We are ADD!

3/5/2012

ADD and what it means to me.... When Cathie and I were at Apria the other day to pick up a new CPAP for me, we got to talking with Jan, the respiratory therapist who was assisting us about ADD. She herself is ADD and we had a grand time expressing our idiosyncrasies and oddness. While I talked about my desire to write professionally, Jan suggested that I do a web site using 'snippets' that would allow others who may not be ADD to see into the mind of ADDers like her and myself without it being a clinical site. She thought it would be a popular idea as there are so many ADDers and so many people who seem to have trouble dealing with or understanding that we are not handicapped, we are just different. We gather, process, and express our thoughts differently than non-ADDers. We have a tendency to express the innate genius of our Creator more openly and perhaps flagrantly than the nons. This does not make us psychos or extra threats to society as a whole, but if mistreated or put into a situation where we are treated differently, drugged and psycho-terrorized, then many do end up being in penal institutions. ADDers love a challenge. We love to challenge and compete with ourselves more than with others. We love the adrenalin rushes that make us feel so alive. We are at our best when we are pressed to think and act at light speed! We are ADD! The nomenclature is incorrect to those of us who be labeled such. We are not deficient, although disorderly. Our attention span appears short to do not understand that we live in the moment and inconsequential to what we are currently focused qualify to we are more others who time can be on.

We are inherent multi-taskers that appear unable to stay on task with a single task. This is only true to the extent that the task at hand holds our interest. I believe that for most ADDers the following quote I have used for years seems to fit: MIND OVER MATTER... IF I DON'T MIND IT DON'T

Doogie Hoser as the Poser Yo, yo, yall

We are ADD!
3/5/2012

MATTER! I think I will market ADDer goods as a support group kinda thang. We are as we are because we are who we are and we are who we are and where we are because of our habitual thinking and we think as we do because we are as we are wherever we are we are and we make those who are not like we are go aaarghh. We are ADD! Snippets are short quotes or quips or can be vignettes of thought and speech. These are the mottoes and sayings that stick with us most... like my previous quote. Snippet to me also can be snip it, snip pets (oh shades of clacker wackers) or any number of things. To me, words are concrete. For as artistic as I am, I do not do abstract art very well at all. It seems foreign to me because I am a three dimensional thinker in relation to physical expression. I am a fourth and fifth dimensional thinker when it comes to esoteric or spiritual things. As an ADDer, unseen dimensions and layers of existence make perfect sense... and we are comfortable with them. ADDers have a tendency to be more spiritualistic, but not necessarily godly or Christian. Although we will think of ourselves as such, children of Aquarius and so forth, we have to be careful about getting into the wrong spiritual venues. Many of the cults and cultish entrapments are alluring to ADDers who just seem to inherently know there is a spirit realm and are drawn to it in some form or fashion. Many of those involved with role-playing games and video junkies are ADDers. We are highly attracted and distracted by sights and sounds, even when we don't want to be. I personally am drawn to human speech, even if I do not understand the language being spoken. I can pretty much block out other sounds as a type of white noise, but it is nearly impossible for me to block out human speech without intense concentration. In hyper focus, I block out everything including my own physical feelings or needs. I

Doogie Hoser as the Poser Yo, yo, yall

We are ADD!
3/5/2012

can go hours or days without food, drink, sleep, potty breaks when I am in hyper drive. I do not express this as a good thing; just stating what is in my world. That is another issue; ADDers are world builders, even if it is only in our own minds. We tend to live in our heads more than others and because of that lose social points and focus. We may be odd ducks but those who love us must be attracted to the strange and unusual in the first place. We can be very exciting people... we love the rush and the brush with death rush is the sweetest when we are young and invincible. Those of us who survive puberty and grow into adulthood... at what age I have yet to determine because, personally, I am just a big kid. Thank God for my loving wife, Cathie! The above paragraph I believe displays my thought patterns. I could have gone back and corrected the second to last sentence as it does not complete itself, but I am opting that there is enough information for the reader to absorb what I was trying to say. ADDers do not always complete their thoughts... we only speak as far as we feel we need to. This I think drives nons nuts because we appear flighty or spacey when we are in truth moving beyond what we may have started to say distracted by our own thought ideas. We shift gears without warning and do not use backup alarms to warn passers by. It is hard to describe on this two-dimensional paper what goes on in my mind even as I write this. I am endeavoring to stay focused while visions of lilyputs dance through my head and numerous flashes of info like television monitors dangling on cables like links in a chain rush past attempting to get my full attention. Sometimes this makes me feel dyslexic, other times it just drives me crazy and exhausts me mentally. This is a bad thing because our mind is what energizes our physical bodies; it sends the signals that fire up the engines that run this ship. Lately, I have felt very underpowered and I do not have an engineer like Mr. Scott of the Galaxy Class Starship USS Enterprise to give me more power by altering the energy flow through my

Doogie Hoser as the Poser Yo, yo, yall

We are ADD!
3/5/2012

circuitry. ADDers tend to be very expressive and descriptive when relating anything. Others find us maddening, even boring because of oral diarrhea that is in truth oral diaria, information overload, because we find it difficult to cut to the chase or start a tale in the middle or near the end. Our recorders seem to automatically rewind to the perceived beginning of whatever it is we are speaking of. Our unfortunate listeners must endure what they already know in part or in total before any new information is 'added' by the espousing ADDer. I try real hard to cut to the chase, but it is not always possible without doing what I am doing now. For some reason when I see what I am thinking in written form, expressed as much as a graphic as well as an alphanumeric mode of communication, I am better able to edit it. In my mind I see words as graphics. Words are thought images clothed in vocabulary... most of the time. But some times words are just that word images that just do not compute and therefore affect me as though I am dyslexic or forgetful. The absentminded professor as my wife likes to call me... amongst other choice names... which I do not blame her in the least as my own inner speech scripts do a much better job of trashing my ego than any others could possible attain. This is also a problem with ADDers. We are driven to perfection in what we see as a chaotic imperfect world and it can drive us and those around us nuts. I live in organized chaos of my own making because my awkward inability to remember something that is out of sight out of mind really irritates me. Therefore, everything I think I need to have around me for this moment and a supposed future moment must be laid out around me to keep me from forgetting. I do not always see it as having my crap strewn around me like a small twister employed as my valet had done the job. This again is part of my lovely wife's burden; she must keep on me to keep myself orderly. I wish I had her organizational skills. I do in my mind but do not seem to be able to translate them into the now.

Doogie Hoser as the Poser Yo, yo, yall

We are ADD!
3/5/2012

I live in the now. I was tested over the course of several months by medial providers and it was determined that I personally have almost no concept of time and my mind seems to be incapable of easily processing time or time related information to where it actually means something. Time is an abstract gauge and I am a concrete thinker. At times, it just does not compute. My wife will inform me that dinner is ready and I will be in the middle of some project and I will tell her I will be there in a minute. She is smart enough to know and kind enough not to kill me that my minutes can effectually turn into hours. When I am in hyper drive, I have a hard time disengaging because when I am flowing I hate to disrupt the flow because the odds are I will never return to this moment in my mind or flow in this thought trough as fluidly or as well as I am right now. I hate forgetting all of the cool stuff that sifts through my cortex to and from the vortex... ya know what I mean, Vern? I could go on and on and on, literally as well as figuratively, and at some point on my blog I probably will. I do not mean to come off as a big mouthed know it all, but I never did like small mouth bass that much, seriously, once the floodgates are breached, the little boy attempting to plug the holes in the dike is screwed big time. He is going down and so is his town! Once again, the above paragraphs will give you a snippet of what goes on in my head, like you give a crap... but then again, maybe you do. We all have to take healthy dumps on a daily basis. It is as a friend of mine used to espouse that his favorite time of the day was when he took and HDB... a healthy defecation break. To a person like myself, most of what I do or write seems that way to me. Forgive me world, but I am like Toyota, I am driven to express myself in whatever form is available at the time. I will tell you though; I am not proficient in Alpine Yodeling so your ear cavities are safe for now. It is 6:29 am and I have got to go back to bed for an hour or so before I start my day the Home Lumber way. Peace out, y'all... (Dont you just hate it... life is more than a charade of clichs is it not?)

Doogie Hoser as the Poser Yo, yo, yall