I'm Back!!

Hello Dear Readers!  

After a few months off and reflecting on what I'd like to do next with this blog, some answers have come to me.  The next goal I am looking square in the face is overcoming what I call, "soporific ennui."  More on what that means in a moment.  

An ADHD friend of mine recently recommended the book, "Scattered" by Gabor Mate', and after reading many ADHD themed books, this is the one that has resonated the most for me.  Why this is so will be answered in the next few essays.  

Lets get to it:

One quote (amongst so many) that struck me as I read, Scattered is, “a powerful ennui and drowsiness would come over me whenever I opened [my mother’s] diary...It must have evoked painful emotions I was not prepared to re-experience on the conscious level” pg. 88-89.   This powerful ennui and drowsiness feels like my everest; paying bills, working on music, planning long term (with short term goals in between), cleaning and so much more.   What is ennui?  From Merriam-Webster, “a lack of spirit, enthusiasm, or interest.”  I would add disconnect.  I cannot connect whatever present action I am doing to a future goal.  

Another accurate descriptive word is soporific: “tending to induce drowsiness or sleep, also sedative, calmative, tranquilizer, narcotic, opiate.”   Paradoxically another word that describes that space is, “wordless.”  For someone who craves words and revels in narrative, it’s a funny place for me to be. 
 
It is this space of abandon and vulnerability that I resist letting people see or enter into.  I think because I haven’t figured out how to resist or avoid altogether this ennui.  In that space I am worthless.  I give up nor can I find the tools to get out of the space.  Not only am I NOT solving the problem in front of me, I am totally wrapped up in keeping my brain on.  How to explain that to people in the moment?

Pause.

I am making official what has already been happening.  I am putting the blog on pause to regroup and think about what I'd like to do with it.  I've kept this space clear for my writing and my writing only and that's been right for me.  Now this blog wants to grow. I want it to grow.  I'd like to include links to ADHD books and blogs that I find worth reading and sharing.  More challenges.  More sitting still and reading difficult, labrynthine directions.  

Good things have come from writing these essays for the past eleven months.  I couldn't have produced a music festival without the emotional and organization outlet that this space has given me. Writing about ADHD has allowed me to become very specific about where my challenges lie (or is it lay?!) and how I articulate them to medical professionals.  That's been invaluable.  Lastly,  I've more fully realized something I've always known on some level, I love writing.

So I am off but plan on returning.  

Thank you for reading.   

Medical Update

My apologies for not writing last week.  Anything that I feel compelled to write about these days feels more like a journal entry and has the flavor of not-yet-ready-for-public-consumption.  

Onto the medical update.  My therapist and prescribing doctor both felt that my antidepressant needed to be doubled.  So we did that and after a week or so of 150mg of Effexor rather than 75mg, I do note that I feel lighter in mood in the mornings.  Regarding ADHD medications, my doctor and I will examine that possible option at an appointment early next month.

As an aside about which I''ll write more later, for those who have followed my blog, you'll know that I successfully produced my own music festival this year, which I created to directly challenge my ADHD.  Recently I met with representatives of a high end grocery store chain that is very interested in helping to sponsor next year's festival.  The best moment of the meeting?  When they asked me what my wish list is for next year. 

More soon.  

Guanfacine

Guanfacine is a "symphatholitic, selective receptor agonist."  Should you be interested to read more about it in friendly prose click on the link above. In short it, "may treat ADHD by affecting the part of the brain that controls attention and impulsivity." Not exactly words of confidence but I'm willing to try it. 

I have a doctor's appointment on Thursday this week where I will discuss this drug option with her.  I'm not so much worried about whether or not I will get a prescription but more as to whether I will be able to afford the drug.   I have my coupons and a drug discount card.  We'll see what happens.  I'm very determined to try different drugs to hep find focus. 

I remain aware that trying drugs is trial and error.  This search could take months and months.  Perhaps the right drug is out there for me.  Perhaps it doesn't exist.  Perhaps my miracle pill does.  

I remain cautiously optimistic.

Squirrel

For those who have seen the movie, "Up", the Squirrel! scenes perfectly embody the distractibility of the ADHD mind.  These days, without the over-arching goal of the music festival that guided my life in the first part of the year, I find myself torn in a thousand directions, none of them particularly satisfying.  

One direction though that has been satisfying is making a conscious choice to read more books again.  I say again because before I purchased a laptop and then a smartphone, which can be carried to bed, I used to read book after book in my late twenties and well into my thirties.  Not that the number is the important part in the equation but I do remark that I don't read the way I used to.  For me it's important to read something in book form or at least on a device that isn't connected to into the internet.  After a few moments away from my device and into my book, I find that my mind calms and I am carried away in the way that any reader hopes for.  Our (as in human beings) relationship with the internet is a lifelong struggle (First World problem I know but there it is).  We have to make conscious decisions whether or not we want to take vacations like these.  For those with an already compromised attention span, the internet can be terribly addictive drug. 

Last night I finished the book, Elegy for Iris, a beautiful memoir of 40 year + marriage of two English intellecuals.  In that book I took trips to Wales, Italy, England, amongst other countries and I went swimming in ponds, rivers and oceans. Even better, I found a truly lovely solitude that the internet doesn't offer to me. 

In my experience the difference between reading on the internet and reading a book is night and day.  The former, while fun, addictive and very often informative (but often full of junk info too) stresses my mind.  The latter calms my mind and brings into focus an experience that is all mine for the enjoying.  

As Good as it Gets

I have been in a wonderful therapy group for over 13 years.  "Thirteen years?" you exclaim.  "How can it be good if you've been in it for thirteen years?"  To this I simply answer, you don't just go to the gym for 2-3 years and say, "well, that'll take care of that. I'm good to go for the rest of my life."  Joining and committing to this group has been unquestionably one of the most important choices I've made in my life. 

This week I spoke about the thought that came to me this week: as I looked at so many of the unfinished projects in my life, I asked  "Is this as good as it gets?"  Just like the movie of the same name asked.  Am I destined to look at the flotsam of projects that got to the B or C stage when they deserved to be taken to X, Y and Z stage?

It's no surprise to me that I've finally asked this.  I'm 41 years old, not married (though I'd like to be) and have no children (though I'd like at least one).   During my scholastic years, I lived with undiagnosed ADHD (now unmedicated ADHD) and from 20'ish - 34ish, I lived daily with Depression (now successfully medicated).  This combination of crapitude (that's the medical term) kept me at barely surviving level for years.  I feel like I am finally able to lift my head a bit and look at the big picture in a way that I'd love to have done when younger but I didn't or couldn't.  Such is that path that my life has taken.  

I reject that this is a good as it gets.  
My next step is finding ADHD medication that works for me.  

As y'all know, I'll report back.

Shame

I'm in one of those moods that is very difficult to get out of.  Money is beyond tight and I am utteraly overwhelmed by the task of looking for a new job, ideally a job more closely aligned with who I am (as in working in music education again) and one that offers health insurance.  In my current state, I read job descriptions and feel all the ways I would fail rather than succeed...or be desperately unhappy because I would feel such overwhelming, soul crushing anxiety each day at all the work I would have to do (and do well) and know that my brain just won't cooperate no matter the amount of will power applied, like willing blurry eyes to focus using brain power alone.    

I've cut and pasted the following list of ADHD characteristics from some ADHD site I was reading and sighed as I read it. 

• Lack of attention to details/careless mistakes
• Lack of sustained attention
• Poor listener
• Failure to follow through on tasks
• Poor organization
• Avoids tasks requiring sustained mental effort
• Loses things easily 
• Distracted
• Forgetful  

 Yep, I relate to all of them to varying degrees (I must say though that I am a much better listener than I used to be).  The one that strikes me is, "avoids tasks requiring sustained mental effort."  I had to darkly laugh at that.  So much of life requires, "sustained mental effort."  Higher paying jobs require, "sustained mental effort."  It's just that simple.  Until I can figure out how to do this, as in finding a helpful drug that I can access and afford, I don't see how I can earn more and find some peace and pleasure in the sustained mental effort of life's work.