Eight Arms of Protection

I have a tiny octopus protector. He sits on my mouse and keeps me from wandering off (so much). He’s why I got three thousand words yesterday. He’s why I didn’t click off to check on Twitter just now.

This attention thing is hard. As I pointed out to my daughter yesterday, she comes by her ADHD honestly. I’ve never been diagnosed, but I’m almost certainly ADHD. If I go to do something in another room, I’m probably repeating in my head just WHAT I need to do so I don’t forget. I’ve gotten pretty good about jotting notes nearly anywhere so I can collect them later. (Know anyone else who texts reminders to their own email?) I tell people at work if they want something, they need to either send me an email so I can remember later, or stand right there and tell me what they need–and then stay there until I do it. If they walk away I’ll get distracted by some other task.

It’s taken me twenty years to learn to use a calendar so it actually helps me remember things. I’ve been a Flybaby for years, but I still don’t manage to clean my house as well as I’d like. Always something else I need to be doing, you know?

My daughter’s psychologist tells her that ADHD isn’t so much an inability to focus as it’s an inability to filter. When other people focus, the world narrows down (somewhat) to what they are focused on. For her, and also for me, that filtering out of distractions doesn’t work as well as it should. We notice everything, and we interrupt people without thinking, and sometimes we interrupt ourselves.

But whatever. I like my shiny-chasing, easily-distracted brain. We get along okay. We learn a lot of cool stuff, that makes its way into some pretty good books.

As I tell my daughter, we all have our challenges. As issues go, I’m grateful mine are pretty mild. I know people–dear, wonderful, beloved people–who are completely unable to function sometimes due to theirs, and I help all I can while being glad that my biggest issue is just being a little distracti–

Squirrel!