A Splintered Mind

A lot is said about adults with ADHD and their inability to focus, but not enough is said when they're focused on the wrong thing. Here I became fixated on adding a certain project to my list of things to do, which was already ridiculously long. (Mobile browsers only display the first page. Please view the text entry after the embedded PDF…)   25 AUGUST 2022 Bookwork 9: Did I really want to write a book about Pokémon? Yeah, about that. One of my steady blogging gigs ten years ago was for a gaming site. When that job shriveled up, my love for gaming didn't shrivel up with it. I developed a trading system for Pokémon XY & ORAS. It sold alright but not as well as I had thought it would. When Generation VII games came out, I wrote a sequel, but the changes Game Freak made to the GTS seemed to kill trading. Basically, my system worked, but not as quickly. I never released the book. Fast forward to the future and Pokémon HOME has replaced GTS, and all of a ...

Long before “Shiny Object Syndrome” was coined as a term, an insignificant blogger from Utah referred to a similar condition and called it Multi-Irons Syndrome. Are they the same thing? Shiny Object Syndrome — The Fancy Term for Something You’ve Been Doing All Your Life There is often a difference between what an expression means when it is coined and how people end up using it. People often don’t see eye to eye on these things. One group will insist on the academic or dictionary usage of a term or word, while the popular usage tromples all over them. Irregardless, we don’t have a lot of control over language. (Yes, yes, I couldn’t resist.) Language evolves. Take a stand on one meaning, and you’ll soon find yourself in the camp of people who hate the use of the singular “they”, shaking your aging fist at the sky, shouting, “But that’s not what the word means!” We lost that particular battle years ago when peop...

Earlier this year, I admitted to myself that my current coping strategies weren’t fighting off my depression as effectively as they were before. Had they simply stopped working, or had something fundamental changed inside of me? The answer was complicated. Obviously, my coping strategies weren’t working since I spent more than half of the days each week struggling to keep my spirits up, but for the longest time, I was too sick to do anything about it. I just limped along waiting to get better. The problem with that plan was that I wasn’t getting better. My depression was fueled by chronic illness. Waiting to get better to act was like waiting to see a doctor about a broken leg after it heals. My coping strategies for depression were based on basic cognitive behavior therapy principles: Identify the trigger. Implement a solution. Experience relief. They were also based on the belief that I could regulate my moods. They worked great for years until I came upon ...

After meeting with a care manager at the University of Utah's COVID Long Hauler clinic, I gained some new information that explained what I've been going through this year. I've been needlessly hard on myself for not getting over something that has impacted me greatly and will continue to impact me greatly for months to come. I also point out recent successes, which shows me that this was a good project to undertake. I will overcome this illness. I will make my goals. This journal is helping me analzye things that have been overwhelming me for some time as well as allowing me to rethink overly agressive goals that may be fun or challenging, but don't get me published. (Mobile browsers only display the first page. Please view the text entry after the embedded PDF…)   17 SEPTEMBER 2022 Bookwork 8: I now have a name for my greatest stumbling block: Post Exertion Malaise Common with other viral fatigue syndromes, Post-COVID has the symptom of taking y...

Call it brain fog, absentmindedness, or a senior moment, but sometimes when your ADHD brain goes on the fritz, you’ve just got to laugh. I am here today to tell you that playing Sudoku daily will not improve brain fog . I know. I’ve tried multiple Sudoku books & apps, Sudoku with words, and there’s a Sudoku game out there for the Nintendo Switch that would let me play with fluffy blobs of cats, but I’m not entirely convinced that will work either. Adults with ADHD deal with brain fog on a general basis, so over the years I figured doing mental activities to improve my concentration and presence of mind couldn’t hurt. Who says that Sudoku improves concentration? The same people who used to swear by crossword puzzles, usually. Certainly, not me. No, I kid. I love playing Sudoku and feel more focused after solving a few puzzles, but after the week I’ve just had, I can tell you that it’s clearly not working as a prevention. There was t...