I watched the Oscars last night, for what has to be at least the 30th time, because I’ve watched them every year since I was old enough to see movies and care about them. That would have been 1981. If I go back far enough, I can probably just remember the 12 year old, or nearly-12-year-old boy sitting in a darkened family room in Augusta, GA, watching as much as I could before it was time for me to go to bed.

Honestly, I don’t remember much about that 1981 Oscars broadcast. I don’t remember the speeches. I didn’t remember who Oscars won in 1981, until I looked it up. But I remember that 12-year-old boy, and more than that — much more, really — I remember his dreams.

“If happy little blue birds fly beyond the rainbow,

Why, oh why, can’t I?”

And boy did I have dreams. Part of the reason I still watch the Oscars is to hear the acceptance speeches, because I practiced my so often growing up that I still watch as an adult. Maybe I want to take notes. Just in case.

Last night’s Oscars took me back to those dreams when the show closed with an elementary school choir singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” a song I’ve sung since I was a child, and now sing to my own children. A song that fueled dreams.

One of my long-held, unfulfilled ambitions is to be a professional singer. I don’t remember when I discovered I had a voice. But, by the time I was in the second grade, I thought maybe I had something. Plus, I had the confidence of second grader, at the time.

I’ll admit, a bit of it’s personal. Besides being a writer, I’ve always been a singer. My first time on stage was in the second grade, when our school did it’s own version of The Wizard of Oz. I told my teacher I could sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” So she asked me to sing it right there in class, and I did. I got the lead, which they changed from “Dorothy” to “Danny.” Actually, I shared the part with another boy who played it in the second act, because we resembled each other and the teachers thought it was too much for a kid to do both acts.

Image via Wikipedia

Actually, the story went something like this.

I grew up watching The Wizard of Oz on television once a year. and watching Judy Garland sing “Over the Rainbow.”

Something about that song resonated with me, though it would be years before I really knew why. But I learned it, and sang along with it until I knew it by heart. Back then, I probably had the same range as Judy Garland, in the movie, and probably imitated her singing more than a little. But it sounded good and felt good to me.

Then I heard that my second grade class was doing a production of The Wizard of Oz. I told my teacher that I could sing “Over the Rainbow.” She looked like maybe she didn’t believe me, but said, “Alright, sing it.” I did. The whole class was quiet. When I finished, the whole class laughed. (Or at least that’s what I remember.) At the time, it took a chunk out of my second-grader’s confidence, but now I think it was because I didn’t sing it like a second grader. I was trying to sound more like an adult, because I was trying to match Garland.

My teacher didn’t laugh, though. Instead, she had me sing it for the other second grade teachers. Probably because I didn’t sing it like a second grader. They listened, and didn’t laugh.

Instead, they took me to the music teacher and had me sing it for him. Again, probably because I didn’t sing it like a second grader.

And he changed the part from Dorothy to Danny, the ruby slippers to “ruby sneakers,” and cast me in the role.

In the years that followed, I looked for opportunities to perform, and had my dreams fueled by a number of different things. Maybe it was a brush with fame, when I met a member of Chic, who happened to be visiting her mother, who happened to be a member of my family’s church. Maybe it was a field trip my entire school took to see The Wiz, and I was inspired by Lena Horne’s performance of “If You Believe.”

And at that age, I dreamed and I believed. I didn’t know how it might happen, but I dreamed — and if you asked me then I’d have said I knew — that I would be one of those people; the people you see walking across the stage at the Oscars, the Grammy’s, the Golden Globes, etc. Maybe somebody told me about the likelihood of that, and my chances of ever being one of those people, but at that point, I wasn’t listening. I was probably too busy watching Fame.

Yet, I think reality began to dawn on me around then. In hopes of escaping the high school I was zoned for, and what was almost certainly going to to be a ramping up of the bullying I had already experienced for two years in middle school, I auditioned for the local performing arts magnet school. I was told they didn’t have a spot for me at the moment, but that my grades and audition scores put me at the top of the waiting list.

I didn’t wait long. I was finishing my first semester of eighth grade. Or rather, I was suffering through it. The bullying and harassment had rendered me “a tortured, suicidal wreck,” as I put it in a song (unpublished, unreleased) that I wrote about it years ago. The school called and told me that a spot had become available. Another student had been expelled for fighting, after a repeated offense. I don’t know who that kid was, but his departure opened up a spot, and I was next in line.

The school gave me a choice: I could finish out the year at my current school and start there in the summer, or I could change schools in the middle of the year. I took the latter option. I couldn’t get out of my current school fast enough.

So, I went, and reality began to dawn on me about how the size of my dreams compared to my talent and ambition. It’s not that I didn’t have talent. I knew I did. And while I didn’t have much confidence, I saw that other people felt I had talent too. When I met with the principal after my audition, and she told me that the voice teacher (who recently passed away) had come into her office after my audition and said “I like his voice. This teacher would twice pick me to be part of the boys quartet that represented our school in state literary meets. (I would go to the state literary competition a third time, with a one act play about Vietnam Veterans that two classmates and I wrote for a class project, based on our interviews with veterans.)

Looking back, I think this teacher picked me for the quartet for the same quality she noticed in class. For those of us who were picked to be in the school’s mixed chorus (shortly after I started, the school launched an all-girl Treble Chorus), the last class of the day was always chorus practice. In the four years that I was in that class, the teacher/director would arrange us by voice, in each section. By that I mean that she would have student A go and sit next to student B, and then have the two of them sing a few bars of something together. Depending on how well their voices blended, she keep A and B together, and maybe add students C and D, until she got the blend she was looking for, and finally would have the sound she was looking for from a particular session.

Me, I was a “blender.” She noted that I had a knack for blending my voice well with others. And it was true. I don’t know where it (along with a natural ability to improvise harmony) came from, but I’d done that. It wasn’t at all about imitating someone else’s voice, but about matching my voice in tone and color to another’s. I don’t know how I did it, except that I could just hear it. It’s like someone tuning an instrument, using a pitch pipe, or like musicians tuning their instruments to one another. After a while, I did it without thinking about it or even trying. My chorus teacher, recognizing this, would often put me next to someone whose voice stood out rather than blending. Or she’d place me in between two distinctive voices that were pulling against each other.

I realized on some level that it meant I’d make a great back-up singer, but I’d probably never be a lead vocalist, a soloist. In other words, I could be one of the other Supremes, but I’d never be Diana Ross.

My other “major” in high school was acting. So, I was in two of the school’s performing groups; the chorus and the acting troupe. Things were pretty much the same on stage. It was kind of like know enough to know just how much you don’t know. I had enough talent to be there, sure, but also enough talent to know how much more talented than me so many of the people around me were. I would be member of ensemble, part of the chorus, or a supporting player at best, but never the lead.

At some point, even my Oscar dreams changed. My acceptance speech was no longer for “Best Actor,” but “Best Supporting Actor.” Now that’s expanded to include “Best Adapted Screenplay” or “Best Original Screenplay.” If I had any talent for make-up or costume designing I might include those too.

And that is pretty much how it played out. The biggest role I had on stage was Barnaby Tucker in The Matchmaker during my senior year, for which I received a “Most Improved Player” Award. The only lead role I played was outside of school, as David in a production of James Baldwin’s The Amen Corner, in a production put at my family’s church.

After that, I never really acted again except for a year in an improve group at my university, called “brief encounters,” which used improve to address social issues in performances for student audiences. I never really sang publicly again except for a semester or two in my university’s mens’ glee club. and one attempt at an “open mike night” at a local bar.

I don’t know whether my dreams were bigger than my talent or ambition, or not, but in some ways it’s easier to think that. Looking at people at the pinnacle of their careers, I’m reminded of a saying a former co-worker of mine used about such situations, when one looks at someone else and envying or coveting their life: “You don’t know what’s in their cup.”

She was referencing the biblical story of the disciples James and John, who demanded to sit at Jesus’ right and left hand, only to have him say to them, “You don’t know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” Meaning that not only could they “drink from the cup,” but that they don’t even know what’s in that cup in the first place. (In a “ghetto standard version,” Jesus would probably tell them they “all up in his Kool-Aid and don’t even know the flavor.”)

There was a time I might have felt bitter watching the acceptance speeches of the winners, wishing I could have been or could be “up there.” And while there’s a part of me that still wishing that, there’s another part of me which acknowledges that while I do have talent maybe I never had “what it takes” to be one of those people, and that’s OK. Yes, I can sing. Yes, I can act. But maybe not well enough to grab a trophy.

Then there’s the part of me that also must own that I never did what it takes to be one of those people. In the words of my former co-worker, I don’t know what’s in their “cup.” I don’t know how hard or easy it might have been for them to get where they are, or how hard or easy it is for them to stay there. I don’t know how many years of hard work it might have taken for any of them to get into movies, let alone win an Oscar. Or maybe it was easy to get into show business — as it might be for one who’s born to parents already in the business — and the hard work comes with trying to sustain a career, make one’s own name, etc.

And there’s the reality that I lived with untreated ADD until I was 33 years old. As a result, whether or not I had what it took, it was even harder for me to do what it took. My reality is that I spent two decades of my life watching my peers race past me, moving forward with their careers and education, while it was all I could do to keep my head above water. That’s a lot of lost time and  missed opportunities. By the time I got help with my ADD and was finally able to do some of the things I couldn’t before, I was married, working full time, and a parent. I was, basically, a late bloomer. I arrived at two different points in my life at the same time, that for some people are separated by a decade or so.

As a song I listen to every once in a while (based on a famous speech)  reminds me:

Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’s only with yourself.

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else’s.

It’s true. Used to think I’d see some of the people I went to school with on the Oscars, Tonys, or some other award show. Who knows, I still might. But so far I’ve only seen one of my classmates in a movie. Still others have gone on to pursue their arts, and to have careers that have taken them to many places.

Some choices I had, and some I didn’t. Some chances and had, and some I didn’t. (Or I had them, but couldn’t really take advantage of them.) As I sat in my house, watching the Oscars while my family slept upstairs, I felt good about how the choices and chances I did have worked out. I wouldn’t change places with anyone on that stage last night, at the cost of having my family. If I could go back in time and change it, at the cost of not having my husband and children, I’d say “No, thank you.” I don’t know what’s in that cup, but I have a feeling I’m finally getting to the sweet part of what’s in my cup.

But still… Whenever I watch an awards show like the Oscars, I get an “itch.” The same “itch”  I get when I watch a really good performance in a movie or a play, especially when it’s in a role that I think I could or would like to play…if my talent, my chances and choices had led down that path. It’s the same itch I get when I’m listening to someone else on the radio sing a song I know is in my range and that I know I could sing.

And I find myself wondering if it’s too late, and remembering a Shirley Horne lyric from “May The Music Never End.”

We were young,
Tomorrow seemed so far away.

But now there are times
When it’s all so perfectly clear.
Tomorrow is hear

What happens to your dreams
When time has slipped away,
And you still have songs to sing,
And words you need to say?

One of the best books I’ve read for and about adults with ADD is Journeys Through ADDulthood: Discover a New Sense of Identity and Meaning with Attention Deficit Disorder by Sari Solden. Solden writes about exactly what I mentioned above.

Why is it so difficult in certain cases to get diagnosed? One of the reasons is that many adults who are inattentive and not hyperactive may have fallen through the cracks because as children they had structure and support in their lives. Or because they had other protective factors, such as a high IQ or other talents, which shielded them from seeing their difficulties. In these cases they often don’t “hit the wall” until later, after graduating from high school, getting married, or going to college or to work…

While other young adults were starting out, reshaping, refining molding and adjusting their choices, self-images and dreams, you may have reached adulthood with a gap in information about yourself that didn’t allow you to do that initial bit of reality testing and adjustment.

As a result of your AD/HD, you may have held on tightly to dreams that were slowly being submerged little by little, year after year, until they were just treasures lost at the bottom of your soul. Most likely, you felt there was no way to retrieve your dreams

And, she says, that itch means something.

To resolve this identity crisis, you will need to revisit a difficult and painful time in yoru past. You almost have to go back to where you fell off the developmental road and complete that process now that you have more complete informaiton that you lacked then. This process will ultimately give you the means to construct a vision for the rest of your life.

The task, Solden writes, for someone like me is to “face the pain of old dreams or parts of yourself left behind,” and then finding a way to fit the core of those dreams — what made them important to us — into the realities of our lives now. This, Solden says, isn’t downsizing those dreams so much as “right-sizing” them into lives that are different from what they were when  we first dreamed those dreams.

Solden writes of her own unfulfilled youthful desire for a career in broadcasting, and how she felt twinges of anger and frustration sometimes when she watched the evening news. But, at that point in her life, it wasn’t feasible for her to try to start building a career in broadcasting. Instead she realized that she felt those same twinges at conferences when she saw someone wearing a “Speaker” badge, and realized that the core of her dream was being someone with something to say, communicating with and reaching people. So, she started pursuing that goal, and became a popular conference speaker.

And me? Those feelings I have during the Oscars, or while watching listening to great performances are telling that I have unfinished business. Good or bad, leading player or chorus member, there’s a performer in me that’s been standing in the wings for some time now, while I did everything else I was “supposed” do to, and struggled at things I’ve never been good at because I believed the things I am good at and wanted to get better at were “extras”; things I could do in my “free time,” as a hobby, after I mastered the “important” things — a/k/a the stuff I’ve never been good at.

But this is my life now.  I can’t very well quit my job, leave my family, and run off to pursue a career in show business. Nor would I, if it means failing to be the husband and father I want to be and promised to be. So, I’ve made forays. I’ve taken a acting class in the last few years. I’ve noodled around with musical ideas. But at this point, if I somehow landed a part in a community theater production, I couldn’t really commit to a rehearsal schedule if it meant not being at home in the evenings, after I’m done with work.

When I talk to friends, what I hear in response is, “Well, in few more years, your kids will be old enough that it’ll be easier for you to start getting back to that…” It’s said or mean as a dismissal of dreams that are important to me. It’s just an acknowledgment that for now those dreams — even in their scaled-back, “right-sized” form — will just have to wait. At this rate, I’ll be in my mid 40′s, at least, before I can start fitting those dreams into my life somehow.

In the meantime — or “mean time,” when pain can recognized and named, but little can be done to relieve it — I’m sharing what gifts I have, or have left at this point with my children. The frustrated singer in me looks forward to singing to them at night. The frustrated actor in me looks forward to reading to them, and turning the books and stories into mini-performances. My “gold statue” comes when they look forward to it as much as I do, and ask for more.

Gareth Unwin, one of the producers who one an Oscar for The King’s Speech, said in his acceptance speech,”This is a boyhood ambition come true tonight.” And I know that I still have boyhood dreams and ambitions, unrealized. Except for some miraculous accident, I no longer expect pursuit of them to get me any closer to the Oscars or anything like the top tier of entertainment. But, in the “mean time,” I can only wait to see where they’ll take me, when I finally get back to pursuing them.

In the “mean time,” that 12-year-old boy sitting in the dark will have to watch, wait, and yearn just a little longer.

Related articles

• Oscars 2011: PS22 Chorus Sings ‘Over The Rainbow’ VIDEO (bittenandbound.com)

Now it appears that, a couple of decades late, science supports my study habits.

For instance, instead of sticking to one study location, simply alternating the room where a person studies improves retention. So does studying distinct but related skills or concepts in one sitting, rather than focusing intensely on a single thing.

…But individual learning is another matter, and psychologists have discovered that some of the most hallowed advice on study habits is flat wrong. For instance, many study skills courses insist that students find a specific place, a study room or a quiet corner of the library, to take their work. The research finds just the opposite. In one classic 1978 experiment, psychologists found that college students who studied a list of 40 vocabulary words in two different rooms — one windowless and cluttered, the other modern, with a view on a courtyard — did far better on a test than students who studied the words twice, in the same room. Later studies have confirmed the finding, for a variety of topics.

The brain makes subtle associations between what it is studying and the background sensations it has at the time, the authors say, regardless of whether those perceptions are conscious. It colors the terms of the Versailles Treaty with the wasted fluorescent glow of the dorm study room, say; or the elements of the Marshall Plan with the jade-curtain shade of the willow tree in the backyard. Forcing the brain to make multiple associations with the same material may, in effect, give that information more neural scaffolding.

I know there are people who concentrate better in quiet conditions, or even in silence, but I’ve never been one them. If anything, I find it harder to focus when things are “too quiet,” let alone silent. In high school, I kept the radio going why I did my homework. In college, when I studied in the dorm, I’d have music going. If I tried studying in silence, I invariably ended up fleeing the library or the dorm for the student center, the campus “quad” or some other place where there sights, sounds, people, and noise.

Even now, if I’m working from home, I have the television on to keep things from getting “too quiet,” or I head out to the nearest coffee spot with wifi. Even if I’m reading, it’s likely the television is still on.

For whatever reason, my mind needs the background noise. I’ve always attributed it to my ADD. The reality is, because of my ADD, my mind is going to wander no matter what. My experience is that having music on or the television on gives it some place to wander to. It also makes that wandering finite where silence could make it infinite (or at least much longer), because the distraction is finite. The song, show, or commercial that caught my attention will end, and give me the opportunity to re-focus on the task at hand. If it’s too quiet, my mind might wander indefinitely.

Other parts of the article didn’t hold true for me, as well. I’m absolutely a believer in different learning styles.

Take the notion that children have specific learning styles, that some are “visual learners” and others are auditory; some are “left-brain” students, others “right-brain.” In a recent review of the relevant research, published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a team of psychologists found almost zero support for such ideas.

No two people learn the same way, and sometimes I think our cookie-cutter approach to education favors some learning styles over others. It wasn’t until I was in college that I realized how I learned and how I learn best.

I found out I was definitely not an “auditory” learner. I attended lectures, and enjoyed many of them, but remembered nothing of them once I left class. I tried taping lectures, but quickly found I’d forget to listen to the tapes. Taking notes during lectures helped somewhat, but I found I could never quite keep up. Writing down one idea or concept, I’d often miss the next one. Again, I think my ADD played a significant role, since I wasn’t diagnosed or treated until my mid-thirties.

What saved me was my love of reading, and my ability to write. (OK. Writing didn’t do me much good when it came to math and science, but it helped immensely in the other classes that served to balance out my grades.) I found that if I learned more when I did the reading, took notes on my reading and/or highlighted important information. I got better grades too. The lectures basically supplemented my reading. (But, again, I found I learned and retained more when there was some degree of interaction and student participation.)

Since then, I’ve kind of carried on my own ongoing “independent study” of whatever has interested me since then. I still read, take notes, underline/highlight what I want to remember, and (of course) write about it all eventually.

And I’ve never stopped learning. So, I must be doing something right.

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.

Maybe the “value added” is that I know what it’s like. I know what it’s like to be on a completely different wavelength from everybody else, and to even feel like you’re an alien from another planet, because you can’t do what people seem to expect you to do, and don’t even begin to understand how to do it. And, thus, I know what it’s like to try anyway, knowing that you’re going to fail.

Like I said, there was a lot in her essay to identify with, but it was the end that really hit home.

I live with anxiety, because the world can be overwhelming and people have expectations that I always, sooner or later, fail to meet. I cannot begin to tell you how many times I have been told that I am rude, inaccessible or cold, yet I have never purposely tried to harm anyone, nor do I mean to be, well, mean.

I could tell you so much more, but instead let me share one last insight. Don’t pity me or try to cure or change me. If you could live in my head for just one day, you might weep at how much beauty I perceive in the world with my exquisite senses. I would not trade one small bit of that beauty, as overwhelming and powerful as it can be, for “normalcy.”

That’s the big one, knowing that sooner or later you will fail to meet those expectations. And knowing that they’re perfectly reasonable expectations, for someone with a “neurotypical” brain. Some of us are very good at compensating. We’ve had to be in order to survive. But you can’t keep “dancing as fast as you can” indefinitely. (Even the most hyper of us are not perpetual motion machines.) The part that hurts is that when you disappoint people, they tend not to have noticed that — up until the inevitable failure — you’ve been really trying. You may, in fact, have tried as hard as you could.

It’s just that sooner or later it won’t be enough. You’ll forget something important, miss some important detail, lose something important, forget to pay an important bill, etc. In fact, you’re guaranteed to do so, probably on an almost daily basis. And even if it turns out not to be all that important, the cumulative effect of having done so “umpteen” times can spell the end of a relationship, a job, a career. It’s all stuff that everyone does, from time to time. But most people don’t do it so often that it disrupts their lives completely.

I know what it’s like to be unable to make other people understand you.

I guess it’s a matter of just being very different in our basic approaches to the world. And trying to translate and interpret between those two approaches is sometimes like trying to reach through a two-foot thick wall of gauze. Frustrating and eventually exhausting. And most of the time it seems like I’m the one who has to stretch to understand and translate into the frequency or wavelength of those around me, because the truth is—at least in this culture— I am, and people like me are, out-numbered.

I know how it feels to face a world where people expect a frightening degree of perfection and are quick to punish imperfection, knowing you’re going to fail. I know what it’s like to live with that failure and the memories of failures past.

And so the memories I’d usually rather forget are part of me as well, because each of them has changed me, in someways for the better and in other ways perhaps for the worse. If I “erased” them, would I also erase the ways in which they shaped or molded my character? If I’d never had those humiliations and dismal failures, or could act as though they never happened, would I be more a more confident person? Would I have less doubt about my abilities and what I can accomplish? On the other hand, would I be less compassionate? Would I have less empathy for people who are experiencing their own failures, losses, and humiliations?

Would I be a better person without those experiences? Or am I better person for having had them? Have I grown because of them? Or because of what I learned from them and how I used what I learned?

And because of all the above, I know what it’s like when people give up on you. And I know what it’s like to give up on yourself.

None of that is going to get me my dream job, or even so much as a promotion. Most of it doesn’t have any value to anyone besides me, or someone else who’s going through what I experienced, or something similar.

Which means it’s not valueless. It has value; immense value to someone.

It means that I can see when someone is experiencing the same thing, and I can try to help, or be someone who understands or at least tries to understand, when others don’t and don’t care to.

It means that I can refuse to let what happened to me happen to someone else.

If it makes a life even a little better, I guess that’s value added enough.

Well, he did behave like one.

[See post to watch Flash video]

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.

Taylor Swift barely had a chance to accept her award for Best Female Video at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards on Sept. 13 before Kanye West rushed the stage, grabbed the microphone out of the startled teen’s hands and aired his objections. “I’m sorry, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time!” the rapper complained, referring to the undeniably danceable “Single Ladies.” Swift, who had won the award for her high school love song “You Belong With Me,” was hurt. “I was standing onstage, and I was really excited because I’d just won the award, and then I was really excited because Kanye West was onstage,” she told People magazine. “And then I wasn’t excited anymore after that.”

West has made a habit of airing his displeasure at awards shows. He walked out of the 2004 American Music Awards after losing the Best New Artist title to country singer Gretchen Wilson. (“I was the best new artist this year,” he complained backstage.) Two years later, West crashed the stage of the 2006 MTV Europe Music Awards and launched into a profanity-laced rant after losing in the Best Hip-Hop Artist category to Justice and Simian. West said his “Touch the Sky” video was better because it “cost a million dollars. Pamela Anderson was in it. I was jumping across canyons.” He later apologized, explaining that he had enjoyed “a little sippy sippy” before the ceremony.

Goodness knows, I’ve been there. Not to try and diagnos West, but one of the joys of having ADD, especially untreated, is the “social difficulties” that come with the territory.

In fact, four of the five most common social problems experienced by kids with ADD/ADHD could easily apply to West.

* Interrupting others – One of the primary symptoms associated with ADHD is impulsivity. The uncontrollable urge to speak makes it hard to listen. Additionally, kids with ADHD have difficulty focusing on one thought for very long, therefore getting their thought out may be more important than joining in the rhythm of the conversation.

* Failure to understand others anger – Kids with ADHD don’t perceive their inconsiderate actions as rude. They may not be able to understand why the schoolmate they interrupted 10 times in a five minute conversation was angry. After all what’s wrong with joining in on the conversation.

* Being Perceived as Self Centered – Self centeredness can be a serious problems both for kids and adults. The ADHD personality may come across as one that doesn’t understand the feelings or needs of others. If this trait is carried forward into adulthood it can be very problematic in personal relationships. For kid with ADHD it often causes problems with schoolmates, parents, and teachers.

* Not respecting others space – Little Johnny sat behind Sara in class. He continually bumps her chair and when no one is looking pulls her hair. Little Johnny doesn’t understand why he keeps getting in trouble, after all he likes little Sara. Kids with ADHD struggle with the concept of personal space. When you combine the disregard for others personal space with ADHD symptoms such as hyperactivity and inattention, classmate Sara should ask for a different seat assignment immediately!

* Poor sportsmanship – One of the common traits of ADHD children is becoming easily frustrated. Frustration can spill over into other activities such as sports; leading kids with ADHD to cheat if they fall behind and throw temper tantrums if the outcome isn’t acceptable. Often poor losers have trouble finding others to interact with socially thus adding to their already unpredictable behavior.

And in West’s behavior, I recognize at least one symptom of ADD/ADHD.

Blurt out inappropriate comments, show their emotions without restraint, and act without regard for consequences

I can’t count the number of times I’ve done the above, and paid a price for it. Before diagnosis and treatment, it was the kind of thing that got me into trouble at school, caused me problems at work, and probably cost me some relationships. You pay a price not only because the behavior comes across as inconsiderate and boorish — often because it is — but because people believe that you’re being inconsiderate and boorish on purpose. In other words, people think that you know better and can do better, but don’t care to.

But, often times you don’t want to be inconsiderate or boorish, and you want to do better, but it seems to happen before you realize what’s happening, or you don’t realize until it’s too late how its going to come across to other people.

It’s worse when you don’t know that you have a problem, or can’t name it and thus can’t find the right way to fix it. Everyone else wonders what’s wrong with you, and you wonder too.

Thanks to an anonymous manager at CNN, I have a new favorite word: “neurotypical.” Or maybe it’s “neuro-atypical.” I’m not sure, but I know which one I am. So, I knew I’d find something to identify with when I (finally) sat down to read her account of how diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome in adulthood left her feeling like an “earthbound alien.”

Like I said, there was a lot in her essay to identify with, but it was the end that really hit home.

I live with anxiety, because the world can be overwhelming and people have expectations that I always, sooner or later, fail to meet. I cannot begin to tell you how many times I have been told that I am rude, inaccessible or cold, yet I have never purposely tried to harm anyone, nor do I mean to be, well, mean.

I could tell you so much more, but instead let me share one last insight. Don’t pity me or try to cure or change me. If you could live in my head for just one day, you might weep at how much beauty I perceive in the world with my exquisite senses. I would not trade one small bit of that beauty, as overwhelming and powerful as it can be, for “normalcy.”

That’s the big one, knowing that sooner or later you will fail to meet those expectations. And knowing that they’re perfectly reasonable expectations, for someone with a “neurotypical” brain. Some of us are very good at compensating. We’ve had to be in order to survive. But you can’t keep “dancing as fast as you can” indefinitely. (Even the most hyper of us are not perpetual motion machines.) The part that hurts is that when you disappoint people, they tend not to have noticed that — up until the inevitable failure — you’ve been really trying. You may, in fact, have tried as hard as you could.

My strategy, for those times, is to fall back on a rule I taught myself years ago: “If I don’t say anything, I can’t say the wrong thing. If I don’t do anything, I can’t do anythign wrong.”

I’m not saying that any of the above is true about West, because I don’t know. And I’m not saying that any of the above excuses his behavior. It never does. (Though people often forget the difference between explanation and excuse.) But I see some of my own difficulties reflected in the trouble West’s mouth and impulsiveness have gotten him into.

I also understand that West seems to be considering a similar strategy to the one above.

“So many celebrities, they never take the time off,” he said. “I’ve never taken the time off to really – you know, just music after music and tour after tour.

“I’m just ashamed that my hurt caused someone else’s hurt. My dream of what awards shows are supposed to be, ’cause, and I don’t try to justify it because I was just in the wrong. That’s period.

“But I need to, after this, take some time off and just analyse how I’m going to make it through the rest of this life, how I’m going to improve.”

It’s a good idea, because as some point it all adds up to a cumulative price that can be pretty big.

It’s just that sooner or later it won’t be enough. You’ll forget something important, miss some important detail, lose something important, forget to pay an important bill, etc. In fact, you’re guaranteed to do so, probably on an almost daily basis. And even if it turns out not to be all that important, the cumulative effect of having done so “umpteen” times can spell the end of a relationship, a job, a career. It’s all stuff that everyone does, from time to time. But most people don’t do it so often that it disrupts their lives completely.

Take some time, as much time as you need, to figure out what’s wrong and what to do about it. Go to a therapist or a psychiatrist, if you need to.

But do it. Because the truth is, if you “neuro-atypical” in a “neurotypical world,” at some point people won’t care. They won’t care what kind of problem you have. They won’t care what kind of help you need, or what kind of help you need to find the help you need. They’ll care only about one thing: making sure your problem is no longer their problem.

And that’s one problem that will dwarf just about any other problem you have.

It’ll make them worse, because you’ll have to solve them. Alone.

If you don’t, it’ll be your problem. Alone.

I guess the lyrics spoke to me.

I was looking for a song the expressed how I felt most of yesterday.

You Can’t Win

(Sung by Michael Jackson)

You can’t win
You can’t break even
And you can’t get out of the game
People keep sayin’
Things are gonna change
But they look just like they’re staying the same
You get in
Way over your head
And you’ve only got yourself to blame

You can’t win, chile
You can’t break even
And you can’t get out of the game

You can’t win
The world keeps movin’
And you’re standin’ far behind
People keep sayin’
Things ‘ll get better
Just to ease your state of mind
So you lay back
And you smoke that smoke
And you drink your glass of wine

You can’t win, chile
You can’t break even
And you can’t get out of the game

You can’t win
You can’t win
No way if your story stays the same
You ain’t winnin’
But it’s nice to see you
I’m awfully glad you came
Better cool it
‘Cause it ain’t about losin’
Then the world has got no shame

You can’t win, chile
You can’t break even
And you can’t get out of the game

You can’t win
You can’t win
You can’t break even
Ain’t the way
It’s supposed to be
You’ll be spendin’
Your little bit of money
While someone else ride free
Learn your lesson, refuel your mind
Before some turkey blows out your flame

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 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?)

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.

Here it is, approaching 2:00 p.m., and I haven’t posted anything. I may manage another automated digest post (does anyone read those?) but it’s looking less and less likely that I’ll publish anything significant today, except for a couple of asides. It’s not that I haven’t been writing. I’ve got a few things in the works, but nothing I’m ready to post.

The reason? Well, I’ve been doing (or trying to do) everything I’m supposed to do when I’m supposed to do it. I don’t know how that works for normal people, but for me it means there’s no time for the stuff that’s not on the list of what I’m supposed to do.

Writing, as rewarding as I find it, is rarely on that list. In a sense, it’s something I have to do. But not something I’m supposed to do.

I’ve written about this before. Writing is something I have to do in order stay sane.

I’ve found that I need to write, in the same way that a painter needs to paint or a dancer needs to dance. It keeps me sane, and if I go too long without writing, I get grumpy, irritable, morose, etc., and not much fun to live with.

But it’s not on the list of things I’m supposed to do.

Funny thing about writing. I’m a writer who’s not really a writer. I’m not a writer at work, after all. Writing isn’t a part of my job description. It’s something “extra,” something I can do if there’s enough time after everything else has been taken care of. Most of my job consists of copying, pasting, and prettifying other people’s writing, and then promoting it to tens of thousands of people.

I’m not a writer at home. Writing, after all, is a pretty solitary practice. It requires time to read, time to write, and time to think. Thus, it takes me away from my family if I attempt to do it while the rest of the family is around. With an infant and a five-year-old in the house, I joke that somebody in my house always needs something, and half the time they need it from me. But it’s true.

So, it comes last…

When I do get around to it, I run into my tendency to write longer blog posts than most people.

And it’s the ‘splaining that’s the bugaboo. It’s also at the heart of the kind of blogging I try to do and enjoy doing; which tends to mean longer posts, with lots of links, that attempt to pull various items and issues into a particular context.

I could probably generate 10 or more posts a day if most of them consisted of one word, maybe one sentence, a link, and a blockquote. But that’s hardly what I’d call "original content." ("Excellence" and "importance" are subjective, I think, and depend entirely on the audience you’re writing for.) Besides, that’s not writing. That’s aggregating, and there are already plenty of aggregators out there.

It’s also just the way my mind works, in a kind of perpetual "associative mode." I can’t think of just one thing at a time. That is, I can’t think of one thing without also thinking of how it relates to something else. How it plays out in my blogging is that I read something, and immediatly think about how it relates to something I read before and/or posted earlier. Once that happens, leaving out those other threads feels like an incomplete picture to me. So I end up with longer posts that link all over the place, or series of posts.

I could probably write posts that aren’t more than four or five paragraphs long, but much of the time I’d end up with the nagging feeling that I’m not telling the story right because I’m only telling part of it.  (I’ve tried to ameliorate this by posting more series.) Besides, I’m not sure I’d be offering anything that people couldn’t find on any number of other blogs.

At this point, I’ve accepted that I’m not going to reach the upper tiers of mainstream blogging, because the stuff that I write about and the way that I write about it isn’t likely to ever appeal to a broad audience.

At this point, I’ve accepted that I’m probably not going to parlay blogging into an actual writing career. In terms of style and form, I’m probably better suited to magazine writing that writing for the web. But blogging had a much lower entry barrier than any of the magazines I’d like to write for. Plus, I’m at a point in my life where I can’t really live off what an entry level journalism job might pay. (If there are any such jobs anymore. People who’ve been in the business are calling it a dying industry these days.)

At this point, I haven’t quite accepted that writing isn’t going to help me get back what I missed years ago.

And, as an adult, acceptance that I “missed stuff,” in terms of being able to to move forward in a career or education when I was younger, had fewer responsibilities, could set goals and the pursue them unfettered; acceptance that I might never “catch up” to where I might have been by now if I didn’t have ADD or had gotten diagnosed and treated earlier.

By the time I was diagnosed, I had a husband already, and a family shortly afterward. Now, I guess I’m a full-fledged grow-up, with a family, bills, a mortgage, etc. And now, when I stumble upon my passion, the reality is that there are a lot of things that end up having to take priority.

Now, I find myself worrying that — and this isn’t intended to sound as self-pitying as it will — maybe I missed my opportunity to “be somebody” or “make something of myself.” There’s a feeling that something is passing me by right now, and I can’t catch it; that I missed the boat because I got to the dock a couple of decades to late. Right now, I feel like I’m doing far less than I’m capable of. But I can’t find a way to do it without stealing time from work, family, or sleep. It becomes a question of which I’m going to neglect.

Basically, during the time in my life when I could have taken advantage of being able to focus on what I’m good at and what I love to do, I might have been further down the road to doing it today. But that “connection” wasn’t available to me when I could have made use of it. Now, at a time in my life where I don’t have much time for anything that falls outside of work and family — and what I love to do, writing, has no real relation to either of those areas with the biggest claim on my time and energy — that connection is wide open, but I don’t have much time to do anything with it. Now I find myself wondering if I ever will. (My attempts to find a job actually writing about the things I enjoy writing bout have been disappointing, when I’ve applied for the few that come available now and then.)

Maybe I’ve almost accepted it, but I’m not sure right now if it’s acceptance or resignation. (I’m sure there’s a difference between the two.)

If I write, it’s because it makes me happy. It makes me feel like I have something to contribute. It makes me feel connected to people. If I write long, deeply linked pieces, it’s because that’s the way my mind works. So it has value to me.

Plus, it has value to others, I’ve found. When I need my spirits lifted, I go back and read some stuff like this.

As I said in my previous post , this kind of blogging (as well as the topics I tend to blog about) isn’t likely to attract massive amounts of readers, because it’s not something they can get in and out of in three minutes or less. I completely accept that. It’s what I meant when I said this.

Most of all, I finally realized a few things: the topics I blog about and the kind of blogging I do will never attract a huge audience, and if attracting a huge audience would most likely mean changing what I blog about and how I blog. I’ve decided against the latter.

But, there are people who appreciate it.

Some of the best bloggers don’t link to a single story, but to several stories. They stand back, study the  news stream, find patterns in the news, and draw out those patterns with well-written, compelling posts. This was the basis for a rant last month by Metrodad over what he perceived as alcohol getting the short end of the cultural stick.

When commenting on a news article, seek out external links that will enhance your commentary. Terrance, the best black liberal vegetarian gay Buddhist parenting blogger on the Internet, has made an art form out of this. Check out this example, where he weaves a blog, a book, and a Washington Post article into a unique story about how GLBT families are becoming an assumed, accepted part of the culture. Or take his great critique of David Kuo’s Tempting Faith – an original piece which he augments throughout by linking to examples of what he’s talking about. This drawing together of various forms of information can be very powerful; it’s a luxury that many journalists can’t afford to exercise in their daily writing, but is a part of daily business for bloggers.

And stuff like this.

And I will be eternally grateful for Tony’s post, which lead me to this article from Jakob Nielsen, “Write Articles, Not Blog Posting.”

Blog postings will always be commodity content: there’s a limit to the value you can provide with a short comment on somebody else’s work. Such postings are good for generating controversy and short-term traffic, and they’re definitely easy to write. But they don’t build sustainable value. Think of how disappointing it feels when you’re searching for something and get directed to short postings in the middle of a debate that occurred years before, and is thus irrelevant.

…It might take you only an hour to write a blog posting on some current controversy, but a thousand other people can do that as well (in fact, they’ll sometimes do it better, as shown above). And customers don’t want to pay for such a tiny increment of knowledge. Sure, sometimes a single paragraph holds the idea that can increase a site’s conversion rate so much that a reader should have paid a million dollars to read it. But they don’t know that in advance, so they won’t pay.

In contrast, in-depth content that takes much longer to create is beyond the abilities of the lesser experts. A thousand monkeys writing for 1,000 hours doesn’t add up to Shakespeare. They’ll actually create a thousand low-to-medium-quality postings that aren’t integrated and that don’t give readers a comprehensive understanding of the topic — even if those readers suffer through all 1,000 blogs.

So, I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing. But the reason I put up the poll is because I wanted to find out what readers might have to say. (I hope it gets some responses.)

In the meatime, I’m going back to work on the post about George Tiller’s murder.

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?

This is the closest I could find in Palmer’s column, but it leaves me with questions.

What would you do differently if you had the ability to accurately assess the total potential of your dream job and found out that it was no longer possible for it to provide the living you dreamed accompanying it? There’s only one answer … you’d look for a different line of work.

Everything is change, I guess. And I believe I understand the Buddhist concept of impermanence. I had what was probably the closest thing I’ve had yet to a “dream job,” and it was good while it lasted, but it eventually changed.

My skill set was either no longer needed, or not as specialized as it used to be, or the company found more profitablility in an area that I didn’t have the skills for or wasn’t suited for. (If I’d been a talented project manager, I might still be there, but that whole ADD/executive functioning thing took care of that.)

Now, I have a job that doesn’t quite qualify for that title. I’ve looked for one that does, but without success. Now, the field is even more crowded with writers (thanks to closing newpapers, etc.), and thus more competitive. Being a blogger doesn’t quite have the cachet it used to.

But, I still dream of … something else.

So, what do you do if your dream job doesn’t exist anymore? What if it doesn’t exist in another line of work?

Do you dream a different dream?

Do you (finally) stop dreaming?

Either way, you gotta earn a paycheck, and on any given day you’ll spend the better part of it earning that paycheck or doing something related to earning it (like getting ready for work, commuting to work, etc.).

What do you do if the chances are slim and getting slimmer that you’ll be doing someting you love or even want to do for, say, eight hours a day?

OK. Let me ask you something else. Why?

If you’re reading a book, a newspaper or a magazine, and happen upon a typo, a misspelling, or grammatical error, does it drive you crazy? Does it tick you off?

If find a typo at the beginning of whatever you’re reading, do you assume the author’s ideas aren’t worth reading, if he/she didn’t spot the errors you did? Do you stop reading?

Again, why?

My guess is that not many readers of this blog fit the description above, because this blog is riddled with typos. Probably in every single post. Not because I don’t care. I’m always going back and correcting typos when I find them. But because if I took the time to read everything and proof-edit it to perfection, I’d never get anything written, let alone posted.

And because I almost never get anything perfect the first time.

A reader left this comment on the previous post (which was really a del.icio.us-generated post, one that I compiled in a fit of pique):

Let me guess: you have problems with perfectionism.;-)

I have to link to this. Sorry.

To which I replied:

Actually, I do have a problem with perfectionism. But I’m the exact opposite of a perfectionist. I’ll post about that later…

The truth is, I’m not only the exact opposite of a perfectionist. I’m probably a perfectionist’s worst nightmare. And yes, the feeling is often mutual.

I think my first real encounter with it was in my first job after graduation, in the science library at my old alma mater. (It wasn’t what I wanted to do, but it was the first job I could find.) Just my luck, I ended up with a boss who was both a perfectionist and a screamer. I sense I was in trouble when, after a mistake in my work, she announced “We can’t have mistakes.”

I immediately thought, “Oh shit. Then I’m not your guy. Because I can’t promise that my work will ever be perfect, but I can guarantee that there will be mistakes, no matter how hard I try to avoid them, or catch them and correct them.

It went downhill from there.

I can only imagine what fidgety Philip would face as an adult. Actually, I don’t have to. The “naughty, restless” child turns in to the “lazy,” “crazy,” and/or “stupid” adult who can’t live up to expectations, and nobody — including him or her — seems to know why. Most of the time employers don’t want to know why. A good many of them don’t care that you have a problem, let alone what your problem is. They just want it not to be their problem.

(Back when I was being treated for depression, which was likely related to having untreated ADD, I was having a bit of trouble finding the right medication. I tried one that left me feeling lethargic and zombie-like during the day. When my boss complained about its impact on my work, I confided to her that I was being treated for depression and the anti-depressant was making my foggy. She simply said “Stop taking it.” I explained that I was working with my doctor to get the right mediation, and simply — with a bit more irritation in her voice — “Well, stop taking it.” She wasn’t concerned about my well being. I could fall apart after business hours as long as I did what she needed me to do. I supposed if I’d committed suicide she’d have complained about my lack of notice and the inconvenience of having to hire someone to replace me. I doubt she’d have come to my memorial.)

I used to get tied up in knots about making mistakes. Excuse me, “careless” mistakes. I’ve never understood the notion that people make mistakes because they just don’t care or aren’t trying hard enough. I’d care very much. I’d redouble my efforts not to make mistakes. But I’d just end up making more of them.

It’s a pattern that I attribute it to my ADD (which is the predominantly inattentive type, not the hyperactive type) and that became problematic when I (finally) graduated from college and entered the working world. The pattern on any job went something like this.

I’d make mistakes; some small some not-so-small. Eventually, I’d make too many of them or make one that was just too big. I’d end up on probation. Which meant that I would be watched very closely and every mistake — large or small — would be noted. A supervisor in one such situation told me, “Don’t be so nervous.” But he didn’t know what I knew. And even I didn’t know what was really wrong. I just knew that I just knew that no matter how hard I tried I kept making mistakes.

When I got nervous, I’d make even more of them. And I couldn’t not be nervous. After all, my job was on the line due to a problem I couldn’t name, let alone solve. And when I tried harder — paying more attention to detail, proofreading everything over and over again, checking lists to make sure I’d covered every task, etc. — I’d get into even more trouble, because now I was moving too slow. (Evidently, perfect wasn’t enough. One had to be perfect and fast.)

Then there was the factor of my (still) untreated ADD. That meant that even if I “tried harder” to be more “careful” I’d probably miss some of my own mistakes. I could read a document backwards (a technique I learned in college) and forwards. It didn’t matter. I’d still miss something. (On one job, a misplaced comma in a press release that I’d send to my supervisor to review before it went out, the day before I left for vacation, was the “final straw.”

I was fired the day I returned.) I’d lie awake at night wondering what I’d missed and when it would come back around to smack me in the face. There’s an overwhelming anxiety that comes with basically being doomed to fail.

Like I said, there was a lot in her essay to identify with, but it was the end that really hit home.

I live with anxiety, because the world can be overwhelming and people have expectations that I always, sooner or later, fail to meet. I cannot begin to tell you how many times I have been told that I am rude, inaccessible or cold, yet I have never purposely tried to harm anyone, nor do I mean to be, well, mean.

I could tell you so much more, but instead let me share one last insight. Don’t pity me or try to cure or change me. If you could live in my head for just one day, you might weep at how much beauty I perceive in the world with my exquisite senses. I would not trade one small bit of that beauty, as overwhelming and powerful as it can be, for “normalcy.”

That’s the big one, knowing that sooner or later you will fail to meet those expectations. And knowing that they’re perfectly reasonable expectations, for someone with a “neurotypical” brain. Some of us are very good at compensating. We’ve had to be in order to survive. But you can’t keep “dancing as fast as you can” indefinitely. (Even the most hyper of us are not perpetual motion machines.) The part that hurts is that when you disappoint people, they tend not to have noticed that — up until the inevitable failure — you’ve been really trying. You may, in fact, have tried as hard as you could.

It’s just that sooner or later it won’t be enough. You’ll forget something important, miss some important detail, lose something important, forget to pay an important bill, etc. In fact, you’re guaranteed to do so, probably on an almost daily basis. And even if it turns out not to be all that important, the cumulative effect of having done so “umpteen” times can spell the end of a relationship, a job, a career. It’s all stuff that everyone does, from time to time. But most people don’t do it so often that it disrupts their lives completely.

I don’t know that I would trade either. Though sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be one of those people, and to have “neurotypical” brain for a day or two. What might it be like, in my case, to be significantly less forgetful, to catch important details at work that I would usually miss, to lose things less often (like the book I just started reading that got lost somewhere today, during the hour that I was running errands at lunch), etc.

I’m sure there would still be other problems, but part of me would still like to know what it would be like to fit in just a little better; and not just at work or socially, but in the world.

Odd, that people think we make mistakes because we just don’t care. I wish I’d known — during all that worrying, all those sleepless nights, and the doctor’s appointments made because of the tension in my neck and shoulders that made it hard to turn my head — that it was all just because I didn’t care.

Just like you were told in school that you just needed to “try harder,” “apply yourself” more, “pay attention,” and “stop making careless mistakes.” The assumption at work will be “If you wanted to do it, you could. So, you must not want to be here.” That’s almost exactly what a my employee advocate said to me when I was going through the process of being shown the door at my first job in D.C., after the cumulative effect of having an employee with undiagnosed and untreated ADD was too much. I had a problem, which meant they had a problem. I got fired. They, then, didn’t have a problem anymore. I, of course, still had an as-yet-unnamed-and-unsolved problem. But it was now my problem. Not theirs, anymore.

I understand it was never their job to figure out what my problem was. It was their job to run a successful enterprise, and if I had a problem that made it difficult to do that, then it was their job to make it not their problem any more. It was just business, that’s all. But there was still something galling about being lectured by the same people on the subject of caring. I cared. I just wished somebody else would.

As a result of the above, I devised a rule that because my fallback coping strategy for a while:

Which is why the article reminded me of something that was an unwritten rule for me during most of the time I lived with untreated ADD, and that still surfaces as a fall-back position:

If I don’t do anything, then I can’t do anything wrong, and I won’t get blamed or punished for failing.

I didn’t say it was a great strategy, but it made sense at the time. Living with untreated ADD, in an environment that demanded perfection and punished errors, it was safer not to do anything. Even if it meant that something didn’t get done, in my mind, that was a little better than getting blasted for doing it wrong.

But eventually I got treatment, and learned a bit more about ADD — including the fact that treatment can reduce the worst of my symptoms, and improve my focus, but it doesn’t cure ADD. I still have ADD. I always will. But now I’ve reached a point where the value I add in the workplace outweighs the mistakes I still make sometimes, and still make with more frequency than those around me.

I eventually developed another way of looking at mistakes, both my own and those of others, and became … well … the opposite of a perfectionist.

Which brings me back to typos.

Not everyone with ADD deals with it in the same way, as I discovered when I talked to an ADDer who responded to it by actually becoming a perfectionist. The subject of typos came up, and our response to them was completely different.

My fellow ADDer is among those who become irritated upon finding a typo in a newspaper, or magazine (even in email, etc.).

By contrast, typos make me smile.

Tom found a typo in Time magazine. Like him, I’m kinda glad to see it. But, then, I’m one of those people who smiles with relief when I come across a typo in a book or an article I’m reading, mainly because it’s a reassuring reminder that I’m not the only person in the world who makes small mistakes like that. And because I know there’s another person who’s cringing over that mistake, has had it brought to their attention several times by different people who think they’re the first person to spot it and rush [to tell them about it], and who may also be filled with dread right now because he or she works for one of those people for whom there’s no such thing as a small mistake. Because nobody’s perfect, but that doesn’t stop people from demanding perfection

For me, a typo is a reminder that there’ a human being behind that typo, who isn’t that different from me. Or, that different from any of the rest of us — perfectionists included.

If anything, I empathize with the person responsible for the typo, for either making it or missing it. Because I know that person is probably cowering under the glare of a “no-small-mistakes” perfectionist, being dressed down by someone who “can’t have mistakes,” or being told to pack up their desks by … well you get the picture.

I empathize because even if the person ultimately responsible for (or blamed for) that typo, even if he or she doesn’t ADD, not only has to deal with his or her mistakes, but also with a surprising number of people who have a great deal of intolerance for the condition of being human.

Imperfectly human, that is.

So, no offense intended if you’re among those driven crazy by typos, or who takes typos as a sign that the writer is either careless or doesn’t have much going on upstairs. But if you are, you probably didn’t read this far.