I've been a student again for six weeks. Grade wise, I've done decently. Predictable, I've done very well on the writing portion, pretty well on the quizzes and gotten mixed results on the various larger projects that we have due each Sunday evening, which I inevitably turn in a day late.
The comprehension issues I have: poor ability to absorb, process and retain data and then to pull it out when needed, remain steadfastly in my life, like a lead albatross sitting on my brain.
I cannot tell you why completing this work is so difficult. For someone as verbal as I am, it's a painful place to be. I am nearly mute on this topic. I may be able to eek out explanations I've read about in my various reading on ADHD but somehow this isn't sufficient. The same inability to process information is the same reason I always struggle to learn an instrument, the same reason I couldn't manage my own business, or take care of my finances on a regular basis. I can read you reasons but I cannot explain my reality to you and it's heartbreakingly frustrating.
Sunday, February 7, 2016
Tuesday, December 22, 2015
A Student Again, Oh My!!
I am a student again after twenty one years as I have signed up for a course to become certified to teach English as a second language. Why did I decide to choose this route? For two reasons: I want to get out of the restaurant industry and I want to go towards what comes naturally to me: teaching. Additionally, I am considering living abroad again and this certification offers to me a very good chance of finding employment in many private and public schools around the globe.
The course runs for two and half months and costs a little over $1000. The length of the course and the cost are infinitely more appealing to me than two years of graduate school and $50k or more of student debt. No thank you.
So with the years of therapy, multiple ADHD (and Depression) books read and strategies tried, I dive back into an arena that for years caused me endless pain and defeat, resulting in a profound lack on confidence in the work world. I didn't even know how to begin to speak about what plagued me all of those years as I was diagnosed with ADHD at 29. I am now (a relatively happy) 44.
As I read about this course, absorb how to navigate online classes, which include live lectures and time-sensitive quizzes, all the familiar struggles return; however, I have come as prepared as I have ever been. For I am well acquainted with the tricks of my brain.
For example: I know that my sense of time is profoundly flawed; emotionally it's either now or infinity. I possess little to no sense of the natural and logical organization of tasks. Sequential instructions are often physiologically and neurologically untenable. I have learned over the years though to read through instructions at least once, twice, thrice with little expectation of grasping even ten percent of what is in front of me. That said, something will get in there and the next day I will come back and will retain something and will read through them again. I know though, that with enough slow and steady, three-times-as-long-as-others attempts that I'll eventually grasp what is in front of me. Along with this, I give myself time to physically move around when needed, study where I will work best (in a cafe) and work when I study best (early morning and after dinner).
As I've said many times, my ability to focus and then to retain information is often as fragile as a candle in a hurricane. The key is to figure out many tricks to keep that little flame flickering.
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
Acceptance
I returned from vacation two weeks ago after spending twelve days visiting friends in Berlin and London. It had been 13 years since I'd left the country and eight since I'd taken more than a four day break from work. This much desired and needed break gave me time to think.
Life with ADHD is difficult and, I think to a great extent will always be so. With this realization comes acceptance. Even with medication, reading many books, and listening to podcasts, for me at least, there have been few aha! moments. I have felt rather a slow acceptance of the condition that has in so many ways defined my life. I feel a deeper understanding of people who openly accept and work with whatever condition or tragedy has been thrust upon them. In the end, after all the anger and sadness cool to an ember, you're still left with the condition and the rest of your life. With that though I also sense the freedom to choose how I want to live and what works for me and my brain.
In that spirit I take up my keyboard and continue my blog.
Life with ADHD is difficult and, I think to a great extent will always be so. With this realization comes acceptance. Even with medication, reading many books, and listening to podcasts, for me at least, there have been few aha! moments. I have felt rather a slow acceptance of the condition that has in so many ways defined my life. I feel a deeper understanding of people who openly accept and work with whatever condition or tragedy has been thrust upon them. In the end, after all the anger and sadness cool to an ember, you're still left with the condition and the rest of your life. With that though I also sense the freedom to choose how I want to live and what works for me and my brain.
In that spirit I take up my keyboard and continue my blog.
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
I know, I know, this is no way to run a blog
Please forgive me my absences. The moderate discipline I managed to forge over the past few years in writing this blog has eluded me recently. I think partly because many things have felt too personal and unfiltered to share. In other words, who wants to read a boring old journal? Not you I imagine. Nor do I want to share one.
I have two updates for you. If you've read this blog from the beginning, you'll know that I started it when I wanted to create music festival in 2013 but was overwhelmed at the idea. Writing about those challenges (and joys) here was invaluable. The blog and the music festival were symbiotic. Well, my music fest happened for a third year last month and I'm proud to say that it was the most successful iteration yet. In short I think with time and money (of course) many aspects of it could be better, but I truly feel that the festival is the definition of, "good enough." People came out, music was played and people had a really enjoyable time, including me.
The second piece of news is that I started taking piano lessons again, something I haven't done in at least six years. Music has ever and always been something in which I have had profound struggles even though I have no doubt that I am fundamentally a musician. I have certainly grown in my singing over the years but even learning songs has proven extremely difficult most of the time. If you'd like a short succinct description of the ADHD brain that may give you insight into why I (and many others) have challenges with the many aspects of learning, and for me the means challenges with practicing and recalling what I've studied, click here for an enlightening graphic.
I have had two meetings with this piano teacher, Ms. G: one to meet and the second for the first lesson. I've explained to her some of my challenges as they arise: : that I can get deeply sleepy when practicing music (and so many other tasks), that physiologically it's difficult for me to slow down to perform, amongst other cognitive struggles. A very cool and promising thing happened in this lesson, I was much more cognizant of my performance anxiety and was able to talk my way through. Ms. G is very patient and it's my responsibility to trust that patience. Two days ago, I practiced for 10 minutes, got sleepy and promptly fell into a deep sleep for almost three hours. I no longer hate myself when this happens. It's just another thing with which I must contend. Adderal helps sometimes and practicing at night is often productive for me. I continue to search for the external circumstances, which will allow my fragile focus to flourish.
I move forward in music with hesitant hope that I will indeed progress and if I should gain a certain level of comfort in the pieces I learn, I will record and post them for your enjoyment.
Later gators.
I have two updates for you. If you've read this blog from the beginning, you'll know that I started it when I wanted to create music festival in 2013 but was overwhelmed at the idea. Writing about those challenges (and joys) here was invaluable. The blog and the music festival were symbiotic. Well, my music fest happened for a third year last month and I'm proud to say that it was the most successful iteration yet. In short I think with time and money (of course) many aspects of it could be better, but I truly feel that the festival is the definition of, "good enough." People came out, music was played and people had a really enjoyable time, including me.
The second piece of news is that I started taking piano lessons again, something I haven't done in at least six years. Music has ever and always been something in which I have had profound struggles even though I have no doubt that I am fundamentally a musician. I have certainly grown in my singing over the years but even learning songs has proven extremely difficult most of the time. If you'd like a short succinct description of the ADHD brain that may give you insight into why I (and many others) have challenges with the many aspects of learning, and for me the means challenges with practicing and recalling what I've studied, click here for an enlightening graphic.
I have had two meetings with this piano teacher, Ms. G: one to meet and the second for the first lesson. I've explained to her some of my challenges as they arise: : that I can get deeply sleepy when practicing music (and so many other tasks), that physiologically it's difficult for me to slow down to perform, amongst other cognitive struggles. A very cool and promising thing happened in this lesson, I was much more cognizant of my performance anxiety and was able to talk my way through. Ms. G is very patient and it's my responsibility to trust that patience. Two days ago, I practiced for 10 minutes, got sleepy and promptly fell into a deep sleep for almost three hours. I no longer hate myself when this happens. It's just another thing with which I must contend. Adderal helps sometimes and practicing at night is often productive for me. I continue to search for the external circumstances, which will allow my fragile focus to flourish.
I move forward in music with hesitant hope that I will indeed progress and if I should gain a certain level of comfort in the pieces I learn, I will record and post them for your enjoyment.
Later gators.
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Closing off options
Deciding what NOT to focus on is anathema to the ADHD brain. Like being told, "you can't have chocolate," you then really want chocolate. I've been giving some of my limited focus to pondering this idea. Why, you ask? Because the s*** needs to hit the fan. I am 43 years old, want these four things in no particular order: marriage, child, my own business and to record an album.
As I type this, a familiar defensiveness comes out of me. I hear a voice say, "so many people do these things every day, just *&*^&^% go do them." I haven't been able to yet though for various reasons: years of depression (very successfully medicated, therapised and exercised out of my brain so far) and, of course, an ADHD brain that wasn't diagnosed until I was 29 years old. What I want to say back to that voice is something I wrote recently in a journal entry:
One of the most disheartening things you can say to someone who struggles daily with a processing disorder is, “see we all have to work hard at this.” As if you'll suddenly think, "Oh my goodness, that was my only issue?! That I didn't realize some tasks and goals are challenging. Thank you, thank you for your wise words. How have I gone on so long without them? Wow, challenges gone." The thing is, your working hard and my working hard are two entirely different beasts. To illustrate; there is you climbing the challenging mountain with your water, boots, nature bars and a good night’s sleep. Difficult but doable. The challenges of the mountain lay mostly outside of yourself. Then there is me climbing the mountain with a coat that perhaps neither of us realize is made of lead. Not only that, I haven’t slept well. I look the same but not only is our task quite different but our experience of the task is quite different. Yours may be an invigorating challenge. Mine will most likely be a fruitless, dispiriting challenge that will only ever get me 100 feet up the hill. I’ll keep trying, perhaps for years, and never get more than 100 feet up that hill. Meanwhile you’ve built a home, had a family and have traveled up another 15 mountains.
As I type this, a familiar defensiveness comes out of me. I hear a voice say, "so many people do these things every day, just *&*^&^% go do them." I haven't been able to yet though for various reasons: years of depression (very successfully medicated, therapised and exercised out of my brain so far) and, of course, an ADHD brain that wasn't diagnosed until I was 29 years old. What I want to say back to that voice is something I wrote recently in a journal entry:
One of the most disheartening things you can say to someone who struggles daily with a processing disorder is, “see we all have to work hard at this.” As if you'll suddenly think, "Oh my goodness, that was my only issue?! That I didn't realize some tasks and goals are challenging. Thank you, thank you for your wise words. How have I gone on so long without them? Wow, challenges gone." The thing is, your working hard and my working hard are two entirely different beasts. To illustrate; there is you climbing the challenging mountain with your water, boots, nature bars and a good night’s sleep. Difficult but doable. The challenges of the mountain lay mostly outside of yourself. Then there is me climbing the mountain with a coat that perhaps neither of us realize is made of lead. Not only that, I haven’t slept well. I look the same but not only is our task quite different but our experience of the task is quite different. Yours may be an invigorating challenge. Mine will most likely be a fruitless, dispiriting challenge that will only ever get me 100 feet up the hill. I’ll keep trying, perhaps for years, and never get more than 100 feet up that hill. Meanwhile you’ve built a home, had a family and have traveled up another 15 mountains.
With this essay and blog overall, I am attempting to get further than 100 feet up the hill that I have traversed over and over again for years? How am I going to do this?
I can't answer this with any certainty but I can say that after years of reading and trial and error, I feel that I have a semblance of awareness of my strengths and weaknesses to attempt to slowly change some aspects of my life. This much I know: I want a family, a business of my own and to make music. Truthfully, there are also lots of things I don't want to change. I must emphasize that. I come to this challenge from a place of joy and excitement. I am happy I am alive. I am grateful for my friends, continued good health, my home, my garden, my family, even my waitressing job, which isn't my dream job by any means, but at which I've made good friends and truly had a fun time.
I can't answer this with any certainty but I can say that after years of reading and trial and error, I feel that I have a semblance of awareness of my strengths and weaknesses to attempt to slowly change some aspects of my life. This much I know: I want a family, a business of my own and to make music. Truthfully, there are also lots of things I don't want to change. I must emphasize that. I come to this challenge from a place of joy and excitement. I am happy I am alive. I am grateful for my friends, continued good health, my home, my garden, my family, even my waitressing job, which isn't my dream job by any means, but at which I've made good friends and truly had a fun time.
As always, onwards....
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
Yes And...
If you've ever taken an intro to improv class, and like any educated, comedy-loving, white middle-class gal of left leaning persuasion, I have, you learn the phrase, "Yes, And..." It's used in improv to help the student keep an open mind but can also be applied to all aspects of life.
If you have untreated mental illness, or cognitive processing disorders, your, "yes, and" may be actually sound like, "umm, well, yes...I guess, oh, god what have I done?!" Or more likely as time goes on, "F*** no."
I have much, "yes, and" in me by nature but it has too often been thwarted by an uncooperative brain. This has gotten me thinking about how I can have a bit more, "yes and" in my life and with it the spirit of openness to new experience that I desire.
So how can Adults with ADHD find their, "yes, and" and feel some measure of optimism and excitement to accompany it?
It's so imperative with any cognitive processing disorder to know what your challenges are and how they manifest in your life on a day to day basis. I am the first to say that this is an incredibly challenging task. It has taken me years of reading ADHD books, therapy and jobs-beneath-my-education-and-talent, to suss out how my brain functions at it's best and worst.
For example: THE most important I have learned over the past two years is that consuming beans has a profoundly positive effect on my brain, mood and focus. When I began to figure this out, I was then stressed out because I wanted to create wonderful dishes to eat, which wasn't happening. The other day though I inadvertently bought canned, ready-to-eat "chile beans." So I just simply added some whole grain rice, consumed this tasty-though-not-particularly-creative mixture and was subsequently stunned at how calm, focused and craving free I felt for hours afterward. In light of this discovery, I've decided to treat eating beans and brown rice like medicine. Recipes be damned! Get those ready-to-make beans, brown rice and take as needed.
Let's try to get to our version of, "yes, and."
If you have untreated mental illness, or cognitive processing disorders, your, "yes, and" may be actually sound like, "umm, well, yes...I guess, oh, god what have I done?!" Or more likely as time goes on, "F*** no."
I have much, "yes, and" in me by nature but it has too often been thwarted by an uncooperative brain. This has gotten me thinking about how I can have a bit more, "yes and" in my life and with it the spirit of openness to new experience that I desire.
So how can Adults with ADHD find their, "yes, and" and feel some measure of optimism and excitement to accompany it?
It's so imperative with any cognitive processing disorder to know what your challenges are and how they manifest in your life on a day to day basis. I am the first to say that this is an incredibly challenging task. It has taken me years of reading ADHD books, therapy and jobs-beneath-my-education-and-talent, to suss out how my brain functions at it's best and worst.
For example: THE most important I have learned over the past two years is that consuming beans has a profoundly positive effect on my brain, mood and focus. When I began to figure this out, I was then stressed out because I wanted to create wonderful dishes to eat, which wasn't happening. The other day though I inadvertently bought canned, ready-to-eat "chile beans." So I just simply added some whole grain rice, consumed this tasty-though-not-particularly-creative mixture and was subsequently stunned at how calm, focused and craving free I felt for hours afterward. In light of this discovery, I've decided to treat eating beans and brown rice like medicine. Recipes be damned! Get those ready-to-make beans, brown rice and take as needed.
Let's try to get to our version of, "yes, and."
Sunday, March 1, 2015
What is it about writing?
What is it about writing things out that changes everything?
This blog has been so difficult to write of late though. Rough drafts plague me but I see nothing yet worth sharing. This morning I reflected upon the reasons why I started this blog project in the first place in November 0f 2012: I was creating a music festival from scratch and I needed a place to write about the challenges that I, an adult with lifelong ADHD, faced. What I learned and what has brought me back here to write in February 2015 is that by compelling myself to share what I am working on, I am also compelled to work harder and to create a narrative that is worthy of your time.
I am here to use this blog again to share my lifelong challenges with a brain that can be wonderfully creative and incredibly alive emotionally but also woefully deficient in linear thinking and follow-through.
For me writing out a narrative equals more follow through. And that is what I need right now.
So I hope you join me again while I share this journey.
This blog has been so difficult to write of late though. Rough drafts plague me but I see nothing yet worth sharing. This morning I reflected upon the reasons why I started this blog project in the first place in November 0f 2012: I was creating a music festival from scratch and I needed a place to write about the challenges that I, an adult with lifelong ADHD, faced. What I learned and what has brought me back here to write in February 2015 is that by compelling myself to share what I am working on, I am also compelled to work harder and to create a narrative that is worthy of your time.
I am here to use this blog again to share my lifelong challenges with a brain that can be wonderfully creative and incredibly alive emotionally but also woefully deficient in linear thinking and follow-through.
For me writing out a narrative equals more follow through. And that is what I need right now.
So I hope you join me again while I share this journey.
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