The Republic of T.

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

I’m officially blaming it on gas prices, which probably isn’t too far off the mark. Metro ridership in D.C. is way up, and recently hit a new record.

Metro says it counted 854,638 riders on Friday, beating the old record by 4,000 passenger trips. Officials attribute the spike to a Washington Nationals baseball game, a Women of Faith Conference at the Verizon Center and tourists visiting the city.

So far, 20 of Metrorail’s top 25 highest ridership days in its 32-year history have been recorded this year. Many of the busiest days are generated by baseball games or big events like the Cherry Blossom Festival or the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

No wonder I can’t find a seat on the Metro. I used to let packed trains go by, because I could be almost certain that I would get a seat on the next train. That means I’d be able to take out the laptop and use that little bit of quiet time between work and home to catch up on some of the stuff I’ve been wanting to read.

But the trains are all crowded now, and by the time the third packed train goes by, I have to get on or get home late. So, what’s a guy to do?

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Is it possible to go on strike over something that isn’t even your job? I’ve been thinking about staging my own writer’s strike. But what would I be striking for, or against?

I’m not really sure. I think it’s mostly out of frustration. I mean, I’ve found something I enjoy doing, and that I think I’m reasonably good at. (Enough that at least people have been wanting to read what I’ve been writing for the last few years.) But here’s the thing. I don’t make a living at it.

It’s given me opportunities that I wouldn’t have had otherwise, and taken me to places I certainly wouldn’t have gone. But I don’t make a living at it. It doesn’t pay a single bill. I’m not a writer at work. I don’t get paid to write. So am I really a writer at all?

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Sometimes you look up and the whole day is gone. You’ve been “doing” all day, but not what you want to do. When you look at the days ahead, you’ve got lots more to be “doing,” but what you want to do isn’t on the list. If it’s on the list at all, it comes after the things you must do, have to do, should do, need to do, are needed to do, and are expected to. It comes dead last.

You can think about it while you’re in the midst of all that “doing,” while you’re in the middle of being a “human doing” rather than a “human being.” You may wonder what you are “being” if what you’re “doing” isn’t what you want to do. Maybe you’re being what you must be, have to be, should be, need to be, are needed to be, and are expected to be. But what you want to be? It comes dead last. Too.

So it is with anything I hoped to write today, or for the next several days. I want to write. I want to be a writer. But have other things to do and be. So, I am not. Today.

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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Ever since I wrote a post about adoption and African American children back in 2004, I get occasional emails from people considering adoption — considering cross-racial adoption, especially — asking for information and advice. I’m not an expert, by any stretch of the imagination, but I try to answer them. The interesting thing is that I still get those emails even though I haven’t posted much on the subject since then.

But that post came to mind recently, when I read a New York Times article about race and adoption.

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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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Well, you won’t find it among the characteristics listed on the Scout Law. But, yeah, in my case a scout is queer.

A few weeks ago, I got an email from the National Eagle Scout Association. (Yes, I’m an Eagle Scout.) I either ignored it or forgot about. But they didn’t forget about me. I got this in my inbox this afternoon.

Do you have fond memories of all those camping trips on your Trail to Eagle? Or do you ever wonder where the other Eagles from your troop are now? Have you considered how being an Eagle Scout shapes your life even today?

The National Eagle Scout Association recently authorized the National Eagle Scout Search Project which will culminate in the publication of the Eagle Scout Roll of Honor. Roll of Honor will be the first-ever registration and publication of its kind - capturing nearly 100 years of Eagle Scout history, tradition, service and achievement.

Oh geez. Now I’ve got a dilemma.

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Nothing like a blog meme to get you back into gear when you’re recovering from a huge conference, like the one I worked at earlier this week. So I have Dana to thank for getting me back to blogging, by tagging me for this rather interesting meme.

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Does anyone else grind their teeth at night? How about during the day?

It started sometime last year, around the end of the summer, but I didn’t notice it until September. I’d started waking up with inexplicable headaches that didn’t dissipate during the day. I’d take pain medications, sinus medications, thinking one or the other would fix it.

Then I realized that not only did I have a headache, but my face hurt too, especially my cheeks and my jaw muscles. I realized I was probably clenching or grinding my teeth at night, something called bruxism.

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That I turned 19. I’m celebrating the anniversary of that birthday. Do the math and you’ll figure out that today I inch ever closer to aging out of yet another demographic. No special plans today, other than doing some writing, treating myself to lunch, and maybe getting to bed early and squeezing in a little extra sleep.

I did fire up the iPod on the way to work today and try to find something that spoke to where I find myself on this, my thirty-ninth, birthday.

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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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Is there anybody still out there listening? Just thought I’d ask. It’s been four days or so since I’ve done any actual writing, or at least what I’d call doing my own writing, and it’s been making me a little crazy. That’s partly because I’m always a little concerned that falling silent in the blogosphere for too long is the same as disappearing altogether.

Granted, with a new baby in the house, I might be forgiven for blogging less than I usually do. It’s definitely not easy. I suppose I could take a leave of absence for a while, at least until Dylan starts sleeping through the night, because it’s mighty difficult to keep yo with what’s going on and to string together even a coherent thought or two when you’re suffering from lack of sleep.

And when I do get around to writing, I’m just catching up and writing about stuff that was news four days earlier. I’ve got about three posts in various stages of completion, and as I sit writing this post on Sunday night, to be posted on Monday, Dylan is here in the office with me, sleeping. Before to long, I’ll “top him off” with a diaper change and a bottle before heading to bed myself, in hopes that he’ll sleep a little longer before it’s time for another bottle, etc. In the meantime, I’m sitting here trying to decide which of my unfinished posts is even worth finishing. All the while, I’m trying to keep from nodding off.

And it’s brought to a realization that kind of alluded to in an earlier post.
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