Thursday, September 24, 2015

When Today is Tomorrow and Other ADHD Blunders

A Great Day for a Cock-up

Good morning! It’s a cool 70°F out there in Midvale, Utah, and I’m going back to bed. But first, a tale of whoa woe¹ that will hopefully make you smile.

I had a phone interview scheduled, and I was so worried I would oversleep that I didn’t sleep at all, which means that today will be a rough day for me. I usually poke fun of my ADHD here, as well as discuss my depression, but what really disrupts my life is my tic disorder. I don’t often write about it because it’s a matter that is out of my control. I can’t do anything to make it better. Consequently, I have no clever tips to share with other people with tic disorders, so I don’t write about it much except in passing.

Unfortunately, there is one simple, insignificant thing that I can do to help my tic disorder: Sleep! What a shame my ADHD and insomnia aren’t interested in helping me get some. Sleep deprivation means that I’ll likely tic a lot today unless I plan a nap in there somewhere. But that isn’t my tale of woe!

You see, I got ready for the phone interview a day early because I thought tomorrow was today. I was up doing email at three in the morning the other night like most normal people, blurry eyed, and moments before I staggered off to bed. I had already delayed the interview a week because I had been ticking so much lately, then missed our last interview because my daughter had a seizure. So when I read the email with the suggested new time, I fired off a “YES!”, except without the capital letters and exclamation. I maintain the fiction of professionalism at all times.

The worst part is that when they gave me a choice between “today”, which I thought meant Wednesday, or “tomorrow”, which I thought meant Thursday, I didn’t realize they meant tomorrow tomorrow, which is Friday. Insomnia stirred with differing time zones makes for blunders like this when ADHD is the spoon. Now I’ve agreed to do the interview while I’m sitting with my daughter and a few thousand fans waiting in line to see Jenna Coleman at Salt Lake Comic Con. I’m sure the interview will work out just fine, assuming they can hear me.

A girl worth losing sleep over

Actually, that’s not the worst part. I woke up early today to be ready for the phone appointment, so I only had four hours of sleep. I was supposed to have a FULL night’s sleep because I’m attending that convention today. My theory was that if I had a full night’s sleep and no stress before the con, I could avoid cutting things short because I started ticking. Now I’m going into the con with less sleep than usual and even more stress. Excelsior!

You know what? I’ve totally got this under control. I’ll just consider my preparation for the interview this morning as practice for tomorrow. And when the real tomorrow happens, I’ll just have to find a quiet spot somewhere surrounded by tens of thousands of people at a comicbook convention. Here’s a case where feeling alone in a crowd might not be quite good enough to make for a quality conversation, but you don’t think I’m going to cancel the appointment and reschedule, do you? Who knows how much worse I’ll make things?!


  1. Whoa, I really did misspell "woe". That lets you know where my brain is at today. I'm so excited to see what else the day has for me! ↩