The Logorrheic

This is not really the blog[1] that I wanted to do today. In fact, I am now far too frustrated with myself to even do this one correctly. Sorry in advance for the size of the supposed-to-be-superscripted numbers. I created this in Word and don’t know how to duplicate it in WordPress.

I haven’t been doing this long enough to discover what it is my blog wants to be. While trying to allow it to reveal itself to me, I am having many stumbling, stammering fits and starts (but few ends). The short version is this: I need to get back on Ritalin. Seriously. I literally can’t count the number of projects I start and can not complete, and I an becoming increasing annoyed with myself. 

I’ve always really enjoyed drifting. The imagery I always think of is from the cartoons when I was a kid. Someone bakes a pie and leaves it on a windowsill (this part I’ve never really understood, but still…) The scent is animated as a drifting wisp of, um, scent, I guess. Someone else catches a whiff, and is compelled to follow the wisp to its source, all the while the nose is leading the way.

I really, really love following that wisp, or following my nose wherever it takes me. I actually believe it is not only stimulating, but also a very cool trait to have. The problem is the compelling nature of that image. The character always appears to have no real choice, again, a close parallel to the way my brain thinks.

It’s been a couple of years now since I received a diagnosis of ADD[2], after several years of close friends suggesting I may consider that there’s a slight chance that I may have a bit of a smattering of attention issues. For a number of reasons, I dismissed those suggestions as the overzealousness of the newly converted (or, I’m embarrassed to say, what I considered to be the obsessively converted), as well as stemming from our culture’s preoccupation with perfection, and said culture’s linear rigidity and its consequent patholigizing (that should be a word, too) of difference in learning, and thinking. I’ll risk sounding pompous (a quality I abhor), something which I most certainly am not, to admit that I really thought it was more about being intelligent and creative. A slightly scatter-brained quirkiness, but an endearing one, I like to think. bwaahahahaha! Ah, the idealism of the uninitiated inhabitant of a former police state’s evolution/devolution to anarchy.

Because I haven’t yet reconciled all of my dissonant thoughts and feelings on the topic, it’s hard for me to remember that this business of thinking/attention/ADD/intelligence/creativity isn’t an all-or-nothing or black-and-white issue. When I am undecided (often) or overly analytical (a prerequisite for residence on My Planet), I find myself grasping for The Rules and black-and-white, while simultaneously believing that said black-and-white constructs are helpful only as a basis upon which to build, not as structures in and of themselves. Consequently, I tend to live in a state of perpetual befuddlement, on this and most other issues, too.[3]

Everyone drifts. I know this, hence my previously long-standing resistance to the Label of ADD, which doesn’t have to be a Label, yet an explanation, unless I make it so. Working for so many years in the (soul-eating) corporate environment that I did, in deadline-driven positions, enabled me to obtain focus from external structure and panic. Additionally, piqued interest enables focus for the person with ADD, which was partly what kept ADD from causing me problems in my younger school years.

When I left my corporate job because I woke up sick to my stomach and sometimes sobbing at the prospect of suffocating yet another day, it was a good thing. Not one single person who I am close to thought I had made a mistake, not even my husband, who was most directly affected by my decision. 

Finally, I could follow wisps of my own choosing – time to do so and few external constraints on said drifting. Ironically (or perhaps I should say, “obviously, duh”), the lack of external structure leaves me unmoored and yes, adrift. It seems that I lack the inherent ability to mostly control my own focus. “Ah, look! A shiny pretty thing!”

Swear-to-God real-life (yet inconsequential) example: While was talking on the phone (via Bluetooth, to you curmudgeonly committee members, thank you) haranguing, er, talking with, my husband, I interjected, mid-harangue, “Oh, what pretty ponies!” and continued with my harangue, though with my attention deficit, he claims it was on another tangent (which, by the way, is an excellent word).

So the problem isn’t necessarily with Drift itself, but with the lack of parameters. I especially enjoy it when there is somewhere my daughter can play that her to do so unencumbered by my cautions and directives. The ideal play site is one with inherent physical boundaries and innately safe playthings, where “kids can be kids” without unrealistic, difficult adult expectations. She plays; I relax. Best of both worlds. Without those conditions, however, I am on alert, as is my job as mother of a four-year-old.

Accomplishing, doing, creating, well, focusing, is like that on My Planet. Without the externally-imposed structure (of school, work, routine), I am frequently stopped only when I call off the monkey bars or run in front of a car (and probably only just then remembering that I was heading for the reading or art section, anyway).

I’m only guessing here, but it’s possible that this partially explains my otherwise unaccounted for obsessive and inappropriate use of ellipses and parenthetical comments. I have other oddities that account for them, too, but I will not be sidetracked. No, I won’t. (But I *will* Alt-Tab to my other Word window to add to the other blog about Those Other Oddities.)

I (surprisingly) don’t know where I’m going with this, so I suppose I will abruptly end this exemplar of My Planet, summarized thusly: shit takes me way longer than it really should. If that is overstating, then certainly there are some very simple things take me longer than it does for other people. Ironically, one of the reasons I’ve always liked/loathed writing is that it crystallized my thinking and helped me focus. I call this entry “lazy man’s writing,” but honestly, it really is the best I can muster today. So I’ll have to skip over the analysis of that irony. I have enough fodder for befuddlement today. I think there’s one piece of cake left in the freezer. 

Don’t forget the fine print.[4][5]

[1] An entry for another day: my discomfort with the trend toward turning technology- and computer-related nouns into verbs, as well as and my compliance with said trend for the sake of simplicity, yet my

[2] Nowadays, the correct terminology and its attendant acronym is Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, with hyperactivity (AD/HD with hyperactivity) or Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, without hyperactivity (AD/HD without hyperactivity). I have the latter variety, and I think the new and “correct” designation is asinine, so I still call it ADD. Duh.

[3] Author wants to point out that the previous statement is not entirely true, but author is trying to remember that she doesn’t have to say EVERYTHING that pops into her head, previous paragraphs not withstanding, and that she doesn’t have to explain herself to the mind-numbing N^th degree to which she is presently so terribly inclined.

[4] Be advised that all included footnotes and parenthetical commentary and external responses to internal dialogue/arguments, while compulsively (and probably unwisely) included, are done so with the author’s full awareness, with tongue planted firmly in cheek. Author apologizes, but points out that said inclusions are intended as weak-yet-authentic, self-deprecating humor, as well as an exemplar of the difficulty the author has with staying focused. In other words, if it drives you crazy/wears you out/annoys you, just think how it would be to live there.

[5] Also, author is aware that there is medication for this, and thinks it is a miracle. However, author, despite seemingly contraindicating behavior, would like to get pregnant again.