Goals

Recently I discovered that I have some symptoms that are similar to ADD. It's not something I had ever considered about myself, and I had plenty of exposure to it as a teacher. I'm planning to talk with my doctor about this, to see if I should bother going through testing now or wait till after Frid comes (i.e., if the meds involved would be ok to take during pregnancy and breastfeeding). In particular, these symptoms include:

• Being a compulsive list maker. I'm great at setting goals, but suck on the progress end. I often forget to consult my lists.
• Procrastinating.
• Not being able to relax. I drive mister mrtl crazy when we're watching a show because I can't sit still.*
• Starting many projects, but not finishing them. My life is full of good intentions but lacking follow through.**
• Having trouble falling asleep and waking up.
• Getting overwhelmed easily.***
• Losing time and getting little accomplished.
• Having difficulty focusing.

*I found a test at www.add.org. I scored 18 out of 24. It recommends talking to your doctor if your score is 11 or higher. Egads! One of the questions was, "How often do you leave your seat in meetings or other situations in which you are expected to remain seated?" Talk about confusion! If ADD is the case with me, I have come up with some great compensation skills. The real question where work is concerned is, "How often do you want to leave your seat...?" When meeting with clients or supervisors, not only did I force myself to stay put, but to take copious notes, even if I was going to receive meeting minutes afterwards. Otherwise, my brain would be all over the place.

**I find that nothing gets my ass in gear better than stress. House need cleaning? Have guests over! Work projects need to get done? Tell me you need it today! It's tiring to always need stress for incentive. This is one of the reasons why I doubt I'll go the anti-depressant route again. It took away that stress, but didn't make me any more productive. Shit wasn't getting done, and I didn't care. I've described this before as the Lotus-Eater Effect (See this and this). The indifference sucked.

***Another example of a coping strategy is with getting overwhelmed when first facing a project. List making comes in handy here, to chunk the task into more manageable pieces. Of course I tend to get completely caught up in the chunking, ending up with a list so long it scares me.

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When I first added this topic for Motif Monday, I had in mind to make my list of things to do before I die. The following list is just the beginning.

15 Things to Do Before I Die

1. Exercise for at least 30 minutes daily
2. Become a decent golfer
3. Run in a 5K (at least)
4. Be a hard body (as hard as this body can be after two children)
5. Read more, including reading the newspaper daily
6. Get a Master's Degree
7. Learn how to play the piano
8. Get a recipe for pineapple Bavarian cream cake that rivals Peasant Village's
9. Take singing lessons
10. Own a 12-inch compound miter saw with extension arms and stand, and make stuff with it
11. Be a tourist wherever I go
12. Visit Europe
13. Go on an Alaskan cruise
14. Travel by train (at least for one overnight trip)
15. Do fun wedding stuff without having a wedding (e.g., try on dresses, have a cake)

I'm sure mister mrtl is having a great laugh over many items on this list. That is precisely why I need to figure out why the hell I have so many problems with follow through as discussed above.

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Hey fellow Girl Scouts! Check this out. I just got my copy in the mail, so it's competing with Harry Potter to get read (i.e., sitting on top of him in my pile of books to be read).

next week's topic: uninvent this

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Note: Links will be added to participating blogs. If you're not included here, please comment with a link to your post.

Bente, Cat, ieatcrayonz, Kristine, Lawbrat

Comments

[The Anti-Stalker]

Well, #1 will help you do #3, in fact, you can probably run a 5K in 30 minutes! It's only a little more than 3 miles, which isn't that far, really.

#5 is as simple as taking 30 minutes of blog time away :-)

#10 could happen for Christmas if your parents still read this!

#13 and #14 could happen within the month!

#2 might have to wait until the bugs are in school, then we can work on that!

You might need #9 for Bug to stop telling you "no sing, momma!, no sing!"

I know you need to figure this stuff out for yourself, but I am always here to help.

[mrtl]

T A-S - I love you. I'm getting offline to read the paper now.

[Bente]

Aww, isn't that sweet.

Good luck with the list! Sounds like it could take a while to complete, but I bet you'll do it some day.

[cat]

O. M. G.
Thank GOD they did not have the whole ADD thing going on when I was a kid, or I would have drugged FO' SHO'! The teachers and my momma just called me "hyperactive." I prefer "delightful," but what can you do?

I would have HATED Ritalin.

[cat]

Oh, and I participated.
;)

[cat]

Um, okay... I scored 24 out of 24 on that Adult Self-Report ADHD Screener. I am actually, for once, not kidding. Should I be worried?

Okay, I promise to stop hogging your comments section now!

[ieatcrayonz]

Mrtl,

I think I have many of the same problems in your symptoms list. I have a big problem with procrastination when I see a project as boring or pointless. Blogging does not help me with this. I've been trying to get started on a technical report for the past two weeks, and I just can't get into it.

The way I try to combat my overwhelming sense of failure is through organization and purging. Nope, not that kind of purging, although Subway is at the top of my list should I ever feel the need.

I've noticed a pattern in some of the HGTV shows I watch. People that tend to have a lot of clutter are also overweight. They like to surround themselves with padding as a safety mechanism. When you're able to purge the junk safety net and surround yourself with a clean, sparse environment, the clarity and focus should come back. When I sit down to a cluttered desk, I can't concentrate for all the piles of junk that need to be gone through and filed. Perhaps this could be a starting point for you if you have the same issues.

I'm not saying that organizing and purging is the solution to your problem, as I've seen photos of your home, and it's very clean. If you do have Adult ADD, then vitamins are your only solution. Whoops, sorry. Thought I was a scientologist there for a second.

I really do hope that you get the help you need, although I can't help but think that you have had your fair share of whirlwind chaos lately with the cross country move, Bug's daycare, pregnancy etc. I just hope that it's as simple as, well, simplifying your life.

Just tell me to shut up. I'm not even close to being a professional.

[Amy]

Mrtl, I went right to that site. I scored an 18 too. I think we are alot alike. I avoid AT ALL COSTS things that take mental concentration. But by jaysus, if I have something THAT DAY, I am all over it.

I do need to declutter this house and get organized before September. I have promised myself this because my ways are starting to rub off on Sam and it's killing me.

[Closet Metro]

Please add one more item to your "before I die" list:
16. Get old.

[Pissy Britches]

You almost totally described me in this post. I have thought I had a mild case of ADD for years but just convinced myself I was crazy. I shall go take the test and see just how nuts I am.

[Tom Cruise]

Vitamins is the key to life. And getting rid of all the demon pieces in your body...for clarity. You need to purge the demons, that is all.

[lawbrat]

Now, for serious. :-) I take an ADD med and it makes a night and day difference.

I played along too, buy you already know that. :-)

[Andrea]

I hate jumping on the bandwagon...but I really need to go take that test myself. I wonder how many people on antidepressants need to be on ADD medication? I feel the way you do about the antidepressants; the bad feelings are gone, but I'm not any more productive (maybe less, because Zoloft especially seems to make me feel a little sleepy).

[butterstar]

Sweetheart, you and I are too alike! It's EERY.

I'm ADD myself, diagnosed not until I was at the end of college (when I was practically flunking out since I just couldn't get any damn thing done). Lists are my bane, too. make em, then get skeered at the length. And of course, never finish em.

I take ritalin now. It has made such a difference in my life that it pisses me off that I didn't get diagnosed as a kid, because things would have been really, really different for me (I can't tell you how many years I felt guilty for not being able to finish things or do things as well as I should have because I rushed through or ran out of time, not having a clue why I did those things).

People with ADD usually don't have a proper concept of time. Even though you KNOW how many minutes you might have until you have to leave, or how many minutes it will take to get to a place, the time almost always gets away from you. I have my clocks all set ahead in my house. And we still end up late sometimes (because, of course, I KNOW the clocks are set forward! Duh!). And forget about time management. Ya always think you have more time to do stuff than you do, or that doing something will take less time. I have a brother who overcompensates for this by tripling the amount of time he thinks something will take to get done when making a list; doesn't work for me because I still assume it will only take a third of the time, which is of course, wrong. I've only learned to do time better with having kids and it being necessary for them to be places on time. And drugs, of course.

Also, having a very rigid, scheduled lifestyle helps if going the nonmedicated route with some kinds of ADD I have another brouther who does that--and it worked for me too, during the week; the weekends always mess me up though, since the schedule is different). Impossible, of course, with kids. :) So helpful, eh?

I once described ritalin as a kind of contact lens for the mind. It clears up the fogginess so I can concentrate on one thing at a time (even though I never felt especially distracted, I obviously was--or couldn't sit still, anyway). I love it. I would marry it if I could. I've gotten more done in the last three months since going back on it again than I had in the previous three years.

OK. Done hogging comments. :)

[suburban misfit]

Because I, too, probably have ADHD or ADD or whatever they're calling it now (it's one or the other, I'm told by the psychiatrists who see The Boy, but I can never remember which one it is...what was I saying? Oh yeah) I only skimmed both the post and the comments. I have 5 bajillion things to do, but I wanted to tell you this:

Read anything and everything by Dr. Edward Hallowell. He's amazing.

That's all.

[jana]

you do realize you just wrote a list, don't you?

I have almost the exact same things on my list too. It's fun to make lists.

I want to do wedding things too! Let's get together and go eat wedding cake, and try on some dresses. Sounds like fun.

[Ern]

Girl, you are going to kill yourself with these kinds of goals!

[The Spurious Plum]

They have a wine tasting badge? The girl scouts let your DRINK now? Can I rejoin?

[Von Krankipantzen]

I LOVE making lists. I chose not to take the test as I just don't need another diagnosis right now. However I am similar in many ways. So many commenters are. Perhaps it is just being human and a non anal retentive A type personailty. I hover around a P Type.

[mrtl]

Bente - I have the best of intentions to try. BTW, I did go to the gym and read the paper today. Woo hoo!

Cat - I blove you just the way you are.

yonz - The thing is that these symptoms have been around for a very long time, before bugs and moving and chaos.

I like the idea of the clutter/weight factor. It's true that nothing beats a clean desk/counter. I WILL NOT shine my sink daily, but I do want to review the book and do some boogying.

Oh, and I'm on prenatal vitamins. They're not helping.

Amy - I hear you, sistah! I'm afraid of rubbing off on Bug, too.

CM - Absolutely, but only in number.

Pissy - Better ADD than crazy, far as I'm concerned!

TC - Get the FUCKING IDIOT ASS off of my blog!

Lawbrat - Thanks for offering that side of the equation. I'm trying not to get into the mindset that there's a wonder drug out there for me, but working on more compensation strategies. We'll see what my doctor says.

Andrea - Must respond to people differently. I was on Zoloft.

I could see how ADD could easily be mistaken for depression. Not being able to keep your shit together no matter how much effort is put forth would bring a lot of us down.

butterstar - Thanks! I like that way of looking at it. I used to set my clocks ahead, too, before getting overly anal about "Superstar Time" (beign 15 minutes early everywhere. Like you, I just did the math automatically, so setting them ahead didn't work very long.

I'm working a my schedule now. It's going to take some time to get that plan down, but it's something to aim for.

misfit - Thanks for the name. I'll look him up.

Jana - Two lists! I'm down with the wedding party. Let's do it while we're both showing. It'll be a hoot!

Ern - As a medical professional wannabe, you SHOULD NOT be saying that to me. Besides, I have at least a good 60 years to accomplish them.

Plum? Wine tasting badge? Where'd you see that?? I'm intrigued!

Kranki - I hear you! Hover away!