Pre-School Cleaning Post

Really, I shouldn’t stop my momentum by typing this, but hey, shiny!

Things that Work
-Instead of leaving the room to put each thing I find out of place away, I have a single box that everything gets tossed in. Then, I can walk around the house putting these things where they belong
-Same theory in the room itself. Focus on one area, for example, top of the dresser. Anything that goes in the desk gets placed on top of the desk, to be dealt with when I get there. This keeps me from getting distracted in organizing the desk before the dresser is done. It does mean, however, that I have to do the whole room before I stop, otherwise, 3 sections are spotless and 3 sections are impossible to use.

Things that Don’t Work
-Facebook
-Livejournal
-Tossing all the knitting into a pile
-Making An Itunes Playlist to listen to while cleaning
-Going out with a friend at 7pm and not coming home until midnight, when I have to be up at 6AM and my bed is still covered in stuff.

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.

Counter-Intuitive

I have something that I doubt you’ve ever heard someone who is ADD say: There is something very relaxing about organizing, for me, at least.

I feel at peace when I lose myself in an organizational system.

Part of this, I am sure, is that I am usually organizing to procrastinate doing work, as I am tonight. I mean, yes, I can’t do this project until I find all the sheets I need in my messy binder, but there is not reason I need to organize the binder as I do it. I mean, dude, the class ends tomorrow. (Well, technically today, it is after midnight)

But I think that it is deeper than that.

In my educational psych class, we learned about disequilibrium. Short summary, it is when your mind is a little out of whack, and you need to be in disequilibrium to learn something. For example, a child sees all things that swim in the sea as fish, and know that fish don’t breathe air, then see a dolphin breathing air, they must go through disequilibrium and confusion to learn this new fact, and assimilate it.

My theory is that because of the ADD, my brain is always a little out of whack, always trying to keep up with everything I am trying to process. When I lose myself in an organizing system, I do what the system tells me to, and my brain can calm down, relax, and just rest. It doesn’t get to do that much.

I wish I could figure out how to achieve this piece when I’m not in the middle of a crisis period, though.

Excitement of the Day

I organized both my school and personal inboxes! Go me. Now I will actually be able to find messages that I am looking for. Gmail is my savior.

Today is the last day before the summer semester ends. I am totally overwhelmed, I feel like I didn’t get enough time to hit my stride, and now it is over. I have a huge long To Do list of things to do today, but I am already at the library hacking away on it. I made the right decision that staying at the house would result in watching BSG and sewing, neither of which will help me passes my classes

I was afraid that I would be too distracted by warm weather to concentrate on summer classes, but apparently the weather has been convinced that June is actually March, so that has not been a problem

Do You Have ADD?

Checklists make me laugh. Take this one, from ADDitude, one of my current go-to places for ADD info and support (My comments are in bold):

* Do you feel overwhelmed in stores, at the office, or at parties? Is it impossible for you to shut out sounds and distractions that don’t bother others? Oh dear lord yes

* Is time, money, paper, or “stuff” dominating your life and hampering your ability to achieve your goals? yes, yes, yes, and yes

* Are you spending most of your time coping, looking for things, catching up, or covering up? Do you avoid people because of this? Are you writing this checklist to describe me?

* Have you stopped having people over to your house because of your shame at the mess? I shut my door when people come over to our house, so they can’t see

* Do you have trouble balancing your checkbook? Thank the good lord, the goddess, and the flying spaghetti monster that my online banking does it for me

* Do you often feel as if life is out of control, that it’s impossible to meet demands? What, you mean other people don’t constantly feel like their life is a plane careening towards the ground?

* Do you feel that you have better ideas than other people but are unable to organize them or act on them? Yes. I have had several ideas that I either told my friends and they acted upon, or I later noticed other doing and profiting from

* Do you start each day determined to get organized? Today will be the day I remember to check my planner!

* Have you watched others of equal intelligence and education pass you by? God, yes. It sucks

* Do you despair of ever fulfilling your potential and meeting your goals? In my weaker moments

* Have you ever been thought of as selfish because you don’t write thank-you notes or send birthday cards? Probably. My graduation thank you cards are still sitting on my desk, needing to go out. Graduation was a month ago

* Are you clueless as to how others manage to lead consistent, regular lives? How do y’all do it, anyway?

* Are you called “a slob” or “spacey?” Are you “passing for normal?” Do you feel as if you are an impostor? Yep, yep, not very well, I put on a good show

Hmmm, I answered yes to every question. Maybe I might possibly have ADD?

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.

Score 1 For the ADD, 0 for Nic

So as I finished up work and sat down to do my homework this evening, I get an email from my professor saying that she is canceling class for tomorrow morning, as she is sick. Of course, this means that I don’t have to do my homework tonight, and can watch Battlestar Gallactica and sew instead. One of my housemates pointed out that I could do the homework anyway, and I giggled, cause clearly, the man does not understand ADD.

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.

Correspondence

I suck at writing letters. Email, cards, actual written letters to mail, you name it, I’m awful at them. Especially thank you letters.

I completed a huge non-profit project with people in April, and have still not sent out thank you e-mails. I really need to get on that.

I have a pile of thank you cards from my graduation party in mid-may that are half done. I didn’t have addresses for them, and even though I now have the addresses, they still have not gotten done.

Do any of you have tips, suggestions for keeping up with things like this?

Wiiii!

So anyone with ADD who has ever done homework knows that it is very important to take breaks and do something active. I usually stretch, then do jumping jacks.

The family I live with, however, has a Wii. A, the mom, who works from home, just engaged me in some Wii Outdoor adventure. Holy crap, fun and exercisy. I may have found a solution to both my not getting enough exercise issue and my breaks in concentration issue. Of course, I still need to get work done in between breaks. Off for another timed hour of work, then more Wii!