understand your child's ADD/ADHD better, but please read it before having your child read it.

The structure of this blog will consist of three main focuses. I will call these items personal, daily, and research. This means that I will talk briefly about some personal matters in regards to ADD and how I have dealt with them. I will chronicle my daily to-do's and have-done's, for reference. I will also include some information that I have researched about ADD and cite articles and such.

I hope this blog helps both people who have ADD/ADHD and parents of children that have bright minds, yet struggle with learning. Use what I learn to help yourselves and your children achieve more. That sounds very self-help, but as you find in a life with ADD, you sometimes have to depend on yourself. It's frightening and the challenges are great, but we can be great too. We are better than our attention-span.

I hope to see you tomorrow. Wish me luck!
-Greg