The Republic of T.

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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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.”

Recently, at 48 years of age, I was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. For most of my life, I knew that I was “other,” not quite like everyone else. I searched for years for answers and found none, until an assignment at work required me to research autism. During that research, I found in the lives of other people with Asperger’s threads of similarity that led to the diagnosis. Although having the diagnosis has been cathartic, it does not change the “otherness.” It only confirms it.

When I talk to people about this aspect of myself, they always want to know what it means to be an “Aspie,” as opposed to a “Neurotypical” (NT). Oh, dear, where to start . …

Neurotypical? Now there’s a new one. I suppose though, it’s better than “normal,” which has obvious implications.

Where to start, indeed.

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Dwight asked a question on a post two weeks ago, that I’m only just now getting around to answering.

I never really thought of ADD being something that lasted over a life, beyond childhood and yet I’ve had the experience of lacking direction, getting burried in life. Some of this time was marked by depression (I imagine poverty, not moving ahead, etc.) added to this

But I never thought of ADD as being very relevant until your posts. And as someone who spent many years in the foster care system, I admit I get almost Tom Cruise -ish when I think of things like medication, being part of the mental health system.

So my question was..how does ADD plug into your experience and what sort of actions did you take to change direction?

How does ADD plug into my experience? I think it’s colored my experience from day one, long before I knew anything about it.

How does it does it plug into my experience? Well, let me put it this way. For more than a week now, I’ve had four pieces of writing I wanted to do, including this one. So far, I’ve had time to write exactly none of them. That is, except for this one. And this one may yet take me more than a day or two before I’m done writing it.

Writing is an activity that I find immensely rewarding and enjoyable, but it isn’t my job and it doesn’t have to do with taking care of my family, so there is always something else that takes priority. That includes sleep, since I often find myself nodding off at the computer at night, when I finally do have the opportunity to write something

That’s partly because of ADD-related problems with time management, but it’s also partly because I’ve arrived at two entirely different places in my life all at once, and at a time in my life when there doesn’t seem to be room for both.

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Ed. Note: This started out as a response to Marissa’s thoughtful comment on a previous post, related to the one before it I decided to let it stand on it’s own, as a post.

The thing is, I’m a late bloomer.

A late bloomer is a person who does not discover their talents and abilities until later than normally expected. In certain cases, the individual may be as old as 60, and retirement may lead to this discovery.

Maybe it’s due to my 30-plus years of untreated ADD. Maybe it’s just because I have a late blooming brain.

Indeed, until quite recently most researchers believed the human brain followed a fairly predictable developmental arc. It started out protean, gained shape and intellectual muscle as it matured, and reached its peak of power and nimbleness by age 40. After that, the brain began a slow decline, clouding up little by little until, by age 60 or 70, it had lost much of its ability to retain new information and was fumbling with what it had. But that was all right because late-life crankiness had by then made us largely resistant to new ideas anyway.

That, as it turns out, is hooey. More and more, neurologists and psychologists are coming to the conclusion that the brain at midlife–a period increasingly defined as the years from 35 to 65 and even beyond–is a much more elastic, much more supple thing than anyone ever realized.

Far from slowly powering down, the brain as it ages begins bringing new cognitive systems on line and cross-indexing existing ones in ways it never did before. You may not pack so much raw data into memory as you could when you were cramming for college finals, and your short-term memory may not be what it was, but you manage information and parse meanings that were entirely beyond you when you were younger. What’s more, your temperament changes to suit those new skills, growing more comfortable with ambiguity and less susceptible to frustration or irritation.

Sounds nice. But it doesn’t quite resolve some

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What I have learned as an adult with ADD and a working parent.

I have to become my mother.

I have to become my father.

I have to learn what they learned.

It does not matter what I want.

It does not matter how I feel.

It does not matter if I am happy.

It does not matter that I am unhappy.

It matters that it does not show.

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Well, if my own life serves as any indication, the answer to the above question for some kids with ADD/ADHD is no. Some kids won’t outgrow ADHD.

New findings that attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder may stem from a developmental delay that children could outgrow, rather than a cognitive deficit, have raised questions for parents of the 4.4 million children diagnosed with the disorder.

The findings from a National Institute of Mental Health study, published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, compared brain scans of 446 children with and without the disorder. The brains of children with ADHD appeared to develop normally but more slowly, lagging on average about three years behind other children.

We spoke with several experts about what the findings might mean for parents.

It means that a certain percentage of their kids will grow up with ADD and that the condition (I so hate the word “disorder” applied here) will persist into adulthood.

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Chase in linking to my post about Popular Mechanics list of “25 Skills Every Man Should Know”, has come up with his own list of “must have” skills.

Here’s how I did.

1. Know basic nutritional needs & how to plan balanced meals
2. Hone your sense of direction & navigation so you don’t need step-by-step turns to find a location
3. Understand types of health insurance & terminology such as OOP max & co-insurance percentage
4. Maintenance of a personal computer
5. In-depth knowledge of your employment benefits
6. Change a flat tire
7. Wash & iron clothes
8. Balance a checkbook & manage your finances
9. Patch holes in walls
10. Fix a clogged toilet
11. Jump start a car
12. Use public transportation to get around
13. Write an effective resume cover letter
14. Professional oral & written communication
15. Basic math
16. Stay calm in emergencies
17. Know when to ask for help
18. Personal hygiene
19. Do your own taxes
20. Use internet search engines strategically (if you know how to do good searches, you can find any information you need on the web)

Not bad. Better than I did on the Popular Mechanics list.

Technorati Tags: blogs, masculinity, adhd

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To borrow a line from Martha Reeves, “Come and get ‘em, come and get ‘em. And take them away.

Seriously though, don’t you have some memories you could do without? C’mon. Something you wish had never happened? Something you’d like to forget? Maybe something you’d erase if you could? What would you erase if you could?

I’ve asked these questions before, back when I reviewed Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, and I’m still asking them. I guess that’s because of my own ADD-related memory problems, which can be pretty disruptive in terms of working, living my everyday life, etc. Without treatment that is. On the one hand, there are days when I’d give almost anything for something that would improve my memory to the some level of normalcy. (I don’t know what a normal level of functioning is, memory-wise. The treatment I’m using now helps some, but there’s no “curing” ADD. Thus, speaking of memory-related movies, I felt a special affinity with the main character in Memento

.

Ironically, on the other hand, there are some pre-treatment ADD-related memories I wouldn’t mind getting shed of. Humiliations. Dismal failures. Lost jobs. Lost relationships. Depression. That why Spotless Mind appealed to me. And, despite the possibility that losing those memories might mean losing part of myself, the idea of a drug that wipes out bad memories sounds pretty tempting.

Technorati Tags: adhd, current events, life, medicine, science

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I knew it. I posted about it a few months ago, when a Canadian psychologist suggesting that "letting your mind wander" (or a mind that wanders of its own accord) can be beneficial. Now a Dartmouth study says that daydreaming is beneficial because your mind may be working out issues that aren't immediately relevant, but that aren't entirely unimportant either. So there. Next time you see someone sitting at their staring out of a window, they're working on something. It just may not look like it.

There are at least three political posts I want to write at the moment, but right now the personal is what’s on my mind. So, if folks will indulge me for a bit, I need to get this out. It’s been one of those months, so far, where I’ve swung between the extremes of the exhilaration of getting to combine my interests and talents in a meaningful way and the shame and embarrassment of letting down people who rely on me and whose respect I’d like to earn.

I’ve been here before. More times than I can count. I wrote back in November about my time/task management issues and my latest attempt at putting things in some semblance of order. I was wary then, about trying yet another organizing scheme.

There have been times throughout my life when this deficiency has been cast in very stark and unflattering light; usually those times when circumstances overwhelm my ability to compensate for it. And there are, in all those periods, events that send me scurrying for some sort of time management information (TMI, for short), the way a man aboard a sinking ship looks for something, anything, with which to bail out the water that’s rushing in. (A bucket would be great, but a teaspoon will do if that’s all I can find. When my first job in D.C. was going down faster than the Titanic, and happened to be riding down in the elevator with the Executive Director, she asked me how I was it was going. I said “Like I’m bailing water on the Titanic with a teaspoon.”) Never mind looking for a lifejacket. That’s somewhere under all the water.

Now — when I’m facing the intersection of work and (a growing) family and blogging and any number of other activities that I might want to engage in — is one of those times. So I find myself reaching for another bucket to bail with, and some trepidation given my track record with this sort of thing (more below). But at this point might worship as a demigod the person who can show me how to get organized and stay organized — to find time to do all the stuff I have to do, and maybe a fair amount of the stuff I want to do — if it will loosen or even completely banish the knot of tension that tightly winds itself between my shoulder blades on a daily basis now.

Six months later, I’m back in pretty much the same place; a little better in terms of the positive side of the scale but losing ground fast, and I’m not sure what to do.

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Do you have one? I don’t. Or at least not one that I thought about until I read this Lifehack post (one of several similar blogs I’ve been reading since I starting trying to implement a GTD system) about how the author’s seven-year-old started his own life list.

About two months ago, on a rainy Saturday, my seven year-old son (who is enjoying his budding ability to write) came to me with a small, yellow pad of paper and said, “Daddy, I want to write a list. What should I make a list of?” Suddenly, I recalled reading about John Goddard and the life list he wrote at age 15. His list consisted of 127 things he would like to do or see during his lifetime (for example: Climb Mt. Everest, run a mile in under five minutes, land on and take off from an aircraft carrier, and circumnavigate the globe). Goddard is now 75 years old and, at last count, has accomplished 109 of the goals he wrote as a teenager.

I hadn’t heard of John Goddard or his life list, at least that I can recall, but I was impressed with the idea that he even started one at age 15, let alone knew what he wanted to do. I can’t imagine doing that at 15 or at seven.

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A while back, I was a retreat where we did a listening exercise. I knew I was in trouble already, because I have trouble listening, but I went along anyway. The idea was to understand three levels of listening: listening to your own thoughts, listening to what’s being said, and awareness of everything around you. The facilitator told us a story less than two minutes long, and was going to ask us questions about it to see how well we listened. Keep in mind, I knew we’d be questioned. Here’s how it went for me:

He starts the story and I see the word “Listen” projected on the screen. That makes me think of a song I wanted listen to on my iPod later. The song made me think about the soundtrack it was part of, which made me think about the movie. Then I thought, “I need to see that movie again.” I tried to imagine my favorite scene, but then I looked out the window and noticed the sky was gray and that it looked like it might rain. I looked down and saw someone’s shoes and thought they were the same color gray as the sky outside, but I really couldn’t tell because I’m partially colorblind and similar shades like that are hard for me …

Then I realized then that the story was winding up. Needless to say, I didn’t raise my hand during questions. My mind had wandered a bit during the story.

I was reminded of that experience when I read that someone is studying why the mind wanders.

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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, 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 . 

It feels good to know I’m not alone.

Mentioned earlier that I have a penchant for procrastination. Not that I particularly like procrastinating. It’s just that it comes with the territory as far as some aspects of my life are concerned. I know it’s a trait I share with Scarlett O’Hara (“I’ll think about it tomorrow. After all, tomorrow is another day!”). But apparently it’s a trait I share with many of my fellow Americans.

My name is Terrance. I’m a procrastinator, and I’m not alone.

Overall, more than a quarter of Americans say they procrastinate. Men are worse than women (about 54 out of 100 chronic procrastinators are men) and the young are more like to procrastinate than the old, Steel said. Three out of four college students consider themselves procrastinators.

… The causes of procrastination combine temptation, sense of immediacy, the value of doing the job, and whether you believe you can get the work done, Steel found. He even created a complicated mathematical formula, complete with Greek letters, to figure out when a person is likely to procrastinate.

Temptation is the biggest factor. And it’s why procrastination is getting worse, Steel said, citing technology.

Far be it from me to argue with science, but I think I’ll have to disagree with the guy who did the study, as far as the why of procrastination. At least in my own case.

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This sweet potato soufflé is something I whipped up to take to a holiday party yesterday evening. (For the uninitiated, those are marshmallows on top. Think of them as a meringue.) For some reason it occurred to me to take a picture of it, and then to post about it. Why? Because lately I’ve been revisiting old dreams and passions of mine (another story), and cooking is one that I’d forgotten about for the past year or so, while we were living out of boxes and waiting for the house to be completed. Now that we’re in it, and we have a functioning kitchen again, I’ve been pulling out some old recipes.

Besides, the kind of political blogging I’ve been doing takes time — time to read, time to think, and time to write. Lately that’s more time than I have. I’m not sure that food blogging takes any less time (time to cook, time to think, and time to write?), but until I finish thinking through a couple more politically-oriented posts, it’s worth a shot.

So, why sweet potato soufflé?

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This may not come as a surprise, coming from someone with ADD, but it occurred to me earlier this week that at least some of the frustration I’ve been feeling lately is due to poor time management, or possibly even a complete lack thereof. Like I said, not exactly a news flash. Neither is the reality that my time management skills have never been great. (Again, no need to alert the media here.) Next to my financial management skills (material for another post), it’s one of the biggest problems I’ve struggled with; especially in school and at work.

There have been times throughout my life when this deficiency has been cast in very stark and unflattering light; usually those times when circumstances overwhelm my ability to compensate for it. And there are, in all those periods, events that send me scurrying for some sort of time management information (TMI, for short), the way a man aboard a sinking ship looks for something, anything, with which to bail out the water that’s rushing in. (A bucket would be great, but a teaspoon will do if that’s all I can find. When my first job in D.C. was going down faster than the Titanic, and happened to be riding down in the elevator with the Executive Director, she asked me how I was it was going. I said “Like I’m bailing water on the Titanic with a teaspoon.”) Never mind looking for a lifejacket. That’s somewhere under all the water.

Now — when I’m facing the intersection of work and (a growing) family and blogging and any number of other activities that I might want to engage in — is one of those times. So I find myself reaching for another bucket to bail with, and some trepidation given my track record with this sort of thing (more below). But at this point might worship as a demigod the person who can show me how to get organized and stay organized — to find time to do all the stuff I have to do, and maybe a fair amount of the stuff I want to do — if it will loosen or even completely banish the knot of tension that tightly winds itself between my shoulder blades on a daily basis now.

So, here I go again. Earlier this week, I finally got desperate enough to go out and pick up a copy of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen. I’m hoping to get though it during the long weekend.

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I don’t write much about being an adult with ADD anymore.It’s something I’ve written about before, though it’s been a long time, and it’s something that seems to be a recurring theme in my life; one that’s cropping up again. Maybe it’s because I’m getting a head start on something. I’m going to be 38 in February. And while 38 isn’t 40, I can see it from there. That combined with other factors in my life, including the reality that my life will soon change again with the growth of our family, has me re-evaluating some things. Old feelings that haven’t come up in a while are bubbling to the surface.

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Whoops. Wednesday was ADD Awareness Day. Seeing as how I’m loaded with it, I guess it’s appropriate that I’d find out several days later. It also took me about that long to come across the article in Tuesday’s Washington Post Express about possible links between smoking, lead exposure and ADD. We already know lead exposure isn’t good for the brain, so the connection to ADD isn’t much of a surprise. What jumped out at me from the Express article, though, was this blurb.

Now, I’m not going to dispute that number. I just want to add one fact that usually gets left out: some children with ADD grow up to be adults with ADD. About 70% to 30% of them, in fact. I won’t go into the experience of living with untreated ADD into adulthood, as I’ve explored it in archived posts. I just wish that it would get mentioned more often that adults can have it too. After all, children with ADD often grow up to be adults with ADD. Then it might be less common to run into someone who says they don’t “believe in” adult ADD (or ADD itself), and easier for those of us who didn’t get help as children to get it as adults.