ADD and Feelings of Inferiority

I had a horrific interaction with my internship supervisor on Thursday. Like seriously horrific. Because this is a public blog and internet sleuthing could probably result in my identity, I won’t post specifics. Suffice it to say it was truly traumatizing, and mostly not my fault. The person in question acted unprofessionally and inappropriately. This person even said at the beginning that my lessons went well, and that I have a great rapport with my students.

Even though I already have a meeting scheduled with the head of the program to mediate, I still am fighting some pretty significant depression over it.

It got me thinking. I take negative comments pretty hard, and I dwell on them. I’ve read that focusing on bad stuff is an ADD trait, but I sometimes struggle in how much of my feelings of inferiority and failure are my ADD and how much of these feelings are just my personality.

And, of course, since I am depressed and feeling sorry for myself, I descend into this spiral. What if it’s not really the ADD at all? What if I just suck at life? What if I am taking the easy way out by blaming all these things on a cognitive disorder?

Do y’all ever feel this way? What do you do?

Frustration

I have a really hard time dealing with being frustrated with myself. I had, all weekend long, planned today as the day to sit down and do work. Last night, however, a family friend suggested we go swimming and horsebackriding today. Now, I really needed the exercise, and it felt really good, but it ate up practically the entire day. By the time I got home and napped and ate dinner and was able to start on my To Do List, it was 8pm.

I’ve finished almost everything, if not quite to my satisfaction, at least good enough to call it done, but I am still irritated with myself. I need to start saying no to things, even things that are good for me, if I am going to manage my workload.

Sorry for the downer, I’ll try to be funnier tomorrow

The first step is the hardest

I’ve been back from 2 weeks of no internet, no air conditioning, and no crazy city life for 3 days now, and I’ve only put a dent in my to do list in the last 15 minutes. I’d like to point out that a good portion of this to do list needed to be done in July.






I find things hardest to do when they are already over their due date. It’s like, well, I already fucked it up, why even bother? Of course, lots of things are still perfectly fine if they are done late, but it is very hard to get out of that high expectation rut. It is one of the reasons that I hate To Do Lists. They end up staring at me, pointing out the things I failed to accomplish.Then I fail to accomplish more, and it is one big spiral down to that happy-fun-ADD-depression.






The only thing that sucks more than fear of failure is actual failure. It is really hard to face it and say, yeah, I fucked up, so now I should do the best I can to fix it. It’s way easier to ignore it and hope it goes away. Sitting here typing, I can be like, hey Nic, that is a stupid plan, but I keep doing it, in school, in life, and romantically. It really sucks watching yourself make the same damned mistakes, over and over.






So that’s it. First step done. I sent those overdue emails. Now, to do the cleaning that I planned to do sunday, and then I will finish dealing with my fucking school loans tonight.

On Forced Writing

I’ve been averaging a post and a half or so a week for over a month now. Less than my original goal at the beginning of the blog rebirth process, but I haven’t totally forgotten the blog and disappeared for another year, either.





Thinking about my progress got me thinking about deadlines and forced writing. I’ve been with the V family all weekend, helping them pack up and move, by entertaining their children. Mrs. V specifically planned to take the kids with them house-hunting this afternoon, so that I could do homework by myself for a few hours. What did I do? Proofread a novel a friend is getting published, ate popcorn, and chilled. I did not write the paper for psych that I needed to write.

It is very hard for me to just decide, ok, at 2pm I am going to sit down and do work. I need to actually be in the mood for working on whatever needs to get done. Unfortunately, deadlines wait for no man. No ADD girls, either. I do try to capitalize on the times when I am in the mood to write, but those often happen when I can’t actually do it, like yesterday at the children’s museum, when I had two children and no notebook or pen.

Sometimes I worry that it is not the ADD, but just a lack of self-discipline. That really, not being able to just buckle down and do things is my own damned fault, and I shouldn’t blame a disorder for my screwups. Of course, I know that self-doubt and worry are two symptoms of ADD, but then I worry that maybe I’m excusing the behavior by attributing it to a disorder I can’t change. And around and around it goes.

The bottom line is, I get stuff done. Even if I have to pull all-nighters, I do have everything done when it needs to be done. My goal is that some day, I will be able to have a slightly more relaxed approach, and finish things :gasp: early, on occasion, but for now, done suffices.

Possibly Good, Possibly Bad

So on Tuesday, we met with our internship supervisors.

Because my college hates me and my ADD, I have 3 separate people I need to deal with and report to: my academic advisor, my seminar professor, and my internship supervisor. My supervisor is the only one I haven’t taken a class with, because she isn’t actually a professor here.

We met and chatted about the year ahead, and then she asked the million dollar question:

Is there anything else I want her to know about me?

I bit the bullet, and said it. “I have ADD, and please feel free to bug me about deadlines”

I know it is supposed to be the kiss of death job-wise, but this isn’t a job yet. It is school, and I need to get through it.

She thanked me for telling her, and we’ll see how this goes. First impressions are hard.

Fear

The problem with ADD is that sometimes, one begins to obsess over one’s fears.

I’ve never been good at getting homework done on vacations, or even just when I stay overnight nannying. This has, of course, turned itself into a fear that I will not be able to get my homework done summer semester, now that I am living in a real house, with other people.

I have worked very hard to set up a usable desk area as my first priority, and I will be on campus for a few hours in between classes, as well, so I think, with some focus and concentration, I should be able to focus and make this work.

But transitions are hard, and fear is harder.

Stupid

I am only human.

It would be really easy for me to only post good things about my ADD, and not mention the bad. But that isn’t fair to you the reader, and it is not fair to me, as this is supposed to be an account of my life with ADD. And you know what, sometimes it sucks. Sometimes, I do stupid shit.

Like, for example, Monday night

I have a prescription for Adderall. I don’t use it very often, because really, I cannot control what it makes me focus on, but it tends to be cleaning, organizing, or other useful things that provide no scholarly benefit. But I had a project, a paper, and a quiz to study for. So I took it. Because Hope Springs Eternal.

At 11:30pm, I made this list:

Here was my To Do List

-reread Hamlet
-finish math game
-write up prospectus for thesis

Here is what I got done
-cleaned out underneath bed
-folded and put away all clothes in dresser
-hung up and organized all clothes in closet
-dry and wet swiffered the floor, including cleaning underneath my desk, which has not happened since September. It took 3 dry cloths and 2 wet ones
-Moved around roly-set-of-desk-drawers from under desk to under bed to give me more room
-Cleaned and organized desk
-Cleaned and organized shelves above desk
-Cleaned and organized pull-out keyboard drawer into something ueseful
-printed out reading assignment for Children’s Lit tomorrow
-Threw clothes into backpack to prep for going to Inae’s tomorrow.
-Got some emailing done that needed to get done.

Noticed that none of the three things on the To Do List are on the Done List.

At midnight, I took another adderall, sat down at my desk, and got shit done. The paper and the project got done and done well, and I said fuckit on studying Hamlet. This turned out to be okay, since he canceled the quiz anyway.

I finished up at 6:30 AM, and took a 45 minute nap before heading off to my classes.

Fucking Stupid. I should know better. Now, there is no guarantee that  I would have gotten  the work done any faster had I not taken the adderall, since knowing me I would have sat on the computer and done useless things instead.  But  when I am already stressed out in general, not sleeping is the best way to get sick, asthmatic, and more stressed.