Sometimes, it's good to just start typing and see what happens. Today, I washed a few dishes, futzed around on the computer (a lot), Spent a little time with my son and an even smaller amount of time with my dear, very tolerant wife (who is pregnant with our second child). I wanted to spend more time with each, but I did not.
I have no job. I have no desire for a job (not true). I have no immediate need for a job (growing less true daily) and I have no real qualifications outside what I was doing with **** (not entirely true). The ability (ies) I supposedly posses are drawn up short by other disabilities. I want to play my guitar (and banjo) and get better at it. I cannot play longer than an hour, sometimes hour and a half, without pain and numbness in my left hand. I want to write more, but I have a hard time getting started and organizing my thoughts. I want to get closer to people, but I have a need to be alone much of the time. And I'm lonely during some of that time, but resent company. I want to get into better physical shape. I can't walk or (as I found out [to my embarrassment] this weekend) dance. I can ride a bike and I can swim, so I'm glad of that.
Some impediments I cannot remove. The personal and physical which seem to grow in number with each passing week, I can do little to reverse. Those external impediments to progress which I can remove seem to reveal other impediments dependent upon others, dependent upon still more until, in thinking of all this, I become stagnant.
I'm now trying to think of a word similar to stagnant which conveys a slightly different, yet more accurate meaning. Instead of leaving it alone and checking it later after my thoughts have all run their course, I'm checking on line to see if there is a Plugin Thesaurus for OpenOffice Writer (the word processor program I'm using to type this whatever-it-is). I can't find one, but I do find mention of the fact that there is one somewhere within the program. Turns out, there's one in here after all: I just had to hunt a little further. Unfortunately, a better, more accurate word eluded me whilst using the built in Thesaurus so I'm going to have to think some more.
Static: I become static. I have so many possibilities that I might choose, I am frozen in a moment not of time but of indecision. Dead in the water. I am unable to choose a starting point and as a result unable to accomplish anything. This has been a repeating pattern (with few exceptions) for my whole life.
So what can I do? I'm seemingly self-screwed and zipped up tight. A-quiver with indecision, stand (or sit) I.
The trick (and it doesn't always work) is for me to go find something different to do. Instead of wasting life worrying about where to start, a particular job, go find another one to work on, one that I can begin with no difficulty. If I can't finish it in one sitting, that's OK: I still have the other thing which may not be so insurmountable this time when I try it. However, I've got to come back and finish what I started eventually. When I finally finish one of the tasks I've begun, there's that all-too-brief feeling of satisfaction which gives way to the depression of being done and having to find something else to do. Yeah, I get that, too. I have not answer for that one yet, other than having something at hand to begin. And sometimes that won't work either.
Turns out, I can't help this behavior: it's the way I'm wired. I am one of a small percentage of the population who suffers from Attention Deficit Disorder or ADD. I did not know this prior to a year ago. I learned about it through counseling with a therapist. The behavior, will very likely not change, but since I'm aware of the condition, living with it is may be a little bit easier.
Why should you care? Good question. Maybe you recognize some of these behaviors in other people you know who, at first glance, seem to be lazy and aimless. Maybe not. Maybe you recognize them in yourself. Maybe not.
If so, cut that person (or yourself) a little slack. If you feel like you know them well enough, tell them about ADD. Maybe they'll check up on it: maybe they won't.
There's also a variation on this theme: AD/HD – Attention Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder. I don't suffer from the hyperactivity part.
I seem to have lost the point here of the posting. So that's a good time to stop.
Anyway, if you want, you can find out more about ADD AD/HD. This website will give you a lot more information and, hopefully, understanding.
Thoughts?
Pax,
Nelson
3 comments:
Ahhhh my good man, firstly: allow me to appologize for my lack of blogging due diligence. Life has thrown me more than my own share of ironies in the past few weeks. But this sir, is about you. I find myself connecting with your words in this post in an unusual way. I find myself realizing that perhaps i need to cut myself a little slack. I find that you're own need to do the same woefully falling short of the mark. I make no negative connotation in that, the reason being least of which because I only know what you choose to share here on this blog. I just feel that we; the few with a "bad set of wiring"; tend to fall into one of two catagories. 1.) we cut ourselves too much slack. making excuses for why things never seem to go right in our lives. or 2.) We are our own harshest critic. we chastise ourselves for failure to succeed in life because of our lack of characteristics that we attribute to those who DO seem to make things happen. This may seem a polarizing view of those with some sort of social disorder. But i feel its a fair way to qualify one's self, and thus perhaps help motivate a change to promote a healthier balance. I ask you this as well, Nelson: Do you find your memory of past events in your life blurred, perhaps even erased or irrevocably changed from what someone who was in direct contact of those same events tells you they are? I have started to find a pattern of similar traits such as this in those people, like you and I, whom find themselves in the same sort of socio-emotional rut (A.D.D., Bi-Polar, Social Anxiety, General Anxiety)/ Disorder. I'll tell you one thing though dude, Blogging is the best medicine ive found yet for this sort of general malady, at least for me. Take care, blog-buddy. We are all out here just trying to make due, just like you ;o)
"Memory, all alone in the moonlight. I can dream of the old days
Life was beautiful then
I remember the time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory live again." A.L. Webber/T. Nunn
Except for me, it doesn't. So many things I want to remember, good things, bad things, all a blur or gone forever as if they'd never been. I know exactly what you are talking about, Ludie. It's damn sad, too. Maybe someday with enough therapy, I'll get some of them back.
You're right on all counts up there, my friend.
It's dark, it's not good or bad, it just is. And sometimes, there's light.
Pax,
N.
Oh, and you need apologize not one jot!
Pax,
N.
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