Five posts without skipping a day! No one ever said that people with ADD don't start strong. It's finishing that we have a problem with. The to-do list is small again tonight because I had a class. I've had several busy nights now. It's kind of redundant to say I'm busy this week. I'm always busy! I stand up alot, and I walk around. I pick things up and put them down. I open the fridge and I close the fridge. I go into other rooms and look at stuff. Dividing one's focus takes up quite a bit of time! So you never really need to ask the ADD kid if he's busy, because we are always busy. Our minds are like little sponges soaking up stimuli and squeezing it all out, just to soak up more. A simile may put it in perspective.
Think of a person walking through a buffet and browsing through the various items in search of a few things that they didn't know they were in the mood for, but know when they see it. This person walks the entire buffet before deciding on an entree and two or three sides. Don't forget the dinner roll! They will finish up their circuit and be seated and enjoy a nice meal in which every item on the plate compliments the one next to it. Simple.
Now it's time for the person with ADD to go to the buffet. The first thing he sees are some roasted potatoes. They look delicious and so he takes some. Right next to the roasted potatoes, their are mashed potatoes. If he had known there were mashed potatoes, he would have gotten them first, because he loves mashed potatoes. So he piles them on. Next to the mashed potatoes are some sweet potatoes. He likes sweet potatoes, so he takes some. Sweet potatoes are more like a carrots anyway, so why not? Then he spots the baked potato bar. Baked potatoes are so awesome! So let's get one of those and dress it up. He'll come back to check out the other sides when he's done dressing his baked potato. So now he has to decide on toppings for his baked potato. He likes the standard butter/sour cream/chives application, so he loads it up. Then he sees some bacon bits. Loves those. Loads it up! Then he sees that there is a yummy looking broccoli and cheese mixture to top it with. Well, if he had known that was available, he might have skipped the sour cream and butter. So he grabs another potatoes and loads it up with the broccoli stuff. Then he sees that there is chili. Could have put that on the potato, but he already has two potatoes stuffed with goodies. Maybe he'll put it on his mashed potatoes. Then he realizes there is probably various gravies available to smother the mashed potatoes with. So now he has to rethink his whole strategy. He returns to the other sides where he found the first batch of potatoes and realizes his plate is completely full and there is no way he is going to get any more sides on there. Wait, all he has is sides? Why didn't he start with the main dish items and work from there? This is so impossible to figure out. He is now overwhelmed by all of the items on the plate that he considers just throwing the plate away and starting over. No, he shouldn't do that. That would be wasteful. So goes back and sits down and eats his potatoes, never to understand what else is on the buffet. He forgot to get a fork, too.
This is kind of how my mind works. It's full of potatoes. There's pending projects and to-do's. Grocery lists and lines of text that I may have read a week ago. There's conversations that I'm going back over and several images that are in recent and distant memory. There's probably one or two songs on repeat in there too, only the choruses probably. The expression 'clear your mind' is something that I am mentally incapable of. So in conclusion, I am always busy.
Things I did tonight:
- Cooked dinner and cleaned the kitchen.
- Blogged
- Went to class and retained the about half of the group discussion, little of the lecture.
- Played with the cats
Tomorrow night we are most likely dining with the couple that we dine with on almost every Friday and watching a movie or playing Scrabble. Hopefully potatoes aren't on the menu.
As a young lad I was prescribed, as many lads with ADD are, Ritalin. Upon starting the medication, I saw a slight increase in my performance in school (this was 8th grade). This tapered off by the end of the year and I was left with only the anxiety and aggression side effects it has on teenagers. I stopped taking it.
As an adult I once more sought out medicinal solutions to my attentive failings. My doctor perscribed me to Concerta, and later a generic form of Adderall called simply Amphetamine. This, again, helped for several months to keep me on task at work and finish jobs. The beneficial effects started to wane within a year and I was left with severe anxiety and panic side effects. I went back to the doctor and said "No more, please".
Recently, I have researched a more supplemental route for easing my anxiety and stumbled upon some ADD and compulsiveness remedies in the way of plain old vitamins and minerals. I'll talk about that next time. I don't want to run out of things to talk about in this part of my blog. Until next time, then!
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