It’s a well-known truism in ADHD literature that stress makes everything worse. I’ve been a bit frazzled lately, what with looking for a day job, and getting rejected (or just ignored), and having a looming deadline, and my partner starting a new job with a crazy commute, and global warming and world hunger and baseball.
And with the frazzled comes a resurgence of attention problems. Yesterday I had an appointment with my friend to get my hair cut. She lives a long way away, I was taking public transit, and only a couple of trains go near her house. I didn’t want to be late, so I raced out of the house … without my cellphone. That would be the device with her address, cross street, and phone number in case I got lost.
Fortunately, I was able to remember enough of her message to get myself there — late, of course. Though in addition to my cell phone I forgot to bring the book I’m reading, so I was bored as hell for two 40-minute train rides there and back.
Today, I was late for my art lesson because I almost forgot something I needed to bring. After the lesson, my mind already racing ahead to the grocery shopping, the job search, my deadline, and the recent net neutrality decision, I stepped out into the hallway in my student’s home. My student’s father and brother had been painting the hallway. His dad warned us that they had spilled paint on the floor. He told us to walk carefully so we didn’t track it through the house — so what did I do? I stepped carefully and awkwardly around the paint on the floor … putting my hand on the @#%^$*&! freshly painted wall for balance, leaving a nice collection of fingerprints.
Gods I feel like a jerk.
But the truth is I was having a bad day even before the art lesson. For instance, I was going to make myself a salad for lunch, and with that end in mind I put a bunch of lettuce in a large salad bowl. And I haven’t seen it since. Seriously. That was around one pm. At about two, I realized that I’d never eaten that salad, and started to wondering where it had gotten to. I’ve looked everywhere. I looked on the counter, in the fridge, even in all the cupboards. I even checked the bedroom and the bathroom. I’m beginning to wonder if I fabricated the whole event in my mind, and there never was any salad. What does that say about me, that the kind of thing my brain makes up is salad?
It’s either that, or I will find it once it begins to smell.
Things have clearly gotten out of control here. I feel that things like lost salad can be taken as a warning that if I don’t take some time and calm the hell down I’ll be losing more important things, like my keys, or my wallet, or my laptop. I find that ritual is one of the most effective ways for me to do this. I light a few candles, meditate on a bowl of water, and read a few tarot cards to see if they trigger any insights.
Maybe I’ll ask them where my salad is.