Adult ADHD & Me — My ‘Current Thing’

I finally found a therapist that takes my insurance. The poor woman. I hit her fast and hit her hard with all my problems. I’ve have 59 long years to collect them and am rather proud of most of them.

It didn’t take her long to come up with an initial diagnosis — ADHD. Not that I have only one mental problem. I have lots. ADHD was just the one my therapist noticed first.

Did you know “adult ADHD” was even a thing? I didn’t. But I have it and discovering that fact has made a big difference in my life so far.

For one thing, the medication is helping me get some serious writing done. I just wish I could find my external drive with most of my million photos. Losing important stuff is classic symptom of adult ADHD. At last, I have an excuse.

ADHD?

It wouldn’t seem like a person with ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder) would be able to sit for hours on a Lake Superior beach looking for agates and actually find quite a lot. Right?

Wrong. Hyperfixation - an intense and single-minded focus on a specific object or topic - can accompany both ADHD and autism. “Attention deficit” doesn’t mean you have a lack of the ability to pay attention to something. It means your brain is wired in such a way as to cause problems regulating and processing incoming stimulation.

FLAPPER — I must have taken at least 30 photos of my daughter Kelly when she dressed up like a “'flapper” for Halloween one year. She never really recovered from the experience.

Seriously Into It

Getting really into something can be good and bad. Obsessions? Not good. Serious Hobbies? Not bad. For most of my life, I have hovered somewhere between the two.

Photography

For a long time (four or five years) I was really into photography. I lived and breathed apertures and depth of field. My daughter Kelly (above) was one of my favorite subjects. To this day, she hates having her picture taken. All already-annoying mom who was constantly pointing a Nikon in her face was just too much for the poor, highly photogenic, child.

Gardening

After my particularly intense romance with photography, I went into a relatively short-living gardening phases. I wish that had lasted longer, as gardening good for you. But Michigan winters were seriously against me. So were the mosquitoes.

Cooking, knitting, quilting and …

As far as I can remember, after my gardening phase I moved into cooking (and baking). My family loved that phase. Then I think it was knitting. I don’t even want to think about the hoard of luscious wool yarn current tempting moths in my basement. I’ve fixed on quilting a few times so far - the most recent being about a year ago. I really want to get back to that soon. It does feel really nice crawling under a quilt I spent an awful lot of money and attention on.

D&D (and writing)

My current thing is Dungeons & Dragons. I got sucked into the abyss of this wickedly fun role-playing game about 15 months ago. I’m currently playing in three games and running two as a DM (dungeon master).

Along with the D&D came a new fixation - writing. I’ve been writing, as a journalist, for over 20 years. But it was only a few months ago that I started really wanting to write, needing to write. I started a website for D&D this spring. This website went up a week ago.

What do you think? It’s not as healthy as gardening but it’s less expensive than photography, knitting and quilting.