📁 07-23

I’m half-way through the book “Driven To Distraction” (published in 2011), and I already feel as though I’m reading my own life story. A lot of the book is verbatim dictation from the clients of Edward M. Hallowell, M.D., and John J. Ratey, M.D., which is pretty awesome. From what I understand so far, an ADD diagnosis is a family affair, so it was refreshing to read of behaviors that are identical to my own memories of childhood. And with so many fresh perspectives, “Driven To Distraction” is almost too refreshing for my brain to handle. What’s worse is that I bought three more books about ADD (same two authors). Oh no, look at me, I have too many books to read *Giant Man Baby Noises*

My father passed away in 2012, so there’s absolutely no way to talk to him about my childhood. In the book “Driven To Distraction”, fathers of both children and adults diagnosed with ADD were surprised to know that their child actually answered truthfully when they repeated the sentence, “I don’t know.” I felt terrible after all my mischievous moments as a kid, but when I was asked why I did it (whatever it was), I ‘didn’t have an answer’ or an excuse. I never blamed the family doggo or a friend. My answer was either a resigned, “I don’t know.”, or an exasperated, “I DON’T KNOW!” Which was often chased with, “You never know do you?” Fun times right?

Obviously, there are other symptoms and or behaviors that I would not have associated with ADD that are mentioned in the book. I never considered that certain verbal and written miscommunications could be a symptom of ADD, but I guess that makes sense. When I was younger, it was nearly impossible for me to keep up with taking notes for any of my classes. I’d fish out my three holed paper, and start the outlining process as our teacher reached the third bullet point of the topic. By that point, what the teacher said was lost to me as I tried to copy what was already written. Which may resonate with most, but toss in the little detail that I made one to five mistakes per line–well, I think it’s clear why I had a lot of partially completed notes for study time. During my senior year, I was burning through so many mechanical pencil erasers that I had one of those sliding erasers. In community college I remedied this note taking problem by using some of my federal loan money for an RCA Voice Recorder (🔗RP-5010). Finished my first semester with a 3.0 GPA because I would review those recordings after every lecture, I took notes, and I studied those notes. I had 14 credit hours, so I dedicated 28 hours of study time per week. I never finished my A.S. degree for a few different economic reasons which include receiving my loan and small grant three weeks after the semester began. I fear ridicule, and I’ve grappled with forming English sentences since I was in high school, so why not create a candid blog? That sounds like a sensible thing to do with my free time.

Actually, speaking of my inability to find the right words and stuff–at this particular phase of my life, my friendships have regrettably transitioned from friendships to acquaintances. One of the many pitfalls of having ADD is incidentally and or accidentally burning preverbal bridges. I’m also 38, and consistently feel like I’m 10-20 years behind, so my friendship status is not just because of ADD. There are some natural processes at play too. Maybe I’m an outlier and most with ADD can maintain friendships, but people with ADD seem to step on their own toes a lot. I have also lost at least one job because I forgot which day I was suppose to work. And for at least two jobs, I simply decided not to go anymore. Which I know is incredibly irresponsible, but at the time I thought I was making the best decision of my life. Even if the jobs I had were ‘just hourly retail jobs’, at least I had the means to maintain my independence. The consequence of one of those ‘career’ decisions resulted in me paying half the rent of a room in an apartment in North Central Florida, while I payed half the rent of a two bedroom apartment in South Florida. I made that ‘career’ decision the moment I turned off my alarm clock. After the alarm clock was vanquished, I stayed in bed for the entire day, “Nope, I’m not going in anymore.” The panic most people would feel was completely absent from my brain. For a few months after the decision, I felt like I was alive again, and that my possibilities were endless. That feeling changed when I realized that I was out of instant ramen noodles (Top Ramen). While employed, my savings went towards little nuggets of irony, like Payday candy bars, so instant ramen noodles were less of an adapted lifestyle and more of a life necessity. My calves are probably more toned because all of all the 🔗 muscle spasms I use to experience when I tried to sleep (not enough minerals, calcium, and potassium).

In order to offset many of the pitfalls of ADD (unconfirmed), I have logs of everything. When I say everything, I mean, I have a log of my meals that I started in 2017. I could pull up what I ate for lunch on October 13, 2020 (Maruchan without eggs, seitan, or pork loin). I also created a system log/life journal in 2017. I also need some real world tangible control of my schedule, so to the left of this desk is a 38x26in world map, and above that is a 23x17in monthly calendar dry erase board. Before I clean the dry erase board for the next month, I take a photo (snapshot) of the previous month. After the Nextcloud app on my phone syncs photos and videos to my local cloud, I move the image of previous month to a specific folder for future reference. I also have an offline digital calendar (🔗 Calcurse) to record completed daily tasks. And I’m not kidding, one of those tasks is to remind myself to shower (everyday).

The digital calendar I mentioned in the last paragraph (🔗 Calcurse) shares a 🔗 TMUX session with the system log/journal, calorie log, and a few other things. The digital calendar is called Calcurse because it’s a calendar that uses the curses TUI framework. I mean, it’s a calendar accessible from the command line, so it’s very portable. I launch the TMUX session by typing the word ‘daily’ (with help from: 🔗 tmuxinator) and then I press enter on the keyboard. Since it’s a TMUX session, I can access the session through SSH as long as I have access to the home WiFi. I feel that having an easy way to set timers (or reminders) has also helped me in the past. At the moment I use a Fossil Hybrid smartwatch to bark out commands to Alexa®, “set a timer for 5 minutes please”, but before that I used my bash script 🔗 Ghemx to help me with setting reminders/timers. My Ghemx config file still has timers saved for the washer and dryer. Actually, two timers for the washer (I dump the detergent in after the machine fills with water), and one for the dryer. If KDE Connect is configured to send desktop notifications out to an Android device, Ghemx uses notify-send, so those notifications will pass through as well. With KDE Connect notifications enabled via whatever smartwatch app (i.e. Fossil app), it should also push out notifications from Ghemx on to smartwatch screens. Ghemx has pushed notifications out to my PineTime smartwatch and my Fossil Gen 6 Hybrid smartwatch. Now I’ll be the first to admit, my Bash language skills are unorthodox, and Ghemx should have been written in Python. Visualizing object oriented languages is not a skill I have access to on command. For example, this very simple password generator Python script that I call 🔗 passgen took me about 40 hours to write, comment, and debug. Someone well versed in Python could have written a similar script in less than an hour.

I’ve had a lot to process recently to say the least. Finding out that I’m not actually a terrible person was pretty good news. Also finding out that most of my impulsive decisions have been due to a misunderstanding of how my brain works was comforting as well.

Thanks goes out to the gods and goddesses of technology. Because I would be lost without it (literally lol).

I love low powered bluetooth radios as much as the next person, but seriously, Fossil could have developed a wonderful watch with an estimated seven day battery life and it would have been so much better. Most of my problems with the FTW 7074 come from bluetooth interference within a few feet away from the phone.

With that said, The Fossil Hybrid watch has indirectly helped with voice activated timers. Small productivity boosters to help with daily side hustle tasks. And the rain percentage provided from voice commands appears to be somewhat accurate. I think it’s kind of funny that I can’t effectively ask for the current illumination or phase of the moon from the watch. I mean, it’s effectively a water dog watch, so why not have all water dog things like wave height and moon phases? Though now that I think about it, reef surfers would probably break the ‘mineral’ glass (not sapphire) within a few weeks.

Since this is a mostly Linux website, KDE Connect does show up in the toggle-able apps to push notifications to the watch, but I’ve had to toggle it off for KDE Connect. It was a great for a week when KDE Connect ignored desktop computer 🔗 MPRIS events. Now with notifications toggled on, KDE Connect will push notifications to my watch regarding each and every YouTube video I watch, or each song that plays from my desktop computer. Which is odd, because I do not receive these notifications on my phone, just my watch.