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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I just have to say, it’s depressing to finally sit down to catch up on my reading with a head full of thing I want to write about, only to discover half a dozen people have already written about what I was going to write about, and said pretty much what I was going to say.

Then I start thinking, “Well, what’s the point?”

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Ed Note: This is one of those personal posts in which I’m likely to come of as whining or in need of therapy. I’m not doing the former, but I don’t have time for the latter, so this is the only place I have to put this stuff for now.

I’ve written before about how having ADD can make you feel like you’r from another planet when dealing with other people, especially people who don’t have ADD. It’s true even where people who love you are concerned, up to and including your spouse. (And your kids, but I’ll get to that later.) It can mean that even though you share your life with someone, you occupy entirely different world, maybe in a different galazy altogether.

Last night, the hubby and I were chatting after getting home from work. (As much as we could between getting dinner and taking care of the kids.) I was unwrapping the mouthguard I bought on the way home. (My third in the past year, which I bought after realizing I’d bitten through my second one.) I mentioned that I had something mind that I wanted to write, which I described as “a long, thought piece, with way too many links, and probably better suited for magazine writing than for blogging. But, try as I might, I can’t find a gig like that.” (I’ve since abandoned the piece since the time it would take to research and write it almost guarantees it won’t be very timely.)

He said, “Well, you will someday.”

I raised an eyebrow and asked, “You really think so?”

He said, “Yes. You’re a great writer, honey. And if you keep writing it’ll happen.”

Wow. The man believes in me. I’m not so sure myself that anything going to happen along those lines. But we’re looking at it from very different perspectives, I realize.

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You already know Michael Phelps is an Olympic hottie, and he’s a pretty good swimmer too. But what I didn’t know, and what kind of makes him even more of an Olympic hero to me, is that when he was younger it was predicted that he’d never be able to focus on anything, because Michael Phelps has ADHD.

Starting with preschool, teachers complained: Michael couldn’t stay quiet at quiet time, Michael wouldn’t sit at circle time, Michael didn’t keep his hands to himself, Michael was giggling and laughing and nudging kids for attention.

As he entered public school, he displayed what his teachers called “immature” behavior. “In kindergarten I was told by his teacher, ‘Michael can’t sit still, Michael can’t be quiet, Michael can’t focus,’ ” recalled Ms. Phelps, who was herself a teacher for 22 years. The family had recently moved, and she felt Michael might be frustrated because the kindergarten curriculum he was getting in the new district was similar to the pre-K curriculum in their old district.

…In the elementary grades at their suburban Baltimore school, Ms. Phelps said, Michael excelled in things he loved — gym and hands-on lessons, like science experiments. “He read on time, but didn’t like to read,” she said. “So I gave him the Baltimore Sun sports pages, even if he just read the pictures and captions.”

She will never forget one teacher’s comment: “This woman says to me, ‘Your son will never be able to focus on anything.’ ”

… When he was in fifth grade, during his annual check-up, Ms. Phelps and the family physician, Dr. Charles Wax, discussed whether Michael might have A.D.H.D. — attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. By then, the Phelpses were a swimming family. (Michael’s older sister Whitney at 15 was ranked first in the country in the 200-meter butterfly, though her career would be cut short by a back injury.) Dr. Wax’s children also swam, and he’d noticed Michael at the Phelps sisters’ swim meets. “Michael used to run around like a little crazy person mooching food off people,” said Ms. Phelps.

The doctor suggested sending assessment forms to his teachers. Their consensus: Can’t sit still, can’t keep quiet, can’t focus.

Well, it looks like someone hadn’t heard of hyperfocus.

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Damn. I guess eight of of ten ain’t so bad. I started going down this list of 10 skills you need to succeed at almost anything and I was doing fine until I got to number seven.

7. Math

You don’t have to be able to integrate polynomials to be successful. However, the ability to quickly work with figures in your head, to make rough but fairly accurate estimates, and to understand things like compound interest and basic statistics gives you a big lead on most people. All of these skills will help you to analyze data more effectively – and more quickly – and to make better decisions based on it.

And number ten threw me.

10. Basic Accounting

It is a simple fact in our society that money is necessary. Even the simple pleasures in life, like hugging your child, ultimately need money – or you’re not going to survive to hug for very long. Knowing how to track and record your expenses and income is important just to survive, let alone to thrive. But more than that, the principles of accounting apply more widely to things like tracking the time you spend on a project or determining whether the value of an action outweighs the costs in money, time, and effort. It’s a shame that basic accounting isn’t a required part of the core K-12 curriculum.

OK, really I guess I can do those things. Or at least I can do them well enough most of the time. I can do some figures in my head, fairly quickly. I had to look up compounded interest to find out that I already knew what it was. And I can do statistics well enough to understand the between the mean and the median.

And I can track my income well enough to keep a positive balance in the bank, and to know when I need to curtail spending for a while.

The only one that seriously trips me up is number three.

3. Self-Management

If success depends of effective action, effective action depends on the ability to focus your attention where it is needed most, when it is needed most. Strong organizational skills, effective productivity habits, and a strong sense of discipline are needed to keep yourself on track.

My ADD makes that a constant struggle, and often a losing battle.

But seriously, does anyone do all of them well, all of the time? If they do, they’re not human.

This is pretty much me in every class or work-related meeting I’ve ever sat through in my life.

This got a laugh out of me when I spotted the title, and then a nod of recognition once I started reading the article. Apparently, ADHD can make you miss 20 days of work per year. Well, kinda.

When “Fidgety Philip” grows up, the problems of attention deficit disorder can multiply into loss of nearly a month’s work per year.

Long seen as a problem for children, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder was first described in 1845 by Dr. Heinrich Hoffman, who wrote “The Story of Fidgety Philip.”

More recently, it has been recognized as continuing into adulthood for some people, and new research seeks to estimate the effect of ADHD on workers.

This lack of ability to concentrate costs the average adult sufferer 22.1 days of “role performance,” per year, including 8.7 extra days absent, according to researchers led by Dr. Ron de Graaf of the Netherlands Institute of Mental Health and Addiction.

It’s almost funny that, for folks with ADHD, those “missed days” occurred when they were actually at work. Almost.

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I’ve written about this before, but I was reminded of it yesterday in a kind of metaphorical way.

I worked from home yesterday, because the hubby was dropping the kids off early yesterday, before going off to a night job he has every other week. Just before the rest of the family left, my cable internet connection went dead. I called tech support and was told there was a service outage in our area, related to the previous night’s storm.

So began a day’s worth of frustration.

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