The Grief of ADHD

I’m still trying to get together that podcast episode on grief, isolation, capitalism, and health insurance, and I’m finding myself stuck in a familiar ADHD-paralysis-glitch. Which led me to write the following journal entry.

I want to be happy. I do not know how to walk toward that. Everything I do, I lose interest in within a fairly short amount of time — two to three months maxes out my sustained enjoyment of most things. And I cannot make myself do something if I don’t have that joyful drive, that dopaminergic power propelling my activity. I have no executive function myself, and I’m too broke to hire a CEO…

I cannot achieve true proficiency in anything because I cannot maintain focus long enough to progress beyond a superficial understanding. I am an incredible pancake. Although, that may be an insult to the depth of pancakes. Perhaps I’m more of a flimsy, roadside diner crepe?

I can create interesting first drafts of songs, catchy little snippets, fun turns of lyrical phrase, but cannot pursue music because I cannot focus on the nuts and bolts of music theory or recording or mixing or editing or developing any real musical skills because I get distracted; I lose interest. By the time my interest is reignited by the unseen and unknowable forces governing my brain, I forget what I had learned and wind up needing to review the basics. I cannot even settle on a primary instrument; I flit from piano to guitar to MIDI instruments in rapid succession, never really gaining mastery in anything.

I can create interesting draft ideas for novels and stories, but I cannot complete them. I cannot make myself focus to finish after the joy of the initial idea has fizzled out. My computer is a graveyard for would-be great American novels. I physically cannot make myself type out the words I know I would write. And I cannot understand this.

I can generate one or two paintings that get accepted into a gallery show… but then… I can’t find the focus to paint again for so long that my skills degenerate and I can’t remember how to sketch out an underpainting at all. 

Now that I understand that my inherent, basic restlessness, my propensity to aimlessness in all things, and my inability to complete any task that cannot be done in one sustained moment of hyper-focus is all ADHD, at least I have a name to put to it all. At least I have a reason other than just the ramshackle cathedral of my own personality flaws. I truly cannot focus. Not in the moment. Not in the long run. 

Medication is a bandaid on a cancerous tumor. It’s crutches, and I have no feet to speak of, only little pegs strapped to what should be my knees. Medication grants a few hours wherein my mind is not a crowded high school cafeteria, and I am able to accomplish some of the daily tasks that need doing: laundry, grocery shopping, sweeping. I can shower without it being a battle. I can go to work, because work is urgent. (It is boring, but it is urgent, especially when my visa depends on it.)

But brushing my teeth will never be an automatic habit. Doing yoga in the morning will never be consistent. Nothing will ever be a habit. Nothing will ever be easy or routine or done without intent. Everything will always be a task (a great series of tasks, in fact) which requires executive function I do not have and some degree of willpower to accomplish. 

I am tired. I am tired of my brain racing around, brimming with creative possibilities and no ability to accomplish them. I am tired of seeing, of knowing. I am tired of thinking. 

My brother asked me a while back what my “North Star” was — trying to help me get a handle on what I was doing. I said that it was to get to a place financially where I could have a little land, a little cabin in the woods, some chickens and ducks and a garden. Solar panels and rainwater collection and my bike.

And that is partially true. I’ve always held that as a dream, and in fits and spurts, worked toward it with things like a permaculture certificate, living on a subsistence farm in Belize, working on random people’s properties. But I also know that I will get bored. I will want something more. I think I will always come back to that… but what happens to the birds when I am off gallivanting because I absolutely had to get away? Well, OK, what’s my true “North Star” then? Maybe I want to “be” an artist (whatever that means)… but that requires skill and focused pursuit. And money. OK, I certainly enjoy traveling — particularly the sort of dirtbag travel that entails wandering around by loaded bicycle or through-hiking. But that requires money. That’s not a profession. And “content creator” is not a job I’m likely to pursue—I am, at heart, a Luddite. I hold a deep suspicion of technology. Besides, I’m so consistently inconsistent, who would join my Patreon? Who would put up with my irregular production schedule?

Everything requires money. And I have about the same level of skill with managing money as I do with managing time.

Which is to say, none at all. I am utterly time-blind. I do not experience the passage of time. Period. All my memories, spread across three continents and close to five decades all exist in an ephemeral not-now that is simultaneously a few minutes ago and aeons ago. I do not experience how long I’ve sat here typing. Or how long I’ve been back in Taiwan. I do not know how long it’s been since anything. I live in the eternal half-present, which is simultaneously pregnant and aged, just-born and long-buried.

Time and money are mysterious forces that seem to have inordinate power over my life, that I can neither comprehend nor control.

Much like focus. Or task switching. Or transitions from work to home. Or transitions of any activity. 

I hate this. 

I’m tired.