A Splintered Mind

Is AI Good for ADHD or Just a Distraction?

2026-01-07T07:00:00.002-07:00

In which Douglas proves he’s not a Boomer

I’ve been rethinking my engagement with AI recently. I’m too eager to be an unpaid beta tester for these guys.

Companies that have invested billions into AI will gaslight us all day about how imperative AI tools should be in our lives. They’ll force us to deal with their AI, replace perfectly useful services with AI, and cram AI down our throats every time we turn around. (Microsoft 365 Copilot, I’m looking at you.)

So what good is AI? Judging by how much trouble it gives me, I’d be tempted to say “not much”. ChatGPT once formatted CSS tables so poorly for me that I spent longer fighting with it than I did just coding them myself. Grok often hallucinates answers, gaslights me until I call it out, then it apologizes and gives me the information that I wanted.

Just tonight I asked Siri how many kids Ronald Reagan had and what were their names (since his oldest son passed away today), and it told me “five”, but withheld the names. ChatGPT told me “four” but provided four of their names. Only Grok gave me all the information and mentioned that one of the children died at birth and wasn’t usually included in the lists of his children. That’s a lot of work to go through for accessing supposedly cutting edge intelligences. It would have been quicker accessing the info on Wikipedia. I’ve had problems with Claude and Gemini, too.

It’s fascinating to me that I am so enamored with technology that I’ll get caught up trying to make something work the new way while slowly putting my blood on boil. Perhaps it’s just plain ole ADHD tunnel vision at work. You know, tunnel vision just like regular folk experience, but on steroids.

For whatever reason, the things that I want AI to do for me give them trouble. Then I’ll become side-tracked by the struggle to get the AI to comply. That’s why I’ve decided to change how I approach all AI. It’s just not ready yet. So instead of struggling to get AI to understand my prompts—triggering my low tolerance for frustration—I’ll think of a project or task that I want AI to help me with, then plan a specific way for AI to make that more efficient.

After all, if I wanted to design a poster in Adobe Photoshop, I’d sketch out my ideas beforehand, then turn to Photoshop when I had a clear vision for the project. I wouldn’t prompt Photoshop to do the work for me, then expect the output to be exactly what I had in mind. Therein lies madness.

My interest in AI is to find a digital assistant that makes my work easier. I believe that this is an exciting time, and despite artificial idiocy, we’ll arrive on the other side of this worldwide beta test with useful tools to improve our lives. Most of my friends don’t have the patience for it, but some of my daughters rely on it deeply. We’re looking at a generational gap in the making. Gen X spent so many years laughing at how inept their Boomer parents were with the technology of the past 20 years, but AI has come to make Boomers of them all.

Meanwhile, I promise myself to stop shaking my fists at the cloud and figure out how to utilize AI to keep myself organized and productive.

~Dˢ

PEM: Thinking Tactically

2025-10-06T05:18:00.006-06:00

(These AI images make me laugh. Yes, I know the calendar is messed up. Allow me my silly moments.)

I’ve decided to think dramatically about my obstacles in my first attempt to blog about my new condition with a sense of humor. Honestly, there hasn’t been much to laugh at. For example, I got distracted playing Chess on Duolingo the other day and gave myself Post Exertional Malaise (PEM). First, I noticed the headache, then I noticed that I was panting, and then I realized that I was dizzy. It was just chess! But I lost track of time, got caught up in it, and overtaxed my brain. Stamina spent. Crash incoming. An entire day wasted. It’s hard to laugh about things like that. I had big plans to implement. Instead, I watched TV—until that gave me a headache, too.

Every day I have lists, but I rarely make it to the end of them because of the drain cognitive, physical, and even emotional events have on my stamina levels. Chronic fatigue is complicated.

That’s when it occurred to me. If ADHD is heading to the grocery store and ending up in Vegas, depression is a dreary, overcast day with frequent downpours, and Tourettes is a random mugging on my way to the park, then Post Viral Dysautonomia is like climbing up a hill, then getting run over by a truck.

Since I don’t live in a Japanese light novel, that truck isn’t sending me off to an isekai adventure. It’s more likely that truck puts me in bed. When I began my new neuro PT exercises last week, I did too many of them and ended up in bed for three days. This illness requires careful planning and tactical thinking, contrary to my ADHD impulsiveness.

For example, I have problems now with dangerously low oxygen saturation levels thanks to COVID–19. It occurred to me that I hadn’t been playing any woodwind instruments in a long while, so maybe I could add that to my daily routine to increase my lung capacity again. Perhaps that would help.

So I practiced for a timed 15 minutes for two instruments, and found that I could only sometimes make the full 30 minute session without getting dizzy and light-headed. Yesterday, I shortened the session to 10 minutes per instrument. It’s a far cry from playing for hours like I used to enjoy, but there are other things that I need to do daily, and if I can tolerate a 20 minute session, then that’s fantastic. I can build up from there. However, I will cap it at 30 minutes. My goal isn’t to play the shinobue and ocarina professionally. It’s just lung exercise and a bit of fun. Other things like freelance work, packing to move, and writing require vast energy reserves. I need to plan my time better. Using a timer is key, but being mindful of the calendar helps, too. Laughter is another tool that I am only now using again. It’s rusty, but I’m sure I can get it shiny again—assuming I can avoid getting hit by more trucks.

~Dˢ

The Car Wreck of My Life Has a Name

2025-08-23T12:23:00.004-06:00

Since the pandemic, I have discovered something harder to deal with than Tourettes. It challenges my efforts to be upbeat and optimistic, and has given me very little to laugh about.

I manage my ADHD & Depression just fine—or should I say I deal with them just fine. They represent road bumps that cause me to slow down, but then I get back up to speed. My Tourettes acts more like an IED that blows up my schedule. It takes a bit more effort and time to recover from, but I always get moving forward again. Post Viral Dysautonomia, as I’ve been recently diagnosed with, has been more like a head-on collision with demolition charges for the past four years, taking out both the car and the roads. It leaves me exhausted, susceptible to illness, and with oxygen saturation that routinely drops below 88%.

Recently, I had a setback in my efforts to overcome dysautonomia. It was just back surgery. I had a cyst removed. Nothing drastic. It was day surgery. I laughed and chatted with the dermatologist and his assistant while they did their work. It was a lark, I tell you.

And yet coming off the anesthesia hit me like a truck. I still needed to finish packing to move, so I implemented pacing techniques to manage my stamina, but I made myself sick and crashed out after a few days anyway. I did manage to maintain my 3200 steps daily baseline, though. Victory? ✌🏻

No, clearly I did too much. This is where ADHD and Dysautonomia come together like a four car pile-up. I become so focused on what I need to do that I forget to take notice of how I’m doing. And I stop. No energy. I might fall asleep right where I am, like a narcoleptic behind the wheel.

With each new day, I square my shoulders and push myself forward. I try to learn from my mistakes, but not dwell on them. What will today look like? Part of the crashout was getting over eight hours of sleep. I’d been functioning on less than six all last week. So I feel much better.

I’d like to…

I don’t know how well I’ll do. Making lists helps, but I don’t hold myself to them too tightly. When I poop out, time is lost as I recuperate. Then the day ends, and I prepare for the next one. Overcoming dysautonomia calls for careful pacing, not exceeding one’s limits, as well as pushing forward without crashing. It’s a very, very hard balance to achieve since cognitive and physical activities pull from the thimbleful I have of stamina. This is my new life, but at least I’m getting guidance finally—a roadmap to skirt around the crashes. Perhaps in time, I’ll even learn to laugh about it (like I did when Grok spit out this “station wagon”).

Traveler's Notebook Distractions and ADHD eBay Blunders

2024-10-02T23:42:00.017-06:00

I joined the Midori Traveler’s Notebook (TN) club this past Summer. I missed the big blogging heyday about them around 2012 to 2015 when the Internet seem to explode over this nifty little notebook system, but I was all about digital back then. I loved my iPhone and didn’t feel a need to go analog.

Recently, though, I noticed some artists doing inspiring things in their TNs, and I thought this could be the kick in the pants I needed to fit sketching back into my life. I started small with one notebook insert with a leather cover. Only when I noted that I was actually using it, I invested in more inserts. The only feature it was missing for me was a ToDo list insert, but nobody made one.

And thus I began my journey yesterday into DIY Notebook Hell.

With ADHD as my guide, I boldly discovered blog after blog of incredibly ornate notebook inserts that people made for themselves because the official ones were just “too expensive”. Since you can get official ones for as low as $4.30, I wasn’t sure what they were talking about. Perhaps TNs weren’t sold in a US store back then. If people had to import these inserts from Japan, I can see why they might want to make one themselves. If you ship via Japan Post, you could practically grow your own tree and harvest it for paper before the package arrives. Yet the examples I found online were so detailed, elaborate, and time consuming. These bloggers clearly weren’t trying to save money. Personally, I didn’t need custom stickers, embossed leather, and personalized charms. I just wanted a notebook that had squares next to lines that I could fill in and then check off.

Then I discovered Ray Blake of mylifeallinoneplace.com who provided the journaling community Midori TN templates to download. He’s still providing updated templates for free, even today, but it was his video from nine years ago that showed how he made his own booklets that caught my fancy. His no-nonsense approach was perfect for my needs, and armed with the knowledge that he shared, I loaded up my Amazon shopping cart with fountain pen safe printer paper, cracked leather cardstock, and a Swing-Arm Swivel Stapler perfect for saddle stapling. There I was, ready to plunk $38.96 down just to make a ToDo list insert for my traveler’s notebook.

But I didn’t pull the trigger.

You see, I just recently got myself in over my head with eBay purchases. I had ignored the rule:

Never Bid on an Auction When You Are Sick or Ticking.

Unfortunately, I steamrolled over this rule a few weekends ago when I was both sick and ticking (I have Tourettes). Somehow my brain thought it was a loophole? Alas, it was not. I ended up purchasing quite a few Splatoon collectibles. Oh yes, it was glorious. Finally! My collection was complete.

Except one of the figurines I bought was broken. I failed to notice the photograph that showed that it was broken. It was right there in the auction. The seller photographed his own hand pointing at the broken part. The little character was missing its ponytail. I missed a giant, gaping hole in the head of the figurine. As obvious as a blinking stop sign. I was gobsmacked. And the other figurine was what I thought was the Smash Brothers version of the Splatoon inkling girl. However, it turned out to be one of four I already owned. So now I have five.

Of course, the other figurines are still on their way from Japan. Who knows what I got wrong with them? But it gets better. The money I used to buy these wonderful bonehead bargains had been earmarked to register my car. Go me.

If I were to tell you that adults with ADHD have a lack of impulse control, please consider me the poster child of ADHD in this regard. When I am sick or ticking, that impulsivity is hypercharged. That’s why I have so many rules to keep myself from making a fool of myself. It doesn’t always work, and now I feel like a jerk. I’ll have one heck of a collection when the packages finish traveling from the other side of the planet, right⸮

So with these wounds freshly bleeding, I looked very suspiciously at my shopping cart filled with new equipment to pursue a shiny, new distraction. Did I really need this stuff? I mean, really? I decided to go to the source. I went to the Traveler’s Company USA site and looked through all of the inserts that they offered. Maybe there was something I missed.

And there was.

Down at the bottom of the list was an insert with a dot grid pattern. One of the examples that demonstrated how to use this wonderful little insert was a ToDo list. So I bought a few, and they’ll arrive next week. In the meantime, the DIY items have been removed from my shopping cart. Maybe one day I’ll invest in them for the fun of it. That day is not today, however, especially since I still have to register my car.

⁂

How to Take Charge of Your ADHD Voicemail Hell

2022-11-11T05:14:00.002-07:00

Ever find yourself missing important messages because your voicemail box is filled with half a decade of unlistened to calls? There might be a solution for that.

Adult ADHD is almost like the Baskin Robbins of the mental health community. There are so many flavors of ADHD, you can be forgiven for questioning if they’re all from the same diagnosis. Some adults with ADHD daydream. Others are chronically late. Some run their mouths off with their feet in the way. Others never stop talking. Some forget why they went to the store. Others forget who they just called because something distracted them after they dialed. There are plenty of attributes that we all have in common, but I am constantly surprised by how diverse the ADHD community is. One size truly does not fit all.

I find that I have difficulty getting organized, I have chronic procrastination issues, I have trouble following through, and all because I have an intolerance for boredom. Those are fairly basic ADHD attributes, but where I notice them intersecting with uncomfortable intensity is with tasks like email, paper piles, bills, and voice mail.

In short, I have an aversion to drudgery. Most people do. The ADHD mind, however, seems Teflon coated to protect itself from boredom. The second boredom occurs, the ADHD mind is off crossing the English Channel, launching into space, or thinking about anything but what it is supposed to be.

I’ve noticed that Adults with ADHD have a tendency to create these types of backlogs at a higher frequency than others. They can become stumbling blocks that worsen over time because the ADHD mind recoils at boredom. Today I want to touch upon how that creates our own version of voice mail hell.

For all the creative energy I put into my voicemail greeting, I sure don’t put as much energy into listening to the messages people leave for me. Somehow, it slips my mind. People reach out to me, the years pass, glaciers move across the continent, and suddenly I notice I have voicemails all the way back to 1995. Most are just doctor offices letting me know about an upcoming appointment, but some are important messages with information I had inquired about. Other times, I found messages from my lovely daughters that were never listened to. I might be only slightly exaggerating, but overall it can get bad.

There are primarily four methods to manage voicemail:

Shut off voicemail. I don’t recommend this one, but there is no law that says you need voicemail. The best mess is the one that doesn’t exist, right⸮
Keep on top of your messages daily by deleting most of them. Build a habit of triaging your messages. I will chuck the dull reminder messages first, as well as the followup messages from school or the doctor’s office. Don’t be afraid to delete a message halfway through your first listen. Work fast and get the drudgery over with. Family messages I save if they’re personal and heartwarming. That leaves me with the messages that are time sensitive. I return those calls, then delete the voicemail when I’m done.
Prune your messages a little bit every day. Sometimes life will get in the way of your efficiency. At those times, it is easy to fall behind your voicemail. I get sick a lot, so there are many occasions where I begin to feel buried by the backlog. To get back on top, I’ll set the goal to process five voicemail a day using the criteria above. It doesn’t take long, and very quickly I’ll find myself caught up. I also make it a point to prioritize current voicemail first.
Declare Voicemail Bankruptcy. Sadly, I find this is a necessary step every few years. For example, coming out of COVID and six months of respiratory viruses, I found my voicemail backlog almost too much to process. Pruning old voicemail everyday was exhausting me and leaving me with no energy for the important calls. A year later, and I still hadn’t caught up. Frankly, if you’re still holding onto a message from three years ago, it’s likely not relevant anymore. Do what I did. Select them all and flush them down the binary toilet. Now I am able to stay on top of my voicemail and respond to current issues in a timely manner again.

If you are the type of person to create a voicemail backlog, then dutifully slog through it for an eternity, you might need permission to free yourself from your self-imposed shackles. Old voicemail is no longer relevant; time is precious; and unfinished projects have an emotional weight that can bind you in the past. Choose the most prudent solution above for your circumstances and make your voicemail useful again.

~Dˢ

Depression: The Highway to Success Has an Awful Lot of Detours

2022-11-03T19:22:00.002-06:00

I’ll write a bit vaguely today because I want to touch upon some things that are family matters and how they impact me.

Recently, I have noticed longtime readers of my blog have leapfrogged over me while my life has become stagnant. I caught myself beginning to feel bitter about it, so instead of letting that bitterness settle into depression, I will share some things that I have learned instead.

My life took a detour a few years back, if eleven can be called of few. It was as if I was forced to take an exit and found myself on the service road bumping along besides the highway, falling behind all the other traffic. I could see where I wanted to go, but I just couldn’t get there as fast.

I called that detour “divorce”, and it took me a few years to get back up onto the highway. I finished two books and blogged professionally during that productive time. Managing my depression while optimistically making big goals helped me to move forward.

The next detour is a touchy one. I’ve never spoken about it in public. It involved pummelings and kicks, objects thrown, property damaged, bruises, and frequent calls to the police while I lived as a punching bag for two people. One of them was a sole instance, but it was bad enough that it changed their life permanently with police, counseling, and a new residence. The other person is precious to me and under my care still.

I couldn’t defend myself well in that sole instance because I was having a Tourette’s episode. My forearm crutches were up against the house, and I was laying down on the driveway. I’ve never felt so helpless in my life. The majority of the events, however, involved the precious one. How could I defend myself against a child? I would take punches while I waited for the police to arrive. This precious one also had epilepsy, so there were many, many emergency calls. I called this detour “911 Hell” and it lasted over seven years.

Autistic children are hard to raise, more so when you don’t have a diagnosis. Teachers and social workers were quick to point fault at us as being negligent. The problem was compounded because the precious one would become Dr. Jekyll after I called the police on Mr. Hyde. Fortunately, we persevered and had our child properly diagnosed, which opened up avenues of treatment that have been life-changing for all of us.

The lessons that I learned were to ignore the petty tyrants in the school system, to not take social workers’ advice (they hastily pass judgement, then move on to the next case), and to proactively seek medical expertise. Also, have your doctor print out and sign your child’s diagnosis on paper with an official letterhead, then laminate it to show to any doubting officials. This saves so much time.

My third detour was less of a side road and more of a bridge that was blown out while I was driving across it. Having Major Depression Disorder and Persistent Depression Disorder, Tourettes, and ADHD while dealing with all of this suppressed my immunity system and caused me to become sick all of the time. I call this detour “the lingering death”. It began in 2014. The last year has been the worst, and I have detailed it more than enough in these pages. I’m still trying to get back up onto the service road, never mind the highway.

All of these detours have profoundly changed me. I struggle to find things to laugh about, and I smile even less. Tapping into my inner brat in order to write funny blog articles is particularly challenging. However, I have not given up hope. Although I occasionally lapse in judgment, I try hard not to compare myself to others and mark my success against my own progress.

As for today, the precious one has COVID–19 this week, but I dodged that bullet. However, I got some other respiratory virus at the same time. You might think those are uncanny odds, but this is me we’re talking about. I get sick just looking outside at the changing weather.

As I come out of this recent illness, I’m thinking hard about how I want to move forward. I need more progress in my life. I need more successes. And I need to acknowledge that I am not managing my depression very well this time around. I don’t know if writing all of this changes anything, but it seems to me that I need to get back up onto the highway sooner rather than later before the next detour presents itself. If putting my life into perspective in a short article can accomplish anything, I hope it accomplishes this.

~Dˢ

Ten Ways to Be Happy with Post-COVID Syndrome (Even If You're Miserable)

2022-10-15T19:14:00.001-06:00

Let’s celebrate my one year anniversary since getting COVID–19! 🎉

I know people who felt that COVID was a pernicious plot by politicians to put down the populace. I know others who believed that nobody would ever get the virus if they were vaccinated, and anybody not getting vaccinated was trying to kill them. Because of this polarization, I have a hard time talking to people about my experience with Long COVID, or Post-COVID Syndrome as I prefer to call it.

Although I have found sympathetic ears out there, they aren’t the norm. The anti-vaccine folks look down on me for masking up and getting vaccinated, or they shun me for admitting that COVID–19 was far worse than a mild cold. If I acknowledge the dangers of COVID–19 in anyway, I’m a compliant sheep to them. On the other side, the pro-vaccine cheer team pretentiously lecture me on the importance of being vaccinated when I tell them I got COVID. I suppose their reasoning is that I couldn’t have got COVID if I had been vaccinated—even though I was fully vaccinated. Since WHO considers 50% to be high efficacy¹, we know that means around 50% of the test subjects got COVID despite the vaccine. At any rate, I’ve dealt with far more compassionate pitbulls out there. It’s as if the pandemic stripped my neighbors and associates of all their long-trained humanity. Life has become Twitter.

Unfortunately, I got the virus a year ago despite living like a cross between a hermit crab and The Boy in the Plastic Bubble. Twenty-two months of avoiding every germ on the planet, and COVID slipped in through the backdoor with the family member of a roommate. It knocked me down hard, and months later I found myself sicker than usual with lots of questions. Why can’t I stay healthy? What happened to my vision? Why is it so hard to think? Why is it excruciatingly painful to give blood now? Why do my wounds take so long to heal? Why do I bruise easily? Why am I so tired all the time? Where did all my stamina go?

Why have I suddenly become so boring‽

Post-COVID Syndrome isn’t just a matter of taking a while to get over COVID. It’s a cornucopia of side effects and symptoms that linger afterwards for months or, in my case, over a year. I have to admit that I’m having a very difficult time adjusting. Last August, I passed out asleep on my bed after blogging. Blogging! I used to bang out a blog in under an hour. Now it takes me four of them. This is due to post exertion malaise, a common side effect of Post-COVID Syndrome, and one that is common to most viral fatigue syndromes.

If all of this sounds discouraging, it is. So I’ve decided to look at the upsides of this delightful virus instead of whinging about it. Since my blog is about overcoming disabilities with attitude and humor, I’m sure this will be easy:

Who needs outdoor exercise when you can get a workout walking to the fridge? Buckets of sweat, a racing heart…it’s almost like running a marathon.
The increase in crippling depression has been a great opportunity to stress test my [coping strategies][fightingdepression]. Just what I needed.
Think of all the TV I get to watch while stuck on the couch. I can’t remember any of it due to the brain fog, but that just means I get to watch it again for the first time!
Speaking of brain fog, I now find myself pining for dealing with just ADHD. At least with ADHD, I got a lot of things done. None of them were on my ToDo list, but I sure was productive comparatively.
Another upside to brain fog is that sometimes I forget that I am depressed. Isn’t that convenient‽ It’s true I also forget to pay my bills, forget which day of the week it is, repeat myself in conversations, and sometimes I forget which day of the week it is, but let’s not focus on the negatives.
I have a keen appreciation of my own mortality now. Before I would cluelessly blunder through life, eternally youthful in mind, but now I am old before my time. I’m positive that sagacity is around the corner.
Thanks to Post-COVID Syndrome, my eyeglasses prescription no longer works. I’ve been limping by in the dark, so to speak, but others with my same condition have had entertaining repeat visits to the optometrist as their vision changes every few months. That’s so awesome. I love optometrists!
I banged my shin at Thanksgiving a month after getting COVID. Here we are a year later, and it still hasn’t completely healed. It’s perfect for Halloween!
I went out to dinner with a friend the other night and came home with a cold. That’s faster than any bout of sickness I ever had before COVID. It’s as if Long COVID has weaponized my immunity system to fail. So exciting!
And the best upside to Post-COVID Syndrome is that when I cancel any one of my dozens of doctor appointments because post exertion malaise or illness has me down for the count, nobody shames me. Thanks, COVID!

As you can see, I can easily come up with reasons to be extremely grateful for this new condition. It’s just non-stop fun over here. So don’t feel sorry for me or worry needlessly. I’m A-OK! I may be sick in bed again, but my brain is feverishly working on even more upsides to Post-COVID Syndrome to share with you next time. Or maybe I just have a fever. With brain fog, I can never remember fully. But that’s no reason to get down, right⸮

~Dˢ

Some 50% facts you should be aware of. https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/vaccine-efficacy-effectiveness-and-protection

ADHD: It's Not Always Your Fault

2022-10-06T18:42:00.003-06:00

Come explore with me the strange intersection of pants and ADHD.

Last July, I lost three pairs of pants.

As usual, I posted to social media to make light of it, but just between you and me, I stayed up fairly late searching the house like a ninja in search of those pants. Hiding my presence, I moved into almost every room in my home, making no sound as I lifted things, rearranged them, and rifled through them hoping those pants would turn up.

I didn’t search the fridge—because that would have been silly—but I searched everywhere else except my roommates’ rooms. It was possible that somebody absconded with my pants, but it was more likely I put them somewhere stupid, right? Besides, I could just imagine the conversation when I accidentally woke my roommates up as I searched under their pillows and bedsheets.

“Douglas, why are you dressed like a ninja?”
“Go back to sleep. You’re dreaming,” I’d say while making ninja-like hypnosis motions with my hands.
“I’m calling the police.”

It turns out that one of the roommates did indeed make off with my pants. This could have been scandalous, except that they politely returned them in the morning—folded—and apologized for accidentally forcing me to run around half naked for…well, no time at all. I eventually stopped looking for my pants, put on my PJs, went to bed, then woke up and got my pants. As far as scandals go, this one was fairly benign.

Except for the hours I spent blaming myself for something that I didn’t do while searching in every stupid place I could have possibly stashed pants.

Afterwards, I was a tad disappointed in myself that when three pairs of pants magically disappeared out of the dryer, I believed that I must have been responsible. I knew, logically, that somebody had taken them—probably accidentally—but I couldn’t believe it. I misplace things so many times on a regular basis, I just assumed that I had done it again. As Ned Hallowell wrote about in “ADHD and Shame”, ADHD adults …may feel that the real you is fundamentally flawed.

I have a brain and have even been known to put it to use occasionally. That means that I know when I’ve messed up and when I haven’t. This incident caught me off guard. Hadn’t I already changed this part of myself? I thought I liked myself better than this! I still don’t? What’s up with that?

I have seen two major ways that Adults with ADHD handle a lifetime of making stupid mistakes and being blamed for not measuring up. The first group internalizes the blame and even perpetuates it, holding themselves responsible for every perceived failure. The second group won’t allow blame to chain them down, so they sprint forward, but without much self-analysis. Both groups tend to become overachievers.

I used to fall into the first group. It was exhausting to constantly be my own worst critic, so I made large strides in putting that type of toxic thinking behind me. So what happened last July? If I were able to skip back through time in order to give myself some advice, I’d tell yester-me to trust his instincts and go to bed. Since I am not able to do that, I will inform future me to keep this lesson in mind.

Pants, even the most active kind, don’t leap out of the dryer and go for a walk. And since there is only ten feet between the dryer and my bedroom door, there aren’t an awful lot of places to misplace pants. I was so troubled by that incident, and so disappointed in myself that I had assumed fault where there was none, that I began to reassess my state of mind. That incident prompted me to seek more information about “Long COVID”.

In a way, I have those pants to thank for my new awareness. I’ve been blaming myself for an awful lot of issues that were out of my control this year. If I hadn’t blamed myself for something ludicrous last July, then been surprised at my error of thought, I might not have suddenly come to a stop and said to myself, “Hold on. Something is wrong here, and it’s not ADHD.” Brain fog is one of the major symptoms of “Long COVID”, but it’s also like a bad ADHD day every day.

I have to admit that I am glad that ADHD has taught me not to take life so seriously. I had a good laugh about those wandering pants. We and our ADHD aren’t always at fault.

The scars of our youth happened a long time ago. We should leave the wounds in the past and stop carrying them into the future. Whether we needlessly blame ourselves, or careen through life like a locomotive in an effort to avoid blame, we still carry those criticisms around with us.

Maybe there are people in your life who still relentlessly blame you. I won’t go so far as to tell you to cut them out of your life, but learning to push back at least can be part of nurturing your self-esteem. You don’t have to be angry, outraged, or hostile. Just draw a line in the sand and don’t budge. That includes pushing back against yourself. Don’t beat yourself up when you make a mistake. Learn from it instead. Laugh at it. Take away its destructive power. You can stop yourself from assassinating your own self-esteem like a ninja in the night. Not everything is your fault.

Now that I think about it clearly, though, I lost my favorite jackknife that month, too. You don’t suppose my roommates would mind if I blame them for its loss, do you? It couldn’t possibly have been me at fault.

Five Ways To Stop Shiny Object Syndrome

2022-09-24T19:59:00.002-06:00

Long before “Shiny Object Syndrome” was coined as a term, an insignificant blogger from Utah referred to a similar condition and called it Multi-Irons Syndrome. Are they the same thing?

Shiny Object Syndrome — The Fancy Term for Something You’ve Been Doing All Your Life

There is often a difference between what an expression means when it is coined and how people end up using it. People often don’t see eye to eye on these things. One group will insist on the academic or dictionary usage of a term or word, while the popular usage tromples all over them. Irregardless, we don’t have a lot of control over language. (Yes, yes, I couldn’t resist.) Language evolves. Take a stand on one meaning, and you’ll soon find yourself in the camp of people who hate the use of the singular “they”, shaking your aging fist at the sky, shouting, “But that’s not what the word means!” We lost that particular battle years ago when people got tired of typing “he or she” and “him or her” as gender neutral expressions in business letters.

Shiny Object Syndrome is another one of those terms. People don’t exactly agree on what it means, and they don’t all use the same expression, though it is clear which one is winning that particular battle. The original meaning of “Shiny Object Syndrome” has more to do with project creep than distractions, but that’s not how it is used. Just look at that wonderful cartoon. It was labeled ShinyProjectSyndrom_e1556842006339.jpg on the oldest link I found, like that helps. Syndrome isn’t even spelled correctly.

I have no idea who drew it originally, but they captured the manic zeal of the syndrome perfectly. I have referred to the same issue since 2008 as “Multi-Irons Syndrome”. My term has more in common with the less popular “Shiny Project Syndrome”, but “Shiny Object Syndrome” has the clout and its own Wikipedia entry.

Shiny Object Syndrome as a Way of Life

Recently, I embraced Shiny Object Syndrome as a coping strategy to deal with the crushing depression I was suffering from during the pandemic, and then after coming down with COVID–19. Laying in bed and staring at the ceiling for entertainment gets boring in a hurry. Letting myself get excited about new projects was the only thing at times that lifted my spirits.

I don’t regret the coping strategy, because it was so helpful initially. I’ve written about having too many irons in the fire before, but I ended up with a bit too many projects this time. To manage things, I’m journaling my process as I take this massive new pile of nascent projects and prune them before I fail to achieve my birthday goals. I call it my Bookwork project.

Adults with ADHD are particularly susceptible to Shiny Object Syndrome. Every task worth the effort involves a bit of drudgery before great things can be accomplished. Unfortunately, our Teflon coated brains are averse to the boredom that drudgery welcomes in with open arms. Our minds switch tasks to something more appealing so quickly, we often are not aware of the change. Then we end up with something like my Bookwork project where I wanted to write fifteen books simultaneously. FIFTEEN! As soon as I realized what I had committed myself to, I had a good laugh.

Simple Steps to Prevent Shiny Object Syndrome from Taking Over Your Life

If you’ve got ADHD, it isn’t likely that you’ll be able to kick this habit. An aversion to boredom is built into the diagnosis. However, you can manage it. Here’s how I halt the parade of ideas and finish the floats I began with:

Keep the most important goals in the forefront of your mind. Plaster them on the wall if you have to.
Periodically reassess your project goals to cut out the cruft.
Don’t be afraid to shelf “cool” ideas if they are getting in the way of what you’re supposed to accomplish.
Work on your projects in short steps to avoid deep boredom.
Build in rewards for staying focused.

Whatever you want to call it, people with ADHD collect new projects without even trying. I don’t think this is a bad thing. Our minds are unfettered and freely creative. Good things can come from that chaotic maelstrom of thoughts. The trick is to regulate it so that we aren’t always creating and accumulating ideas, but taking time to bring some of them to life.

ADHD: Brain Fog Is No Laughing Matter. Well, Maybe Just a Little

2022-09-08T09:30:00.004-06:00

Call it brain fog, absentmindedness, or a senior moment, but sometimes when your ADHD brain goes on the fritz, you’ve just got to laugh.

I am here today to tell you that playing Sudoku daily will not improve brain fog. I know. I’ve tried multiple Sudoku books & apps, Sudoku with words, and there’s a Sudoku game out there for the Nintendo Switch that would let me play with fluffy blobs of cats, but I’m not entirely convinced that will work either. Adults with ADHD deal with brain fog on a general basis, so over the years I figured doing mental activities to improve my concentration and presence of mind couldn’t hurt.

Who says that Sudoku improves concentration? The same people who used to swear by crossword puzzles, usually. Certainly, not me. No, I kid. I love playing Sudoku and feel more focused after solving a few puzzles, but after the week I’ve just had, I can tell you that it’s clearly not working as a prevention.

There was that moment where I was distracted cleaning up my Nintendo Friend List. Who were all these people? Clearly, all that meditation I had been doing under mountain waterfalls had failed to sharpen my wits. There was this one entry labeled “Avril”* with a bulbous Kirby as her avatar. Hey! I know an Avril! But is it the same Avril? Moments before bringing an impulse to life via text, I stopped myself, iPhone in hand, and thought hard for the first time in days. You can’t just ask somebody out of the blue if their gaming avatar is Kirby, Douglas. Does she even game? Waitaminute…how long has it been since you reached out to her anyway? Crud! Has it been months‽

In fact, it had been so long since I last texted her that the conversation had been automatically deleted. For all I knew, I had left her on “Read” since last year. Suddenly, I realized again that the dream I had about forgetting that I was dating somebody wasn’t so far from reality.

Last weekend, I was talking with a friend about the latest Spider-man movie that was rereleased into theaters. He couldn’t believe that I hadn’t seen it yet. He stared at me like I had three heads. I had insisted that he watch the first two movies last Fall (that HE hadn’t seen) so that he could catch up in order to see the movie in theaters with me. Then I got sick.

Later I found out that he went and saw it with family instead while I was sick in bed. Why are we still friends? How could my friend not know how sick I’ve been? But never mind that. Why do we say “three heads”? Wouldn’t two heads be weird enough? Were two heads a normal thing ages ago, thus making three heads something outside of the norm? Perhaps there’s something more to the “two-faced” idiom. 🤔

At any rate, he was right that I was adamant about him getting caught up. I wanted the shared cinematic experience. I realize I was bedridden for much of the winter, but it’s strange that I never bought the movie, or streamed it online. It couldn’t be that I forgot about it. One of my daughters loved the movie so much, she rented out a seat and lived in the theater during its first run. It’s all she texted about for weeks.

I think this is more like that ADHD joke, “Oooh! Shiny!”, but on a larger scale. For me it’s a Tourettes episode that lasts for more than a few days or an illness that lasts for a week. I lose track of my current goal if I go too many days without working on it. I’m running forward headlong towards a goal when something happens, then POOF! What goal?

I compensate for this, usually, but having a ton of reminders and to do lists. I’m pretty good about keeping track of most of it. It’s how I’ve written two books, blogged professionally for years, and raised kids. However, every once in a while something slips through the cracks. This time it was responding to a text and seeing a movie I had planned on. The brain fog from Long COVID (or chronic fatigue syndrome—whatever they’re going to call it), only makes my ADHD absentmindedness worse. It can be frustrating. Whenever this forgetfulness interferes with my life, I try to have a good laugh, but not laugh it off. It’s important to acknowledge some of these quirks are funny. It’s better than hating myself as I used to do decades ago. However, a healthy sense of humor is the only thing that seems to be healthy about me lately.

Maybe I just need to play even more Sudoku. I’m sure that’ll fix things.

~Dˢ

* Name changed to save me from embarrassment.

ADHD Fixation: The Dark Side of Hyperfocus

2022-08-27T06:35:00.001-06:00

A lot is made of ADHD’s super power of hyperfocus. I’ve written about it on several occasions over the years as well. I’ve even created a ToDo List technique to simulate it!

Should we really label hyperfocus as a superpower, though? I have always been painfully aware of the downsides to hyperfocus. I’ll even avoid undertaking certain tasks because I know that I’ll slip into hyperfocus and loose track of time and the events around me. It’s not always a desirable state of mind to be in.

Normally, adults with adhd might as well be hamsters on a wheel, furiously running, but not getting anywhere. Suddenly, hyperfocus grants us clarity of vision and purpose, opening the road in front of us into a straight line towards success. When your days are spent fighting against your own brain to get something done, hyperfocus is a big deal.

So, what’s so bad about hyperfocus?

Hyperfocus without limits is a form of tunnel vision. I like to say that character flaws are talents gone awry. If hyperfocus is a talent, then its flipside is fixation. This ADHD fixation occurs when hyperfocus has no endgame. There is only the project and the drive to complete the project. Everything else is ignored while we relentlessly pursue our goal.

“But Douglas!” I hear you say. “Isn’t focusing on completing the project an endgame?”

It seems that way, doesn’t it? Hyperfocus is wonderful when the project moves smoothly from start to finish without inconveniencing anybody. What happens if hyperfocus makes you difficult to work with, though? What happens when you encounter a hitch? Do you step back and rethink your approach to the project, or do you run forward in hyperfocused hamster mode, furiously running in circles, but with greater energy?

I recall a time when a college friend and I were working on an import Japanese goods startup business. We ran into software issues which affected the catalog layout. Instead of stepping away to research the issue, I continued struggling against the software for hours while my friend grew more and more frustrated. I didn’t listen to a darn thing he said. He pleaded with me to find another solution, but I continued. “I’m almost done. Just one more sec.” I never did resolve the issue, so what did all that intense hyperfocus accomplish? Over the last three decades, I have trained myself to not become so fixated when other people were waiting in the wings. However, I still inconvenience myself if I don’t watch for it.

How do I stop myself from slipping into hyperfocus?

Life is filled with moments where we have to park our hyperfocus in order to function with those around us. While raising children, I had to put the brakes on hyperfocus so that my children wouldn’t have to wait for me to finish a project before, oh, feeding them perhaps? Even last night, I put off writing this article until my adult autistic daughter was put to bed.

When I find myself out in the weeds filled with glorious purpose, I use these tips to drag myself back to the road:

Become aware of which activities you tend to hyperfocus on. The first step is developing an awareness of yourself. Knowing which activities catch your attention will help you avoid them when you have other responsibilities.
Clear away your responsibilities before allowing yourself to sink into hyperfocus. This is a core issue that is made difficult by the very nature of ADHD itself. However, you can train yourself to do this. It takes effort, but it is achievable.
Begin with the ending time in mind. This is where I trip myself up. Have a clear idea of how much time you can allow yourself to work on a project before you begin. Use physical timers and phone reminders to keep yourself on track.
Stop when you should. This is the hardest skill of all when hyperfocus whips us forward in a euphoria of clarity. You don’t have to wait until you’ve made a wreckage of your life before learning this skill.
Reassess your project and be flexible enough to change course if necessary. Hyperfocus will have you endlessly working the wrong approach to completion. Our first ideas aren’t always the wisest, even if they are compelling.

Get it right with practice.

I love hyperfocus; I despise ADHD fixation. Nothing good ever comes of being fixated. I become inflexible, obsessed, and out of touch with the world around me. Years ago, I melted more than a few pans on the stovetop before learning not to work on a project while also cooking. It is true that sometimes “brilliant” ideas are lost when I prevent myself from getting hyperfocused, but I’d rather be reactive and bored than brilliantly hyperfocused while the world burns around me.

~Dˢ

That Time ADHD Helped Me Win a Couple of Auctions

2022-07-07T23:30:00.020-06:00

The problem with chronic illness is that it's boring. I don't mean for the person stricken in bed and suffering. Who cares about them, right⸮ I am referring to everybody else who finds the subject duller than a twenty-four hour CSPAN marathon. When the chronically sick try to tell others about their struggles, they are likely to receive no small degree of exasperation from people who can't hide their dismay, as if to say "What? This again?"

Of course, not everybody is so callous, and even if they are, they aren't likely to be so open about it. They'll smile at you, nod their head sympathetically, tell you to call them if you ever need anything, then disconnect their phone number. I am almost certain this is what really happens, or at least, I am mostly certain since my observations were possibly affected by my 102°F fever. As I've written over and over before, I contracted COVID-19 in October like an early Halloween treat, received RSV for Thankgiving, then had a string of mystery respiratory viruses all the way into April. Despite blogging about this three and a half dozen times, nobody has sent me bales of cash with a sweet "Get Well" card yet. In fact, I would have simply been happy to have received a postcard from Healthy Town, USA with the words, "Wish you were here," scrawled on the back, but no such luck.

In March, I celebrated six months of respiratory viruses by bringing another one home with me from the virus distribution center. This was a proper bookend to COVID-19, complete with five days of a 101°F fever, and it left me bedridden with nothing to do except…what was that?

"Stop being so negative, dear."
"Don't identify as your illness, my dude."
"Keep your plague to yourself."
"You were sick?"

That last one was from one of my beloved daughters, so yes, I was sick. And I had a lot of time to think about things like ADHD, Depression, the fascinating patterns in my ceiling, and how I was going to eat. I can assure you that modern amenities don't accommodate the sick in bed. You can imagine my frustration when I discovered Door Dash would not, in fact, come to my bedroom door. Never mind that I'd have to mail them my front door key first, which I couldn't do from beneath my bedsheets.

If chronic illness is boring for others on the outside, just imagine how boring it is for us on the inside. Couple that boredom with ADHD, and I can get up to dangerous mischief without leaving my bed. During my tumultuous time of illness, when I survived by eating my pillow, I would pass the days propping my iPhone on one arm while I weakly flopped the other arm in its general direction, randomly stabbing at the screen as my hand passed by it. In this way, I surfed the net and kept myself entertained. I can inform you with great authority that being sick in bed with ADHD and an iPhone is a very, very bad situation. Especially when eBay is involved.

Somehow, in my feverish state—where I enjoyed reading badly written books because I was too sick to notice—I also took time to bid on several out of print Pokémon games. I do have an interest in that game series, I must confess, and that in itself wasn't the problem. Bidding on something in order to keep an eye on the auction instead of simply adding it to my watch list was the source of my trouble. I not only won both, very expensive auctions, but I discovered to my alarm that I already owned one of them.

I had forgotten the age-old adage passed down to me by blessed family members who had learned the hard way: "Never bid on auctions when you're sick!" Or perhaps it was my own adage learned at the School of Hard Slaps. I was too feeble-minded to recall.

I recovered long enough a week later to relist the items on eBay immediately after they arrived and before my bank account began to hemorrhage from my stupidity. Both items sold quickly, and when all fees had been totaled, I was out about five bucks between the two. Disaster averted.

I've been writing about coping strategies for adults with ADHD for seventeen years now. In that time I have shared my most blockheaded moments for your entertainment, though I have not shared them all. Some ADHD mistakes are colossal in their stupidity and should be kept secret, buried in a vault, and forgotten by time. Fortunately for you, my deft auctioneering was not one of those moments. Take note and learn, my friends, which moments are the worst for your ADHD.

Illness and ADHD are a terrible combo for me. There are many things I will not allow myself to do while sick, mostly because being bored out of my mind while suffering from reduced impulse control always gets me into trouble. Perhaps that might explain why I have an old LP of Artie Shaw arriving today even though I don't have access to a record player.

⁂

Coping Strategy: Never bid on auctions when you're sick or tired while experiencing a case of chronic ADHD.

ADHD – I Forgot that I Was Dating Somebody?

2022-05-13T21:42:00.004-06:00

Can you be so forgetful that you’d forget that you were dating somebody? For a few groggy moments, I was convinced that I had.

As I dealt with forgotten bills, paperwork unearthed from the Jurassic era, and various and sundry things I had meant to get to sometime around last September, I wondered if maybe, perhaps possibly, I was forgetful.

Oh, everybody forgets things! It’s perfectly normal. For example, my mother routinely forgets my name. After bringing me into this world many long and hoary decades ago, you’d think she’d have gotten the hang of it by now, but there she goes again, calling me by name by starting with the youngest son then moving upwards through the sediment of time until she comes around to me.

People with ADHD are just like that, except with trips to another room, a few phone calls, and a sudden urge to reorganize their closet in between each name. Perfectly normal! That’s why you probably won’t be surprised to hear that I’ve forgotten quite a bit over the past half year.

My Fall was more hectic than usual. I started with a car accident in August, surgery in September, COVID–19 in October, RSV in November, then an attempt to catch every virus in Utah before the merry-go-round came to a stop last month. I’m surprised I didn’t end up with Hanta Virus somehow, as well as Chicken Pox for a third time. My life was such a wreck, I was lucky I remembered my own name!

Some interruptions derail the ADHD train so completely that when we finally get our caboose back up on the tracks, we often head off in a new direction. It’s not unusual for me to suddenly realize two months after getting over a death match with the Black Plague that I accidentally started a new project instead of resuming an old one. But there go I introducing a new metaphor. You’d think I had enough archeological material to work with considering how much my bedroom resembles a dig.

Speaking of my bedroom, aside from creating geological strata in all four corners with paperwork, I have been known to sleep there on occasion. Imagine, if you will, my sleepy head emerging from the covers one shiny morning in a panic. No, I hadn’t been buried under the weight of over half a year of mail. I had dreamed that I had suddenly realized that I had a girlfriend who I hadn’t called since September. I was so alarmed in the dream that my heart began pounding as I struggled to remember her name. How could I have forgotten my darling! Then my lucid brain had a chat with my dreaming brain and came to an agreement that it was time to wake up.

As I laid there in the bed calming my racing heart, I chuckled to myself. Like I could ever forget somebody so important as a girlfriend… Then I had a real moment of panic as I realized that I forget people all the time! I forget their names, I forget to call them back, and I forget that I’m on the phone with them when I suddenly start organizing my closet. Yes, I concluded from the sagacious perch of my pillow. I could possibly forget somebody that important.

But did I? I began to worry that maybe I had broken somebody’s heart. How do you apologize for accidentally ghosting somebody for eight months? Fortunately, my lucid brain realized that I was still sleepy and the whole incident was nonsense. There was no girlfriend. I was absolutely in the clear.

Probably.

I'm still surprised that I am so used to being forgetful that I could honestly believe such a dream-addled fiction, even for a moment. To my credit, I’m not so forgetful that I would space off a relationship, but if I ever do get a girlfriend and forget her name, you’ll know I’ll be buried with the dinosaurs if I’m tempted to dig through the layers of my memory and start rattling off past girlfriends’ names until I finally arrive at the right one.

Blind as an ADHD Bat

2022-04-28T16:54:00.002-06:00

Ever been so ADHD that you can’t see what you’re looking for, even when it’s right in front of your face?

Given that ADHD has as many flavors as a bag of jelly beans, you might not all relate with ADHD tunnel vision. I, unfortunately, can’t say the same. If I had a jelly bean for every time something I was looking for was found right there in front of me, I could go into business and give Jelly Belly a run for their money.

Today, the missing item was my iPhone. I got up from the table, left the kitchen, then wondered where my iPhone had gone. I went downstairs and searched for it. My daughter called it. I visited every room of the home as I retraced my steps all over the place. I imagine I traced paths just as comically convoluted as any you can find in Family Circus. Finally! Finally. There was one room I hadn’t visited. The kitchen. And there was my iPhone. The ringer had been turned off, but it was right where I had been sitting at the table, hidden in plain sight, clear as the nose on the end of my face, lying on the table next to my empty glass of strawberry lemonade.

Was I blind? In a matter of speaking, yes.

Sometimes ADHD concentration can be narrow-focused. In fact, this tunnel-vision can be so tight that we can miss things sitting out in the open. Haven’t you ever looked for an item, rummaged all around, then found it in the first place you had looked in? “How could I have missed this?” you might think. It was what you were looking for, yet you couldn’t see it. As I’ve mentioned before, ADHD attention dysfunctions aren’t too different than what anybody else might experience except in frequency and flair.

I used to constantly lose my wallet and keys in stupid places. They couldn’t be more obvious if they were waving a sign, yet I’d still look right over them. This lack of attention is caused by information overload and a lack of impulse control. To find objects, our minds will phase out extraneous details as we scan over the environment for the item we are searching for. With ADHD folks, everything can be an extraneous detail when we’re preoccupied!

In general, I’ve found that if I’m mistaken about the color, shape, or presentation of the item I am looking for—as in I have a preconceived notion of the item’s appearance—I’ll even put my hands on it, but pass it right by. Wallets and keys are familiar objects, so we have a better chance of noticing them, but if we are distracted at the right moment, any object can become invisible to us.

Unfortunately, there is no cure for this particular myopia. For me, it’s as much a part of ADHD as distractibility. I know I can look forward to future scenarios where I lose my iPhone while it sits there on the bed or table and mocks me.

“Hey, Siri! Where are you?”¹
“Right in front of you, stupid.”
“Hey! Siri, you’re getting kinda cheeky lately.”
“Stop “losing” me then.”

To avoid imagined fights with Siri and other AI assistants in the future, I have come up with some tips that help me minimize the times I turn a blind ADHD eye to my belongings:

Tidy up before you go: If I had cleaned up after myself before I left the table, I never would have misplaced my iPhone. I generally do this in public, but am lazier about it at home.
Doublecheck, triple check…just check again, already!: Develop the habit of checking for your belongings before walking away from where you’ve been. I don’t want to make you neurotic, but this is a life-saving habit. I can’t recommend it enough.
Bluetooth trackers: These l’il devices will save you so much headache and worry. I use Tile devices. I’ve attached them to my wallet, keys, and go bag. As long as you keep the batteries fresh, you’ll not worry again about where anything is. Now if only they made Tiles small enough to stick on my eyeglasses. I swear those things slip through dimensional pockets and reappear in random places.
A place for everything, and everything in its place: Train yourself to place important items in specific locations. I’ve done this with my wallet and keys. They go in one place, and one place only. I almost never need to use the bluetooth trackers to find them anymore because I don’t lose them. My iPhone on the other hand…
Take a deep breath, calm your mind, and look again: Once I become agitated and frustrated, it helps to take a second to center myself, then look again with fresh eyes. I usually see what I’ve been looking for soon after.

Developing these habits will help you become more mindful of where your possessions are, thus helping you get back up and running in a hurry. However, if you do find somebody handing out jelly beans for finding things in plain sight, please let me know. I’ve got a killer plan for taking over the confectionary world. Now, if only I could remember where I placed it.

~Dˢ

Yes, this phrase actually works. You have no idea how many times I’ve shouted it out this year. 😕 ↩

ADHD: Here Are Five Steps I Use to Rein In My Focus

2022-04-23T14:12:00.002-06:00

A lack of focus is the one common trait that all adults with ADHD seem to have, but focus isn’t as elusive as you might fear.

The other day, a friend texted me out of the blue. He wanted a list of some of the things that I do to maintain focus. Initially, I panicked. I’ve been chronically ill since getting COVID–19 last October. I haven’t blogged in four months, so my ADHD advice muscles were all out of shape. Fortunately for my friend, I haven’t met a topic yet that I didn’t have an opinion on, so I worked up my courage and sent a list to him.

Finding focus is a complicated issue for adults with ADHD. There are times when we have far too much focus and times when focus is as rare as a moderate during election primaries. Too much. Too little. This would be fine to work with if there was predictable rhythm to the pattern, but usually we find ourselves with too much focus on things we shouldn’t be doing (often called hyperfocus), and too little focus on the things that we should (often called many rude labels that I won’t bother listing). How do we regulate that‽ This is why I believe ADHD should refer to an attention dysfunction disorder, not a deficit.

The key to focus is understanding that ADHD minds have an aversion to boredom. Scolding somebody to not be bored motivates somebody about as well as a gun to the head. There may be some short term benefits, but in the long run, it will create self-esteem issues and other psychological hangups. Instead, accept that boredom is part of the problem and address it with targeted coping strategies.

Here are five steps I use to rein in my focus:

Simplify your tasks: I break projects down into three steps at a time, usually in the form of a checklist, and memorize those steps. I call them my ThreeDos, instead of ToDos. I find I can simulate ADHD hyperfocus by doing this, but without the downside of being totally immersed in my own world and deaf to the one around me.
Drown out distractions: I like playing EDM to pump up my energy levels, but any music that excites you will do. Dance music causes me to tap my feet, which has the same focusing effect as exercise. It’s important to not play any music with lyrics if you haven’t heard the songs before. The purpose is to prevent distractions, not add to them! If EDM doesn’t work because I’m working with others or I need to stay attentive to outside interruptions, I will play white noise (often mixed with brown and pink noise).
Timers are key to focus: Use a timer and work for shorter periods. I’ve found I can work for about forty-five minutes when focused, but I start with twenty minute periods at first, building up from there. Once the timer goes off, take a mental break. Look around. Check in with others. Disengage from your task for a moment. Then, after a few moments, start your next timed session. If you work at home, an old fashioned kitchen timer can be effective, but if you work with others, a soft alert sound on your phone can be just as effective.
Alarms and reminders can keep you on task: Similar to timers, having a message pop up on your phone can jog your memory if you’ve become distracted, or keep you on track if your focus is fading. I often utilize Siri on my iPhone to set reminders. Where this tool becomes most useful is when I’m in the middle of a working session, but don’t want to forget something that comes to me. “Hey, Siri. Remind me in twenty minutes to call X.” Utilize your phone, no matter the platform, for on the fly reminders instead of trusting your memory.
Make sure you are fed and hydrated: You can’t focus without fuel, yet this one step eludes me time and time again. Hyperfocus is often to blame. I have found that when I plan in meals with my breaks as outlined above, I focus better, and I am far more productive.

When my productivity drops and time sails out the window, I know I haven’t been applying these coping strategies. I may not be able to get rid of my ADHD, but I can regulate it. Making the effort to tighten my focus helps me accomplish what I set out to do. Hopefully, these tips will help my friend, and maybe you as well.

~Dˢ

When Does Research Become a Fixation?

2022-01-27T23:00:00.001-07:00

I pull back the curtain a bit today, revealing a deep, dark secret about myself—a secret so dank, surely I’ll lose the last three readers I have.

I’ve been reading far too many Japanese light novels lately.

It started as a form of research, but now I actually like the darn things. I can’t get enough of them. They’re my personal Pandora’s Box. I opened the beautiful, ornately engraved box, saw the plentiful wonders inside, and now I can’t shut the lid. Is this an ADHD obsession, or a newfound joy? I can’t tell, which is why I’m troubled. Have you seen my Goodreads timeline? I read almost all escapist manga and light novels these days. I know I’ve been struggling with depression lately, but it’s embarrassing! I’m sitting here wearing a Fair Isle style, wool sweater, a designer, long-sleeved, henley shirt, and Izod tech pants, not a 1-ply t-shirt featuring Sailor Moon with chip crumbs all over my belly. How will my polished author image survive this lapse in pretentiousness?

In 2019, I had noticed that many of my favorite anime that season had origins as light novels in Japan. The more I looked into them, the more I realized that most anime was based on successful light novels. I’m not sure when they crowded out manga as the number one source. Even many successful manga are light novel spin-offs these days.

The best way to describe a light novel is as if pulp fiction and anime had a baby. Most stories are told in the first person. Most are written in a rush, with rapid output outweighing literary craft as the number one priority. The emphasis is on story and entertainment, not languid, literary explorations of contemporary themes. That’s where light novels are similar to pulp fiction, but where they differ is that the stories share more in common with comics with overpowered characters, romance being secondary to adventure, and so many portals open to fantasy worlds, it’s surprising Japan has any population left. In fact, many read like visual scripts to anime—as if the authors already have the licensing goals in mind. At worst, they can be fannish, derivative tales where they don’t milk tropes as much as they stick a spicket in and drain them by the bucketful.

Light Novels are not all bad. Otherwise, I wouldn’t spend so much time enjoying them. I’ve found my favorites. The intricate settings of Ascendance of a Bookworm are inspiring, as is the characterization and complicated plot. So much detail and research went into that series that I’m a little bit in awe of it. Unnamed Memory is gorgeously written. Earlier volumes are more sumptuous than later volumes, but over all I find the strong world and character building very engaging. The story reads like a fairytale whodunnit. The marathon-named Banished from the Hero’s Party, I Decided to Live a Quiet Life in the Countryside is a LitRPG, traditional high fantasy story that slowly reveals deep explorations on the meaning of free will while it subverts the proverbial hero role. Like Unnamed Memory, the story bucks the Light Novel trend and features romance in a warm and healthy way. Also, the Rascal Does Not Dream of… series is notable for its rapid-fire and funny dialog. Imagine a Young Adult X-files crossed with Moonlighting situated in Japan. The story is funny, but the author makes me care about the characters. The last volume was a bit cruel with my heartstrings.

Reading for research is one thing, but light novels have replaced vegging out in front of the boob tube. That’s an improvement, right⸮ They’ve replaced gaming, too. The downside is now that I read for fun, I’m no longer studying the craft, the pacing, the compromises, or the output of the authors involved.

I blame j-novel.club (JNC). I paid for a subscription to read everything I could get my hands on. I wanted to understand the phenomenon better. JNC serializes the stories as they are serialized in Japan—weekly—so one can find themselves quite busy keeping on top of several series all week long. I just paid for one month, but here I am two years later. I’m just glad that JNC doesn’t serialize daily as some of the stories are released in Japan.

I’m not complaining. Light novels and Kindle Vella gave me the kick in the butt I needed to write more. Serializing daily? Do you realize how much work that is? Even if the output is a tropey lark with no originality, I am still impressed with the dedication and output. On top of my Tourette’s and other issues, the pandemic, along with family drama, snuffed out my writing flame. I felt like a podling from Dark Crystal, drained and lifeless as I moved from day to day. Now I’m anxiously engaged in a good cause in my own way instead of letting depression win.

If only I could cut back on reading and do more writing. (Serialized daily! I’m exhausted just thinking about it.)

~Dˢ

Finding the Beauty in Chaos

2021-09-19T12:30:00.003-06:00

A new beginning that looks an awful lot like the old one.

When I set out to explore fractal art, I face a confusing array of controls & parameters. It has taken me years to develop the eye to select the best cropping, the most flattering palette, and the most interesting settings, then present them in a pleasing manner. Without this discipline, the fractal is an utter mess with no focus. By making a few poorly chosen decisions, the same mathematical location and the same color palette can appear completely different—and far less appealing.

Of course, anybody with the time and desire to learn the software can produce pleasing images. It isn’t as if I received a PhD in advance fractal art, traveling to distant lands to study with the Mandelbrot masters before writing my doctoral thesis on the societal implications of sliders versus number fields and how they subvert the patriarchy.

However, as I was exploring a particular fractal set the other day,—tweaking the parameters to get something beautiful to leap out of the screen—I had an interesting thought that caused me to stop and ponder:

I wish my life was as easy to organize as these fractals are.

There is too much chaos to detail here, but suffice it to say that my life is more like the bottom image with its cacophony of line and color, overwhelmed with indiscernible patterns. It feels like absolute and total chaos, and I’m not pleased about it one single pixel.

I sat there wondering what my slider controls were. What could I tweak to bring my life back into focus? Was it as simple as choosing a new palette, in other words, changing the scenery? How could I pacify the waves of chaos that seemed to be carrying me far from my goals? Oh, I self-pontificated grandly, assigning various aspects of my life as metaphorical tools in my fractal art program. After a few minutes of that, though, I realized it was all a bit silly. There is no “frequency” dial in my life to reduce the amount of chaos.

But if there could be such a dial, what would it look like? How would I use it? Would I want to?

Since the pandemic, my family life has become complicated. I don’t write as much as I’d like. I don’t draw or play instruments anymore. It seems that I am entirely preoccupied dealing with my disabilities as well as those of my daughter. I must admit that I am thoroughly depressed, my ADHD is not being managed well, and my Tourette’s is running my life. Although I am not lying down, playing the victim, I am so busy surviving that I am giving no consideration to thriving.

Instead of being knocked around by life, I want to choose the direction. Recording my thoughts on social media has long lost its charm. I want to thrive. It’s not enough to tread water. We only tire ourselves out that way. Instead, we need a clear direction to head in.

Since I’m still living out in the fractal weeds, so to speak, that clear direction that I want in my life is obscured by chaos. I’ve decided to record my thoughts as I work through the process. ocial media has lost much of its appeal for me, yet blogging has also lost its appeal. I began to worry too much about each article being quotable, SEO-optimized, and shared. So I’ve begun a new journal instead, then post the pages here. I’ll try to get back to my roots to when I began blogging, offering more personal observations.

I will discuss my process more, working through my ADHD, depression, Tourette’s, and family life as obstacles. It’ll be more like my old Writing in a Fishbowl series, but I will try to be less colloquial and more beautiful in the way that I write. Finding beauty in chaos starts with me. I need to highlight the good in my life and emphasize my progress.

I hope you won’t mind coming along for the ride. There are some beautiful sights to behold. They may have even been right in front of my face, but I missed them because I was focused on the chaos instead.

~Dˢ

Date: September 19, 2021 at 12:30:54 PM MDT
Weather: 76°F Sunny
Location: Sandy, Utah, United States

Top Mental Health Blogs for 2020—the Bestest Year EVER!

2020-12-08T00:04:00.003-07:00

All was not terrible in 2020.

The press will try to convince you otherwise, but their job is to panic you into thinking the world is ending any minute…again…so that you click on their news links to help them make money. I'm sure your personal life is filled with happy events that spit in the eye of Cynicism 2020. In fact, I'm positive I can rattle off dozens of such events in my own personal life. For example, my ex and I successfully gained guardianship over our learning disabled daughter. Pretty good, huh? I filed pro se, and the hearing went without a hitch. Take that, ADHD! I sold another article to ADDitude Magazine. Huzzah! I successfully learned to do the 180º cross-step on my longboard while carving. Well, that was important to me even if it seems obscure. I've only been practicing for three years. Oh! There was that time I crossed the street without getting hit by a car. That was a big event in 2020. And those monoliths from space aliens planted in my Utahn backyard? That turned out to be a PR stunt. Huh, that wasn't so exciting after all, but the local BLM and news reporters sure made us laugh. Um… I lowered my blood pressure? I dropped down to a 36" waist—then climbed back up to 38" with pandemic pounds? My plants haven't died?

This is tough. Maybe 2020 really wasn't such an exciting year, after all.

On the upside, however, I won another blog award. Don't roll your eyes! This is great news for you because I can now point you to other blogs much better than mine. Merry Christmas! You're welcome!

British education site Twinkl reached out to me with the good news in September—right when I was in quarantine—or maybe I was just sick? I don't know. September was a long time ago. But I promised to share the news with my blog readers and here we are! It's only four months later, right⸮ This time there was only one other blogger I recognized (Hi, Natasha!), so I'm excited to look over the list as well.

If your Fall was filled with sickness, quarantines, family members with COVID-19, and false alarms like mine, you might enjoy having something new to read. Here is a list of fresh mental health blogs with unique points of view. You might find a new kindred spirit or a new valued resource. Hurry on over to Top Mental Health Blog 2020.

ADHD: ToDo Tabs Done Right

2020-10-01T09:00:00.001-06:00

Sometimes I wonder if there’s a support group out there for adults with ADHD who have an open tabs addiction.¹

Hello, my name is Douglas Cootey, and I’m a hard core tabs junkie.

Maybe this seems like a first world problem. Maybe you’re asking yourself, “What’s the big deal with several hundred open tabs?” If that’s how you think, you might need to join me at that meeting.

In theory there’s nothing wrong with lots of open browser tabs. I did things that way for years. If I found a web page with a great project or article I wanted to refer to later, I’d keep the tab open and leave it with the other saved ToDo tabs. The problem I ran into, however, was although ToDo tabs helped me not forget important data, I had so many tabs open in my browser I couldn’t find what I needed.

Just as ToDo lists can get long and unmanageable, ToDo tabs multiply until they become noise—no longer useful as resources or reminders. Yes, you’ve got web pages open for that funny self-surgery with tweezers, fifty things to do with a used toilet paper roll, and The Astounding Link Between Lizard People and the Founding Fathers, but where are they?

Productivity takes a hit when our ADHD tendencies aren’t reined in for a simple reason: chaos means extra work. I once had so many tabs up, I kept researching the same material over and over again. I had forgotten the very same research was already available in two identical tabs. Other times, when I do manage to remember I saved something as a ToDo tab, I have to dig through dozens upon dozens of tabs to find where the web pages I want are hiding. Worst still, I might be distracted by an old tab while making my search. Open tabs can weigh on the mind. Many of them represent unfinished projects waiting to snare my attention. This is what happens when you keep “31 Pumpkin Spice Recipes that Will Win Her Back” lurking in the background. Instead of writing, I’m suddenly in the kitchen making pumpkin spice sushi rice.

What turned me around was when my learning disabled daughter hopped onto my open Mac and somehow reset all my tabs. I had three windows open with 20–30 tabs in each window. Yes, some of the tabs were a kind of wishlist on how I wanted to spend my time or money, but the majority were important research for my first book. I literally sounded like Luke Skywalker when he met a certain long-lost relative. All my research! Gone!

Fortunately, my hourly data backup allowed me to restore what was removed, but since that time I’ve changed how I utilize ToDo tabs. If you’re as prone to distraction or wasting time on the internet as I am, you might find the following tips helpful:

Wipe the slate clean – I’m not going to lie. Deleting all your ToDo tabs and starting smart from scratch is the easiest solution. One time, after a long bout of illness, I discovered that I had 197 tabs open on my iPhone alone, never mind what I had on my iPad and Mac. There were multiple hundreds of ToDo tabs! Why did I have so many open tabs anyway? I simply didn’t have the time or energy to prune them all. I opted to wipe them all. It was amazing how liberating that felt.
Use a “read later” app – Instead of loading dozens of news stories into tabs, I like to send articles I want to read later to Pocket, a read later service. Then the articles appear on my Kobo ereader for later perusal, but they can appear just as easily in the Pocket app on my iPhone or iPad. Kindle users can use Instapaper for that purpose, too. Read all your news later, leaving no open tabs in your browser to distract you or clutter up your work environment. The downside is that you will still have to eventually prune them afterwards in Pocket or Instapaper.
Browse in Privacy Mode – One way to reduce open tabs is to separate your productivity web browsing from your break time browsing. I developed the habit to browse in privacy mode when reading news. I realize that privacy mode is usually used for hinky sites you don’t want anybody but your ISP to know about, but you can use this feature for other purposes. I prefer to use the Brave browser for this purpose. It never saves privacy tabs. Once I shut off privacy, the tabs all go bye-bye. This is perfect for cruising around the web on a whim, but leaves nothing to clean up later no matter how many tabs I opened up. You can do the same thing in a new window just for breaktime. Then when you’re done, just close the window.
Segregate your ToDo tabs by window – To keep ToDo tabs from becoming cluttered, designate different browser windows for different purposes. News, work, research, fun… Each window can have its own ToDo tabs. Personally, I found this method a bit too prone to abuse. I’d mix themes all the time and end up with five or more browser windows with dozens if not hundreds of tabs all in a jumble. However, if you’re disciplined, this method may work best for you.
Segregate your ToDo tabs by device – I need more austere ToDo tabs separation to fend off chaos. For this reason, I do my blog research on my iPhone. Writing research is left for my iPad. On my Mac’s browser, I keep only tabs that relate to my current project. Since I use iCloud, all bookmarks and pages are shared, so the segregation isn’t as hard core as it sounds because what I have open on one device is available on the other. Keeping a theme for each device helps me be more organized. In this way, ToDo tabs become very useful.
Segregate your ToDo tabs by browser – If using different devices to organize tabs seems too much work, you could use different browsers for your different ToDo tabs instead. This can help you manage the clutter and keep important pages from being buried in a wasteland of open tabs. When I was researching my Pokémon book a few years back, I did all my work in Chrome browser while keeping blog work in Safari. This made finding my research painless and productive. Segregating by browser or device is extra work at first, but once you get used to it, you will find the productivity benefits worth the effort.

My old ToDo tabs system was terribly inefficient, risky, and a drain on productivity, but now ToDo tabs have become a powerful tool at my fingertips. I have to admit that every once in a while I need a reminder lesson. About once a quarter I prune my ToDo tabs to make them easy to access, visually accessible, and useful again. My ToDo tabs and bookmarks are much more useful when I take time to prune and organize them. Since open tabs represent ToDo list items to me, each tab needs to be important and deserving of my time. Now that I manage them, I don’t need intervention or a support group anymore.

This article was based on an older article originally published on May 20, 2017. ↩

With ADHD, Who Needs Sleep Anyway?

2020-08-27T07:00:00.004-06:00

I came across this old blog post that I never shared here. It’s from March 2013. I updated it a bit. I hope you enjoy it.

If I thought ADHD could throw monkey wrenches into my plans before, divorce was like dumping the entire plumber’s toolbox into the works instead. It’s taken a bit of time to heal, to sort out the mess, and to know what to do with all those monkey wrenches.

We have joint custody so we split parental duties as well as time spent with the kids right down the middle. She gets medical, and I get school. Since I am in charge of making sure my girls’ school paperwork is in order, I like to use my iPhone to keep things straight with the Calendar, Reminders, and Clear (todo list) apps. With those apps I keep track of everything that needs to be taken care of. My skills are awe inspiring—that is assuming I remember to write things down in the first place. Unfortunately, life gives me helpful reminders of how important it is to use my reminder system, like that weekend last month…

The girls were at their mothers (we switch every two weeks), but the teacher mailed me a packet of forms. It was time for my youngest daughter’s reassessment in the special needs cluster program. She has cerebral palsy and epilepsy, along with other issues that make school challenging for her. I used the “Put the packet out in the open. You can’t possibly forget about it if you trip over it” method that weekend instead of usual iPhone reminder system. Too bad I absentmindedly put another pile on top of that reminder pile. Sometime around 2am on Monday, early early on a schoolday morning, I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t filled out the paperwork.

My first panic was that I couldn’t find them. Once that problem was taken care of, there I was filling out psych evals and questionnaires for hours. Needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep that night, but I got the paperwork filled out on time. I was able to preserve my reputation as an awe inspiring, responsible father — assuming my ex doesn’t read this blog. The silly thing is that I have systems in place to avoid these types of stressful situations. That’s why I designed them. Adults with ADHD benefit from having systems in place to help avoid careless errors. We resist the structure at times, but nobody needs it more than we do.

There are plenty of reasons why I didn’t use my iPhone system that weekend. I had the flu…I was busy establishing world peace…I was abducted by aliens. No one really cares. Whatever is due is due. Fortunately for me, I didn’t let anyone down, so I’m not beating myself up over it. If losing sleep was the price I paid to pull it all together, so be it. I’ve now recommitted to using my reminder system, and started training myself to use it more instinctively going forward. At least until the next time I forget about it.

People Read What I Write? Who Knew‽

2020-08-13T03:16:00.002-06:00

22K Pageviews? Not bad!

Have I mentioned I was sick for a long time at the beginning of the year? I may have mentioned it once or twice ¹. Well, while I was down for the count, my editors over at ADDitude Magazine were counting pageviews for an article I wrote for them a while back. Apparently, I hit 22,213 pageviews for that article alone. They told me all about it last February while I was slightly inconvenienced. I just recently discovered their post when I had to use carefully placed demolition charges and a pick axe to catch up with my email.

I know my mother wasn’t reloading that page over and over again as she wardrived from free wifi network to free wifi network all around town. Not only would she not think of doing that, she wouldn’t understand what I just wrote! Instead, I can only assume that there was a sizable amount of people who were interested in The Reinvented Chore Chart That Actually Motivates My Child

It was a fun article I wrote about how I finally got my stubborn teen to work on her chores. There was a lot of psychology involved, some of it even on a comfy chair, but in the end I succeeded in transforming my daughter into a celestial chores-happy being! There wasn’t any hypnotism or coercion involved either. Yep, I’m wicked good at taking what other people tell me and making it my own. You should read the article.

I make no apologies. I was sick for over half a year. It’s taken me four months to work off the weight I gained and build back the muscle tone & strength that I lost. ↩

In Memory of Dr. Elena Díaz de Guereñu

2020-07-17T08:58:00.006-06:00

I’ve been blogging about ADHD & Depression since 2005. In that time I have met many wonderful people. One of them was Elena Díaz de Guereñu. Elena would translate my blogs into Spanish for her TDAH (ADHD) readers. I was always grateful for her efforts.

I haven’t heard from her in a while, and now that I’ve visited her blog again (Dra ELENA DÍAZ DE GUEREÑU – Diagnóstico y tratamiento del TDAH), I know why. She stopped blogging due to health reasons over a year ago. And now she’s gone, which feels off to me. The magical aspect of online relationships is that people live forever in our minds. Sometimes, we have no idea who they are in real life or what impact they have had on others. Judging by the dozens of tearful comments left on her facebook page, Elena left behind a legacy of grateful patients who she taught to manage their ADHD. She touched so many lives.

Here are the six articles she translated of my work. Most of them were written for ADDitude Magazine (who altered my URLs during a website redesign. You can’t follow through the links on her site.). If you speak Spanish and are interested in TDAH, I hope you find these articles useful. Elena translated a lot of ADHD material for her patients and readers. She was friendly, kind, and selfless. We will all miss her.

⁂

If you are interested in reading more articles that I’ve written about ADHD, you can find them here and at ADDitude Magazine.

I'm Not Dead Yet

2020-07-16T19:26:00.003-06:00

I’ve been rethinking the purpose of my blog lately. Haven’t I written enough on ADHD & Depression? I don’t write exclusively about either subject, which turns some readers off, so I’ve never had the meteoric rise of some bloggers who target one or the other subject (although with ADHD bloggers & YouTubers, they usually blaze through the sky then disappear after awhile). Writing about comorbid conditions isn’t sexy, though I think I look pretty good in my newest jeans. Seriously, though, it’s hard to compete with Facebook. Remember when RSS, not Facebook, made the blogosphere go round? Heck, who even uses “blogosphere” anymore? It makes me wonder where I should be putting my focus.

The first blow to my blogging schedule was getting sick last Fall for SEVEN months (I cannot write enough about how disruptive that was to my life). Then COVID–19 arrived just as I was getting better, and my learning disabled daughter needed every ounce of my focus in order to graduate. Meanwhile, I decided to make the move to WordPress (in order to have comments again and to escape Google’s fickle ecosystem), but configuring WP templates was so needlessly complicated, my boredom resistant brain wandered off, leaving a half installed blog on my personal server with no new posts on my “old” blog. Plus, I was dealing with a major bout of depression which was defying my coping strategies. My answer to that was to leave social media entirely for over a month—not write more. When a friend offered to take me on vacation down to his parent’s home in Saint George, Utah, I leapt at the chance.

Then I rethought it, backed out, discussed with him how I could still do it, backed out again, then got him to delay HIS vacation by a day, and ultimately went. That is the kind of laser-focused, steely-eyed determination I am all about lately.

What I discovered on my time away from stressors was that:

I miss writing about ADHD & Depression.
I don’t schedule time for my blog book projects.
I am taking too much time preparing/researching for my middle-grade novel.

So I made a list. What does a prolific Douglas Cootey look like? The concise list gives me eight thought provoking, evocative reasons to ponder my purpose in life while empowering me to do better. I am contemplating how to implement these sweeping changes into my life, and thinking, “Hey! This exercise would make a great blog post!” I’m finally feeling more like myself. Hello, Douglas. Long time no see.

Before charting my next move, I want to state something publicly: I do not regret taking time off from my writing to focus on life. Consider it my gap year. My blog has taken a beating in key search results terms, but I am still here. Sometimes life throws up unexpected detours. My family needed me; I was incredibly ill; and now I’m emerging from all that with greater insight. I am undergoing a chrysalis of sorts. Even the frustrating, overwhelming, often burdensome experiences have made me a better person. I look forward to showing you my personal growth here in these pages over the next few months.

~Dˢ

Easy Goals Even Old Coots Can Achieve

2020-01-01T04:30:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the best goals are soft and squishy like an eggnog filled belly.

It’s either very late or very early, depending on your point of view. Either way, I’m sitting here thinking deep, New Year’s-like thoughts. In the other room sleeps a friend who almost wasn’t my friend anymore until we patched things last week. Upstairs sleeps my third daughter whose heart is in need of mending as her marriage comes to an end. Hanging out with dad and his friend on New Year’s Eve was either a low point for her or just exactly what she needed.

My thoughts are a warm blend of nostalgia and regret with a subnote of bitterness and peace. I am, as they say, conflicted, but I’m happy. My health didn’t interfere with the night’s festivities. We all had fun and enjoyed each other’s company. We were supposed to play video games together, but ended up introducing my daughter to the wonderful My Hero Academia. Finally, we pulled ourselves away from bright conversation and Crunchyroll to kill each other mercilessly in Sega Saturn Bomberman. We fight for the trophy, a glorious knickknack that was put together by another friend who is spending New Years with my good friend and their two children while her newest, third child hangs onto life in the NICU.

I could lie that my thoughts are filled with a deep concern for mankind and the state of my nation, but honestly, I am only thinking that I had too much eggnog. That, and I am wondering what my goals will be for my fifty-third year. This blog is now fifteen years old. The fourteenth year was a rough one on it, filled with months of neglect and shifted priorities. What writing goals do I have to look forward to? What will motivate me to make time for this blog and my writing projects?

I don’t like to make New Year’s Resolutions. I prefer to make birthday goals. They used to stress me out because they were massive in scope and as unrealistic as the dreams they were born from, but they did drive me, albeit to the edge. I stopped doing that to myself a few years ago, but then I stopped making goals. My life has been about managing my health and disabilities, as well as dealing with my disabled daughter. She has become a handful, as they say. Perhaps two handfuls. My goals are sidelined regularly as I come to a screeching stop to make a sudden u-turn or take an emergency exit. My goals are like baubles bouncing around the back of a pickup truck. If the path gets too rough, my goals end up on the side of the road somewhere.

I can’t say that I’m happy with the direction my life is taking me. Although this current moment is a nice one, I’d like to have a few more like it without all the drama. I like to have more of a say in where I’m heading. With four months of illness, however, I feel that I’ve been bounced out of my own truck, left in a breakdown lane somewhere between Exit 9 and Dissolution.

I’m wondering if I had a more concrete plan than I currently do, maybe my life would be less prone to veering off course. I am meeting all my duties as a stay-at-home dad. One could argue that I am doing everything that I’m supposed to be doing despite ADHD, Depression, and Tourette’s. Raising an intellectually challenged child with epilepsy and cerebral palsy is challenging. I’m not complaining about my duties. My daughter is precious, and I love her dearly, but I feel unsatisfied with my own personal progress.

This is why I have decided to make simple, open-ended goals that will reward effort and not require accomplishment. No matter what illness or emergency lies in wait, my loose list of goals will help me stay on course.

Things To Do While Fifty-Three:

❑ Turn my sleep schedule around eventually.
❑ Make more time for writing.
❑ Exercise more.
❑ Play my ocarinas more often.
❑ Longboard in the sunlight whenever possible.
❑ Spend more time praying and studying scriptures.
❑ Fill my sails with hope, keep my eyes on he road, and mix fewer metaphors.
❑ Be sick more often.

That last one will be a challenge, but I think I can nail it.

It’s time for me to rest my eyes and pretend to sleep for a few hours. Maybe I’ll even manage to fool myself and wake up rested by accident. I’m hoping for less conflicted feelings going forward. Less clenched teeth and panicked eyes, more satisfied sighs and smiles. In a few short hours, the chaos will resume, but for now I have clarity. This is going to be a great year.

~Dˢ

One Step Forward…

2019-12-13T14:13:00.001-07:00

I picked up particulate respirator masks so that I can go outdoors again. I’ve apparently developed asthma due to the pollution in Salt Lake Valley and the California forest fires. It’s why I’ve been so horribly sick since September. I’ve been a near complete shut-in.

Alas, I overdid things yesterday. I looked like a dork in my mask, but I happily ran errands all over town. I also worked out on my treadmill, exercise bike, and did twenty minutes of aerobic activity. Unfortunately, I forgot to use both my inhaler & nebulizer. My lungs are burning again, and the cough has returned. 🙄 I feel so feeble. I kinda hate this.

I don’t regret my busy day, especially going to the library for a writing session. That felt great. I’ll just have to make sure I use my inhaler and nebulizer faithfully. No skipping days!

My coping strategy for today is to:

Use my nebulizer. I’m huffing on the contraption as I type this.
Add my nebulizer to my medications app. I forgot to do this. I can only assume ADHD boredom settled in after three months of taking a basketful of meds every day.
Get in the habit of using that app again. I haven’t been updating the app faithfully since I started to feel better. This was a mistake. I’ve been forgetting to take my blood pressure medicine, too, as well as my sleep medication, my antacid, etc. My whole regimen has gone out the window.
Stay indoors today. My body needs a chance to heal.
Keep pushing forward. Just because I had a setback doesn’t mean I allow depression to get a foothold again. It’s mentally exhausting to follow my new daily regimen of medicine paced throughout the day, plus an inhaler and nebulizer twice daily, but the alternative is to be so sickly I become bedridden again as my body tries to fight off the pollutants.

Between coming home with con crud after FanX in September, dealing with a severe allergy season due to the unusually rainy Summer, and then the California fires mingled with the good ole Salt Lake Valley inversion, I felt like I had stepped out in front of a speeding truck. I can now say I’ve never been so sick in my life. My depression this Fall has been worse than it has been in a long while, too. Being bedridden will do that to you.

The upside is that the con crud is gone, allergy season has passed, and we now know what I’m dealing with: asthma. The air quality has become my kryptonite. It drops me to my knees and leaves me feeble. What is strange to me is that inversions have never troubled me like this before, and I’ve lived here non-stop since 1988. However, I refuse to be discouraged any further.

I’m off to take my medicines, and maybe work on a book or two. How many have I begun on this blog? I’ve lost track. I sat down to work on an old project the other day and discovered I had already written the first chapter. Then I just wandered off, apparently.

I’ve got a follow-up article about Goo Hara I want to write, then I’d like to continue working on my middle grade novel and get back on track with my ADHD ToDo list book. Now I’ve told you, so I’m committed. Being a shut-in will work to my advantage today.