The Republic of T.

I think I’ve discovered something. Not long ago, I wrote this, about what I’ve felt (and still feel) to be the “lost time” in my life due to untreated ADD, and feeling like it was truly lost time because I couldn’t find any value in it or anything that was gained by it.

And I know I’m looking at this through the lens of having lived with untreated ADD into my early 30s,but it feels like on one hand I’m dealing with people who are about to catch the train I missed long ago. And on the other I’m dealing with people who caught that train and reached their destinations. Somehow I missed it and got stuck at the station, just punching everyone else’s ticket. Or at least that’s what it feels like, and it’s a pretty familiar feeling. Last time it was triggered by seeing two law students studying on the Metro, and it launched me into wondering what happened to that time in my life, and what if anything it was for.

I’ve written about this before, but there’s a kind of virtual marker on the timeline of my life that divides everything into before my ADD diagnosis/treatment, and after my ADD diagnosis/treatment. I haven’t thought much about it lately — being more focused my my life now — but it came back to me this morning, brought one by these brief encounters with apparently twentysomething law students.

What was I doing in my twenties? It all seems like a blur now, but what I mostly remember was spending a lot of time and energy trying to keep my head above water, and not always succeeding. I remember watching other people advance in their careers and educations, while I seemed to be working hard just to tread water, and still occasionally went under. Now I look back and I wonder what happened to my twenties. What happened to those years? They happened, but what happened is something I’m still not sure about.

I tend to look at them as “lost years,” because it’s literally as if at or around 32 years a curtain was suddenly pulled away, and there was light where I’d previously been stumbling around in the dark. The obstacles I’d struggled with in the past were still there, but I could see them clearly now, along with paths around some of them. At thirty-six, I’m finally making the progress I felt I should have been making at twenty-six. It becomes obvious to me when I look up and see people around me doing incredible things at an age when I was stumbling around in the dark.

I’m not sure whether or not I wish I had those years back, knowing all I do now, mainly because there’s a lot in my life right now that I wouldn’t trade for anything — mostly my life with my husband and son. Whatever else might have worked out differently had things gone another way in the past, that is something I wouldn’t want to change. As far as I’m concerned these are the good years; very good years, in fact. What I found myself thinking about this morning is just what those years of stumbling in the dark were for.

But I think I just figured something out.

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Clearly something is amiss. Let the record show that, as we say in the south, “he ain’t right.” Kelly Clarkson wonders what happened to him as a child. Obama called him a “jackass.”

Well, he did behave like one.

Seriously, though. I wonder if Kanye West really does have a problem, because I can very much identify with the trouble his mouth has gotten him into, again.

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There’s one Michael Jackson video I forgot to add to the previous post. I thought of it because I found myself humming it yesteday.

I guess the lyrics spoke to me.

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In everything I do  but especially when I’m doing something for the sole reason that I find it rewarding , enjoyable, and want to do it — but something that no one particulary needs me to do — I’m am always running out of time.

In fact, that pretty much sums up many days: Out of time.

Granted, my ADD means I have (have always had and will always have) issues with time management.

But is that it. Or am I trying to do things I ran out of time to do long ago?

I meant to add these two videos to the previous post, but time (as usual) was not on my side.

I have the last post in the series I wanted to write two weeks ago but only started at the end of last week — because the other post I wanted to write had already been written several times over and there was nothing much more to say.

I’ll try to get it posted this afternoon.  (Does anyone read blogs on Friday afternoon?)

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If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know I have a tendency to write long, deeply-linked, and researched posts from time to time. You also know that my quantity of my posts (though I hope not the quality) has gone down in the past couple of years.

In light of this, it occurred to me today that I probably only have it in me to do one of those types of posts — which I admit are my favorite to do — per week.

Case in point, I’ve been working on a post about the murder of George Tiller as it relates to the concept of the conscience clause and its use in recent years. I’ve been working on it for about a week, and it looks like I won’t post it today. Maybe tomorrow, if I’m lucky.

That got me wondering. Is there a good time, from the readers’ perspective, to publish a longer post? Is Monday a better time because it’s more likely to be read? Is Friday almost guaranteed to mean it disappears into oblivion? I guess this is really a question about your reading patterns, in an attempt to adjust my writing rhythm.

So, If you care to help me figure it out, take the poll.

Oh, and if you want the back-story, it’s after the jump.

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Shelly Palmer asks a rather disturbing question.

How many people are now looking for jobs that no longer exist? If you used to be a computer photo typesetter, you were replaced in the 1980’s with desktop publishing. Now, if you had that skill set, you probably could have opened a boutique desktop-based print pre-production house and done fine. Or, you could have looked for work in the transportation or food services industry. They are all about as related.

Perhaps you’d like to be a theme music composer for television or a graphic designer for the broadcast industry. How about a gig as a professional studio trombone player, or a cameraperson on a remote three-person news crew?

All of these jobs still exist in some form, but they are far from dream jobs. In fact, these production skills have been commoditized and practitioners can look forward to making about the same kind of money as they would waiting tables in a good restaurant.

So, what’s the right answer?

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Let me ask you something. Do typos bother you?

OK. Let me ask you something else. Why?

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Say it isn’t so.

OK. Granted, I’m a Type C personality.

The hubby and I got a babysitter last night, and went to a party at the home of a friend and former co-worker of mine, and on the way home we had a chance to do something that’s often rare for parents of a young child: talk to each other. Not about our son, or about something that needs to be done around the house. We had a chance to just talk to each other.

On my end, the conversation turned towards something that’s come up more than a few times in my life; that when it comes to personality types, I’m definitely not a “Type A” personality. In fact, I’ve often referred to myself as a “Type B surrounded by Type As”; especially here in D.C., a city which by its very nature seems to be a magnet to for type A personalities.

When I got home, it was still on my mind, so I looked around online, and found this test that would supposedly tell me whether I was a type A or not. I took it, fully expecting it would tell me I was a type B.

I got an answer I wasn’t expecting. It turns out, there’s a third: type C.

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OK. I value my autonomy (what’s left of it) way too much to do something like this. But the idea of someone else being in charge is tempting at times.

Chen Xiao had pretty much given up making her own decisions and so decided to throw open her life to the whims of China’s hundreds of millions of Internet users, known in China as netizens.

“It’s your right to arrange Chen Xiao’s life, and it’s my obligation to serve you,” read her online shop.

Since December, Chen has been allowing others to decide what she will do each day, because, for the most part, last year was awful, she said. Her hometown was hit by blizzards, her country rocked by a devastating earthquake, friends divorced and her clothing shop went bankrupt.

“Every time I had a plan for what I wanted my life to be like, nothing would come of it. It was very disappointing. I figured if other people came up with things for me to do, I might stumble upon something new and better,” she told CNN.

C’mon, who hasn’t thought about it?

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I’ve been thinking alot about one of my favorite movies lately; Amadeus. It’s been a favorite of mine every since I first saw it back in ‘84, when it first came out. And yesterday I received some news that brought it back to mind again.

I find myself thinking about a few scenes in particular that projected on the back of my mind in an endless loop for the better part of yesterday evening.

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I came upon this post as the result of a Google search, and felt inspired to respond.

I read an interesting article in my local paper this past weekend. The title caught my eye, “Study Finds Middle Age is Misery.” How depressing! I just didn’t agree, so I had to read it to find out more.

Read more below.

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