Attention!

Wow.   I am proud to say I scored the right to put this icon on my blog:

alt="Serious ADHD Likely!" width="200"
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The exclamation point is the best part.  Like I am soooooo happy about it.  I did, after all, score 99 points on a 100 point scale.   I guess that’s…ummm….something.

The reason I even took such a test to begin with was because I finally realized, at the tender age of 35, why it is so hard for me to get things done.   I mean, I always knew on some level and would joke about my woefully non-existent attention span, but it’s suddenly become much more clear to me.  I realized that I always seem to have this inner resistance to doing things that are really not unpleasant or difficult at all, like weeding the garden, or in some cases that are things I really enjoy, such as writing.  I’ve never been able to understand this resistance, and it’s caused me really immeasurable stress and frustration over the years.  Somehow it finally made sense to me this morning, though.  The resistance does not come from the difficulty of the task, but from the difficulty in paying attention long enough to complete the task.  Once I realized that, a lot of other pieces could be fit into the puzzle.   Such as why I tend to gravitate towards jobs or duties which require me to do a lot of small tasks, such as answering emails, even though these duties don’t give a great sense of fulfillment.  They don’t require me to *focus*.   It’s like I’ve been at war with my brain for my entire life….on one hand I want to spend my time learning and creating and doing things that require sustained attention and focus, and at the same time my brain is saying “Nope, sorry, can’t do it.”

So, what to do, what to do?   For one thing I’ve been realizing that if I give my brain a *constructive* distraction to focus on, it can help me give adequate attention to the task at hand.   For example, while I’ve been writing this post I’ve been listening to a violin concerto by Joseph Joachim, and I’ve been forcing myself to really concentrate on the music as I write.   That seems to quiet enough of my brain to focus on actually getting the words out.   Another good distraction is crochet, though of course that’s difficult to do while writing.  But it’s good to do while reading, watching films, or talking to people (which has always been difficult for me as I lack the attention necessary to carry on a conversation).    So, yeah, I will work on positive ways of distracting myself.   But I’m actually finally going to consider meds as well.  Reading over a list of ADHD symptoms I realize now that it’s likely been affecting every area of my life in a negative way, and I think I’m ready to be done with it.