And [...]]]> 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.

I’ve been hanging out on the Women with ADHD Ning, and recently one of the members mentioned that she’d never really fit in with “the girls”.  Several more of members chimed in about how they’d never felt “feminine”.  It seems that a lot of women with ADD are just no good with the girly stuff.

It’s [...]]]>

I’ve been hanging out on the Women with ADHD Ning, and recently one of the members mentioned that she’d never really fit in with “the girls”.  Several more of members chimed in about how they’d never felt “feminine”.  It seems that a lot of women with ADD are just no good with the girly stuff.

It’s not surprising, really.  A femme has to be organized.  She needs to get her hair cut regularly, and she needs to leave time to style it every morning, and then she needs to do her make-up.  She needs to shop for coordinated, fashionable, flattering outfits, which can mean buying more bras than I’ve ever seen in one place to go with different necklines and silhouettes.  Then she has to get up in the morning early enough to put all of this together.   If you have ADD, you’re lucky to be heading off to work with matching shoes.  We need to keep it simple just to stay sane.

For instance, take my wardrobe (please!).  Clothes are one of the areas of my life that I streamline for time-management purposes.  I don’t spend a ton of time shopping or dressing.  To this end, my couture consists of five t-shirts and a single pair of jeans that are all way too big.  But what the heck, I have a belt, which means my pants stay up.   It’s all good.

Most of the time, this works pretty well for me … except that I’m going to France next month, and people there dress up a little more, and I don’t want to stick out like the Ugly American.  On a more practical level, I need some clothes that dry quickly, and my giant pair of jeans is not that.

And that means it’s time to shop for Pants.  The dreaded, dreaded pants.

Allow me to digress into an anecdote.  I used to work for a major outdoor retailer.  Many of the women who shopped with us were marathoners, triathletes, and century cyclists.  What I’m getting at here is that they are not your stereotypical chubby Americans.  They are not marshmallows.  They are athletes in prime physical condition.

And yet, every single woman who shopped at the store where I worked would come out of the dressing room with a dozen pairs of pants.  “I’m really sorry”, she’d say as she handed them to me. “I don’t want to make you restock all these, it’s just that none of them fit.  I’m sorry.  I must be a mutant or something”.

At the time, I was a good sixty pounds overweight, and pants shopping was a nightmare.  I assumed that it was because I was fat; for some reason, a lot of stores — my employer included — seem to assume that fat people don’t exercise or go outdoors.  By their standards, I was the mutant.  Right?

But if that were true, why were all these fit, athletic women struggling to fit into pants?

The answer is that Pants are Evil.

Pants, you see, don’t fit any woman, at all ever.  At least, not until her spirit has been broken by trying on the 30th pair in four hours, and even then, only if she’s lucky.  It has nothing to do with how fat or thin a woman is.  It has to do with the fact that she’s a woman who dares to shop for Pants.

Back then, I was a size 20.  When I started working at that store, nothing we sold off the rack fit me (I had to go to the website for extended sizes, and even then it was a maybe).  Shopping for pants was a miserable, horrible experience that made me feel like a short, fat blob of blobbiness.  I was sure that if I could get into shape, lose some weight, everything would be different.

Now that I’ve gotten into shape, shopping for pants is a miserable, horrible experience that makes me feel like a short, fat blob of blobbiness.  I’m a size 8, or 10, or 12, depending on who’s asking.  There’s actually one retailer’s size chart where I’m an 8 in the hips, a 10 in the waist, and a 12 in the bust — except of course that size 12 shirts haven’t fit me in six months.  Except that one time, when it did.  And I recently had to return a size 8 I ordered because it was too big.   Of course, it should go without saying that whatever pants I get are 5 inches too long.

Talking to those athletic women who came out of our fitting rooms with armsfull of pants should’ve given me a clue.

Being on time has always been a struggle for me, and it’s an area where I’ve made great strides in recent years.  I’m still not perfect, but I used to be late for absolutely [...]]]> I’ve been back from my holiday trip for two weeks now, and since then I’ve managed to be on time exactly once.

Being on time has always been a struggle for me, and it’s an area where I’ve made great strides in recent years.  I’m still not perfect, but I used to be late for absolutely everything all the time.  It got to the point where my friends would just plan on seeing me half an hour after we were supposed to meet up.

Over the last few years, I’ve managed to get better at it, but I couldn’t quite tell you how — possibly this has something to do with why things have gotten chaotic over the past few weeks.  The trip caused a disruption, and then being sick caused another disruption, and I just lost my grip on my routine.

Routine is a scary word for a lot of adults with ADD.  By its very definition it threatens the spontenaity we ADD types love and excel at.  “Routine” conjures up bad memories of school, or the job we hate, or the structure that was imposed upon us by others — often, we were told, because we are too careless or scatterbrained to manage our own schedules.  Like “organized” or “neat” or “schedule”, it’s a word that makes us feel like screw-ups.

It took a long time for me to even want a routine, let alone to know how to build one, but starting last summer I began to create a schedule for myself.  One thing that helped, of course, is that it was my schedule; it wasn’t something imposed on me as a punishment for handing in my assignments late, or bring home a bad report card.  The other thing that helped was changing the way I think about routine.

You see, I realized that routine, far from being an inherently boring monotony, is actually a way to streamline the boring stuff and give myself more time for what I enjoy.  If I know that I clean my kitchen from 1:30 to 2:30 on Wednesdays, and I know what order in which I do each part of that task, I don’t have to waste time thinking about how to clean my kitchen.  I don’t have to waste time wondering how long it will take.  I don’t have to set aside all afternoon and evening on Friday because company is coming on Saturday and the entire house is a disaster.

Likewise, if I know that I get the same items at the grocery store every week, I can have a copy of that list on my cell phone.  My list has items to buy every week, like bread, and another section for things to check on every week, like olive oil.  I don’t have to waste time each week making up a brand new grocery list.  Furthermore, if my list takes the store lay-out into account, I don’t have to wander around backtracking or looking for items on my list.  I start with the bread, then the dairy, and so on.  I can be in and out of the grocery store in under 20 minutes.

My routine leaves me more time to be spontaneous.  If I want to make an unplanned stop on the way home from the store — no problem, I have the time.  If I want to go out with friends on Friday night — no problem, the house is clean.  The time that I used to spend writing grocery lists and doing emergency cleaning is time that I can now spend making art, blogging, or just watching TV.

I guess now I just need a routine for leaving the house in the morning.

One of the most popular New Year’s resolutions, year in and year out, is to “get organized”.  According to the National Association of Professional Organizers, who polled more than 400 adults last November, 71% of respondents felt that their quality of [...]]]> It’s the New Year, and that means New Year’s it’s time for New Year’s resolutions.

One of the most popular New Year’s resolutions, year in and year out, is to “get organized”.  According to the National Association of Professional Organizers, who polled more than 400 adults last November, 71% of respondents felt that their quality of life would improve if they were more organized.  65 percent described their home as “at least moderately disorganized”, and 27 percent said disorder keeps them from being effective at work.  Furthermore, 96 percent of respondents believe that better organization could save them precious time every day, with 30 percent of respondents reporting that they could save at least 30 minutes each day, and 15 percent of respondents felt they could save more than an hour each
day.

To put that in perspective, 30 minutes a day adds up to a whole week every year.  An hour a day adds up to fifteen days — that’s more than two weeks — each year.

If you’re an adult with ADD, chances are that you’re more disorganized than most, and that getting organized will be more of a challenge than it might be for other folks.  You may have started your New Year’s organizing resolution and gotten stuck.  Fortunately, you don’t have to go it alone.  The Adult ADD declutter group, in association with addclasses.com, is meeting for the next three weeks to provide an online chat forum to support its members in decluttering.  The cost is $147 for three classes, but if you sign up by January 8th, it’s only $47.

I’ve had good luck with long-distance group coaching in the past.  It tends to work best if you’ve already gotten a toe-hold in your organizing project; for instance, if you know what you need to know, but are having trouble motivating yourself, or if you’ve already set up a system that you need to maintain.  So check it out, and good luck!

Why tabby cats?

Well, a Squidoo community that I’m a part of has been having weekly contests, and last week’s was to write a lens for the “animals and nature” category.  I figured this would be good for me; all of my lenses to date have been [...]]]> This weekend I wrote a Squidoo lens about tabby cats.

Why tabby cats?

Well, a Squidoo community that I’m a part of has been having weekly contests, and last week’s was to write a lens for the “animals and nature” category.  I figured this would be good for me; all of my lenses to date have been about my various cognitive issues, and some of them have been pretty heavy.  I chose “tabby cats” as my topic for two reasons: one, I have two tabby cats; and number two, I am such a nerd that I have actually phenotyped my cats.

That’s right, I was reading about cat genetics several years ago on the internet, and armed with the information I found about dominant and recessive alleles, I figured out which genes both of my cats express.  I did this for fun.

Anyway, I figured that I’d be able to write this lens in my sleep.  But then I decided that I wanted to illustrate the lens with photos of my actual cats.  So I had to take pictures of them, and then download them, and then crop them, and then upload them, and then write blurbs about what they illustrated …

And in short, the lens took me twenty #%*@ing hours.  Gah.  Actually, a lot of my lenses, and my blog entries, and anything else I write, tends to take me way longer than I feel it should.  You may have noticed that I can’t write a blog entry without writing an essay.

I know I’d be more productive if I could let it go sometimes.  One of my MFA profs liked to tell a story about a pottery class in which half the students were told that they’d be graded on the quality of one perfect pot, so they spent the entire term on that one pot.  The other half of the class was told they’d be graded on the number of pots they produced; the quality of the pieces didn’t matter.  Those students spent the term madly making pots, as many as they could.

Guess which group produced the best ceramics?

If you know anything about the creative process, you won’t be surprised to learn that it was the second group.  They felt free to experiment and make mistakes, because the only thing that mattered was that they made as many pots as they could.  They felt free, and it showed in their work.

What does this have to do with ADD and organization?  Well, I’ve been reading a lot about time management lately, and it turns out that perfectionism is a common ADD trait. It’s also a huge drain on productivity.  It certainly tell you that it messes with my life.  I don’t update my blogs as often as I would like, because I feel like I have to say something profound, and I feel obligated to add graphics (that takes quite a bit of time, actually).

So I am hereby resolving to write my blog posts without worrying how “good” they are.  It’s a blog, dammit, not a New Yorker article or a PhD thesis.  Some posts will be extensive and detailed.  Others, well, they’ll just be blog posts.

“I think we should help each other get organized”, she said.

I was stunned. “Get organized? Help each other?” I asked. “How can I be any help to you at all? You’re pretty [...]]]> My organizing journey began in the fall of 2005 when a friend of mine called me with an interesting proposition.

“I think we should help each other get organized”, she said.

I was stunned. “Get organized? Help each other?” I asked. “How can I be any help to you at all? You’re pretty organized already. I’m a chaos demon. I think I just need to come to terms with that.”

“I realize that I know more about organizing than you do,” said my friend. “That’s OK. But I just moved in with my partner, I’ve got a lot of unpacking to do, and two people’s stuff to deal with. I could use the company. And I think I could help you a lot.”

“Look, I’m grateful, I really am. I’m happy to help you get unpacked. I just don’t think I’ll ever be organized. Honestly. I’ve tried EVERYTHING. You wouldn’t believe the money I’ve wasted on containers and drawer organizers. Besides, I’m in grad school, and I have a job … I have no time and no money.”

“Do you have one afternoon a week?” she asked.

“Well, I guess Friday afternoons are free”, I said.

“Great. If I recommend a book, a single, inexpensive book, are you willing to buy it?”

“I don’t know. I feel like I’ve read everything and nothing works. Besides, I’ve got a ton of reading to do already.”

“You haven’t read this,” my friend told me. “And it’s easy. It won’t take you any time at all.”

“OK, fine, I’ll buy the book”, I said. “I just don’t want you to feel bad if this doesn’t work.”

“I know you’ve had a lot of bad experiences in the past, but I know you, and I really think this will work.  I wouldn’t be suggesting it otherwise,” my friend said. “Go find that book. And I’ll see you Friday.”

Hmph, I thought to myself after I hung up. We’ll just see about this book.

The book, Julie Morgenstern’s Organizing from the Inside Out, would change my life. Using it, I was actually able to organize my space, starting a cascade of healthy, positive change that has completely transformed the way I see myself.

I was greeted by a scattering of ratsh*t.

Nice.

My cursory googling indicates that they’re probably roof rats. They probably [...]]]> No, the OTHER kind of rat pack

This afternoon, there was a noise as of heavy construction coming from the ceiling in my kitchen.  I went upstairs to the bedroom and checked the closet that’s in that same corner.

I was greeted by a scattering of ratsh*t.

Nice.

My cursory googling indicates that they’re probably roof rats. They probably found their way into my roof through an opening not much bigger than a nickel.  They probably like my roof because they can run from my roof to my neighbor’s roof to an adjacent apple tree in my neighbor’s yard, and roof rats like fruit.  Roof rats also to carry and transmit diseases by all kinds of exciting methods including aerosolized matter from feces and urine.

Here’s hoping I don’t get hanta virus, and that my landlords are responsive to this problem.