Coming to Grips with My Approach

The more I reflect on my adult life and the way that I had set my goals and tried to follow through (or not), the more I see a very clear pattern of struggling with ADD. For example, all these fit me to a T:

• “zoning out” without realizing it, even in the middle of a conversation.
• extreme distractibility; wandering attention makes it hard to stay on track.
• difficulty paying attention or focusing, such as when reading or listening to others.
• struggling to complete tasks, even ones that seem simple.
• tendency to overlook details, leading to errors or incomplete work.
• poor listening skills; hard time remembering conversations and following directions.

Being "inside" these symptoms is a struggle, because they simply distract me from what it is I want to do. They also create a fundamental separation in social or professional settings because I am simply not operating the way everyone else is. Looking at how I behave from the perspective of teachers, coworkers, etc., I can see why I would have been perceived as a "bad fit."  I can see why it took real outside pressure from my superiors and clients to get me to remain on task, as it were. I would have to be suffering from ADD.

And naturally I would be frustrated, insecure, at times depressed and despairing, because I was greeted with all the above symptoms and no knowledge of the cause.  Unable to focus and faced with a fair amount of alienation, I would naturally create a fantasy world - not only because ADD sufferers' brains tend to do this anyway - but because I simply did not know how to cope with my world. 

I've been attributing my approach to a kind of fucked up mix of childhood abuse, somehow being more imaginative than others, and a lack of proper resources. All that may somehow be true, but without ADD as part of the mix I would have kept wandering from this or that situation and responsibility, never getting ahead. 

Tomorrow, I go see a psychiatrist, who will hopefully prescribe Adderall. It seems highly effective with very manageable side effects.