Focus Interruptus
Francelle Garrote - "Goblin"
Sitting down to write this week's Blog has ended up being a perfect metaphor for the progress I've made this week: Turn on the computer. Sit down. Type a sentence. Check my phone. Watch a Youtube video. Use the restroom. Sit down. Stare at the screen. Think of the song I've had running in my head for the last few days. Stop. Listen to the song. Try to refocus. Type another sentence. Stare at the screen some more. Think "Gosh I'm really tired today." Go to the bathroom again. Smoke on the porch and watch the turkey buzzards soar over the neighborhood. Refill my tea. Pause to brew more tea because I just emptied the jug. Sit back down in front of the computer. Casually look at the time. Freak out. "How did I lose so much of the day already?"
As a reference, I started this Blog almost two hours ago.
This is what my progress in writing has looked like this week.
To be fair... hang on, I'll be right back...
To be fair... oh shit. This is what my progress has looked like for the last month... or three. Six? Shit.
So, fun fact. I may actually be dealing with more than I realized. The 10 minutes I just spent pausing to take a self-evaluation and read up on the subject because "Hey, it's not like I'm writing a Blog write now or anything" heavily suggests that I may have adult onset ADD. Who f***ing knew?
I write this in a relatively humorous mindset, but the reality is that I've suspected and ignored this issue for a long time. I grew up in the 80s and 90s when having ADD or ADHD was considered a "slacker's excuse." It was a thing people referenced about the kid in class who regularly couldn't get his shit together. "Oh, that's just his ADD. You know him." In college it was spouted off as a punchline to explain away flighty thoughts or why papers got put off till the night before they were due. Everybody said it because, well, apparently everybody has these experiences at one point or another. It's normal, especially in high stress environments... but not when it's chronic like I've experienced them.
Damn it.
In case you were wondering, this is me figuring shit out in real time. D' Nile isn't just a river in Egypt, folks. It's a way of life around here.
I'm reviewing the scenarios in my head of all the times I had trouble at jobs due to productivity, like the time my office job supervisor threatened to take away my discman because I was spending too much time jamming out to my music. Or the police service desk job where I had difficulty absorbing the training in a timely fashion. Or the case management job where my paperwork took me twice as long as the other case managers and the office manager tried to accuse me of milking the clock. Or the time I became a fulltime author but couldn't focus long enough to write my next G.D. book.
Admittedly, these issues are probably all interconnected: the depression, the anxiety, the ADD, the smoking, the caffeine addiction, the (mostly prior) sugar addiction, the priority level I've given to my current walking regimen, my messed up sleep schedule, my WoW addiction, my inability to meditate, my crippling fear of being incapable of handling pretty much anything beyond the bare minimum of day-to-day survival...
To quote Joel Hammond in "Santa Clarita Diet":
F**K!
I've been avoiding it long enough. I have a doctor's appointment scheduled a few weeks from now to review my blood sugar issues and check progress on my general health. I think it may be time to see what he can do to help get this aspect under control too. It's gone beyond just fear of losing my creative edge to recognizing that I haven't been able to create anything in a while now anyway. It's time to get shit done. It's time to take care of me. It's time to move past the excuses and find solutions.
I think tomorrow may be a designated Spring Cleaning day. I've got piles of random crap all over the place. The carpet needs to be vaccummed. The bathroom needs to be cleaned. I need to reorganize and reclaim my personal space because it's starting to look a lot like the inside of my brain. We'll see what I can accomplish from there. I anticipate it will help way more than I realize. It usually does.
Huh. Here I thought I didn't have anything to write today. Go figure.
