ADHD Stew or The Weekend Wrap

My wife has become ever more vigilant of physical examples of my ADHD manifesting itself in an effort to cut down on the distractions presented to my older son. The goal, of course, is to give him more tools to be able to keep himself on task and my occasional ADHD-on-speed techno-awesomeness sometimes disrupts those plans.

Like this weekend where I had my laptop feeding internet football feeds into a picture in picture display on the main tv so I could track two games at once. By the way, Veetle is an outstanding resource for internet video feeds. The randomness is almost as awesome as the chance to catch movies that are still in the theatres (The Expendables and Salt have been on heavy rotation). Veetle is, basically, a video-re-broadcasting site. All of the feeds are set up by end users and the media is streamed from their machine. Whatever they feel like showing is what gets shown. And on Sundays there are always a couple of football feeds to grab.

Hasta la Vista, Adderall

Oh Adderall, you came into my life and organized my cluttered brain, you made focusing on my work and tasks easy. You made it easy to drop a few pounds going into my first triathlon and you did much to secure my sanity.

And then things started to go bad.

First, you decided that my forehead really needed a new pimple farm. I'm 40, I don't really need to be dealing with adolescence again. The first time was plenty of fun. This time around, not so much.

Second, damned if you aren't ridiculously expensive. Your little orange-ish pills work out to around $4.50 each.

Third, you started to leave me in the afternoons when I'd get home from work and need you to keep from getting frustrated by family stuff.

Fourth, you pretty well just stopped working altogether.

Fifth, you are, at your basic level, meth amphetamine and that shit is some nasty, nasty stuff. Highly addictive, highly corrosive to lives and, honestly, I just don't want anything to do with you anymore.

We had some good times, Adderall, but its time to move on to other medications and therapies.

Oh, and Adderall, please don't steal a bunch of stuff on your way out. I know you meth monkeys need fast cash to keep the high going but I'll be watching you go so don't try to grab my laptop or tv or kids or anything.

Burnt Clutch

So I had a thought last night before bed that I didn't stop to take the time to write down as I usually do with thoughts I have right before bed. Usually, if I don't write them down, they are gone by the time I wake up. But not this time, which is a sign of something, I'm not really sure what.

My brother wrote me the other day, a short email contained in the subject line, "Are you okay?" which has been on my mind alot since. Am I okay? Have I ever been okay? Is okay good enough since its kind of like pulling a C, its passing but it ain't nothing to shout from the rooftops about.

Great = A
Good = B
Okay = C
Not okay = D
Bad = F

Given that scale, yeah, I'm okay but it would certainly be a hell of a lot nicer to get to good or even great every once in a while.

I've been thinking an awful lot about what makes me tick or not tick as the case may be. The most apt metaphor I can come up with is a car that's got a nice big V8 engine, its got lots of power, makes a great sound when you blip the accelerator and could make the vehicle (me) rip it up on any road its put upon. The only problem is that the clutch connecting that massive, beautiful engine to the wheels has burnt out and can only engage just a tiny bit of the engine's power.

So I am engaged in trying to find a way to better engage my engine and put the power to the pavement more effectively. One step along that way is to talk with my doctor and see about trying out another medication for my ADHD. Another is to make sure I'm going to bed earlier, being up past midnight every night has been taking a toll on me that was hard to see until I started going to bed earlier and feeling much more complete and ready to attack the day.

How do other people do it? How do other people stay on task? How do keep track of all the myriad things you need to get done in a given day, week, month, year? I'm open to suggestions, ideas or what's worked for others. Let me know in the comments.

Resonation and Distractability

My mother sent me this link, Patient Voices: A.D.H.D. which has interviews with people who have ADHD and how it has effected them over their lives. The interviews include parents with ADHD and their kids.

While all of the audio clips had something that I could relate to, the first one could have been me talking. Only I haven't gotten to the solution that he had.

If you have many competing voices in your head and find it very hard to stay focused on a single task for any period of time beyond a few minutes, you might have ADHD. I'm nearly positive I do and knowing that means I can be on the lookout for the signs in my two boys.

My next step, I think, will be to use some of my benefits before they run out and go get an actual diagnosis and figure out some potential ways to treat it.