Planning.
Apparently, it's a problem.
For those of us with ADD/ADHD, it can be our nemesis. We have problems getting started planning, completing planning, following through on a plan. In the worst cases, all of these are true. We can feel it is a trap - something that will squash our creative energies (probably due to memories of years of teachers and authority figures telling us to pay attention and just do THIS). The problem is that it can also be incredibly freeing once we've done the planning. It means we don't have to spend any more time than necessary on structuring things we don't want to be doing in the first place. Personally, I like having the boundaries. Otherwise, I get overwhelmed and can't start things or I get incredibly distracted by all the shiny POSSIBILITIES.
I have the almost unique opportunity to learn what it's like on both sides of the ADD aisle, so to speak. I am an ADDer and I am MARRIED to an ADDer. While that may sound wonderful to those of you with ADD who feel no one understands what it's like to have ADD, let me assure you it is most often NOT. Because that forces me to alternately act the role of the NON-ADDer or the ADDer being misunderstood.
Our house is in chaos most of the time - and I am not just talking chores. Our finances. Our social life. Our TV schedules. Our work. Our meals. Even our love life. There is no anchor in the storm. Sure, we can have a lot of fun. But without someone to be the calm influence, we're frequently sniping at each other and wondering whether or not the electric company is going to show up at our door to turn off our service for a bill that got "missed."
I'm constantly struggling to "grow up" and waiting for adulthood to begin. It would be really easy to blame all these things on my husband. Really, really easy. But I'm not going to do that because I know that I am just as much to blame. Neither of us can get a handle on things. And the truth is there is really no one to blame for it. This is how we are both hard-wired. It requires us both to constantly be trying to figure out how to navigate a world not designed for our kind of wiring. I try to keep this in mind when we are arguing because I know that these problems are frustrating and people say things they don't mean when they are frustrated and angry that they are always fighting against the world to live. Still, you can only take personal insults so often and be called controlling so many times (and this goes both ways).
I think I've been blessed to have been exposed to so much since I first got my diagnosis of ADD in college in terms of ways to manage time and impulses. I have learned to make lists and made schedules my friends. Most importantly, I have learned to pick myself up and keep trying when one system or another fell apart (although I am pretty sure I learned that growing up with ADD and not knowing it). Unfortunately, I don't know how to teach this to anyone else, especially my ADD husband. How do you convince someone to sit for 5 minutes and discuss how you plan to move couches up and down stairs? My husband's mentality is: we just move it. Any suggestion about planning moving the items which they will have to be moved around (such as bookshelves) makes him decide I've worked in state government for too long. I guess those management classes are a waste of money, too. Why talk about it beforehand, after all? And then there is the insult that women want to talk everything to death. I'm pretty sure he forgets sometimes that I also have ADD. I just wanted to get the darn things moved without breaking anything, living or nonliving.
So, I guess we'll continue to live in chaos for awhile longer. And my husband has the satisfaction of moving the couches without me. Because I really don't want to break anything living...so I'm going to the library.
