14 August, 2009

Government policies are needed to deal with the Fear of Zombies

In other news "people are morons of the highest order" a fact I have been espousing for some years.

Today's Second Post - and a drug update

I don't know why it is, but I seem to develop a tolerance to drugs quite quickly. My wodnerful start to Ritalin has certainly plateaued. I have not plummeted into a black hole, nor have I forgotten how to do my job. No, I am still working, still producing, still contributing, but somehow the initial flurry of super productivity seems to have been a bit of a manic spike rather than a consistently achievable level of productivity.

But then, I have never been the unproductive type. Despite the ADHD, I have always done several things at once. At one stage I was working full time, studying part time, in the army reserve and the father of a newborn. So, I finished the study, resigned my commission and immediately started writing a rock climbing and abseiling training guide for a youth organisation. Plus I always seem to be on a committee (or two) or leading a bible study group or helping out at the scout hall (often both at the same time) and I play rugby, take my kids to their own sports (and training sessions).

Yep, I may lack a certain focus at times but as I write this I am beginning to see just how fantastic I am. I jest, I have always had an overinflated sense of my own worth.

Still, it may be time for a drug holiday. See if kicking the meds for a while will give me back the kick when I next take them (don't worry, I will research the possibility then talk it through with a suitably qualified medical person).

So in short...
Ritalin, the best meds for me so far but no magic bullet.

Don't Make me Restart

I hate having to restart my computer (ever). You see, I am not a clean desk kind of guy. I read something once that said ADHD types are less likely to put things away, because if they do they will forget they exist. And for me that rings true, but it isn't just my post-it notes. I do the same thing with emails. If they are crap I delete them, if I can I ignore them (open them, read them, perhaps drop them in a sub-folder by subject) but if I need to do anything with them then they will stay open (although minimised) until they are dealt with. If the due date is a long way off, then I will tag them for follow-up with an associated reminder.

The same is true of my browsing, sure I bookmark things, but some stuff isn't important enough to bookmark (otherwise my bookmarks folder would be huge, cumbersome and useless). For that stuff I want to read but haven't, I open it in a tab, with the idea of coming back later. This could be TED talks I plan on listening to, Seth Goden's Blog Posts, Neil Gamen's Blog Posts. Stuff, which is peripheral to keeping my head around all that is new in libraries. Now, I subscribe to a few blogs (and I contantly revisit my need for each subscription). Of those blogs I subscribe to, the library related ones are read as they appear (and I'll usually look a couple of times a day).

So, why not just mark the post and come back to it later? I currently have over 300 posts saved in my feed aggregator (almost 100 for Stephen Abram alone) but I so rarely go back to them. If I read it before I close my browser I will read it, if not it is usually not revisited.

The same is true of books, I have half a dozen open on my bedside table at any one time because if I put it away I will forget it exists and never realise I didn't finish reading it.

So, why do you care about this? Perhaps you are reading this blog because you ae an ADHD nutjob like this librarian, but if not I would like to suggest that the world is becoming like me. There is just too much 'stuff' out there, there are too many web pages to read, to remember, to bookmark. there are too many books, songs and TV shows to buy, watch or illegally rip from P2P. If you don't steal it now, you'll probably forget and if you do do it, you'd better watch it straight away.

Which leads me to cry, don't make me restart my computer. Every time I do I have to restart my life and if that isn't bad enough, when one of my work machines died a couple of weeks ago I not only had to restart my browser but I had to recreate my list of firefox plugins, greasemonkey addons, search engines, bookmarks.

It is hell. Or was until I realised that I never revisit those sort of things unless I am restarting from scratch. there are so many nice things on this new computer (and no, I haven't added them to my others, because that would involve remembering what they were. But next time they are upgraded...)