A Splintered Mind

In which Douglas proves he’s not a Boomer I’ve been rethinking my engagement with AI recently. I’m too eager to be an unpaid beta tester for these guys. Companies that have invested billions into AI will gaslight us all day about how imperative AI tools should be in our lives. They’ll force us to deal with their AI, replace perfectly useful services with AI, and cram AI down our throats every time we turn around. (Microsoft 365 Copilot, I’m looking at you.) So what good is AI? Judging by how much trouble it gives me, I’d be tempted to say “not much”. ChatGPT once formatted CSS tables so poorly for me that I spent longer fighting with it than I did just coding them myself. Grok often hallucinates answers, gaslights me until I call it out, then it apologizes and gives me the information that I wanted. Just tonight I asked Siri how many kids Ronald Reagan had and what were their names (since his oldest son passed away today) , and it told me “five”, but withheld the names. ChatG...

(These AI images make me laugh. Yes, I know the calendar is messed up. Allow me my silly moments.) I’ve decided to think dramatically about my obstacles in my first attempt to blog about my new condition with a sense of humor. Honestly, there hasn’t been much to laugh at. For example, I got distracted playing Chess on Duolingo the other day and gave myself Post Exertional Malaise (PEM). First, I noticed the headache, then I noticed that I was panting, and then I realized that I was dizzy. It was just chess! But I lost track of time, got caught up in it, and overtaxed my brain. Stamina spent. Crash incoming. An entire day wasted. It’s hard to laugh about things like that. I had big plans to implement. Instead, I watched TV—until that gave me a headache, too. Every day I have lists, but I rarely make it to the end of them because of the drain cognitive, physical, and even emotional events have on my stamina levels. Chronic fatigue is complicated. That’s whe...

Since the pandemic, I have discovered something harder to deal with than Tourettes. It challenges my efforts to be upbeat and optimistic, and has given me very little to laugh about. I manage my ADHD & Depression just fine—or should I say I deal with them just fine. They represent road bumps that cause me to slow down, but then I get back up to speed. My Tourettes acts more like an IED that blows up my schedule. It takes a bit more effort and time to recover from, but I always get moving forward again. Post Viral Dysautonomia, as I’ve been recently diagnosed with, has been more like a head-on collision with demolition charges for the past four years, taking out both the car and the roads. It leaves me exhausted, susceptible to illness, and with oxygen saturation that routinely drops below 88%. Recently, I had a setback in my efforts to overcome dysautonomia. It was just back surgery. I had a cyst removed. Nothing drastic. It was day surgery. I laughed and chatted wi...

I joined the Midori Traveler’s Notebook (TN) club this past Summer. I missed the big blogging heyday about them around 2012 to 2015 when the Internet seem to explode over this nifty little notebook system, but I was all about digital back then. I loved my iPhone and didn’t feel a need to go analog. Recently, though, I noticed some artists doing inspiring things in their TNs, and I thought this could be the kick in the pants I needed to fit sketching back into my life. I started small with one notebook insert with a leather cover. Only when I noted that I was actually using it, I invested in more inserts. The only feature it was missing for me was a ToDo list insert, but nobody made one. And thus I began my journey yesterday into DIY Notebook Hell. With ADHD as my guide, I boldly discovered blog after blog of incredibly ornate notebook inserts that people made for themselves because the official ones were just “too expensive”. Since you can get official ones fo...

Ever find yourself missing important messages because your voicemail box is filled with half a decade of unlistened to calls? There might be a solution for that. Adult ADHD is almost like the Baskin Robbins of the mental health community. There are so many flavors of ADHD, you can be forgiven for questioning if they’re all from the same diagnosis. Some adults with ADHD daydream. Others are chronically late. Some run their mouths off with their feet in the way. Others never stop talking. Some forget why they went to the store. Others forget who they just called because something distracted them after they dialed. There are plenty of attributes that we all have in common, but I am constantly surprised by how diverse the ADHD community is. One size truly does not fit all. I find that I have difficulty getting organized, I have chronic procrastination issues, I have trouble following through, and all because I have an intolerance for boredom. Those are fairly basic ADHD attribu...

I’ll write a bit vaguely today because I want to touch upon some things that are family matters and how they impact me. Recently, I have noticed longtime readers of my blog have leapfrogged over me while my life has become stagnant. I caught myself beginning to feel bitter about it, so instead of letting that bitterness settle into depression, I will share some things that I have learned instead. My life took a detour a few years back, if eleven can be called of few. It was as if I was forced to take an exit and found myself on the service road bumping along besides the highway, falling behind all the other traffic. I could see where I wanted to go, but I just couldn’t get there as fast. I called that detour “divorce”, and it took me a few years to get back up onto the highway. I finished two books and blogged professionally during that productive time. Managing my depression while optimistically making big goals helped me to move forward. The next deto...

Let’s celebrate my one year anniversary since getting COVID–19! 🎉 I know people who felt that COVID was a pernicious plot by politicians to put down the populace. I know others who believed that nobody would ever get the virus if they were vaccinated, and anybody not getting vaccinated was trying to kill them. Because of this polarization, I have a hard time talking to people about my experience with Long COVID, or Post-COVID Syndrome as I prefer to call it. Although I have found sympathetic ears out there, they aren’t the norm. The anti-vaccine folks look down on me for masking up and getting vaccinated, or they shun me for admitting that COVID–19 was far worse than a mild cold. If I acknowledge the dangers of COVID–19 in anyway, I’m a compliant sheep to them. On the other side, the pro-vaccine cheer team pretentiously lecture me on the importance of being vaccinated when I tell them I got COVID. I suppose their reasoning is that I couldn...

Come explore with me the strange intersection of pants and ADHD. Last July, I lost three pairs of pants. As usual, I posted to social media to make light of it, but just between you and me, I stayed up fairly late searching the house like a ninja in search of those pants. Hiding my presence, I moved into almost every room in my home, making no sound as I lifted things, rearranged them, and rifled through them hoping those pants would turn up. I didn’t search the fridge—because that would have been silly—but I searched everywhere else except my roommates’ rooms. It was possible that somebody absconded with my pants, but it was more likely I put them somewhere stupid, right? Besides, I could just imagine the conversation when I accidentally woke my roommates up as I searched under their pillows and bedsheets. “Douglas, why are you dressed like a ninja?” “Go back to sleep. You’re dreaming,” I’d say while making ninja-like hypnosis...

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...

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...

A lot is made of ADHD’s super power of hyperfocus. I’ve written about it on several occasions over the years as well. I’ve even created a ToDo List technique to simulate it! Should we really label hyperfocus as a superpower, though? I have always been painfully aware of the downsides to hyperfocus . I’ll even avoid undertaking certain tasks because I know that I’ll slip into hyperfocus and loose track of time and the events around me. It’s not always a desirable state of mind to be in. Normally, adults with adhd might as well be hamsters on a wheel, furiously running, but not getting anywhere. Suddenly, hyperfocus grants us clarity of vision and purpose, opening the road in front of us into a straight line towards success. When your days are spent fighting against your own brain to get something done, hyperfocus is a big deal. So, what’s so bad about hyperfocus? Hyperfocus without limits is a form of tunnel vision. I like to say th...

The problem with chronic illness is that it's boring. I don't mean for the person stricken in bed and suffering. Who cares about them, right⸮ I am referring to everybody else who finds the subject duller than a twenty-four hour CSPAN marathon. When the chronically sick try to tell others about their struggles, they are likely to receive no small degree of exasperation from people who can't hide their dismay, as if to say "What? This again?" Of course, not everybody is so callous, and even if they are, they aren't likely to be so open about it. They'll smile at you, nod their head sympathetically, tell you to call them if you ever need anything, then disconnect their phone number. I am almost certain this is what really happens, or at least, I am mostly certain since my observations were possibly affected by my 102°F fever. As I've written over and over before, I contracted COVID-19 in October like an early Halloween treat, received RSV for Thankgiv...

Can you be so forgetful that you’d forget that you were dating somebody? For a few groggy moments, I was convinced that I had. As I dealt with forgotten bills, paperwork unearthed from the Jurassic era, and various and sundry things I had meant to get to sometime around last September, I wondered if maybe, perhaps possibly, I was forgetful. Oh, everybody forgets things! It’s perfectly normal. For example, my mother routinely forgets my name. After bringing me into this world many long and hoary decades ago, you’d think she’d have gotten the hang of it by now, but there she goes again, calling me by name by starting with the youngest son then moving upwards through the sediment of time until she comes around to me. People with ADHD are just like that, except with trips to another room, a few phone calls, and a sudden urge to reorganize their closet in between each name. Perfectly normal! That’s why you probably won’t be surprised to hear that ...

Ever been so ADHD that you can’t see what you’re looking for, even when it’s right in front of your face? Given that ADHD has as many flavors as a bag of jelly beans, you might not all relate with ADHD tunnel vision. I, unfortunately, can’t say the same. If I had a jelly bean for every time something I was looking for was found right there in front of me, I could go into business and give Jelly Belly a run for their money. Today, the missing item was my iPhone. I got up from the table, left the kitchen, then wondered where my iPhone had gone. I went downstairs and searched for it. My daughter called it. I visited every room of the home as I retraced my steps all over the place. I imagine I traced paths just as comically convoluted as any you can find in Family Circus. Finally! Finally. There was one room I hadn’t visited. The kitchen. And there was my iPhone. The ringer had been turned off, but it was right where I had been sitting at the table, hidden in plain sight, ...

A lack of focus is the one common trait that all adults with ADHD seem to have, but focus isn’t as elusive as you might fear. The other day, a friend texted me out of the blue. He wanted a list of some of the things that I do to maintain focus. Initially, I panicked. I’ve been chronically ill since getting COVID–19 last October. I haven’t blogged in four months, so my ADHD advice muscles were all out of shape. Fortunately for my friend, I haven’t met a topic yet that I didn’t have an opinion on, so I worked up my courage and sent a list to him. Finding focus is a complicated issue for adults with ADHD . There are times when we have far too much focus and times when focus is as rare as a moderate during election primaries. Too much. Too little. This would be fine to work with if there was predictable rhythm to the pattern, but usually we find ourselves with too much focus on things we shouldn’t be doing (often called hyperfocus), and too li...

I pull back the curtain a bit today, revealing a deep, dark secret about myself—a secret so dank, surely I’ll lose the last three readers I have. I’ve been reading far too many Japanese light novels lately. It started as a form of research, but now I actually like the darn things. I can’t get enough of them. They’re my personal Pandora’s Box. I opened the beautiful, ornately engraved box, saw the plentiful wonders inside, and now I can’t shut the lid. Is this an ADHD obsession, or a newfound joy? I can’t tell, which is why I’m troubled. Have you seen my Goodreads timeline? I read almost all escapist manga and light novels these days. I know I’ve been struggling with depression lately, but it’s embarrassing! I’m sitting here wearing a Fair Isle style, wool sweater, a designer, long-sleeved, henley shirt, and Izod tech pants, not a 1-ply t-shirt featuring Sailor Moon with chip crumbs all over my belly. How will my ...

A new beginning that looks an awful lot like the old one. When I set out to explore fractal art, I face a confusing array of controls & parameters. It has taken me years to develop the eye to select the best cropping, the most flattering palette, and the most interesting settings, then present them in a pleasing manner. Without this discipline, the fractal is an utter mess with no focus. By making a few poorly chosen decisions, the same mathematical location and the same color palette can appear completely different—and far less appealing. Of course, anybody with the time and desire to learn the software can produce pleasing images. It isn’t as if I received a PhD in advance fractal art, traveling to distant lands to study with the Mandelbrot masters before writing my doctoral thesis on the societal implications of sliders versus number fields and how they subvert the patriarchy. However, as I was exploring a particular fractal set the other day,—tweaking the parameters t...

All was not terrible in 2020.  The press will try to convince you otherwise, but their job is to panic you into thinking the world is ending any minute…again…so that you click on their news links to help them make money. I'm sure your personal life is filled with happy events that spit in the eye of Cynicism 2020. In fact, I'm positive I can rattle off dozens of such events in my own personal life. For example, my ex and I successfully gained guardianship over our learning disabled daughter. Pretty good, huh? I filed pro se, and the hearing went without a hitch. Take that, ADHD ! I sold another article to ADDitude Magazine. Huzzah! I successfully learned to do the 180º cross-step on my longboard while carving. Well, that was important to me even if it seems obscure. I've only been practicing for three years. Oh! There was that time I crossed the street without getting hit by a car. That was a big event in 2020. And those monoliths from space aliens planted in my Utahn backy...

Sometimes I wonder if there’s a support group out there for adults with ADHD who have an open tabs addiction. ¹ Hello, my name is Douglas Cootey, and I’m a hard core tabs junkie. Maybe this seems like a first world problem. Maybe you’re asking yourself, “What’s the big deal with several hundred open tabs?” If that’s how you think, you might need to join me at that meeting. In theory there’s nothing wrong with lots of open browser tabs. I did things that way for years. If I found a web page with a great project or article I wanted to refer to later, I’d keep the tab open and leave it with the other saved ToDo tabs. The problem I ran into, however, was although ToDo tabs helped me not forget important data, I had so many tabs open in my browser I couldn’t find what I needed. Just as ToDo lists can get long and unmanageable, ToDo tabs multiply until they become noise—no longer useful as resources or reminders. Yes, you’ve got web pages open for that funny self-surgery with tweez...

I came across this old blog post that I never shared here. It’s from March 2013. I updated it a bit. I hope you enjoy it. If I thought ADHD could throw monkey wrenches into my plans before, divorce was like dumping the entire plumber’s toolbox into the works instead. It’s taken a bit of time to heal, to sort out the mess, and to know what to do with all those monkey wrenches. We have joint custody so we split parental duties as well as time spent with the kids right down the middle. She gets medical, and I get school. Since I am in charge of making sure my girls’ school paperwork is in order, I like to use my iPhone to keep things straight with the Calendar, Reminders, and Clear (todo list) apps. With those apps I keep track of everything that needs to be taken care of. My skills are awe inspiring—that is assuming I remember to write things down in the first place. Unfortunately, life gives me helpful reminders of how important it is to use my reminder system, like that week...