Poem Means Business

When I started my business, I wrote some haiku. About ADHD.

My business. My monkeys. I took this photo at the Exploratorium in San Francisco in 2013.

I. First think…

Failure: the worst word
for possible outcomes.
No attempt. No win.

II. Freeze

Frozen, fearing what?
Step forward will mean two back?
Learning is no fail.

III. OK. Go.

Feet on floor, seated
not ergonomically.
Motionless. In motion.

Business Time vs. ADHD

I put the picture of the monkeys up because: 1. I’ve always liked monkeys. 2. I love the Exploratorium in San Francisco. 3. I like the idea of “monkey brain.”

When the picture was taken (Thanksgiving in 2013) (it might have been Thanksgivukkah — Hanukkah plus Thanksgiving that year!) we were with family in the Bay area.

And I was pretty happy and stable, but I was still wondering why I could not harness my energy and make ideas come to life. A friend later suggested I might have ADHD. I took an online questionnaire specifically for women and girls. Just reading the questions gave me my answer, but I took the questionnaire results and brought them to my psychiatrist. He referred me to someone who would give me an official evaluation.

Testing took two days. The results… drumroll please:

Yes, I had depression, anxiety, and… ADHD, primarily Inattentive Type.

Well, that explains everything.

I have had it all my life.
And it explained so much: Not paying attention in school. Double booking appointments and having to change things at the last minute. Risky behavior: cutting school, sex, drugs (drugs not so much, because food and sex were my drugs of choice).
Not understanding what I had done wrong —when I had spoken without thinking. Feeling that I was smart, but I did not know how people just as smart did things like turn assignments in on time.

And that was just school. Imagine what it was like to enter the working world.
A world where you were supposed to answer every email PROMPTLY saying, “I will read your suggestions. When do you want to know what I think of them?”
And then schedule an appointment with yourself to answer the email, having read the suggestions!!!! If you’re thinking 2013 -2014, yes it was easier to schedule things.
But go back a decade, and then another decade, and you’ve got a scheduling nightmare!

Even farther back:

I just found an old journal, in which I wrote in 1979 (I was 23) and an undergrad, “I’m not applying myself at all this term. What is it that keeps me from applying myself?”

And farther back than that:

In 3rd grade, we had some kind of lesson about prehistoric humans. And because much of the lesson may have been something I already knew about — although wasn’t an expert in it — I tuned out until the teacher asked me for an answer… I did not even know what the question was.
She wanted to know what “anthropology” was and I told her I didn’t know.
”Well how would you find out?”
”Ummm”
”Well?”
The answer that was forming in my head and that I began to say went something like this:

“I could ask my father. He’s studying to be an anthropologist and he would know but I will have to call him because he doesn’t live with us…”
”…you would look it up in the dictionary!!!” the teacher growled.

Now imagine being bored easily by the tasks you have to do. And easily distracted by anything else (yes, the Internet is for people with ADD)

That’s all for now… but… this is how my ADD mind works—when it’s working. So, what gave me the idea that I could have a freelance writing business?

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