I spent most of my undiagnosed life blaming bad luck for the lows and feeling very lucky when times were good, which wasn’t often. I didn’t then, nor do I now, believe in the art of fortune telling.

I get a kick out of numerology when applied to birth dates, because the numbers are based on a calendar that has a random start date.

Tarot cards may be more accurate, I don’t know, and I’m equally unenlightened about palm reading. They could be the real deal … though I doubt it. My palms are so scarred that I don’t think you could read them anyway, even if they were actually written on. Oh, wait … eggs, bread, new guitar … maybe I can read my palm.

And I was never lucky at cards

Not Tarot cards, playing cards, greeting cards, none of them.

And credit cards also seem to hold more misfortune than fortune for me. Mine was recently hacked for several thousand dollars worth of travel and accommodation. Visa is currently trying to ascertain whether or not I’ll be liable for that??!?

I’ve never known anyone with a crystal ball, nor the ability to see the future in one.

I think the art of phrenology, the reading of the lumps on ones head, might have more to it then crystal gazing. I’d like to give it a try, if only for the scalp massage. But my head has some weird bumps, I don’t know if they could read mine.

But if there is one obvious place to turn, it would have to be the fortune cookie fortune.

How can we be sure that it is effective?

There are many reasons why the fortune cookie fortune works. It isn’t printed up specifically about you, so it can’t have been knowingly geared to you. And hey, it’s a cookie, what more proof do you need? Okay, enough with the reasons, already.

Without any further distractions, I’d like to relate to you my choices for top 10 fortune cookie fortunes for people with ADHD. Some of them might be actual fortune cookie fortunes … but probably not, this is a low budget production.

10 – You are a person with too many books on the go …

9 – You appreciate browser tabs

8 – The rent is late

7 – You may find that you are easily distracted

6 – What was I talking about?

5 – You are an idea person

4 – At this time you may find you have had to much coffee

3 – You are about to embark on a new career … again

2 – You are a person of infinite activity

And the number one, all time favorite fortune cookie fortune (of mine)

1 – Squirrel!

Happy Friday everyone.

Today is Mental Health Month Blog Day and I wanted to do something to participate. Many of you may be aware that, while my personal mental health issue is ADHD, my personal challenge is to battle mental health stigma. I’m not alone, many bloggers work hard to minimize the effects of stigma with every post they write.

One of my favourite bloggers, Melanie Knapp, writer of Psychology Discussions, also believes in reducing stigma. Her voice is softer and gentler than mine, but her message is no less powerful.

She and I have decided to share a title for Mental Health Month Blog Day. And that title is the one you see at the top of this post. Here is her post.

And I mean it!

Well, maybe not these shoes …

Don’t judge me. That’s really all I want to say. Don’t judge me and I won’t judge you. The part about walking a mile in my shoes is somewhat irrelevant. If you truly do know what it’s like to walk a mile in my shoes, I know you aren’t about to judge me.

But if you don’t know what it’s like to walk a mile in my shoes, if you don’t know what it’s like to have ADHD, let me make it easy for you. You already have all the symptoms. Well, if you don’t have all of them, you have most of them.

• Do you ever start doing one thing and end up doing something else?
• Do you ever walk into a room and wonder what you went in there for?
• Do you ever say something and, possibly while you are saying it, start to think you shouldn’t be saying it? And then know you shouldn’t?
• Do you ever make an appointment and then forget about it, completely?
• Do you ever find that you need intense activity to jump start your thinking?
• Do you ever over-indulge in something just because it feels good to?
• Do you ever leave some task to the last minute and then, when others would be giving up, you do it with little or no time to spare?

Me too. But here’s the difference. This is the norm for me. This is my life, from one end of the day to the other, these things happen for me over and over and over, ad infinitum. Or, I guess, ADD infinitum.

For instance, I can walk in to a room, wonder what I went there for, return to the room I had left in the hopes I’ll remember, only to wonder what I’m doing in that room. And even when it isn’t that bad, I still do it twenty times a day.

You might go in to a store to buy a quart of milk and come out with the milk and a chocolate bar. I’ll walk in to the store and come out with 10 things I wasn’t looking for, five of which I can’t afford and two that I already have at home … but I won’t have the milk.

Is there a problem here?

Yes, these things are problems. But you judging me won’t fix them.

I’m glad that those of you without ADHD don’t have to put up with these symptoms [...] I don’t think you could take it.

And while this might be a bit judgmental on my part, I’m glad that those of you without ADHD don’t have to put up with these symptoms at the intensity and frequency that I have to endure. You see, I don’t think you could take it. We, the ADHDers of the world, have been working and living and playing with these symptoms all our lives, you’ve only been told what it’s like.

So I’m asking you nicely, don’t judge me, or others with ADHD, until you’ve walked a mile in my shoes.

And for heaven sake, try not to walk a mile in my shoes.

Sometimes I think that working for a contractor is the best possible job for someone with ADHD. There is structure without routine. There is a set expectation. I know what I’m supposed to do and when. I can do my best work and it is appreciated.

And often, when I go that extra mile or figure out how to make something better or do something more efficiently, that’s appreciated also.

Did I mention I’ve started work for the season? Well, I have.

And there’s more. There’s something about working that I love. I mean working as in having a job. The thing I love about it is the focus that comes with engaging your brain in a task that is judged successful when the time is up for the day. Whether the job itself is finished or not, I’ve put in the day. I go at it with the goal being to get to the end of the day, and I succeed.

I’m not a watch watcher

I’m not lazy. I do the work and I put real effort into it. I don’t shirk. If I’m hurting when the day is done, I know I was working hard enough. And the job itself may end at anytime, but more often than not, when that happens, there is another job to go to.

Who’s the boss here anyway?

I’ve noted the difference between working for someone else and working for myself. It’s too easy to get distracted by details, desires, ambitions. I could be self employed but it would have to be as a contractor. I need an end plan in order to focus. The point of running a business is to maintain a job, keep making work. That seems foreign to me. I work better if I can identify a job, and then eliminate it.

And another thing …

Distraction is my number one enemy. But it seems I’m able to work around that when I work for someone else. For example, when I’m on the job, I might be going to the tool trailer to get a shovel. I don’t pick up a hammer and take it to some other task to quickly do some other thing that then sidetracks me again into another line of thought about three other things … or 33 other things. I get the shovel. I go do the shovelling. I put the shovel back. I move on.

What about the soundtrack?

It sounds boring, but it isn’t. My mind is still whirling around at light speed. There’s still a light and music show going on in there. It just doesn’t get to play with things in the real world, it has to settle for thoughts and plans and schemes. It can’t make me pick up the hammer until it is time for me to pick up the hammer.

What’s it worth to me?

There are times when I think ADHD is made up entirely of poor self esteem and self awareness. If I can treat the jobs my boss gives me with this much respect, why can’t I respect the things I need done for myself enough to just take care of them with focus and dispatch?

Oh well …

But this is a question I can spend some time pondering, while I work, because while I work, my mind will need something to do. It isn’t allowed to play with the hammer.

And I only know one of them. Well, okay, I know the one where I set my GPS to an address and let it tell me where to go. I’m use to being told where to go, I’ve been told plenty.

I would really like to set the GPS voice to that of a Scottish Female. I find that accent very appealing. But I’m pretty sure I’d just find that to be distracting. I’m also certain I’d be taking wrong turns just to hear her say “That’s okay, sure, we’ll just be recalculating and we’ll have you back on the rrrright rrroad in noo time.”

Back on track …

But the GPS isn’t what I want to tell you about. I want to talk about ADHD Navigation. On Tuesday of this week, I hit the road at 5AM for a run down to that city with the international reputation, that you may all hold accountable as the place of my birth. That’s right, Toronto. Toronto has grown a bit since 1959, and I have too. For one thing, I find myself calmer and cooler if I steer clear of such hectic urban sprawl.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the city … once I’m in it. I love walking down streets of culture. Past culture, current culture, future culture, I feel at home in the melee of sights and sounds and smells.

Wait, am I lost, again?

Again I digress. I was talking about navigating, ADHD style. But now, looking back on what I’ve written, I see I haven’t so much digressed as given you an example of ADHD Navigation. I’ll get there, just not on time, and not likely via the most direct route. And that was my trip to Toronto, and also my return home.

My passenger and I were on our way to her new apartment to deliver some of her belongings. She doesn’t drive and told me that she has only a vague sense of which highways go where. And we get along well enough to chatter quite a bit, so road signs are no help beyond providing options for more conversation – “I wonder what that sign said?”

So the rule of the day for navigation was just keep heading South and East, on the way down, then North and West on the way home.

All those in favor …

Turns were decided on by majority vote, which was usually a vote of one, with the other voter abstaining. One or the other of us would say “I think we should take that road coming up, and the other one would say “Whatever you think best …” thinking “I’m sure you’re so wrong.” but sub consciously hoping the other one was right.

And more often than not, we were right. On the way home, we discussed this means of navigation. She had been a bit upset by it I think, but seemed relieved when I said I didn’t care. I think she was worried that I might have expected her to navigate with detailed precision.

Zen and the art of friendship maintenance

I pointed out that we had seen some wonderful sights, and had some delightful conversation. That our friendship had not suffered and, in fact had more likely grown stronger. She laughed when I called my means of finding my way “holistic navigation.”

Sometimes when I’m bouncing from thing to thing in my scattered world, I come across stuff I might have missed had I not been … you know, looking at everything at once, the whole picture. I think that holistic navigation, while still in its infancy, is well worth looking into. Someone should focus on that, eh?

When I was a young lad in school, as you will know if you have parents or grandparents, I had to walk twenty miles to school each day and twenty miles back again, up hill both ways, and it always snowed while I was walking. And often times, that was the good part of my day.

Okay, that’s an exaggeration. But I am not lying when I tell you that I went to one room schools, as in “Little House On The Prairie.” Grade one and grade two were spent in a school with grades one through eight all being taught by one teacher. How did I learn anything you ask? I learned everything. If the teacher was talking I was listening, struggling to comprehend lessons meant for people who ranged from a year older than I was to people twice my age. But I couldn’t do my own work.

By grade three we were being bussed to different schools, still one roomers, where we were collected by age so that we didn’t have as many distractions. That year I attended a school that had only grades one two and three. The next year I went to a different school that had grades four and five and the next year I went to a different one again that had grades five and six.

The good, the bad and the abusive …

Although I had a fairly bad teacher earlier in my life, grade five delivered me into the hands of the queen of harsh teachers. Her methods of motivation were making an example of you and ridiculing you. And by you, I mean me.

As a boy with ADHD in a world that knew nothing of ADHD, I was a natural target for her maliciousness. I was not her only target, not even her favorite one, but I was a frequent one, and I was one who was prepared to believe in my stupidity.

The breaking of a boy

The year went very poorly for me, and finally … I broke. I don’t remember what happened that day, I don’t remember the fracturing of my mind. If you had asked me I would have said I must have blacked out, but I was apparently loud and vocal about my fear of having to remain in that school.

I never went back. After a month of rest I was returned to the school of grade fours and fives where I managed very well with the understanding woman who mastered that institution.

Lets talk about something else

In my school career, I had good teachers. My grandmother was a retired teacher, and she became my first school teacher when she taught me to read and write before I officially started school.

My first grade teacher was a kindly gentleman who was intolerant of misbehaviour, but fair in deciding what that actually was. My third grade teacher was also a very good teacher, and my fourth grade teacher, the one who took over part way through my fifth year and salvaged my shattered self esteem was by far my favorite.

Yes, I got my share of “Does not apply himself to the full of his potential …” comments on report cards, all through school, at every grade, but that was all they knew back then.

I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to be thankful, to look for the good in everyone and everything. But I’ve been bitter about my experience in grade five for so long that it’s hard to let it go.

I’m moving on …

But today, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I’m going to thank that teacher for giving me something none of the good ones were able to offer. I’m going to thank that teacher for teaching me what life without compassion would be like.

I’ve grown strong because of good teachers I’ve had and continue to have in my life. Ones with compassion, ones who seek out the student who needs their own path to learning.

The good ones are out there, I’m nodding at you, Rahmi and Tron, as my proof. And I know there are more of you, I wish to say thanks to you also. You are needed, you are admired and appreciated and needed.

If you have ADHD, you’ve got trouble. You know the symptoms as well as I do. And yes, we all agree that we love our lightning brains, but the controls on them aren’t what we would have ordered if we had been getting the custom model instead of the factory refurb.

The thing about ADHD is that our minds don’t develop completely in a couple of key areas. We’re left with the executive function of a child.

That means that even as adults, we make mistakes that are viewed as children’s mistakes. When we screw up, we do it in a childlike way.

But take heart, I’ve found some thoughts that can help you overcome feelings of inadequacy, simple things that are childlike in their simplicity.

1. Sit at the kids table. I prefer the kids table, ADHD fits in there. If you sit with the adults, you’re not going to have as much fun, but if you sit with the kids, you’ve got potential to really enjoy yourself. You score extra points if doing so allows someone who really deserves it, to sit at the grownups table.
2. If given a choice, always opt for the more youthful activity. Lets face it, most of us are far more likely to shine at sport oriented activities or video games than we are at discussing the market or the merits of various shades of white for a soon to be painted second bath. Choose the walk, the game of ping pong, canoeing, snowshoeing, air hockey, you get the picture.
3. Get busy. When you’re feeling like you’re out of sorts, having trouble concentrating or just unable to settle into something like bed or a movie, do something active for a while. We don’t transition well, but if you force a transition into some brief active or adventurous diversion and then transition into whatever you’re having trouble with, you might find it easier to cope. So take a short, brisk walk, Climb a tree, play hoops or hopscotch in the driveway or bounce a ball against the garage for 15 minutes.
   It’s not unlike speeding up your breathing to get control when you are hyper-ventilating. Once you have control, you can slow it down. Once you have control of your transitioning, you can move to the quieter activity with less trouble.
4. Take the time to play now and again. We spend way to much time worrying about falling behind. The truth is that we have no benchmark we have to reach. We can’t fall behind. Okay, we can get behind in the laundry and the bill paying, but we can get behind in feeling good about ourselves too. So schedule yourself some fun. Paint a picture, especially if you’re not good at it, make a house of cards, join a baseball or hockey league, learn to bake or take up archery.
5. Last of all, and this one truly is the closer, don’t take yourself so seriously, especially when you screw up. When you were a kid, and things didn’t work the way you planned and you got in trouble, it was out of your head in moments. Let it go, the self abuse does more harm than the screwing up could ever do.

So that’s my advice for today. Do the young thing, if you have a choice of two paths, take the one that leads past the playground, kick gravel, drag a stick along the fence, see what the view of the trail is like from the woods instead of settling for the view of the woods from the trail.

Just lighten your heart and mind, just be good to yourself, just … be a kid.

Having ADHD means that I have non-functional executive function, executive dysfunction if you will. This is the part of my cognitive machinery that is supposed to help with decision making.

It isn’t that it doesn’t work, it does, when I engage it. But engaged should be its default state, and it isn’t . Or at least, when it is needed, it should kick into gear automatically. It does not.

Worse still is that, since I have to engage it manually, I have to decide whether I need it, without having it engaged. Do you see a problem there? How am I to make a decision on whether I need the decision making machinery without having the decision making machinery up and running.

It’s never that easy …

That all sounds rather simplistic, and it is. In truth, if I’m slowed up a bit, my uncommon common sense will often give me pause to think. I love that phrase, “pause to think.” It’s often what I need. If pausing to think isn’t common sense, if it isn’t executive function, it is a damned good substitute.

No you may be wondering whether I’ve gotten off on the wrong topic here. I haven’t mentioned social media yet. Well maybe now is the time to tell you that social media isn’t really the social filter I was alluding to. It’s more the context of the social filter, mixed with a means of communicating. You see, it’s the enter key that I use. Okay, sometimes it’s the mouse button, it’s what ever gives me the chance to differentiate between thinking and saying.

It all happens too fast

When I open my mouth, I don’t get to assemble the words, take a second and maybe a third look at them and then click send or hit enter.

When I open my mouth to speak, in my mind, the deed is done, the words have already been spoken. In fact, my mind is already farther on in the conversation, anticipating what the response will be and calculating options for my next response. And it gets pretty upset when it has to backtrack to apologize for something it has already forgotten it sent to my mouth.

But online, oh online …

Yes, when I’m logged on to some social network or other, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul, I am the editor of my own thoughts. And before I hit enter or click send, I have the opportunity to edit those thoughts, and sometimes delete them entirely.

Now I’m not saying that I always edit those thoughts, that I never mess up online, I’m simply saying it happens less often. Those of you who only know me online are now thanking whatever god or gods you honor for the gift of not knowing me IRL, in real life, right?

Don’t worry, I’m not offended …

I’m so much cooler online … no, really.

What I’m really saying is that somewhere in the fact that there is an enforced difference between typing the statement and sending it, is a clue to what is missing for us, the thing that is dysfunctional.

It is as futile to tell us to stop and think before we speak as it would be to tell us to pay attention.

But there must be something to this. There must be, because I truly am … so much cooler online.

I know, scary thought, eh?

Are you tired? Are you bored? Have you had enough of ADHD? Do you want a cure? Do you want a way to fix it? End it? Leave it in the past?

Join the club. That’s what we all want.

That’s why the people with the latest therapy or herbal remedy or book or diet will always have customers.

Don’t misunderstand me, some of the books outline plans that help some of us, maybe even many of us. And many of the books available do the great service of reminding us that we are not alone in this insidious disorder. But we are as diverse a group as there could be. Even the things we have in common aren’t common to each and every one of us.

How bad is it, doc?

So we are in the worst situation. We recognize our symptoms in each other, but no one else has all our symptoms. How could there be a single solution, a one size fits all fix for the diversified mind of diversion?

In a world of white, button down arrow collared, long sleeved dress shirts, we are a big old rack of tie-dyed tees …

In a world of white, button down arrow collared, long sleeved dress shirts, we are a big old rack of tie-dyed tees, every one the same, no two alike. Some of us are loud and flashy, some of us are deep and quiet, each of us is swirly in our own unique way.

And when we get going, we can be pretty intense. We do things with out reservation, we hit some plan hard and barrel through. We don’t look to the side when this happens, we keep our head down and we charge in with guns blazing, so to speak.

Ahh, but then …

When we’ve finished, ahh when we’ve finished, we can’t answer the simple questions that people ask. Questions like “How did you think of that?” or “How did you manage to accomplish that so quickly?” go unanswered while we raise hands and shoulders and shake heads with glazed eyes and open mouths. We don’t recall how we did it, sometimes we don’t recall even being present for the work.

And yet, we know we did it. We have a brief sense of accomplishment. We even feel proud of what we’ve done, though we wonder how we managed it.

This is just one of the things about ADHD I could leave behind without a backward glance. I wish I could capture the secret of “how I do it” so I could bring it to bear on every problem I have.

And I do love the things I do, the things I get done, the stuff I accomplish. But I know the sacrifices I make. I forget the little things and the not so little things that require my attention.

So when it comes to ADHD, I’ve been there, done that, whatever that was …

… you know, most of it, well, some of it, anyway. Damn!

I’m sure you’ve heard that people with ADHD are very creative. It’s nice to think that may be true, and it may be true, but it isn’t yet a fact.

A fact is something that current tests show to have a high probability of truth. At one time it was a fact that the sum orbited the earth once a day. Now we know that the earth orbits the sun once a year. It looks like the sun is going around us because earth is actually spinning itself around once a day. That gives us a view of space towards the sun and then a view of space away from the sun.

Since there are no tests to qualify or quantify creativity, there is no way of testing the creativity of anyone. The only test is if they create

Those of us with ADHD are known for not finishing things. Being creative requires things to be finished, doesn’t it? So how did this rumour get started?

Perhaps it’s not quantity, but quality that fuels this idea

I create songs. Some of them I like. I even catch myself humming my own music sometimes. It’s actually quite disconcerting to have a tune playing in my head and be trying to “place” it, figure out where it came from, only to realize I wrote it, I’ve given myself an ear-worm. So maybe quality is creativity.

But I’d be less than honest with you if I told you that every song I write is a winner. I’ve written some pretty bad stuff in my time.

“If I had a nickle
For every dollar
That I’ve ever made,
I bet I’d have spent
About five percent
More than I’ve already paid.”

Not exactly chart topper material ….

Maybe it’s that perseverance thing

Sometimes, I’ll start working on something, a song, a poem, or content for some publication, and I will worry it ’til I can’t find a single thing wrong with it. But then I’ll avoid doing anything like that for a long while, possibly for ever. The thing I did was good, and constituted creativity, I guess, but I’m not doing it again. I’ll do something else. Maybe perseverance is creativity.

In reality, many of my friends and connections are, in my opinion, very creative. And of those creative people in my community, many of them have ADHD.

The thing about those of us with ADHD that I notice, is that they turn their creativity loose on some project, and turn it on full. When that project is finished, they cast around for something else to work on, usually really different. Maybe being unable to tolerate boredom is creativity.

Maybe if we consider where creativity comes from

Is creativity a learned behaviour or an innate quality? Is there a certain amount of creativity in each of us? I don’t know. I know that it must be nurtured if it’s going to mature. I was not encouraged consistently to be creative. It’s taken me this long to get to a place where I believe my writing is okay. Sometimes I’ll turn a phrase that I consider to be very well written. But I don’t often think of myself as creative when writing prose. And I can’t draw, can’t paint, my “art” skills are bad. My artist’s eye is good, but I cannot make my hands make any medium move in a pleasing way. As a result, I believe myself to be a reasonably good amateur photographer. But is that creative?

I’ve been playing devil’s advocate here today. I do believe that many if not most of us with ADHD are very creative. I see not only their creativity and their creations, I see the reactions of others to their creations. There is no proof of our collective creativity, but I have faith.

And creativity gives us a sense of achievement, a much needed boost to our self esteem. So fact or fantasy, truth or rumour, I’m going to use creativity to my advantage. I’m taking every opportunity I can to be a creative individual, to grow my appreciation of myself.

Why can I focus on some things better than others? And why is it that the important things seem to be harder to focus on? These are questions that plague me.

They plague me particularly when I’m trying hard to view my ADHD as a way of being, rather than a flaw in my being.

I am always hoping that understanding issues will lead to being able to rectify them. If not, then I hope understanding them will possibly present a usable work around for the issue I’m studying.

The first thing I’ve noticed about things I am better able to focus on, is that they are, more often, things I enjoy. So why do I think they are less important if I enjoy them? Perhaps that is a self esteem issue. If I like them, they can’t be that important.

Yet maybe I like those things more because, for some reason, I am more able to focus on them.

Aaaaah, focus

There’s a sweetness to focus. At least, there is for me. It’s like everyday life, but with a light sweet taste. It’s like eating king crab regularly and then discovering the taste of snow crab.

Unanswered question

But I still haven’t figured out what makes me focus. If I like something and that makes me focus, then what makes me like it. And is it true that I only focus on what I like?

And as I said, I like focus. So maybe I don’t like everything I am able to focus on, maybe I’m just enjoying the focus.

Things I focus on

I don’t really like video games, but I can play them for hours. It’s like an addiction. Am I addicted to focus?

TV is the same thing. It sometimes seemed easier to tolerate what is on the tube than to try to decide what else to do. To many choices, to much preparation and organization, to much distraction. TV is garbage piped in to my brain, but it requires little in the way of organization or preparation. I’ve quit watching TV.

I must confess that reading fiction is the same for me. I can read for hours, even if I know I have other things to do. I don’t get upset with reading though, I feel good about it.

Wait a minute …

Hmmm, TV, Videos, games, books – there seems to be a commonality here. These things are all external, and to some extent, beyond my control. I mean, yes I can change the channel, turn off the console, turn the page or close the book, but they are all still there.

The focus required to keep me on task when doing complex internal projects like income tax and house keeping is so easily set aside, misplaced, and without visual or auditory cues, long gone and forgotten. The focus required to do the simplistic external projects like watching TV or playing a video game or reading a book is reinforced by the very real visual and auditory cues we get from the book in front of us, the TV’s sights and sounds and the video consoles display and auditory feedback.

What can we learn from this?

Focus is generated internally, but the stuff that is reinforced with external stimulus is the focus that is easily maintained.

Creating consistent focus, then, is a matter of adding external cues. Lets ponder that for a few days, and come back to this topic, shall we?