Stories of an ADD Adult

If you’re wondering, the move was successful.

Every time I move to a new place, it is like a wake-up call for me. I realize how disorganized my living area actually is because I have to sort everything into suitcases and boxes. I become more aware of how having ADD affects my personal life.

In the end, I would say that it is always therapeutic in some way (though always painful) and gives me the encouragement to improve my ways of coping with ADD. I always realize that there are things I can do to improve my life.

The past couple of days have been awful because I have been packing and preparing to move out of my apartment.

Moving is one of those extremely annoying and difficult things in life, regardless of whether or not you have ADD! I don’t know anyone who doesn’t hate moving.

My main problems are:

• I have too much stuff. Although I am better now at not accumulating decorative objects and useless clutter, I accumulate lots of materials for all my projects. It’s all useful, but there’s so much of it.
• My stuff is highly disorganized. I envy the people who have a specific place in their houses for everything. It’s incredibly difficult to sort everything into categorized boxes and suitcases now. I know from past experiences that I can’t just throw everything into boxes and sort it after I move, because I will never get around to it.
• I have papers for work scattered all around my house, mixed in with mail, receipts, paycheck stubs, and other paperwork for my personal records. I’m terrified of losing something important.
• Keeping track of so many things at once is driving me mad. Normally my ADD is actually helpful when I have to do lots of things at once. But in this case I have to keep track of an abnormally tight schedule in addition to sorting my entire living area and packing it into my car. I feel like I am going crazy!

I shouldn’t even be writing right now because I have so many things to do in so little time. Well, I needed a break. I have been feeling so overwhelmed and depressed, and today I felt like I was going to have a mental breakdown.

This break really helped me put my worries into perspective and calm down. I am sure I will be fine once I get back to packing. I also made a list of things to do, which is making it easier.

I can’t believe I’ve been able to keep up this blog for so long. I start so many projects but have a hard time keeping up my interest in each one for more than part of a day.

My house is a mess because there are materials from unfinished projects all over the place. I rarely wrap up my work and clean up when I’m done working on a project.

Instead, what determines whether or not I am done with a project is distraction. It may be in the form of another project that I’m in the middle of, starting a new project or task, or even just wandering off. When I get distracted, that’s the end of whatever work I had been doing previously.

I don’t like being distracted from projects, and I try not to get distracted. I try to see how much I’ve accomplished every five minutes in order to keep me on task.

Inevitably I end up getting distracted and beginning something else. It happens every 10-15 minutes when I let myself work on projects without paying attention to the clock, and every half an hour when I’m conscious of time.

I was watching one of the Strattera videos where they mentioned this exact problem with focusing on projects. That’s what inspired this post, really.

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.

The average person loses his or her personal belongings sometimes, but not as frequently as the person with ADD or ADHD.

In many cases, the person with ADD or ADHD loses items regularly throughout the day. Sometimes, despite great effort to maintain a system of organization at home or work, items get misplaced as if he or she had never made any effort to be organized.

Losing things can be a nightmare, especially when the things you lose are books from the library. This happens to me frequently, always by accident.

I try to keep my library books on a special shelf in my living room, but somehow I always end up bringing books to other places and forgetting about them.