Geek Pride Day was May 25. I wrote this post yesterday, and then forgot to hit “publish”. Whaddya want? I have ADD!
As I wrote at Well-Ordered Chaos yesterday, my blogging plans have been laid waste by the goddam flowering olive trees outside my house. They’re trying to kill me, I swear. So please forgive me if this post is a little incoherent.
I wanted to celebrate Geek Pride Day (May 25, which is the anniversary of Star Wars, “Towel Day” in honor of Douglas Adams, and the Glorious 25th in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld) by sending you all over to Wil Wheaton’s blog to check out his post “… A Sort of Homecoming“, in which he talks about his psychological journey from child star to grown-up actor and writer. I think it’s a story that many adults with LD, especially 2E’s, can relate to.
For those of you who aren’t giant nerds, Wil Wheaton played the teenaged Wesley Crusher on StarTrek: The Next Generation when he himself was still a young teenager. Also for those of you who aren’t giant nerds, I will tell you that Wesley was not a well-written character, and many people found him to be annoying. Since this is a science fiction community, there was a small group of fans who avidly and vocally hated the character, and were unable to separate Wil Wheaton as an actor and a person from Wesley Crusher the character he played. Continue reading Happy Geek Pride Day
The weather in my neighborhood is usually fairly predictable. Rain from January through March. Sun in April and May. Fog from June through August. Sun in September and October. Fog or overcast weather in November and December.
Usually, what this means is that I can count on April and May to be my good months. The days get longer, and the sun shines. As I’ve written before, both my depression and my ADD are highly responsive to the amount of sunlight I get. I can usually count on April and May for a better mood, incredible energy, and the ability to really focus on getting things done.
Not so this year. The winter rains just haven’t stopped. California needs the rain, gods know; we’ve had a running drought for a few years now, and all this rain may finally be pulling us out of it. But my own selfish needs are not being met. I’m trying to juggle my online writing, a job search, and an art project that needs to be finished on a deadline. I could use a little help from the sun right about now.
Since it’s already mid-May, I’m afraid that I may not get my sunny Spring this year. We may just get rain, rain, and more rain, until the fog rolls in and covers the land for the summer. This is not a good thing for my brain.
At the moment, I’m in the middle of an application process for a public sector job. In spite of the fact that this is work I’ve done before, and work I’m eminently qualified to do, I might lose out on it for stupid bureaucratic reasons.
Like a lot of public sector jobs, this one requires applicants to take an exam; and like a lot of exams, this one had math on it. I was extremely anxious beforehand — on the drive over, the music running through my head was the Confutatis from Mozart’s Requiem. My hand shook the entire time I was taking the test. And after all that effort, I’m probably screwed anyway.
I promise my next post will involve something other than whining about my job search.
The single suckiest thing about all my LD’s has been its impact on my work life. I’ve spent my entire working life underemployed at retail gigs and poorly-paid part-time teaching jobs. I have never had a job that pays decent money, let alone one that uses my skills or intelligence.
My problem has been that my learning disabilities — dyscalculia, dysgraphia, and ADHD — make it nearly impossible to qualify for entry-level admin work. You know, those jobs where you’re supposed to keep track of who called whom, write phone numbers correctly, create the office schedule, keep the records, do the filing, and maybe even simple book-keeping … . Those are all things I need an assistant for. They’re all things that I would have an assistant for, if I could ever get past the entry-level jobs where I’m supposed to be the assistant.
Except that I can’t even get hired for those jobs in the first place. Even temp agencies take a look at me and say, “don’t call us, we’ll call you”.
I’ve been working on a new post for about a week now — it’s on a complicated subject, and it’s taking much longer than I anticipated. Please stay tuned!
For the entire month of April, you’ve only posted once to your blog about ADD … but you have half a dozen drafts sitting around dated throughout April.
And that’s not even getting to the drafts from previous months.
I’ve really got to do something about that offline life
So I’m working on this art project, right, and I’m going to be applying these 1.5 inch decorative leaves to a certain space that’s 7 inches wide. I’m trying to figure out how many leaves I’ll need to cover the space.
And I was sitting there, trying to figure out how to solve this problem. Multiplication? Division? I tried both, and both answers seemed perfectly cromulent. Finally I got out my tape measure and tried to count the number of times 1.5 inches happens in 7 inches.
As I did this, it occurred to me that I had a 7 inch space, and basically I was dividing it into 1.5 increments.
Oh, language, my old friend… without you, I wouldn’t be able to do a third grade level word problems in under 15 minutes.
A few weeks back, a feature recently ran in the Shelby Star in which a reader wrote in asking about whether the Feingold Diet might work for her son’s ADHD. The columnist, John Rosemond, replied that while many mental health professionals believe that the diet is ineffective because of, you know, insufficient evidence. But, he says, that’s only “true as far as it goes” — because studies address averages, and even if the participants didn’t improve “on average”, the study might not report that some of the participants did improve. Continue reading Bad Science: John Rosemond weighs in on the Feingold Diet for ADHD
Over at the dyscalculia forum, we’re all pretty bad at math. That goes without saying. If we could do math we wouldn’t have dyscalculia. QED.
But there are a lot of non-math problems that tend to accompany dyscalculia. We have trouble conceptualizing time, reading maps, dancing, remembering sports plays, learning to read music, and playing games. In these areas, it seems that everybody on the forum has their “exception”. Somebody may be able to understand sports pretty well (even football, which is hecka complicated!), somebody else may be a decent dancer, and somebody else can actually play cards. Continue reading Dyscalculia and Directions
A new study out of UC Davis has provided physical evidence for a “faulty brain connection” in children with ADHD.
This is huge news. If the results of this study hold up to scientific scrutiny, this will mark the first time that direct evidence has been found for a neurological difference in those with ADHD. Until now, ADHD has only been defined, and therefore diagnosed, by behavior. This is necessarily a subjective approach, and has led to wide-spread myths about attention deficit disorder being a hoax, or “only” a cultural phenomenon, or just an excuse for bad behavior. Continue reading ADHD children have different brains: actual, physical evidence!
Geek Pride Day was May 25. I wrote this post yesterday, and then forgot to hit “publish”. Whaddya want? I have ADD!
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