A Splintered Mind

I'm an addict. I love reading. Sometimes, though, it is not often simply a joy. There is a drive to the consumption of letters that causes me to read on. If I have visited all my daily haunts, there is a moment where I wonder "Bummer, what else can I read now?" I am not sated. My thirst is not slaked. I am thirsty for even more new information - and hence I have become a serious news junky. The web simply cannot publish enough news about computers or politics. And yet there is so much other material I'd like to read. So much I'd like to learn that I'm not learning. Why aren't I driven to study Spanish or Japanese? Why aren't I driven to read more productive tutorials online? Why aren't I driven to sit at my desk and draw and create new works at a similar frenetic rate? As I continue to take charge of my life away from my disabilities these are the types of questions I demand answers for. My wife came home last week all excited ab...

Depression after success. Sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it? For me, this is almost the most annoying aspect of ADD, second only to my kids and I are really enjoying American Idol this year. We're big Carrie Underwood fans. And yes, I changed the subject on purpose. ;) This time it was controlled and exaggerated, but most of the time ADD takes me for a ride and I don't realize I've boarded the train until long after I've left whatever I was supposed to be doing far behind me. That aspect of ADD is annoying and disruptive enough, but getting sad because I did well!?! What is up with that? There are better descriptions of the phenomenon in Edward M. Hallowell's and John J. Ratey's book, Driven to Distraction, but here's a my simple explanation. With ADD, focus is always an issue. When I manage to get myself engrossed with a project, I enter a new zone of focus — of hyperfocus. Finally, I have clarity. Finally, I have purpose. Finally, I am ...

There's a title that doesn't make sense. What do those two things have to do with each other? Read along and find out... Why can't any of these jokers do this stuff right? I've spent all day learning the ins and outs of podcasting and let me tell you, this is not easy stuff. It's not hard to do when you know what to do, but getting to that "knowing" part is the trick. There really aren't great tutorials out there yet that make setting up one's own podcast a "no brainer". This is a new frontier and the convergence of tools hasn't happened yet. One has to use multiple tools and services to get the job done. Here's an example. Blogger.com doesn't support RSS enclosures, which means I can't podcast here unless I convert my Blogger.com Atom feed through Feedburner - a seperate service - into a RSS 2.0 feed. That works fine, but Feedburner doesn't often update that feed because they offer their service for free...