In Between the Macro and the Micro

Change is THE WORST.  And yet and yet....

I desire change.  I'm mentally ready for change but how to earn a half way decent living doing at least some of the things I do really well is still a mystery for me.  

I've been doing my best to objectively ask myself, "why do I dread change?"  

Here are some answers that I came up with in no particular order.

• Change for me usually equals earning even less money than I make now.
• At least for the last few years, learning restaurant knowledge for a job that, in truth, I don't ever really want. 
• The way I've made changes for most of my life tends to not be done is small, healthy doses but in large terrifying not well done leaps.

I've found these ADHD rules-to-live-by quite clarifying.  The ideas contained it get me closer to what I'm looking for.  To paraphrase, in case reading it is not in the cards for you today:

• Get a better grip on impulse control, whether it be around food, online distractions, or anything that catches my attention.

• Work to have a deeper understanding on how I attempt to solve problems and where my weaknesses trip me up.

• Learn how to delay gratification.

• And lastly and the one that resonates most with me: Learn how to have a better intuitive sense of the future.  

People with ADHD tend to be, "time blind."  To quote the article cited above, "ADHD makes the future seem far away. A goal that requires a significant investment of time, incorporates waiting periods, or has to be done in a sequence of steps, can prove so elusive that you feel overwhelmed. When that happens, many people with ADHD look for an escape route."

Unfortunately if you're not diagnosed for years, one spends his or her life feeling overwhelmed and looking for an escape route, consciously or unconsciously.   I was around 29 when I was diagnosed, well after the school years when I have to imagine it would have been helpful to understand how my brain worked. 

But the past is the past and I am looking to the future as best as I can.

Depth of Focus

I am lost.  Not in a self-loathing, depressed, I'll-never-get-anything-right kind of way but more in a I'm-lost-in-a-city-without-much-money-but-I'll-look-around-and-see-where-this-has brought-me kind of way.  The second iteration of The Takoma Porch Music Festival has come and gone.  It went really well and now I look more broadly to the future.

Christopher Hitchens, a favorite writer and public intellectual of mine who died in 2011 wrote in his book, Letters to a Young Contrarian, "what really matters about any individual is not what he thinks but how he thinks." (pg. 63).  

Boy isn't that the (*&^%$^% truth.  

There are just so many distractions in this world - out there and on my computer.  How do I put controls on my tenuous focus that don't feel like deprivation?  It's not just the stupid celebrity news and cat videos that distract me but genuinely fascinating articles related to science, math, astronomy, music, or any of the thousands of fascinating websites out there with ever more information. So many of them offer access to Things. Worth. Knowing.  I have almost no method to filter or rules to guide me in this.  And even if I do find rules I'll need to follow them in the way that works best for me and my more than unruly brain.  

I have watched friends and acquaintances move so far past me in their lives in Getting. Things. Done.  The pain of this is most acute when I see fellow musicians grow deeply in their music skills AND in their ability to create shows or music acts and earn money at it.  So. Much. Organization. and Stick-to-it-tiveness.  It's the latter that continues on as a struggle for me, a mostly unproductive and energy wasting struggle. 

What does a totally reasonable expectation of doggedness in the face of all that distracts me mean?

What do I do when all passions and the tasks related to them too often feel equal and unending?  

This is my current dilemma.

Hello Again - Fake Grad. School - Year II

I need this blog again.  I want this blog again.  Those who read it over the past two years may recall that I used it to manage the thoughts and feelings I felt while creating and producing a music festival, something I had had no experience doing before.  

The Takoma Porch Music Festival happened for a second time this past May 17th and it went crazy well; I was even nominated for a local award!  The weather was perfect and any glitches were so minor that they're barely worth noting.  While the daily work of organizing it was not particularly easy, I didn't feel the need to blog about it.  My strongest emotion this time around wasn't the terror of creating something that required my believing in my strengths in spite of my weaknesses but rather enduring the frustration of not enough time, money nor energy to create and publicize the kind of music festival I know Takoma Porch can be.  So huzzah! to progress of sorts.


Now that that huge project is currently off my table, I've been thinking about how to approach the next year of my life.  That alone is a new concept for me.  Meds, therapy and creating the festival have helped me to conceptualize time somewhat better than before.,...well, ever.  

This time around I've laid out books to read, web sites to guide me and two second year projects.  The time frame is June 2014 - June 2015.  Here is my syllabus:

Texts: 

• ADD and Your Money: A Guide to Personal Finance for Adults with Attention-Deficit Disorder by Stephanie Moulton Sarkis and Karl Klein

  

• Making Money in Your PJs - Freelancing for voice-over and other solopreneurs by Paul Strikwerda

•  The Complete Idiots GD to Music Composition by Michael Miller

ADHD website I've found most helpful:

• Working with ADHD

Second Year Projects:

• Create a full functioning live show with paid performers with funding from a crowd-sourcing site.  

•  Create and make public my own website.

The Show Must Go On...

I didn't get the job.  Am I disappointed.  Yes.  Am I devastated? 

Not at all. 

I'm feeling quite resilient.  Less than 20 hours after receiving my rejection email and I've already been in contact with the woman who recommended me for this job.  She's expressed her thought that there are lots of jobs out there for me in the arts and we can find them (or create them ourselves).  Considering this woman founded an arts organization that continues to thrive after almost twenty years in existence, I'm inclined to stick close to and learn from her.  

I am feeling impatient to find more meaningful and remunerative work.  


What's to come in my next essay?  I've been talking in person with other ADHD folks.  While I am neither inclined nor at liberty to share their stories I am happy and willing to share what my thoughts and feelings have been.  

Goodnight all and if you live in the US (East and South) bundle up.  It's getting very snow out there. 

Productivity and Me

This week has not been particularly productive.  I have so much to do for this music festival that I am most definitely experiencing mental paralysis.  I'm stuck on the task of making this iphoto video and it ends up preventing me from giving my time to other music festival goals.  It needn't.  Though the video needs to be done soon there are plenty of other tasks upon which I could focus.  My fantasty: to get lost, in the best sense of that word, in a project.

But back to reality...

My challenge, as always, is the toxic mental paralysis that overwhelms me when I contemplate the empty hours in front of me and the (seemingly) endless tasks that SHOULD be done, tasks that have no form, structure or boundaries in my brain.   Yesterday I actually had HOURS to work but the thought of sitting down and working on them filled me with the very typical (for me) feeling of the empty infinity, the sureness of failure that burrows into my bones. Once that heaviness has set in it's nearly impossible (at least for the time being) to reverse the process.   Needless to say, I slept two full hours and then watched at least four hours of, "Sherlock."  

So what must I do to avoid this issue because surely it will come up again and again:
  

1. Give myself a deadline for the video that is connected to another person.  That is, "I commit to showing the video to Jane Doe by Feb. 15th."
2. When I feel the lethargy coming on commit to working on something in five minute increments.  
3. Go outside and walk for 20 minutes.  Hell, 10 minutes!!
4. Phone a friend and have them yell benevolently in my ear.   

Today is better.  I received some good advice and I'm not feeling at all sleepy. 

On a final note, my interview last week when really well.  My interviewer and I talked for over an hour.  He even asked me, "how do you organize yourself ?" And I was able to give him an answer based entirely on the music festival from last year.  He seemed very pleased.  I should have an answer within the week.

Broken Dolls

It's been a very satisfying and interesting week.  I'm making connections with other ADHD adults and sharing notes, keeping up with exercising in a realistic and very enjoyable way and am interviewing for a job tomorrow, a job that isn't waiting tables and IS in the arts.  Next month I'll be meeting up for coffee with a woman who happened to mention to our mutual music instructor that she is ADHD.  As life moves ever so slowly in the direction that I desire, I measure the change in small increments.  

One such small example is that I always have the necessary quarters to do laundry, unlike before when I either didn't have the actual money or didn't think to collect quarters until the laundry had built up.  Another such change is my ability to get more and more done each day without it feeling like a dreadfully boring task or that the weight of all of infinity is laying out in front of me to confront.  

Don't get me wrong, I very much still struggle.  I've made only a tiny bit of headway in creating an audio slideshow using iPhoto.  I still can't figure out if I can upload it to YouTube.  Technology, I love you but you are a bitch.  Additionally, I've made very little headway in creating this second music festival and it's nearly the end of January.  That said, I have a bit more faith that I'll do what needs to be done and it will get done well.

Why the title, "Broken Dolls?"  Meeting a number of adults roughly my age and talking about our shared employment, depression, relationship, you-name-it issues has been like coming home.  

We're all broken dolls but you're my broken dolls.     

Music Festival - Round II

Hello Readers, ADHD and not so.  

If you've been a regular reader of my blog you know that last year I used this space to process my experience of producing my own music festival in the context ADHD challenges.  While it had it's very difficult moments, the entire experiment, music and blog, were a resounding success. 

I am now into the second year of the festival and with that comes even more details but much more public support and buzz around the entire event.  This second festival will be happening Saturday, May 17th, 2014. 

Along with writing about it here I'll also be pondering changing jobs.  I have an interview coming up to work as a programming coordinator with an arts organization.  It's very satisfying to know that I would never have applied for (nor, I believe, caught the attention of the organization) had not created last year's festival.   

I am becoming alarmingly optimistic in my endeavors.