A Splintered Mind

Saturday – Entry 37: I should be working on my second draft, but I am gripped by an epiphany I just had. One could say it is even an old epiphany rediscovered with new words. I will never like myself. This is the epiphany I had: I will never like myself. Not unless I change how I think. Somehow I have sewn my self-esteem into my goal making so that if I fail to meet my goals, I hate myself for the failure. If I meet the goals, then the momentary boost in self-esteem is erased the moment I select a new goal. And there is always a new goal. That is why I will never like myself. Now that I realize what I’ve been doing, I can’t think of a more wrong-headed way to go about developing self-esteem. When I was younger I liked myself. I was pretty awesome if you asked me. Self-esteem at that time wasn’t based on accomplishments because I was too young to have any—not in my late teens and early twenties. Instead, my awesomeness was based solely on the caliber of my goals and how good ...

The life of an adult with ADHD is always fun! One of the upstairs neighbors dragged their drippy garbage all down the stairs, across my doorstop, and throughout the breezeway. It bothered me deeply, so I asked management to clean it. They sent a guy with a high-powered steam cleaner to make short work of the mess. So I quickly grabbed my doormat, banged it out, dusted it off, stored it inside, then awaited my doorstep to be sparkly clean.  Soon, their work was done, and I rushed outside to behold the wonderfulness. Everything was scrubbed and beautiful to behold except for the maintenance guy's muddy footprint right on my doorstep. Isn't that just my luck?  That footprint bothered me even deeper than the dribbley garbage. So I grumbled and walked over to my balcony to grab my outside broom. Then I fixed myself something to eat. About 30 minutes later I noticed there was a fly in my kitchen. Was a window open? Great. I left the balcony door wide open. I hadn...

Monday - Entry 36: Not sure where to begin. Let’s try this: And then I was depressed. There. I can work with a beginning like that. It’s spells out the problem and hints that something happened before I made my realization. This day has been a hard one to get through. The sickness lingers, sapping me of energy & strength. Each cough is a gagging experience. My lungs burn. My head throbs. I’ve been sick like this since August 21st. I know. I know. I promised not to count the days. I haven’t. I just remember acutely the day my life ended. You’ll have to forgive me. I don’t consider lying on the couch being productive, having an adventure, or living for that matter. I’m pretty discouraged. I’ve even given up on reaching out to people for comfort. Conversations sound too much like this: Me: Hi, it’s Douglas. Them: Oh, hey! How are you doing? Me: Still sick, but hanging in there. Got a moment? Them: Oh, jeez… Me: Excuse me? Them: Oh look! I have to, um, water my eggs or something...

NOTICE: Since I am disabled, sometimes I am offline. Please don't expect a speedy response to your comments. If you need immediate help, please call the hotline or reach out to somebody you trust. Update 2016: This article was featured in my book "Saying NO to Suicide" , with added commentary. On National Suicide Prevention Day last week, many Twitter celebrities did their civic duty by retweeting the same two tweets over & over again, both pointing to suicide prevention hotlines. Some people who discuss suicide the other 364 days of the year were irritated by the superficial emphasis on hotlines—as if tweeting a hotline constituted quality support. Certainly, Twitter can be vapid. Twitter advocacy is usually about feeling charitable more than actually being charitable. But were suicide prevention hotlines as bad as people claimed? I generally considered a hotline the last option because there are so many other better, more personable, resources out the...

If you've been following my blog for a while, you'll know that years ago my chronic motor tic disorder interfered with my ability to draw. I fought to keep my skills, but stopped trying in 2006 or so. I played at it from time to time, then I eventually stopped pursuing it altogether. I lost heart. I could remember how the pen was supposed to move on paper, but could no longer get my hand to comply. Something terrible had happened. More than the loss of skill, I had begun to be afraid of the blank page. Drawing wasn't fun anymore; it was stressful. Anything I drew that didn't compare to the skill of years past represented failure to me. Since August of 2011, my ticking has abated somewhat so I've been pushing myself to draw again. That train may have left the station for me career-wise, but I don't like to let fear dictate my actions, and I miss drawing when it wasn't work. So I invested in a Wacom Bamboo Duo stylus and started playing with Paper by 53...

Friday – Entry 35: We all deal with problems. Some of our problems are worse than others, some lesser. My problems seem to be health related. I realize they're not degenerative, or deadly, or even crippling, but they do make life just that much more difficult to manage. So I write about it. I write to communicate. I write to connect. I write to express. I write to cope. What follows is my attempt to cope and be positive. I am discouraged, but I can't allow it to become depression, so I write to be free of it. On August 21st, I became sick. Although I rushed in to see somebody at the Instacare clinic, they laughed and said that it was only a three day virus and there was nothing to worry about, but I had been down this road before. I had felt this sick before. I was very worried. I didn't want to go into the sickest months of the year with the same nasty illness I had leaving the last Winter. The good news is that my blood pressure is 128/86. Considering that I was 1...

There are beasts lurking in my home. They are jagged, ugly things that tower in corners. They sit by the TV and sprawl upon my kitchen counter. They come out at night in my bedroom to trip me in the dark. They are made out of forgotten intentions and the expensive dreams of the past whose sole purpose is to weigh me down and crush me under their toppling mass. Oh, who am I kidding? They're junk piles. After I spent January thru March sick with flu & pneumonia, then March until now recovering from a car accident, I have created the nightmarish horror of several junk piles. My normally organized receipt collection and carefully sorted bill folders have been transformed into mounds of paper piles. If I need to find a document or bill, I must excavate it from the geological layers of my neglected shame. Once you let them get out of control, junk piles are hard to manage. Important bills and letters can be mislaid, making you miss deadlines. Gifts can be lost as well. I spent ...

A new take on "Carrot Top" A week has passed and I am still pleased with myself. My first draft is finished. Did I mention that already? I may have crowed about it earlier. What I am more pleased about, however, is that I used an unconventional approach to help me reach a goal and avoid a pitfall. I've already gone into detail about how growing out my hair , as silly a goal as it may seem, was perfect for the carrot I needed to start and finish my book's first draft within two months. But it also had the side-effect of helping me overcome ADHD's "depression after success" . When an ADHD mind finds focus, it finds clarity. This is a blissful experience for those whose minds are often filled with calamity and distractions. The sweet relief of hyperfocus on a project helps us feel calmly purposeful. It filters out the noise around us as we get busy being productive. Hyperfocus is a great attribute of the ADHD mind , but it can be misspent. We tend to empl...