ADDiva first learned of the org when she saw their commercial.  The commercial itself is fine.  A woman in a wheelchair introduces us to her co-workers, and explains how all of them could be called a little “different”.  There’s a young woman with Ugly Betty fashion sense, a guy who always makes the copier spit reams of paper at him, and another guy who feels a need to shout when you’re standing right in front of him — and then with the narrator herself, who reveals that her own “difference” is that she makes terrible, awful, no-good, very bad coffee.  Ha ha!  See, you were expecting her to mention the wheelchair, but she fooled you!  Coffee!  Ha!

If you’ve ever worked with people, you’ve probably worked with these people, right?  It’s a lighthearted, not-too-challenging look at the way we categorize the strengths and weaknesses all of us have.  So, the campaign has scored a reasonably successful commercial.

Then ADDiva went to check out the web site, and found that they were offering e-cards as part of their campaign.  Here’s where things get a little weird.  The very first e-card showed a young woman at a messy desk with the label “Clearing Impaired“, and the caption: “I hid a hundred dollar bill on your desk.  Let me know if you ever find it.”

Well, the bottom dropped out of my stomach as I suffered a minor anxiety attack.  As an ADD adult, I have spent a great deal of time looking for vitally important things — including money –  in my many piles of clutter.  I also have many traumatic memories of my mean fourth grade teacher standing over me, mocking me to the rest of the class as I looked for the library book that was due yesterday, or the worksheet that had bee due last week, or the permission slip that should have been signed last night.  A snide remark about hiding money in my mess, even when made by electrons on my computer screen, is a pretty potent trigger.

As ADDiva wrote,

Ouch. That hurt.

The site that purported to lay waste to labels had just inflicted injury on the single most prevalent trait of ADHD – clutter.

She wrote them an e-mail, which she posted on her site.  She finished by saying, “maybe I’m too sensitive … or maybe they just forgot that ADD is a disability too”.

By now, my curiosity was thoroughly piqued, so I went to the site myself.  And I can say that, no, ADDiva, you are not being too sensitive; and yes, clearly they forgot that ADHD is a disability too; and furthermore, that was far from being the only problematic part of their e-card campaign.

The first, and comparatively minor, problem with the campaign is that the cards are a bit mean-spirited.  I simply can’t see myself sending anyone a card that reads “Yo, Jargon Prone” or “Dear Clearing Impaired”.  The Clearing Impaired card itself is the second problem.  As ADDiva says, it ridicules a common ADHD trait — clutter.  And I have to ask myself — does that card makes ADD adults look like valuable, productive employees?  Would you really hire someone you thought would literally lose money?  No?  Didn’t think so.

AND that takes us to problem number 3.

We’re spearheading an initiative to show that people with disabilities are normal, productive employees just like you!  And to that end we’ll … make fun of schizophrenia?  REALLY?  Apparently the people involved with this campaign are also unaware that mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, are also disabilities.

On the whole, I find this e-card campaign to be more than a little bemusing.  It’s a campaign that’s allegedly about thinking beyond labels and treating the disabled as people first, but to achieve this end, they employ thoughtless, flippant text about the characteristics of two very real disabilities (ADHD and schizophrenia).

When I actually sent the e-card to myself, I found that you have the option of deleting their “humorous message” and writing your own.  Great, so I can remove the insulting message.  Now I just have to find a good reason to send someone an e-card that starts out by saying “Hey Speakerphone Syndrome!”.  That will make sense.

Finally, when you receive the e-card, you get a message in your inbox that says “You’ve been labeled!”.  Um, great!  Then the message reads:

Addy Bell (addaptabilities@gmail.com) has labeled you!

See how they see you by picking up your eCard at http://www.thinkbeyondthelabel.com/ECards/PickupECard.aspx?ecardid=485.

We think labels get in the way, but disabilities rarely do. Think Beyond the LabelSM

About Us

Our goal is simple: To raise awareness that hiring people with disabilities makes good business sense. Employees with disabilities have unique, competitively relevant knowledge and perspectives about work processes, bringing different perspectives to meeting work requirements and goals successfully.

All problems with ableism aside, I just can’t see anyone sending one of these to their hiring manager.

Ultimately, I feel that these e-cards reflect a deeper, fundamental problem with this campaign.  This is not an action taken by the disabled to assert our worth, dignity, and value in the workforce; as it so often happens, we are silenced while the non-disabled claim to speak on our behalf, with all of the condescension and paternalism implied thereby.  Why would the non-disabled bother to do this?  Well, it turns out there’s a fair bit of grant money available to “help” the disabled, from both private and federal sources (remember welfare-to-work?).  Health and Disability Advocates, a large non-profit, has given $4 million of this money to the Chicago ad agency Wirestone to launch this effort.  That kind of money could make a real difference in the lives of HDA’s clients (and indeed, it seems like the org has some worthwhile programs).  For instance, HDA could have sought out an ad agency or PR firm with ties to any disability community; if they had, I think the e-cards would much more respectful, much more coherent, and ultimately much more successful.

***NB: The screenshots of the e-cards are posted without the permission of Health and Disability Advocates.  If asked by that organization, I will remove the e-cards.  Then, I will wallow in the irony of being an unemployed disabled person who has received a cease and desist order from an organization whose mission is to employ the disabled.

Thanks to Alfred Hitchcock, many people now associate vertigo with fear of heights. The two are actually completely unrelated; vertigo is a balance disorder, resulting in feelings of dizziness and fatigue. Granted, when you’re feeling dizzy and tired, the last thing you probably want to do is climb a high ladder. But the nasty thing about vertigo is that the ground doesn’t stay in one place while you’re standing on it. Or sitting on the couch. Or lying in bed.

One legacy of growing up with undiagnosed LD is a deep-seated fear my problems aren’t “real”. I was repeatedly told by every available authority figure that I wasn’t “trying hard enough” and that I could succeed if I “really wanted to”. Of course, I was sure I was “trying”, but when every single grown-up around me was telling me otherwise, I soon internalized the message that I was lazy and flawed — and worse, simply unqualified to interpret reality.

When I’m sick with a viral inner ear infection, this fear is always lurking in the background. I don’t look sick, you see. Nor do I sound sick. Nor do I have any symptoms of illness that can be externally validated, like a fever or a cough or even a runny nose. I’m just dizzy and exhausted. If I go to the doctor, they’ll take a look at my ears and tell me everything looks normal. “Just go home and rest”, they’ll say. Great. Rest. I’m bored with resting, and besides … I want proof that I’m sick. Then I could reassure myself that this is real — that I’m not just malingering, making up symptoms for a vague and unverifiable illness, and believing in them because I’m just that neurotic.

I’ve been reading about time management lately.  One thing that keeps coming up in time management advice is to let go of perfectionism.  In the literature that’s specific to ADD, it’s noted that  lot of folks with ADD are perfectionists.  And I just gotta ask myself, WTF?

Seriously, why do we do this to ourselves?  We’re at a clinically demonstrable disadvantage when it comes to getting places on time and having out sh*t together.  Why do we make it worse for ourselves?  Is it hyperfocus?  Is it a neurological inability to let go?  Is it something to do with the “right-brained” nature of ADHD?  Are we predisposed to be creative divas?

Or is it a learned response to all the years of being told we’re not good enough?

Whatever the reasons, it’s crippling and I wish I could stop it.

For some reason, he’s got all kinds of people in and out of the film industry rallying to his support. Because he’s 76 years old. Because he’s a Great Director. Because he Has A Family.

Why am I writing about this on a disability blog? For a couple of reasons. The first is that people with disabilities are often vulnerable to sexual assault. The second is that people with disabilities can be at an institutional disadvantage when demanding accountability of those who have harmed us. The third is that, as someone who was ridiculed and punished for my disabilities (which were not my fault!), the ridicule and punishment faced by rape survivors (rape is not their fault!) hits pretty close to home.

The feminist blogosphere is involved in a passionate discussion right now about whether it’s appropriate to prosecute Polanski against his victim’s wishes — she’s forgiven him, she says, and wants to get on with her life. A media circus would certainly interfere with that. Legally, of course, what the victim wants is irrelevant (that’s food for a whole other discussion right there), and in this case, it’s particularly irrelevant, because charges have already been brought, and Polanski has pled guilty. The issues are that he fled the country, thus avoiding the sentencing hearing and breaking a few more laws in the process.

As for Polanski’s defenders, they are forgetting, or refusing to admit to themselves, the single most important fact in this case: Roman Polanski raped a child. Kate Harding at Broadsheet says it better than I ever could.

Focus is a commonly misunderstood aspect of ADD.  Anyone with ADD can tell you of the many many times they’ve been told, “but you can’t have ADD!  I’ve seen you play video games for hours without getting bored!”  Folks with ADD know that that their inability to pay attention when they need to is often complicated by an ability to hyperfocus … often when they should be working on something else, or it’s 3 in the morning, or whatever.

For many of us, this issue arises in new and exciting ways when we find a medication that works for us.  Suddenly, the ability to self-initiate, to see a task needs to be done, or to start that languishing project is within our control.  For the first time in our lives we can do what others do so easily — we can just do it.

And so, we dive in.  We just do it.

And, we keep doing it and doing it and doing it, because the medication has in essence enabled our hyperfocus.  We don’t know when to stop doing it.  We don’t know when we’re done.  We don’t know how good is good enough.

Like many people with ADD, my concentration is either nonexistent, or it’s turned all the way up to eleven.  This is true whether or not I’m on medication.  The main difference between being on meds versus not being on meds is how easy it is for me to start doing something.  A secondary difference is that I’m able to keep doing something even if it’s boring.  Sometimes this is a good thing — for instance, today I got hyperfocused on cleaning the kitchen, to the point where I actually took apart the gas burners and cleaned off a few years’ worth of cooked-on gloppiness.  I removed a stain from one of the burners that I had once thought permanent.  All I’d meant to do was run the dishwasher, wipe down the counters, and clean the stove top.

Being able to continue a boring task isn’t always a good thing though.  There have been plenty of times when I’ve started a cleaning project and gotten sucked into it, only to realize that the afternoon was gone and with it, the time I’d promised myself to spend in the art studio.

I don’t know how much of this is medication and how much of it is attention-shifting skills that non-ADD people learn along the way.  It seems like other people can say to themselves, OK, I’ve wasted enough time on YouTube for one day, now it’s time to get back to work.  Or, the living room is clean enough for now, it’s time to pay the bills.  Or, I’ve spent all day setting up my file cabinets, so now I’m going to spend the evening chilling out in front of the TV and come back to it tomorrow. Maybe it’s not my brain, per se, maybe I just never learned the skill of stopping.

I’m trying to acquire this skill by observing myself as I begin and finish tasks.  Earlier today, I was actually able to check in with myself about whether I wanted to spend my time in epic battle with my stove top.  I thought a bit about what I needed to get done today.  I thought a bit about what I wanted to get done today.  And then I decided, hey, it’s Saturday; I can spend it however I want!  Let’s get this stove top clean!  Yeah!

Hmmm… maybe I need a life.

*I only steal from the best!