The Republic of T.

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.