One mans fortune …

I spent most of my undiagnosed life blaming bad luck for the lows and feeling very lucky when times were good, which wasn’t often. I didn’t then, nor do I now, believe in the art of fortune telling.

I get a kick out of numerology when applied to birth dates, because the numbers are based on a calendar that has a random start date.

Tarot cards may be more accurate, I don’t know, and I’m equally unenlightened about palm reading. They could be the real deal … though I doubt it. My palms are so scarred that I don’t think you could read them anyway, even if they were actually written on. Oh, wait … eggs, bread, new guitar … maybe I can read my palm.

The city of my birth has grown at an alarming rate.

And I only know one of them. Well, okay, I know the one where I set my GPS to an address and let it tell me where to go. I’m use to being told where to go, I’ve been told plenty.

I would really like to set the GPS voice to that of a Scottish Female. I find that accent very appealing. But I’m pretty sure I’d just find that to be distracting. I’m also certain I’d be taking wrong turns just to hear her say “That’s okay, sure, we’ll just be recalculating and we’ll have you back on the rrrright rrroad in noo time.”

Is this Executive Function for dummies?

Having ADHD means that I have non-functional executive function, executive dysfunction if you will. This is the part of my cognitive machinery that is supposed to help with decision making.

It isn’t that it doesn’t work, it does, when I engage it. But engaged should be its default state, and it isn’t . Or at least, when it is needed, it should kick into gear automatically. It does not.

Worse still is that, since I have to engage it manually, I have to decide whether I need it, without having it engaged. Do you see a problem there? How am I to make a decision on whether I need the decision making machinery without having the decision making machinery up and running.

Just some random cat …

I don’t own a cat. And no, no cat owns me either. But there is a cat in my neighborhood that has adopted me. Well, okay, not me so much as my place. As I write this, the cat is hanging, spread eagle, on my patio door screen.

Yep, it marches to the beat of its own drummer. Sound familiar? That’s right, a kindred spirit.

When I first encountered it, I referred to it as “some random cat” on Facebook. One of the wits that I’m proud to say is a friend of mine dubbed the cat “Random.” I was against its having a name, didn’t want to give it the impression that it was welcome.

Our Shotgun Wedding, donating their time

There are times when you should speak up, and there are times when you should keep quiet. There are times when you should stand up and be counted and times when you should conveniently be in the bathroom when the vote is tallied.

A Friend of mine is on his way to India for a month. He is volunteering to teach Tibetan refugees, that’s what the trip is about. Its a working vacation of sorts, more working, I think, than vacation.

He hasn’t left for India yet, but the work has begun already. He has to pay his way there and support himself while there and my friend is not so well heeled that he can just slap down the cash for a venture like this.

This meal did not cause my ADHD

There was a time when there existed people who disbelieved in the existence of ADHD. I can hear you gasping as you ask incredulously “When?”

Prepare yourselves for a shock, the time … is now. There are still people out there who believe that ADHD does not exist. But that time is fast approaching its end. The proof may never be clear enough for the average person on the street to understand, but its wide spread acceptance by the medical community heralds the end of the time of doubt.

You see, genes have been isolated, risks calculated, detriments catalogued, impairments noted, deficits evidenced. Conclusion? There is a psychological disorder called Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder.

Knowing one of us doesn’t mean you know all of us

They’re out there. You know they’re out there. Those people who think they know all about us ADHDers.

And what makes them such experts? Why do they think they know about us? I don’t know. Maybe they hear things in coffee shops. Maybe they read misleading internet information (I know! I too was recently shocked to discover that not everything published online is true).

Or maybe they make assumptions about all of us based on one or two of us.

I would guess you’re tired of hearing me say that ADHD is a collection of symptoms. But it is, and no two of us have the same set to the same extent, so how could one or two of us be used to define the description of all of us? Well, they couldn’t, that’s how.

This may have been a mistake …

Wow, tomorrow is Valentine’s Day? Seems like that just happened 12 months or so ago. What? Are they having it annually now? You’d think I’d have noticed that …

Oh well, luckily, last year, I came up with a list of 5 ways to make your Valentine’s Day an ADHD success. And I put that list in a pile on my desk, a pile of lists, a pile of lists of important things, perhaps ways of making occasions successful or some such thing as that. Now where is it …

Yep, that’s me, but look at the lawn …

So, on Wednesday, we talked about how we focus on things like TV. I suggested that It wasn’t really a positive thing, more like something we can’t help. And while the focusing is something we’d like to be able to harness, I didn’t think I could find any help in examining this particular habit.

I did allude to the idea that drama might play a role in focus, and, bad TV aside, I still think drama is a great focusing tool. If you can find drama in a dull task, you have a better chance of making it to the end of that task.

My mother had a way of making my tasks more difficult. Don’t get me wrong here, she knew what she was doing. If I was suffering in my attempts to get through a particularly tedious task, she would make it more challenging. Bingo, focus accomplished.