A Splintered Mind

Ever since it was first released, I have been a big fan of Letterpress for iOS . I have found it perfect for my ADHD. It’s mentally stimulating; the board can change drastically turn by turn; it’s a constructive pursuit to help me unwind; and it gives me an endorphin boost from the competition. Letterpress is like weaponized Words for Friends. Fans of Scrabble will feel at home since it uses the same dictionary, but points are allocated differently, and you can steal your opponents letter tiles. As in chess, strategy is important since to win the game you need to have the higher score when the last letter is played. I won’t bore you further with detailed game mechanics of a game you may never play. All that is important to understand is that I take the game seriously, and I have a lot of fun playing it. When I first started playing I quickly paid for the full version so I could have ten games going at a time. I didn’t get a lot of work done then, but I sure got good at the game ...

In the last journal entry that I shared with you, I wrote about a recent epiphany where I discovered I had inextricably linked goal making with my self-esteem. It was an obvious problem once I drew attention to it, but I was surprised at how long I had been cluelessly operating under such a destructive thought process. How could I like myself if I only liked myself if I was working towards goals? There would always be more goals because if I finished a goal I would immediately be unhappy and restless. I needed a new goal for focus and purpose. I placed all my self worth on success and only success. I had become addicted in a way to ADHD’s hyperfocus, needing more and more goals to find clarity. It was exhausting, but how to train myself out of it? First of all, having goals isn’t the problem. Goals are good things to help motivate us to improve ourselves, and improving ourselves will benefit us by uplifting our quality of life. But only being happy if goals are being met can dri...

Most of the time, people talk about adult ADHD as if it is a curse. We all know the horror stories. If you’ve been following this blog for any length of time you’ve read more than a few horrifying tales of ADHD woe with me as the terrorizer and victim. Fortunately, ADHD has its upsides . Sometimes a distraction leads me to discover things I wouldn’t have otherwise known about. Case in point: my Kobo mini isn’t affiliate-linked with my local bookstore. This is a big deal. Kobo was supposed to rise from the ashes of the Google Books failure and be the ebook savior of independent brick & mortar book sellers nationwide,. On the surface it seems simple enough. People buy a Kobo ereader from a local bookshop, and that bookshop gets a percentage of every book purchased with those ereaders. Unfortunately, there’s a big catch. One day when I was supposed to be pumping out freelance assignments and doing the laundry, on a whim I called Kobo when I couldn’t link my Kobo Mini to my local boo...

As I was getting my Gmail inbox down to zero last month I discovered a nifty folder where I stored emails that I wanted to blog about. Of course, I completely forgot about them once I put them in there. A lot of my plans have been sidetracked because of my car accident last Spring. They were pretty good plans, too. I was thinking of writing a book, posting embarrassing videos of myself on YouTube for internet fame, finding Brigham's gold in the mountains, and tagging Sasquatch. I dream big and fall hard. So you shouldn't be surprised that I didn't publish an excellent correspondence I had with reader Sandra J from the UK. Here is the conversation I had with her about coping with Depression without meds. Leave a comment and let me know what you think of the correspondence. Can you relate with her? Do you have different advice to give her? ⁂   Hi there I'm reading your blog. I have a question. Imagine yourself at one of those lowest points, when meds are not really workin...

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...