I don’t know about y’all, but one of the things I have a real problem with is doing the exact same thing over and over. So this week, instead of having a survey, I thought we’d have a free-for-all.
So - brag, share, vent, tell me what’s going on in your life, etc., etc*
I think I’ve found the perfect craft for my ADDness - I’ve been fusing glass as part of TAD this month, and I have been having loads of fun. It only takes a few minutes to put the glass together, and a few more minutes in the microwave, and a 1/2 hour of waiting to see what I ended up with. And I can indulge all my crafty and experimenting tendencies.
My aunt was in a production of “The King and I” when she was in college. She got a Siamese cat not long after that. She was going to name the cat Etcetera, but the cat turned out to be female, so Aunt Martha named the cat Etceterita - now imagine that is a strong rural Texan accent. I always think Aunt Martha and that cat’s name when I use etc.
The worst thing for me is it is impossible being a perfectionist with ADD. Nothing is ever perfect, I find flaws in eveything. Being hard enough to finish something as it is, finding flaws that most people don’t see makes it very hard, then I just give up and slam it together. I also hate that when I start stuff, the planning for every possible outcome becomes brutally long and discouraging.
It drives me nuts that as much as I would like to respond to threads on the Dope, typing a reply, proofreading, fixing any gramatical mistakes, posting, re-proofreading then editing is a huge pain in the ass. Especially here, where mistakes in spelling and punctuation are not allowed or the SDMB grammer police will be slapping you with their notoriously high fines payable with your confidence and dignity…lol. Now, with that said, I think from now on I will just say what I want and use this post as my reason for a lack of any sensical meaning. It would make a great sig if I could attach a line saying " Don’t bother mentioning the spelling or punctuation as per this link… (attach link to this paragraph of this thread).
My wife suggested that I should start a new business catering to people with ADD. She said that if we are all the same I could start selling half finished products to them and then they would only have to finish them, and considering that I already have the inventory startup would be a breeze. Me thinks she was being sarcastic!
What kind of products are you working on? Maybe we could trade off! (We could call it “A meeting of two half wits”?)
I’m able to shake off the worst of the perfectionism, but as someone mentioned in an earlier thread, it’s the things I think shouldn’t be a problem that get caught in use.
And today I’m trying to write a synopsis of my skills for a new boss, like a résumé light. This taps into all of my insecurities, because so many of the soft skills are not what I’m good at. “thrives in environments requiring ability to effectively prioritize and juggle multiple concurrent projects”? Yea, right.
Okay, so, I considering starting music lessons again. It’s been many years but it’s the only way Ms LP will allow me to bring home the Hammond A100 organ I was recently given.
It would be somewhat harder to hide than the Fender Strat, Martin Backpacker Guitar, Gibson UB1 Banjo Ukulele, generic Banjo ukuleles, 5 string Banjo, soprano uke, violin, xylophone, drum kit, (she noticed that), Electric Bass, various other guitars, brass, woodwind and percussion instruments.
To my credit, I have started divesting myself of my collection of microbiology, land-survey and electron microscope instrumentation.
Still trying to decide if I can part with the vintage pr0n collection, old floor model shortwave radios, tvs, assorted quantities of fun chemicals. I’m keeping the lathe, milling machine, MIG welder, oxy-acetylene kit (for now)
oooooh! there’s an auction next week where I suspect a nice mass spectrometer will go for pennies on the dollar!
longPath - I have a piano, penny whistles, a recorder, a bodhran, a tambourine and finger cymbals. The finger cymbals are the only instruments that I can play with anything like skill. (Ok, add the tambourine, because that just needs to be hit and shaken in time with the music).
Oh, yes, lots and lots of unfinished projects of all sorts. However, since my diagnosis and drugs, I can stick with things a lot longer. I find that whatever it is still needs to be something I’m interested in to begin with, it just takes much longer now for it to become boring. Usually long enough for me to finish it, or at least have no trouble coming back to it another time to finish. Started guitar lessons, bought an alto recorder I cannot play, bought the ingredients for meals I had good intentions of making, only to toss half of them out when they go bad and use the rest in other dishes…etc., etc.
One of the things I really like about the author is that she doesn’t believe that there is only One True Way. That’s important to me as an ADDer because I find that what works for most people doesn’t work for me.
I think that today’s post is quite relevant to some of this discussion: Lower The Bar
I have a question I don’t want to muck up the more focused (heh) threads. Does anyone know when they decided that hyperactive kids and ADD kids were one and the same? When we were young (early 80s) my childhood friend Lee and I were deemed “hyperactive” by our doctors, and ADD was never brought up at that point.
Most “hyperactive” kids are boys, but here’s a story to show you why I got that label:
When I was one, a couple of months after we moved, my mom couldn’t wake me up from a nap one afternoon. I had a pulse and was more or less breathing normally, but I couldn’t be roused at all, so I was of course rushed to the ER. It was chalked up to an idiopathic illness (doctor speak for “dunno”) after testing for various poisonings like nicotine since dad smoked - two years later the same thing happened to my then two and four year old friends not long after they moved in, and their doctor suspected it had to do with the neighborhood having been built on a filled in quarry.
Anyway, after a day or so, I came around, much to everyone’s relief. The doctor wanted to release me from the hospital, but my parents insisted that I wasn’t back to my old self, as evidenced by how sluggish I seemed to them. The doctor insisted that I was acting like a normal one-year-old, but eventually my parents got him to agree to keep me another night.
When my parents came back in the morning, there was a net locked over the top of my crib, and my doctor was very apologetic. He told them that he was sorry for doubting them because I really did seem like most young toddlers…but once I really felt better that night, the nurses had a hell of a time keeping me in my crib, so they’d resorted to netting the top to keep me in, and that they’d never dealt with a kid that young with that much energy before. My parents looked at each other and said, “Now she’s back to her old self.”
That’s an interesting question. A search of Google ngrams makes it look like ADHD didn’t start getting used until around 1985, and about the same time “hyperactivity” starts getting used more in proportion to “hyperactive”. That’s about the time I first heard about ADD, so it sounds about right to me.
Well, I’m fighting a sore throat and I’ve got a show this weekend that I should be getting ready for, so I’m quite happy to do another free week.
My husband is starting his diagnostic path next week. He’s a little scared, as am I. Neither of us want his personality to change. We just want him to be able to stick to a diet and exercise, so he can keep his job. He had a trial of some ADD drug and it made him “flat.” He wasn’t funny or in any way spontaneous.
Please tell me he can be a little more focused without losing the good stuff.
I was diagnosed about 10 years ago. I don’t take anything. I think I’m pretty contained,but I have my moments.
According to the psychologist I see (unrelated to ADHD, which I don’t actually have) ADD (which used to be called “minimal brain dysfunction”, I guess) doesn’t exist anymore and hasn’t for something like 15 years. The diagnoses now are ADHD, inattentive type; ADHD hyperactive/impulsive type; or ADHD, combined inattentive, hyperactive/impulsive.
IIRC. And I probably don’t because I retain information the way a colander retains water.
Anyway, for the “perpetually late” thing… I’m a procrastinator so, while I am seldom actually late, I find myself doing things at the very last second and feeling rushed and panicked. I talked about this a couple weeks ago and the suggestion I got was to remove the word “should” from my vocabulary so that things like “I should wash some laundry… (continue clicking every link Youtube recommends for 20 minutes) I should get in the shower…” becomes “I wash laundry. I get in the shower.”
I think that one piece of advice is worth every single dime that man will make in his entire lifetime. My productivity in the last two weeks has gone through the roof, I don’t feel rushed and crazy and like I just don’t have enough time for everything, etc. It’s been cool. So maybe that would work for some of you. Unless you’re spastic hyperactive so it’s more like “cooking dinner I should paint a fence! house burns down”
