A Splintered Mind

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...

22K Pageviews? Not bad! Have I mentioned I was sick for a long time at the beginning of the year? I may have mentioned it once or twice ¹ . Well, while I was down for the count, my editors over at ADDitude Magazine were counting pageviews for an article I wrote for them a while back . Apparently, I hit 22,213 pageviews for that article alone. They told me all about it last February while I was slightly inconvenienced. I just recently discovered their post when I had to use carefully placed demolition charges and a pick axe to catch up with my email. I know my mother wasn’t reloading that page over and over again as she wardrived from free wifi network to free wifi network all around town. Not only would she not think of doing that, she wouldn’t understand what I just wrote! Instead, I can only assume that there was a sizable amount of people who were interested in The Reinvented Chore Chart That Actually Motivates My Child It was a fun article I wrote about how I f...

I’ve been blogging about ADHD & Depression since 2005. In that time I have met many wonderful people. One of them was Elena Díaz de Guereñu. Elena would translate my blogs into Spanish for her TDAH (ADHD) readers. I was always grateful for her efforts. I haven’t heard from her in a while, and now that I’ve visited her blog again ( Dra ELENA DÍAZ DE GUEREÑU – Diagnóstico y tratamiento del TDAH ), I know why. She stopped blogging due to health reasons over a year ago. And now she’s gone, which feels off to me. The magical aspect of online relationships is that people live forever in our minds. Sometimes, we have no idea who they are in real life or what impact they have had on others. Judging by the dozens of tearful comments left on her facebook page, Elena left behind a legacy of grateful patients who she taught to manage their ADHD. She touched so many lives. Here are the six articles she translated of my work. Most of them were written for ADDitude...

I’ve been rethinking the purpose of my blog lately. Haven’t I written enough on ADHD & Depression ? I don’t write exclusively about either subject, which turns some readers off, so I’ve never had the meteoric rise of some bloggers who target one or the other subject (although with ADHD bloggers & YouTubers, they usually blaze through the sky then disappear after awhile). Writing about comorbid conditions isn’t sexy, though I think I look pretty good in my newest jeans. Seriously, though, it’s hard to compete with Facebook. Remember when RSS, not Facebook, made the blogosphere go round? Heck, who even uses “blogosphere” anymore? It makes me wonder where I should be putting my focus. The first blow to my blogging schedule was getting sick last Fall for SEVEN months (I cannot write enough about how disruptive that was to my life). Then COVID–19 arrived just as I was getting better, and my learning disabled daughter needed e...

If you struggle with suicide, depression or anxiety, the types of people you have in your support network can make the difference between them being a lifeline or a weight. It’s been over two years since I was last suicidal. I wasn’t making dark and deadly plans at the time. I simply thought I would be better off dead. It was the matter-of-factness of the “epiphany” that startled me the most. It seemed perfectly logical. Fortunately, I’ve heard this logic before and immediately engaged my coping strategies. I let family members know, I prayed deeply, and since I didn’t have a current counselor, I reached out to a bishop for a recommendation. Quite quickly, I put the suicidal ideation behind me. That’s the benefit of coping strategies. It also helps that I was able to analyze my feelings and separate my awareness from the emotional maelstrom. I could outthink the destructive thoughts. This is very difficult for many people, though. They get caught up in the emotional maelstrom. ...

If you’re feeling down from too much social distancing, how do you build a support network when you’re sheltering in place‽ Support networks are the sort of things you’re supposed to have already put into place for that time when you need them. You’re also supposed to file your taxes on time, separate your recyclables, and brush your teeth twice a day. There are a lot of things we’re supposed to do, but for one reason or another, we sometimes don’t get around to doing. Support networks take effort to build. Because of that, it is easy to avoid putting yourself out there when things are going well. Then your government tells you to stay inside or else, and suddenly that support network seems a lot more important than it did before. Fortunately, communicating with each other over distances isn’t limited to letters via post. Now we can private message, video chat, audio chat, and text over phones lines and the internet. If you deal with dep...

Sequestered away and worried about COVID–19? It’s good to take this crisis seriously, but social distancing doesn’t have to be as dire as people online make it seem. Here are the top ten ways I’ve kept my attitude upbeat while isolated from others. As I’ve written before, I’ve been sick and social distancing since September 2019. I have asthmatic bronchitis, rhinitis, and chronic respiratory inflammation. Consequently, my body has been so busy struggling to breathe, it hasn’t had much oomph left to fight off every cold & virus in Utah. At first, I just thought I was getting a lot of colds for some reason. As soon as I got better, I’d go out again, but by the end of September, I was staying clear away from everybody as much as possible. By Christmas the isolation became difficult to bear. I’d do things with family, wearing a dust mask to filter out the smog, but it would only work for a short time. I was too sickly, and I ended up sicker and si...