ADHD memes

What really scares me is that I don't meet the classical medical criteria for ADHD, but I relate to these memes like a motherfucker...

Y'all still trust your brains? Lol

Thank God for auto pay

My memory really only seems to function properly for keeping track of large sets of complicated variables, like writing lore or designing a rule set or coding. Ask it to remember something simple and it'll completely throw it out the window. Which, okay, it's a pain in the ass, but I can really do that first bit in a way that I watch other people struggle with.

I may operate like a confused blob spreading in all directions, but every little piece of that work is a chunk of a bigger picture that I can see clearly. I may be flitting from task to task within that work and advancing ideas as my brain spontaneously shifts focus, but when they're all tied to the same end result they all advance the work in an organic and automatic way.

When I let myself work that way, that's when I really feel what Bukowski meant by "Don't try".

Yes, it takes me literally forever to leave the house in the morning. Sure, numbers without a specific meaning and immediate use swim around in my head like alphabet soup. Okay, I literally can barely tell the difference between one hour and six hours if I'm not using some sort of event to track the time.

But my awareness in the moment is pretty on point. I'll catch things other people won't. I'm great at spotting the silhouettes of animals out in the dark and I notice erratic drivers from a mile away. The same things about my memory that make me terrible at getting my day going or that make it hard for me to keep up to date with people or deal with paperwork also make me way more observant than I would be otherwise. They're also the reason I can track these massive piles of inter-related data and not feel overwhelmed. My memory works differently, but it's pretty useful for what I need it for.

We're different, and sometimes it sucks. But a big part of the reason it sucks is because society isn't built for our particular variety of human. That doesn't mean we're not beneficial to ourselves or our species, and it doesn't mean we're broken. It means we work differently and we have different capabilities.

For some people it may make sense to medicate to make it easier to keep track of things, and some people may not have or may not have found applications for the way their memory works differently; we all have to find what works for us.

But I also think that we don't necessarily have to frame our experience of our own brains around apologizing for not being what society expects or overly pathologizing our own variation from the perceived norm.

Based on this diagnosis, I have ADHD, despite not having trouble concentrating on things, just hard to remember things.

I'll set a alarm this time so I remember.... no I don't need to title the alarm so I remember what it's for, no way I will forget what it's for..... 6hrs later why the fuck is my alarm going of

Thought pop-ups in my head, I need to research about it. I alt tab, click in search bar... and I stare dumb at the blinking cursor... mind blank. Have to catch it fast, light speed, or it's gone.

The soap in my bathtub is too big for the soap holder. I want to cut it in half. I think if it every time I’m in the bath. Then I forget. Now I’m on the toilet. Maybe I’ll remember long enough to…

UPDATE: I did it!!

This is when you discover checklist and day planners

Sometimes it might not be days later but weeks or months that I finally remember. At least it feels that way, I'm a bad judge of the passage of time.

This just reminded me that I have needed to print out new insurance cards for the last three months.

Always when I need more toilet paper rolls in the bathroom

ADHD sucks

When I look for something I have to mutter it repeatedly so I remember what I'm doing. Just repeating to myself "phone, phone, phone, phone, phone...."

Ironically I have found the best way to remember something is to tell myself to forget about it, because I then have to remember the thing I need to forget about. Unfortunately, this seems to mostly work for obligations rather than stuff that is fun.