Stories of an ADD Adult

Sometimes it feels like time is warped. My mind starts to wander away from my work, and the next thing I know, half an hour or more has already passed.

The effect is exaggerated when I have the internet at my disposal, ready to distract me at any moment. If I stop to look something up online, before I know it, I’ve spent half a day surfing the web.

I feel like my mind travels to outer space and back.

The web surfing example I mentioned is probably pretty common for people with and without ADD. I’m sure people without ADD would also say that their minds wander sometimes. But I feel like without medication, my mind is foggy and spaced out during 90% of the day.

I have an unfortunate history of getting bad performance reviews when I have worked for companies in the past.

It makes me especially resentful because I try harder than anyone else. I stay long hours to get the work done, and I feel like I care more about my work than other people. I think I also have a gift of enhanced creativity, which my coworkers often notice, but never my boss.

Companies measure performance in terms of results, and I guess that I just don’t produce results that are as good as the results of other people. I can’t figure out why.

Is it because of my ADD? Partly, but I don’t want to blame it all on ADD. Some of it must come from myself.

I know that my mind tends to wander during meetings. I can’t always pay attention, even though I try, and sometimes I get put on the spot. When I’m put on the spot during one of my daydreaming moments, I get caught not paying attention.

I know that I get distracted by little details. I try to see the big picture, but it’s hard when all the little details are so interesting. Maybe I see things that others don’t see. Maybe I just have more hope in certain little things that my manager can’t understand.

I know that I’m disorganized. My email inbox is a mess. Sometimes I lose emails and forget to reply. Sometimes I miss appointments, which is much worse.

I know that I’m hopelessly late to meetings. I plan to be there 10 minutes early, but I always end up walking in late and disrupting.

Finally, I know that I have trouble socially. Often I have trouble keeping up a conversation because I get distracted and my mind wanders. I lose interest in what people are saying, not because I am selfish, but because my attention span is so short.

I was diagnosed as ADD, not ADHD. I don’t know if it was because my doctor always generalizes adult ADHD as “ADD”, or if he really does think that I don’t have symptoms of hyperactivity.

Personally I think that I am not hyperactive anyhow, but I’m not completely sure. I just know that when I was young, I was a daydreamer, but not a child with endless hyperactive energy.

Not being hyperactive makes it more of a hidden illness. It’s more obvious to everyone when a person is clearly hyperactive, but being a daydreamer, people just think that I’m a hard worker. It doesn’t matter that I spend much of the time that appears to be “hard work” daydreaming (without meaning to daydream, of course).

Having a hidden illness can be better than having an obvious illness in some ways, and worse in others. It depends how compassionate and knowledgeable about medicine the people around you happen to be.