Summer Tomatoes

Special thanks to http://www.flickr.com/photos/9229859@N02/1280445882/sizes/m/in/photostream/ This was creative Commons licensed.

I have been feeling the burgeoning of summer tomatoes lately.

I've never been much a fan of tomatoes like my parents were and my mom still is. She'll eat them sliced on a plate and call it a good meal. Since becoming an adult I've grown to enjoy them, though not to that extent.

Still, the thing that impressed me then and still does now was how, through a small amount of effort and regular tending, it was possible to create a wealth of tomatoes. A harvest resulting in tomatoes on every available surface. Tomatoes on the porch, in the dog bowl, under the bird cage, behind the TV. So many tomatoes that people would be giving them away. When you came to someone's house, they'd say "you can leave, but you gotta take tomatoes with you."

Such sumptuous bounty is a very good symbol, a very good metaphor for my creative drive at times. In fact, both the bounteousness and the "embarrassment of riches" aspects of the symbol are apt.

I have learned that, unless my creative impulse has somewhere to go, it starts to leak out the sides of my consciousness. The fulsome bounty of creativity generates summer tomatoes: rich, fulsome, delicious, but sometimes a bit much.

When this happens my speech can get a bit awkward, my thoughts can race, my mind plays with words. It is just as difficult as when I don't know what to say, or when I say the wrong thing, sometimes, because it leaves people feeling…a bit lost? To follow my train of thought is as hard as it is to cut an over-ripe tomato with a dull knife.

This is part of what it is to be ADHD, to realize what is happening and to consciously try and channel those impulses, to make them be more useful than annoying, to tell your inner 3 year old to be patient, that this more boring stuff will be over soon and soon, you will be able to come out and to play.

That's called "deferment" and it's very hard to do, but part of what we must learn in order to cope with the Gatherer world. I had to defer posting this today because it was just not the time. Now I'm rewarding my waiting by getting this out before I go to bed.

At least summer tomatoes lets me know that there is still a rich fertile creative ground underneath it all, that I could if I wanted to harness these vines, harvest them, and maybe even put up in jars some marinara sauce, or stewed tomatoes, just like my family used to do when I was young.

I invite you to not stifle your creative urges, but think about a time when you could use them. Become willing to wait. Fulfill promises to yourself. You may not feel like you have much time left, but you do. And if you wait, then one day soon you can enjoy your own riotous blossoming.

Until then, enjoy this tomato. It's fresh, and ripe, and it's all yours.

Take two, they're small!

Winter Night

When the wheel rolls around to this time of year, I am always reminded of issues of light and darkness. I am mindful that many people do not perceive that Yule (usually December 21st) is the shortest day of the year. But our bodies know it in our bones, our pineal glands, our viscera. I am keenly aware that when my co-workers, for example, forget to even say goodnight at the end of the day, they are probably working through their own seasonal sadness.

That there is an intense, childhood memory laden holiday at this time seems almost cruel; at a time when even healthy people are a little down. What would the world be like if Christmas was celebrated on June 25th instead, at the height of the sun rather than at its perihelion?

For someone like myself who is being treated for depression, it is a time of year where, once again, I do quarrel with the Shadow almost hourly. Striving to see that voice as a gift is hard; this is not the time I can hold its hand, the Shadow is not a cuddly fuzzy monster but an infiltrating doomcaller who inhabits every worry or fear. Still, I recognize that, no matter how Shadowy things get, I am holding on and reaching out to my friends, loves, and family. There is a lot to live for.

I am blessed and there are many others who do not even have the energy to keep up the struggle. There are those who tried and failed and I bless their memory and wish that things had gone differently for them: I am looking at you, John, Billy, and Lauren, and keeping your memory such as I have it.

To those who do not think they have the energy to fight, I ask that you accept a hug and encouragement from me. I hope that, since it comes from someone who knows the dark pit of depression, it may mean a little more. Please hold on for me, for you, for all those who will one day care and love you, for the fact that, very soon, we turn the corner on the waning of the Light and will start watching the days grow longer again. There is power in that metaphor… Even as the Earth passes through darkness and comes back through the other side, you can, too. May it be so. May it always be so.

Winter Night Picture, above, is Creative Commons licensed, check out this link for the creator:

Getting Things Done

I’ve been listening to the audiobook of Getting Things Done by David Allen. I’m really enjoying it.

The first, best take-away I have from it is this: time management is not just about trying to be more productive. Yes, there’s an element of that. But it is also about taking the stress off of your life and getting your brain clear so that it can focus. Understanding that has made this whole concept of learning how to better get things done more attractive.

I am not all the way through the book yet, but already I can tell you that I’d love for folks to take a look at this. It is starting to show dividends in my life already.

It’s been a while…

Since I last wrote. I have been going through some transitions in my personal counseling experience. My awesome counselor had to go to internship so I got shuffled around a bit. Finally ended up with a male counselor, who was not a bad fellow, but I just can’t relate as well to a male as I can to a female.

Ultimately, I hope that I can find a new counselor that will be the kind of counselor I need.

In the meantime, I keep working on myself, confronting a lot of the stuff that lurks in the background. I won’t say that I’m fearless, because I’m not fearless. I know it will be tough work. I know that it will not be pleasant. But I want to do it.

Bright thought of today:

“In order to double your success rate, triple your failure rate.” – T. Watson

Feeling Down

I’m feeling down. This is, really, not a national emergency. It’s not even a unique event. It’s just a normal part of my week. Living with depression means understanding that, sometimes, you will feel down and there won’t be a good reason why. I had an OK morning. I got to work on time. I had a decent breakfast. I have no reason to be down, really: I have a family who loves me, I have a decent job. There are plenty of people who are worse off than I am. But there it is.

 It is really not the being down, but how one responds to it, that makes the difference. I suppose I could point to a lot of reasons why I might be down, but I don’t want to belabor the point. Ultimately, whether the feeling is just some chemical weirdness in my brain, or born out of some actual reaction to the world, it’s there. Sitting with it, noticing it, talking about it; these are the ways I’ve learned, that I’ve taught myself, to cope with it all.

 But it doesn’t define me as a person. It doesn’t make me different from other beings drawing breath. We are all in this together. So, despite the feelings of loneliness that I feel, those feelings I get from time to time of being an alien in a crowd of normal folk, I know that we are all built with the same kind of DNA. I am not alone. There are the sounds of people’s voices just down the hall, or across the way. So, I comfort myself and I go on.

Here’s hoping you will, too.

Very cool fiction representation of ADHD in a girl

Theo Waitley, the protagonist of the Sharon Lee and Steve Miller’s new novel, Fledgling, is clearly someone with attention issues. How the authors deal with it is fairly realistic, and it is a very empowering story for those of us who have felt this way. In this story, the ADHD-like conditions Theo has demonstrated are actually an outgrowth of her genetics: she comes from a family of fast-reaction-time spaceship pilots.

Fledgling is a coming-of-age story. I hope you enjoy it and the podcast, as I am involved with reading the story for the podcast.

The Challenge of Depression

I just read a news article that featured the findings of a Canadian study on depression.

This study determined that people who were reported “cured” of their depression and subsequently exposed to “mild sadness” would frequently re-lapse into a depressive state.

What this means is that, even if you are “cured” of depression, and you stop taking anti-depressants, you may relapse into depression afterward.

This is not surprising. I believe there are some folks who will always be on anti-depressants. I believe that I am one of those people. But does this mean that life is not worth living? Does this mean that I can’t expect to have some measure of happiness ever?

Of course it doesn’t mean that. It means that there are some folks who are always going to have to mind their emotional health, and take care of it. There are people who are more emotionally reactive than others. These are people who are, by nature, also able to be affected positively and who feel emotions more deeply in general than others, in my opinion.

 I’d love to see a study that took that into account as well.

 As for me, I’m going to keep on, keeping on. There is no other choice. If I have to keep taking anti-depressants, then I will. That’s just that.

I certainly would rather not have to need them, but if I must, I will.

Silence

Lately I'm fighting a lot of creative silence. There are things I want to say, but the words are being too timid to leap out onto the screen or into the air. Part of the silence has to do with a lot of inner changes I'm going through due to my counseling. Part of it is that my life is stressful. Part of it is my depression.

I try not to let the silence win. I accept it, open it up, realize that silence is sometimes necessary, realize that this, too, will pass and I'll soon be back in the thick of things.

It's hard in these moments, however, because I can't help feel as though I'm speaking only to myself, when I do speak.

And it matters to me what other people think. I don't write, or podcast, for fame or glory but I wouldn't mind having some. Heck, all I really want is for someone to occasionally pay attention to me. Not all the time. Not in a weird, obsessive way. But just…sometimes. Knowing that I have an audience. Knowing that another human being wants to know what I think – that's a powerful thing.

I know to devote myself to my art and my writing, I'm going to need to get over this need for feedback / response / recognition. I'm sitting with it, knowing how hard it feels, recognizing what parts are inside of me irrevocably and sadly – what parts of it are brain chemistry rather than Truth.

I refuse to accept that my brain chemistry is truth. Life is true, beauty is true. Depression is a foul plague of shadows, and it isn't at all true. I have had my share of grief and sadness, but do I deserve to be this sad all the time? No, I don't.

So, I answer back the brain chemistry with the shot-in-the-dark chemicals they give me to make me more happy, more compliant to social convention, more attentive to things that I otherwise find boring. I'm here. I'm trying.

I'm turning over all the boxes and trying to sort through them, throwing away that which is not useful or important anymore.

There just doesn't seem to be enough time to do what I want to do and what I must do and what I should do.

Let me quote a science fiction TV show. "I stand between the candle and the star." Between the last hope of light and the source of all light.

And I refuse to let the Shadow do me in.

May it always be so.

Lost in the Forgetting

As I grow older, I realize that my memory is for crap.

That fact has been used to hurt me in the past. There are several people who, in the course of my life, utilized my poor memory against me.

For the longest time, I tried to hide my memory problems. Trying to lie to cover up the fact that you just don’t remember is not exactly the best solution for the problem. For one thing, liars need to have a really good memory, to be able to tell the same lie over and over again.

As I have come to understand the truth of the idea of “honesty making the best policy,” and implement that policy, I’ve started to have less and less trouble with that kind of memory problem.

Being consistent is not just a good idea for memory retention, it helps you be able to present a decent face to the rest of the world, as well.

Sometimes, though, there are whole conversations and whole agreements that I have had and have made that I just don’t remember. This is difficult for me, especially since I used to spend a lot of time with a person who really used my poor memory against me. This person knew that I was vulnerable to forgetting things, so she utilized this knowledge in “Gaslighting” me.

Such a manipulative person should have the license to talk revoked, in my opinion. But I digress.

I don’t think that anyone in my life would purposefully do this to manipulate me. I believe I’ve learned over the course of years to seperate myself from that kind of person.

So, now, I just have to sit down and say, “OK, look – I don’t remember what you’re talking about. I’m willing to believe that you said it and that I was there. I can’t for the life of me recall saying that. However, if you’d like to tell me what we talked about, I can give a stab at remembering it.”

My memory is relative and relational. Each meme unit is connected to other meme-units. If I can get the meme-units linked together, I will have a fairly decent memory of something.

In order to create the meme-unit connections, I try to establish ties with the memory to already existing frameworks. For example, if I need to remember a particular appointment, I always do better when I have a reminder pop up on my computer, my cell phone, and my PDA AND having a post-it note on my computer monitor AND putting it on my car dashboard AND talking about it to several people, who will most likely ask me, “So, did you get the tickets to that Brazillian Penguin Performance this weekend, like you said you were?”

Actually, it’s only things I find boring that I have a truly hard time remembering. I have developed several different strategies for remembering these things:

• Tie the boring appointment with something fun in your mind: If I go to the Doctor’s appointment this Wednesday, I will reward myself with a stop at a bookstore.
• Reinforce things. When doing chit-chat about your week, say to your chat partner, “I’m going to get to go to a bookstore this week when I remember to go to my doctor’s appointment.”
• Use a website like AirSet.com to send yourself phone messages reminding yourself things – 48 hours, 24 hours, 12 hours, then 3 hours, then 1 hour before hand.
• Leave notes for yourself.
• Call your own voicemail.

Above all, avoid beating yourself up for having a bad memory, because it just makes you stressed out, and stress leads to distraction, and distraction leads to having a bad memory.

When doing something where you’re handling really difficult topics, use a computer. Chat logs are so much better when you can go back and read them later and say, “Wow, OK, I remember when I said that you could paint yourself purple. I didn’t realize I had agreed to that. OK.”

And keep your sense of humor and forgive others their memory lapses. This is especially important.

Hunter’s Mind

I feel as though I have struggled all my life with not being in sync with the world around me. 

Let me explain. I am not trying to say I'm some sort of whiz kid or some sort of supah-genius. I am just a regular guy for the most part. But I have a very active brain. And my brain demands input. And when it doesn't get input, it gets antsy.

I call this Hunter's Mind – because the most useful this state can be is when I'm sitting and waiting for something to occur, waiting on something to change. I can sit still when I am doing this. If I am engaged mentally, my Hunter's Mind can keep me still for hours.

And there are all these novelty circuits in my brain. Novelty shines through the sensory noise of everything else and suggests itself to me very quickly. 

 My brain craves the novelty, recognizes the patterns of novelty and goes after it. *Snap* Like that.

 This is not a great adaptation to living life in a civilized world. Polite society has very little need for hunter types. So I have been diagnosed with a "disorder" that is called "Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder"

I don't feel that it is a disorder. I agree that it doesn't fit this world very well. But I don't think I'm broken.