"There was no 'One, two, three, and away,' but they began running when they liked, and left off when they liked, so that it was not easy to know when the race was over."

Same place, different day.
Sadly this entry could well mirror the last, a rambling and confused admittance of...something.
I dont know...
a new list?
a new book?
a new approach, tattoo, painting, poster, artist, quote?
God dammit!
.
.
.
so what do I know?

• sleep enough
• exercise enough 
• meditate enough

okay. what else?
small steps, visualize...
and
I think better in the afternoon.
I also know that the allure of oblivion through distraction is stronger than the conceptualization of fulfilling far off dreams...
so small moves & small rewards.
fragments and circles today.
starts and stops and geting no where
running in circles.
dammit...

“Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

priorities.
so i have reached a fork in the road in this journey.
a fork that i have come across before. It is a fork that forks and keeps on dividing and spreading out like the delta of a river.
and time anda again I find myself standing at these moments of choice na do not know which direction to head...
The inability to choose is not choosing not to chose. uncertainty is not stoicism.
or i am running head long and notice only periferally that I am totally forked.
so, I have to get my head around my priorities somehow...
no neat little tricks or apps or advice today..
just a confused and rambling question that i think lies at the heart of this whole thing.
where to begin?
all the time, every day.
what should i do now?

sadly i am often left feeling like this guy.

and though he has tried really hard to get organized and put a lot of time and effort into developing a system (and looks pretty happy)...
  he has no idea which direction he is heading.

"I don't want to go among mad people..."

I would like to interject that I am embarking on this journey of self discovery and improvement whilst I am home on paternity leave with my three year old and my one and a half year old sons. The youngest is sitting beside me as I type... spitting on my sleek Macbook Pro keyboard in order to get my attention.
His older brother, the three year old, is playing dj by starting and restarting Your Wife is Calling by punk legend  Lee Ving over and over again. 1234, 1234. 1234,1234..ad infinitum.
I am not making excuses just providing context,
   and not for you, but for me.
I saw this today and it made me think.

I have been struggling with how slowly change seems to be taking place.
I am perpetually frustrated by this.
Case in point: I have been reading Four Weeks to an Organized Life for the better part of two weeks now and have only successfully completed three days of the program...
this frustrates and disappoints me.
I get frustrated and disappointed in myself.
so...kindsight.
progress is slow
and so I will chip away at the rock of myself to reveal the me underneath..
but I wont do it alone. I can't. I have tried. I have failed. I have beaten myself up about it.
so what i have learned?

I have learned that I cant do this alone...I get too distracted.
(Ba-dum-tiss)

And so I have joined Attention, a study group of sorts here in Karlstad that focuses on ADHD issues of all shapes and sizes. I am looking for a support group.
I have also contacted Andrea from the fantastic blog The Art of ADD. Andrea works as a life coach. I am not certain what this means per say but I know that it means some sort of support.

Today's goals:
Create a week schedule version 1.0
Chip away at my new office space for twenty minutes
Update the blog. yay!

“It's always tea-time.”

I have  a new tool and i am using it right now.

It is intended to induce the state of last minute panic productivity at will.

Drink up, drink up, Move down, MOVE DOWN!

....is what i think to myself. 

The suggestion comes from Four Weeks to a an Organized Life by Jeffery Freed and Joan Shapiro.

very practical advice: time limits and visualisation so far. 

So, i have eight minutes left to blog after looking for cool pics of of the mad hatter at teatime. 

My self imposed time limit means that i settle for this pic which i know is not the best picture of a Mad Hatter Clock on the internet...hmmm...so many thinks.
Is it better to settle and get things done or try to do things exactly as i think that they should be done but not actually get them done? 

That, i think, is the entire point. Three minutes. This twenty minute tea time approach is going to be implemented when it comes to keeping this blog updated. One minute left. I have many more things on my mind but many other things to get done today. Next post: The Art of ADD and life coach Andrea.

"How puzzling all these changes are! I'm never sure what I'm going to be, from one minute to another."

Just a quick note to point out that I have realized something grand.
I do believe that the solution to my "problem" is to become a cyborg. Heck Yeah. 

Hold your circuits now. Not a cyborg in the Cybermen, Ghost in the Shell, Cylon kind of way...

which is the way that i suppose i may have implied...

but rather in the sense that my shortcomings are going to be upgraded and outsourced by exterior technological apartas.  

I have been following Amber Case for sometime and she goes on and on about how we are becoming cyborgs.
I wonder if, in the hyper-modern sense, I am not seeking for a solution to my frustrations from within the system that is their source. I may well have biological predisposition to AD/HD behaviour. Visual right mindedness and all of that. I do recognize the effect of context in this development.

Sonnet 121

'Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed,

When not to be receives reproach of being,

And the just pleasure lost which is so deemed

Not by our feeling but by others' seeing.

For why should others' false adulterate eyes

Give salutation to my sportive blood?

Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,

Which in their wills count bad what I think good?

No, I am that I am, and they that level

At my abuses reckon up their own;

I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel.

By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown,

  Unless this general evil they maintain:

  All men are bad, and in their badness reign.

Thanks Stephen Tonti and his TEDx talk: ADHD as a difference in cognition, not a disorder.

" 'Where do you want to go?' responded the Cheshire Cat. 'I don't know,' Alice answered."

Sitting at the kitchen table mere minutes until the bedtime that i have been told is all important to my talking control of my life approaches.
eleven o'clock.
I eat Cornflakes,
listen to Gesaffelstein (french techno)
and read Russel Barkely's Taking Charge of Adult ADHD.
I am tired but my mind begins to race.
"Go to bed" one voice says.
"Fuck that" says another. "This dude doesn't even have ADHD...what the hell does he know about it?
Stay up all night writing. dance. go for a bike ride"
but i know that i wont do any of these things...except for maybe write a bit...and dance a bit...and maybe do a few push ups...and end up doing nothing including sleeping...then tomorrow will suck...
but i feel good right now.
exhausted and exhilarated.
Alive.
And i am supposed to learn how not to be that...
from a bunch of people who don't have what i have...
don't feel what i feel...
this must be what a teenager at a counsellor's office feels like...
"you don't know me"
this is hard.
and prescription meds wait for me on Monday.
a phone call away.

damn. It's past my bedtime.

“Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.”

I have high hopes. 

This next few months have been earmarked for learning to organize my life. I have been trying for years but the implementation of this desire has more than fallen short. I am a high school teacher and my biggest fear is that I will lose one of my students assignments in the piles of papers. I like to think that I can become an example of what a person with AH/DH can accomplish for students with  and without AD/HD.

I have gotten my degree, I inspire my students, but my organisation is almost non-existent and this just will not do. 

My abismal organisation skills have bothered me my entire life but I have never tried to identify the cause. I have tried many times to get organized "once and for all" with sweeping changes and closet clearing mega cleans. These plans are inevitably short lived though I have adopted some habits that have lasted in the long term.

Such as,

I am proud to say that I am a successful ToDo lister.

Some years back I began using the ToDo list and have gotten progressively better at it.

It used to be that I would write a ToDo list, lose it, find it months later and be gripped by shame.

The entire list remained unToDone. After all this time.

However, now when I find a lost ToDo it is rare that I cannot, with great satisfaction, scratch off several  items. Occasionally the entire list is checked off one item at a time with great flourish and sense of accomplishment.

So progress has been made.

Also,

I have a calendar. I love it. 

It is a black, Moleskine masterpiece full of chicken scratches.

I buy the exact same one every year, or rather my Love puts it into my christmas stocking.

I have a crazy internal system within the coated cardboard covers that changes often and randomly, 

not unlike my mind. 

It is me holding on by my fingertips and I live in fear of losing grip.

But these are new times. 

I am looking at this in a new way.

I am on a mission to find answers outside of myself.

I have ordered these:

then my "research" lead me to this video:

The man in the video is Russell Barkley, the author of one of the books that I have ordered.
The video spoke to me, it kicked me in the heart as though he was speaking of my own experiences.
"Nearsighted in time...11th hour...organizing for the imminent future...everything is a crisis...know what to do but cant do what they know."

Every lesson I teach is the product of yesterday  Even if it is a lesson that I have taught a dozen times I have to re-plan it for every occasion. Re Write the lesson, Re plan the timeline, re print the hand outs...hell re make the hand outs from scratch after searching computers hard drives, USBs,  e-mail accounts and Dropbox, re Google the links ect. ect.
This infuriates me.
An educator's time is sacred.
The biggest challenge in being a teacher for me, hands down, is effective use of time.
Thus you will allow me a howl of frustration.
Howl.
So I have ordered these books but what if, like the author of one of them says, learning skills is useless because they wont be used?
Time will tell.

"Begin at the beginning."

there are no beginnings, so here is the story so far.
I have been living along side AD/HD ever since my twin brother, father and sister were diagnosed in the nineties. I was diagnosed some time later when trying to get through university when I was around 19 years old.
I was prescribed medication in order to help me finish my essays but decided that if I relied on medication in order to get my degree then the degree would not in actuality belong to me.
This was my logic.
You may not agree with it but it is how I felt then and it is how I feel now.
So, no meds for me.
But you never know.
Sometimes, I like to think that I am perfect for my place in the world.
If I can find that place
made perfectly for it.
Sometimes I think that there are no places for anything
and that there is no perfect,
but usually I fluctuate wildly between varying degrees of each think.
Often I feel lost.
And often I don't know which way to turn,
and often I wonder if my salvation lies in a pill bottle.
I think highly of the humans and their technology and I think that technology is here to show us the way.
But for now I have decided to look for answers elsewhere, on line, from others who are going through the same thing. Looking for a way.
I don't think that AD/HD is a curse or a gift but a skill set that is coming of age, or will be soon.
I have to admit that I see it as a stage in our evolution.
In today's jungle it is the tooth and the claw.
It is the ability to be everywhere and nowhere simultaneously, and to fluctuate between the two states with the entirety of being.
It is both cause and effect.
Nature and nurture.
If you weren't born with it inside of you then you sure as hell had it hammered in to you by MTV, Coca Cola and the interweb.
North America was settled by the impulsive.
They created a stimulant hungry nation and character traits compounded.
A breeding ground sprung up organically as a shallow tepid pool.
And multiply and spread they did, we did.
Time will tell.