Learning with Living disabilities

It is interesting what kind of help having formal diagnosis can be. I now begin looking at myself and saying, 'oh yah, thats why I do A, B, or C'. Today is a case in point. I got to thinking about living life with ADHD and how my specific LD (a processing disorder) fits in.

First off, let me give you an example of what living with ADHD is like (at lest for me). First off, you assume that you are perfectly normal. This is important because it gives you a good understanding of how I view (or viewed) the rest of the world.

Second, your brain seems wired for one speed and one speed alone...fast. You are constantly coming up with new ideas, rehashing and revising new ones, and mulling over things at the seed of...well...thought. Great right? Wrong. See, the speed of thought is really really fucking fast, think Caffeinated Squirrels on Cocaine type fast. So fast that there is NO WAY you will be able to record these wonderful thoughts in your head fast enough to have them make any degree of sense...if they are given free reign. You can deal with this by babbling your mind into a tape recorder and 'hopefully' remember to come back to them later when they make some sort of sense, or you can cache them in your mind and hopefully be able to write them down in some semblance of order, or you can just deal that most of these thoughts are going to go the way of the Dino. To make matters worse, unless you medicate somehow these thoughts are streaming around in your noggin ALL THE TIME. So what you may ask, well say you have a great idea for a book, but your not a great writer. About two hours into writing you get up to go to the bathroom, and find that the bathroom needs to be cleaned. After cleaning the bathroom you realize that the living room is a mess and you really should start picking it up. After picking up one or two things you notice that the blankets really smell...hmmm...time for a load of laundry. After putting the blankets in you notice you have room for a few more items, so you head to your laundry basket to pick up the laundry. On the way there you have this great idea for the cover to your book. Not wanting to loose the idea you grab a sketch pad and some paper to sketch it out. Sadly, your not the best sketch artist in the world, and the end result is so frustrating that you give it up and just scribble something down to try to remind yourself what you were thinking of later (which you no longer really remember because you have revised it three to five times). Frustrated you wonder to the kitchen and find the load of laundry waiting for you to grab a few more things to start it. Wondering back to the bedroom you start to grab a few things, then decided to sort the laundry. This takes three or four hours, as the cats like to play. Eventually you just grab one or two things, toss them into the laundry, then realize its midnight and you really need to go to bed in order to get to work the next day.

End result of this 'little' example:
- A wet load of laundry which you may or may not remember to put into the dryer the next day
- A pad of paper with some sketches and ideas that you have left lying around "somewhere"
- A Living room which is still a mess (albeit less of one)
- A 'clean' bathroom (Chances are you only did the toilet and sink, ignoring the tub, floor, and mirror.
- No dinner
- An unwritten manuscript for a book which, more than likely will never get completed.

So for many folks that may seem pretty normal (if it does you may have ADHD yourself), and without some type of focus this can really ruin your life.

Third, your self esteem is constantly under fire, usually from yourself. You feel like you never accomplish anything (because you don't), quite possibly flunk out of school (forgetting homework bad), get depressed, and don't want to go to work (your brain wont shut up about how horrible it will be). To make matters worse you tend to fixate on things you should not be fixating on, such as are the cats happy, do I have enough beer for a party next week, can I see a movie, ect.

Forth, you only feel "in control" when the world is out of control. Try cleaning up a room, get distracted three ways from Sunday. Try cleaning a room while your wife yells at you about something, debtors call you non stop and threaten to sue, the kitchen is on fire, one of the cats is bleeding, and someone is pounding on the door, then your fine. I may be exaggerating a bit here, but the only time you feel in control is when everything else seems to be going mad.

Finally money is a very scary thing. You work so you can get a nice big paycheck, but for some reason by the time your bills come do, you never have enough, and your never sure why. Admitedly you spent $400 on Minatures and cards last week...but those guys you were playing with were so impressed and you were really starting to feel like they would be good friends...

So there is ADHD in a convoluted little package...for me at least. Now to make matters a bit more complicated. I have what is called a Learning Disability known as a Processing Disorder, focused on Spelling and Math. What this bit of word jumble means is that I cant think on my toes when dealing with numbers or when spelling out words. In fact usually I can't even think on my feet, I have to (sometimes literally) sit down, and work out Exactly what is going on for myself. You know that casher at MacDonalds who takes 10 min to get you your cash back because the register is broken and he has to do the math in his head? Yah, thats me. There is a term for people like me in the service industry...slow (or just plain stupid if you prefer).

Calling this a Learning Disability is a bit of a misnomer...it impacts every faucet of my daily life. I have to have a calculator on me at ALL TIMES in order to make sure I have enough money in my pocket for...say...lunch. Round numbers I can usually puzzle out...but add decimal points and percents and I'm lost.

The combination of these two factors, my brains tenancy to go a mile a min with most things, and its sheer inability to process mathematical formula, brings me to the point of this article...dealing with it.

Oddly enough I deal with it mostly by NOT dealing with it. I was fortunate enough to find a spouse who is not only understanding, but good with numbers. Although she probably does not know it, she deals with everything in the family that scares me shitless, such organizing routines, dealing with bills, creating a budget, and keeping a calendar to ensure I don't miss out on appointments and important dates (like my birthday). These seem like little things, but before I met her I was relying almost completely on my Mother for these things. The very idea of sending a check for a bill scared me to death...what if I overpaid, what if the check was late and I forgot about it and overdrew the account, etc.

There are tricks that I'm learning to cope with the ADHD, but as for the processing disorder, all I can say is Thank you Beth! Without you I would be a complete mess (instead of a partial one). I guess everyone has to find a way to work around their issues, I just thank god mine is as patient, understanding, and caring as she is.

I thought I would share this

I read an article for my Writing class today which I found both insightful and poignant. The article revolved around the death of a man I had never eve heard of, David Foster Wallace, back in 2008. As a memoriam the magazine, "More Intelligent Life", quoted a commencement speech that he had given a year earlier.

What got me about this article was that in the speech Mr Wallace outlines some very fundamental building blocks of life, things that we tend to take for granted. He also makes a decent argument for why Liberal Arts are necessary in schools; not for the good of Humanity as a whole, but for the individual.

I have posted a small quote below that I found particularly thought provoking.

“… I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded… It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self.” (Wallace, 2008).

You can find the entire commencement speech here:

http://http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/david-foster-wallace-in-his-own-words

Sites Mentioned in this Article

moreintelligentlife.com: http://http://moreintelligentlife.com

Random Musings on Faustian deals.

Because I'm a nut, I got to thinking about Faustian deals, you know, the type here you get everything you think you wanted only to find that it has nothing to do with what you actually need to live.

So I asked myself, what type of person would take someone up on that type of deal? For example, say you were offered one day to do anything you liked, no consequences, then, at 12:01am the next morning, you would die, no ifs, ands, or buts. Would you take the deal? On the surface it sounds great, especially if your dying anyway or feel you have nothing to live for, but if your like me you would probably piss away most of the day trying to forget that you were dying in X many min.

Alternately, say you were offered one night of sex with anyone you wanted, the best sex of your life. The catch...after you were done the memory would fade away like a dream. You knew you had done something with someone, but have no idea what exactly happened or with who you did it. Would that short time of pleasure be worth it if you had no memory of it afterwards?
Just random musings....

Life or something like it

In the hopes of being at least quasi interesting and posting to my own blog, I decided to post something which is impacting my life. Much to my lack of surprise I have been officially diagnosed as ADHD. I have figured that this was the case for quite a few years, my tenancy to be easily distracted, my focus on small things, and my chronicle poor memory. What came as a shot was the level of diagnosis. The diagnosing shrink has put me down as a 'high impact case', someone who's ADHD 'significantly impacts' his day to day life.

This came as somewhat of a shock. I have always been able to go to school and work, as well as concentrate on things which I needed to when required... haven't I? Looking back the answer is NO. Without the use of calendars and a routine I'll forget rather important things, Dr's apts, Test Dates, What time I am supposed to start my first day of work, ect. I get lost easily without a map, and cant focus for long periods of time without some degree of movement. In fact I find it horribly hard to concentrate without some type of movement. Its almost like my brain is inexorably tied to my mother functions. Without some type of movement my brain feels stuffed with cotton.

Whats even odder is that I figured that these things were normal. I had often heard of 'writers block' where someone would be unable to find something to write about. I figured that I had a similar 'Life Block', a point where I just could not keep moving.

It turns out that I've been doing myself a disfavor this entire time. Sitting quietly and removing external stimuli can have extremely negative consequences for me. Without some type of movement my brain begins to focus on small distractions, the tragic outside, the radio in the background, ect. The only way I can function is to allow myself a space where I can move as I need to and remove external distractions. Oddly enough I do this by putting on headphones and focusing on a single source of distraction, music on the radio.

So what does this mean now that I actually have a diagnosis. Well, first off, I can begin to learn strategies on how to deal with the way my brain works. Take frequent walks, shift a bit while at a computer, wear a headset so you can focus, keep distractions like Facebook away, and when flagging, switch out what I'm doing, making sure to get back to the primary project in time to complete it.

I've found it rather liberating actually getting the diagnosis, I no longer have to hold myself to a mold which I cannot meet, now I try to find a way to mold myself to the world instead of the other way around.

Blather

So once agian I am making a chainge in life. Instead of focusing on my Art History degree I've decided to take the plunge into CS. Its odd, but it feels quite nastalgic, writing code and working out math problems. With luck I'll have time to learn enough to actually make a carrer out of the bits of peaces that I'm picking up.

Back on the horse

Its been a while sense my last post, and I seem to be missing my goal of posting weekly. That said, I have been a busy man. I now am working as a customer service rep for Elance and it has been working out remarkably well. Elance is a freelancing website which allows skilled individuals, or providers, to work jobs for clients. Everything is done on the site, and I've found it amazingly easy to sell myself to prospective clients, and weed out those that I don't want to work with.

I've also been working for my Mother, helping her set up her Etsy shop for her jewelry. Her store, named A Brunette & A Blonde Custom Jewelry is pretty new, but with the quality of work that they do I think their business will do well.

You can find a link to their store below:


Mostly what I've been working on is photo touch ups for jewelry, as well as restoring old photos. I'm still having a lot of difficulty sharpening old photographs, but I'm doing a good job at getting rid if discolorations, lens flashes, and the like. The photos below are old family photos on my wife's side.



This is an image of my sister in law getting married. I mostly brightened up her dress and enhanced the contrast between the newlyweds and the background.



This is one of my wife's Great Grandfather on her mothers side. The picture itself had quite a bit of damage to it and was pretty badly faded. I evened things out and darkened it, as well as added a filter to make his features easier to see.



Here is the original.

Sites Mentioned in this Article

Etsy.com: http://www.etsy.com/
****: http://****/
A Brunette & A Blonde: http://www.etsy.com/shop/1susan1lora/
Elance.com: http://Elance.com/

As you can see there was a bit of work done to the original, but I feel I saved most of the original image.

Thats all for tonight, duty calls and I have to make some changes to some more images my mother sent me. No rest for the wicket...*yub yub*

Words as Art

My newest class is Typography, which means that I'm now having to think of letters, those fuzzy funny little things you see all over the screen, as not just a way to convey information for the literate, but as a way to convey messages as an artistic medium.
So far I'm finding it fascinating, and more than a little overwhelming. You never really think about what words and letters really are, until you start digging into the history. Turns out that most of the letters we use today started out as Phoenician trading language to represent trade goods. The Greeks nabbed it as a nifty way of writing down ideas and it's been growing ever sense.
As of the invent of movable type, however, they have taken a new path. Now we begin to look at letters in terms of font. Turns out some smart cookie a while back came up with the brilliant idea that words can be used to convey more than just ideas, they can be used to convey emotion and set mood. Whats more, just changing the way the letters look can alter the way our brains process the information. As an example:

The words "I like to eat apple pie" take on different meanings depending on the font used:
Helvetica: "I like to eat apple pie"
Geneva: "I like to eat apple pie"
Comic Sans MS: "I like to eat apple pie"

You are far more likely to take something written in Helvetica or Geneva seriously, then something written on Comic Sans. That said, Comic Sans is useful to imply whimsy.

Sites Mentioned in this Article

****: http://****/