More extreme measures to ensure attendance...

This week, I had a board meeting to attend. Last week, our boss reminded us that we had this board meeting, at the weekly staff meeting. I wrote it down in my calendar.

It was a Monday, when she reminded us. And I remember her saying "we have a board meeting Wednesday, make sure that's on your calendars".  She also said "oh that's right, the meeting is earlier this month because of..."...some scheduling issue. But the meeting is usually the third Weds of the month...the week we were having the meeting in was the second week of the month...my brain just collected the information. Because...that's sometimes how my brain rolls. The information is there, just floating around in my head. I'm fully aware of both pieces of information. But they don't connect...until they connect. This is why I write things down.

By the next day, Tuesday night of last week, I was still worrying about which Wednesday she'd been talking about. The one "tomorrow" or the one next week.

I decided that although I had the meeting on my calendar for "next week" I would show up for "tomorrow".

So I did. I was a week early. I don't know how, but my calendar was correct. There must have been more information given at the meeting that I was able to recall.

Better a week early than a week late, I say.

When I think about it, anyone with any kind of brain could have been confused...but because of the ADHD factor, I didn't want to take chances. I didn't know if my calendar was correct or if I had mixed up the information. I think that's one of the keys to succeeding at anything with ADHD (really, it's important for anyone...but a little extra important for the quirkily-brained): double checking and erring on the side of responsibility, even if it means you do something silly once in a while. Because at least you will do it silly early, not silly late.

It's also important not to go around thinking you're right all the time. I know plenty of people with ADHD who succeed in life. The ones that don't are the ones that put things off until later, think they're right more of the time than they should (even though experience should tell them otherwise), don't trust outside sources, and don't double-check things. Yes, you can go overboard in compensating...only practice will help you find the balance. Practice with a good therapist as a guide is even better...

So I'm just sitting here because I'm afraid I'll forget...

...I missed my last appointment with my therapist because...well duh, because I have ADHD. I had done everything I usually do to remember. Normally my little tricks works and I get there. It was a horrible feeling when the phone rang and she asked where I was.

It literally felt like I'd entered some kind of time warp and had no idea I was supposed to be anywhere even though I'd been reminding myself all day. It was terribly confusing, having actually forgotten, to have her calling me and it was very frustrating because of course I remembered then that I'd been trying not to forget all day...but hadn't remembered the appointment anyway.

So my appointment was rescheduled...to tonight...and though there's an hour between when I'm supposed to go and when I got home from work, I don't want to "do" anything because I'm afraid I'll forget again.

I'm going to go put my shoes on and sit in the car for another ten minutes so I make sure I don't forget (of course...I'll probably be sitting there in the car and suddenly think to myself...wait...why am I in the car again?)...

Nacho Bitch

If you're curious about the title, I'll spare you the suspense: Nacho Bitch is my not-so-far-removed alter ego. She ain't takin' no shit. And she made me write this blog post.

It's been an issue recently, shall we say, that my work has been undervalued in some extremely...shall we say...offensive ways. And Nacho Bitch and I are DELIGHTED. Because this is what we call a gift in a crap package.

Gifts like this allow you to reaffirm your commitment to yourself. They allow you to really confirm if you have your shit as together as you think you do. They allow you to really walk your own talk. And this gift couldn't be more perfectly timed.

I just resigned from my day job - which was absolutely the right thing to do. It took me longer to make the decision, due to my now larger household and my immense sense of responsibility, but Sonny and I were fully in agreement and I finally did what I needed to do.

I'm cultivating some opportunities now that I'm really proud of, and which are a good fit for me in all my quirky glory.

I choose to believe that it's no mistake that I have now been faced with some challenges to my resolve. Call it coincidence, call it magical thinking...but I'm delighted either way.

This week I had a debtor contact me re: my event production business and telling me he's ready to make things right...and that we shouldn't let a little amount of money like this get in the way. I knew that I should let that one sit in the inbox for a bit before responding. I couldn't "feel the bottom" of my thoughts on that one immediately. After a few days, I was hit by that particular punch in the gut that only lowballing can give you...a sense of brief dread when you realize that the question itself was an attempt at devaluing your labor, followed by a "you've got to be fucking kidding me" scrolling past my mind's eye on repeat...and flashing..flashing bright red.

Asshole. And so...I'm going to respond...naturally...with an invoice.

Then there was the request from an outlet that I have done paid work for in the past...asking me to work for free. Mmmm...tastes like another lowballing. The flavor is indeed, kind of like chicken but smells more like bullshit.

The other major boner of the week is one that I can't actually even refer to obliquely for a variety of reasons but it did confirm for me some suspicions that I already had - and honestly, it only confirmed for me that I already made the right decision in relation to the question at hand.

So Nacho Bitch and I are like "really? you're joking, right? three times in one week? and you think we can't...oh girl, get outta the way...". Bring it on. Seriously. Nacho Bitch and I are ready. We have a mortgage to pay, we work hard, and if you EVEN try "but the economy sucks" we'll be happy to discuss how your economy of lowballing people to get things you need is like, a totally outdated shade of unethical.

Bring. It. On.

The best advice that I can give you...

...is to practice.

Practice having a better morning. Practice enjoying driving even when it makes you feel crazy. Practice loving a person that treats you like shit, by never talking to them again, because you deserve better. Practice speaking kindly to people. Practice remembering that you sometimes forget. Practice remembering that even though you sometimes forget, you are not always wrong. Practice writing everything down in your calendar. Practice seeing the mayhem and jolly chaos you create for what it is...a mixed plate, filled with a few joyful ecstasies that would honestly never have occurred if you were living in normalsville. Filled with things that you may need to choose to approach differently, though not all at once. Practice putting your ATM card back in your wallet. Practice accepting that you are sometimes to blame. Practice forgiving yourself.

Practice checking your calendar each morning. Putting the pens back where the pens go so they're there when you need them. Practice telling your therapist the truth. Practice saying "I'm sorry".

Practice not wondering why you put the remote in the refrigerator, practice just taking it back to the livingroom.

Practice not caring that people don't "understand" how you do what you do, as long as you're honoring your commitments.

Practice accepting gifts in crap packages. Just let them be.

It's all you can do.

Defining our own borders...

"The number one rule of having ADHD", I announced to the girl, "is never leave anything for 'later'".

She in the 4th grade now and next year will be her first year of increased expectations regarding homework, organization, remembering to cart a computer back and forth between school and home and - 

Hold on a second I'm starting to feel like a mommy-blogger, let me just reassert some jackassery for my own sanity: Motherfucker! Cocksucker! Fuckity-fuck-fuck-fuck!

Heh.

Alright, so she's going to be in the 5th grade. And to illustrate the degree of challenge this may present for her, allow me to illustrate an hilarious episode from our family life, which occurred just last night. Sonny had been talking for weeks about needing to get the kids on a regular chores schedule, and I was all for it. Last night, the chore list was made and the work began. Everyone got an age appropriate task or two. Youngest boy, the kindergartener, gets to feed the lizard (since he's the one who asked for a lizard) and clean up his dirty laundry. Second grader actually loves to clean the bathroom so his daily task is wiping down the bathroom sinks and counters each night...and of course cleaning up his own dirty laundry (they're big on laundry hitting the floor, so while this seems like it should be a given, I'm sure you parent-readers know what I'm saying when I say...it's not). Almost 5th grader is cleaning the dishes (and yes...cleaning up her laundry off the floor!).

She's washed dishes with Sonny before so he's showed her the process and he even reviewed the process with her before she was set  loose with them. She gets to work on the dishes, apparently finishes them in a reasonable amount of time, comes out to watch some TV. I go into the kitchen to get a glass of water and...there are the dishes. She had washed them and placed them in the other side of the sink for rinsing, but never rinsed them. The soap was mostly dried on now.  Oopsie.

I called Sonny out to see them, because I kept giggling and since he had started the task with her I thought it would be nice for him to finish out the instruction. He called her out to the kitchen and asked her to look carefully and tell him what was amiss in the sink. "OHHHHHHHHHHHHH" she said. Ha...

She rinsed them off and all is now well.

But I'm just picturing how much fun next school year is going to be. A rule was made this year that she would not go to horseback riding lessons anymore if she could not remember her own riding gear...it's worked surprisingly well - though predictably, she often gets out to the car before realizing she doesn't have them and then runs back in for the bag.

And that's how the declaration came about...generally Sonny will remind her to gather her things the night before. After a few minutes, if she hasn't motived...I give her a kind reminder...and when her response to that was "I will" I said "The number one rule of having ADHD is never leave anything for later". And then...I allowed her to fail. And she did (we all do sometimes, of course).

My goal is to create a reasonable amount of reminders...deliver them kindly and clearly...and then yes...allow her to fail if that's what it takes.

She needs the structure, but sometimes people also need consequences, in order to create their own structure, and define their own boundaries between them and the world.

Meds Are Not Inherently Bad. They're just not.

Below is a re-post of a comment that I actually left on Mark Heath's "Another Fine Mess" blog. I'm reposting it as a solo piece here because...I feel like it really sums up the feelings that swirl in my head when I hear people say that medications are bad. That "big pharma" is trying to kill us all. This is my pavement-level response:

I’m a huge fan of my anti-depressant that I actually take for anxiety and to prevent a migraine disorder. Yes, I think it’s important for questioning to remain a part of any scientific process so I don’t think that people who question the effectiveness of antidepressants are jerks.

It’s just that whether the effect is placebo or medical, it saved my life. In addition to being a person who is almost constantly assaulted by a “white noise” kind of anxiety in my body (which is not a problem for people around me but is a horrible, nagging and constant discomfort within my body) – I spent several weeks last year disabled by a migraine disorder that rendered me cognitively unable to function in any normal sense and unable to ambulate with any reliability thanks to crushing vertigo. I also intermittently experience depression of the variety that begins to distort ones thinking…not psychosis…but the kind that paints every perception and experience in a manner that teeters on self-destructive and begins to eat away at relationships with those around me.

I also come from a family of very diagnosably anxious and depressed people, many of whom would also qualify with no question as having ADHD as well. A family where addiction to alcohol as a self-medication has eaten through generations of family relationships, corroded futures…you get the picture.
I only belabor this point because it’s just so easy to try to seek a blanket to soothe us, either through medication or through skepticism. It’s easy to choose black or white, when grey is less appealing, when the answer might really be “sometimes”. But for me, grey is the reality. When you are faced with disability, or with the spectre of suicide and addiction in your family line, if you have any functional desire to survive, you will seek options.

For me, one of the best options so far has been medication. I don’t know why it works, why it seems to cause me no side-effects…but the benefits in this case greatly outweigh all else. I can’t think of any good reason that I should choose to remain constantly agitated by an intrusive anxiety, or unable to even get off of my couch due to disability…I can’t imagine why I would choose to allow depression or anxiety to make my life decisions for me, to allow them to clone me into a statistic of addiction or suicide…when I can choose to live. When I can choose to be happy. When I can choose to take a medication (the fourth one that I tried, and accidentally, because it was for the migraine issue, not the anxiety or depression, that I tried it) that for whatever reason has given me control over those factors.

THAT SAID…because the issue is a grey one…this may not be the appropriate approach for everyone. I just worry that people who may benefit from medication are sometimes leery of them because of a “meds are bad” stance. Meds are bad sometimes, like when they’re giving you freaky side effects. Sometimes they’re freaking great. Mine are freaking great.

Valde Melancholicus

I was watching a TV show about Oliver Cromwell (yes that Oliver Cromwell...is there another one?). Spiritually lusty, murderous, ambitious and wait...what's this? Depression sufferer?

Seems they called it "valde melancholicus" back then. This bears interesting implications:

• Big pharma didn't invent depression as a means to make more money. Oh, I know...protest all you will, but it's just not true. 
• Depression has been around probably as long as humans have been. Yes, I know, I'm filling in a lot of holes with my imagination here, but I'm feeling bold.
• It must have really sucked to be "treated" for depression back then. Because...they probably didn't have a lot of "treatments" that actually worked. And it probably involved things like leeches, bats-wings, and arsenic. Yes, the imagination again...but...I'm guessing I'm not far off (as I spark a new obsession with researching ancient and antique remedies for mental health maladies...)...

And so Oliver...or Cromwell if you prefer...would pester his doctor at all inconvenient hours of the night when the spirit moved him (often it was in the midst of a spiritual crisis of some kind) for some remedy that I'm dying to know the details of (Google ain't cuttin' it here...yet...).

Oliver Cromwell...THAT Oliver Cromwell. Geek trivia.

(To add a little accuracy, articulacy and more geek trivia: apparently Cromwell's depression was religion induced and interestingly, some Protestants during certain time periods seem to have been more susceptible to depression and subsequent suicide...depression...a human companion of many origins...)