How to Lose Time & Clients Simultaneously

It seems there’s been nothing but illness, sickness, ailment, infirmity, and infection in our home lately. On top of that my teenage daughters are doing their best to give me a heart attack with boys, friends, and clothing. I’ve tried explaining to them they may want to wait for me to get published before driving me to my grave, or at least until I have a beefy life insurance policy. I’d be worth more to them then, but you know teenagers. There is no time for adult advice.

Mostly, my life has been bouncing from bronchitis to ticking and back again until my body is so confused that every time I tic I need a cough drop. Honestly, what is there in my life that is interesting to write about? Or even tweet about? It’s Dullsville on a mothballs over here.

Take Saturday morning. I experienced a charming nightmare involving a poisonous coral snake, moody music, and a delightful scene where it crawled into my clothes. I couldn’t move fast enough to yank it out before it bored into my spinal column, wriggling its way up my back. I awoke refreshed and twisted in my covers with my legs turned in a different direction than my torso.

After I untied myself from the pretzel I was in, I realized that I would soon be late for my hair appointment. I shaved, then spent 10 minutes walking around the upstairs looking for my wet towel. It took me that long to recall that I hadn’t actually taken a shower.

I knew then it was going to be one humdinger of a day.

Then again, that’s really how well my Summer has been going. It has been drama, drama, drama over here followed by intense periods of confusion. I haven’t written in my novel since the BYU conference. I don’t practice my pennywhistle 30 minutes a day. I don’t draw. I seem to be completely wrapped up in my daughter’s lives instead. You’d think I was the stay-at-home parent or something.

Somehow I think every year, “Hey, it’s the summer. I won’t have to drive them around everywhere. Think of all the time I’ll have with them home all day!”

Truth is, however, I never find any time. Time needs to be harvested, not found lying around on the ground. I can become so wrapped up in my day to day activities that I fail to plan properly. ADHD fog blurs the days as they pass by and Summer is almost over before I know it.

For some reason, I constantly plan my personal projects as if I have all the time in the world, instead of realizing I already have a full time job. Then the big projects fall by the side and I end up frustrated and behind. It’s an ADHD disconnect with reality that gets me every year at this time.

Case in point: my current web assignment. I say “current” with a cheek full of tongue. The project is behind and now the blame lies fully on my shoulders. What was originally a timing issue with my client last Summer & Fall is now turning out to be a timing issue with my own life. It’s embarrassing. Family drama, illness & disabilities don’t mean much to clients. They just want results.

In hindsight I shouldn’t have taken on the job, but now I’m committed. One thing going for me this year, though, is that I’m aware of the problem in July, not September, so I can do something about it. Embarrassment is quite the motivator.

I’ve made the goal to finish the site by the end of July. I’ll have to make some sacrifices to meet that goal, but I intend to induce hyperfocus on my end so that I plow through the procrastination wall with my head if I have to.

There are occasions where readers ask me how I am able to work through Depression or ADHD to be productive. I’m afraid I’m not really that amazing. For me the secret is fear of failure. I may be in a neurological cloud of confusion from moment to moment, but eventually responsibility breaks through like the sun on a rainy day. Those moments shock me forward and give me focus. I’d prefer to be organized without them, but my attention deficit wouldn’t be a disorder if I wasn’t so dysfunctional.

So I press on. My current client may never work with me again, but I’ll get their job done. The alternative is more embarrassment, and frankly I’d rather get bronchitis down to my toes again than experience that.

Bamboo & Shadow

Bamboo & Shadow
Originally uploaded by Darkstream.

Up late.

Listening to the ethereal trance sounds of Above & Beyond's Tri-state.

But not sleeping.

Spare the Sponge, Spoil the Child

This article was originally published at dadomatic.com.


I have a seven year old with learning disabilities. She’s a cute kid, and I love her tons, but she has a small problem that challenges me on a daily basis: She’s mentally a five year old with the reach and appetite of a seven year old.

Case in point, I have sugar cubes I like to add to my tea. No matter where I store them, she’ll invariably find them and eat them—every single one. At this point, I may never drink tea again. It’s quite difficult to get out the ladder and climb to the eaves where I’m currently hiding them.

Yesterday, she was on the prowl for some cookies my wife had picked up. When I told my girl that not only had I hid the cookies, but that she couldn’t have them until after dinner, I was met with a classic tempersulktrum. First her spine seemed to liquify as her body collapsed in upon itself while she simultaneously threw her arms upwards. Then they came down in a masterfully timed descent with the crumpling of her legs. Before hitting the floor she sprung back up while wailing, then repeated the process a few times. It was quite the spectacle.

I usually send her to her room and tell her she can come back when she’s ready to behave. This time, however, I was struck with a sudden idea. Grabbing a discarded candy bag, I told her it represented her stomach. Then I took a sponge and told her it represented a cookie. (Ew! A sponge‽) Then I put the sponge inside the bag and asked her if there was any room left in the bag. When she saw there was none, I told her that’s why we want her to eat dinner first—so there’d be room in her stomach for it. The light went on in her eyes and I knew I had won a decisive battle.

I personally know a handful of ladies who can sew up fluffy, colorful, cloth stomachs with insertable, stuffed snack and dinner dolls faster than I can scratch my armpit, but lacking said skills I did the best I could. Even after some thought, however, I couldn’t come up with a better visual aide. Using real cookies and dinner in a ziplock baggie would look disgusting. For the time being this was one tempersulktrum I managed to simply blot up with a sponge.

How do you teach your children to not snitch treats before dinner? Please share your tips.

 

Douglas Cootey is a married, full time dad raising four girls in the Salt Lake Valley of Utah who has long ago overcome his aversion to the color Pink. Douglas blogs about overcoming AD/HD & Depression with humor & pluck over at the award winning A Splintered Mind. He also co-produces a podcast with his 17 year old daughter. The random thoughts of his addled mind can be found at DouglasCootey and SplinteredMind over on Twitter.

Photo credit: Look What I Found
Like reading The Splintered Mind? Share articles with your friends, link from your blog, or subscribe!

---

It's Only a Matter of Time

This article was originally published at dadomatic.com.

Have you read that book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
?

You haven’t? You must not want your kids to succeed. In it Gladwell provides evidence that the only difference between so-so violin players and master violin players is the amount of hours they practiced. The masters put in about 10,000 hours of practice before hitting twenty years old. The so-so players? Only 8000. That’s only 1.466 hours of practice a day, seven days a week for fifteen years. What slackers! If only their parents had driven them from age five on to practice a measly .366 hours a day more — a mere sixteen or so minutes.

Learning that I wondered if I had failed as a parent and doomed my children to mediocrity for the rest of their lives.

“I’m so sorry, girls! You’ll never amount to anything!”

They stared at me slack jawed and wide eyed and I knew that it was true. Clearly they were all brain damaged.

“But it’s not too late!” said I. Quickly calculating, I realized that if I put my seven year old with Cerebral Palsy into ice skating today, she could be a master by twenty with only two hours of daily practice. My ten year old, who wanted to play the harp, would only need to practice 2.75 hours a day for the next ten years if she wanted to amount to anything in the harp world. She could fit all that practice in while we were at the skating rink and during the ride home. Most kids spend more time watching TV than that, so it was completely doable.

My fourteen year old was a dancer who wanted to compete in the Irish stepdancing on the world level. She’s already put in about 2000 hours since she was eleven, so she’d need 3.66 hours of rigorous dancing a day to hit 10,000. Easy. We could just leave her at home with some plywood planks, a mirror, and some food. She doesn’t like doing homework anyway…

My seventeen year old posed a problem, though. She’d been singing since she was two, but not with a dedicated daily regimen. She’d only amassed 6000 hours of practice — such an abject failure. I was deeply ashamed for her. She, too, would need to squeeze in 3.66 hours of daily practice if she wanted to be a master vocalist in three short years.
But she could do it. I mean, she’ll have to if she doesn’t want to grow up to be a complete loser.

In fact, they could all do it if they did nothing but practice non-stop. Who needs playtime?
Fortunately, it’s not too late to shape and mold my seven year old. I can just imagine the conversations we’ll have when I prepare her for Charter High School next year…
“But Dad, I don’t want to major in system administration, pharmacology, and neuroscience!”

“You’ll do as you’re told. Now hush, we have to get you to the skating rink for your Olympics training.”

Borderline Personality Disorder - An Emotional Hair Trigger, Often Misread

Personal Health - An Emotional Hair Trigger, Often Misread - NYTimes.com

This is an interesting article on Borderline Personality Disorder, something I was diagnosed with when I qualified for Social Security Disability in 1995. I have come to believe that the diagnosis was in error since I don't manifest any of the symptoms. I suspect my Depression, Anxiety Disorder, ADHD, and Chronic Motor Tic Disorder provided a cornucopia of symptoms that perhaps confused my psychologist at the time. Also, I'm sure the fact that I was experiencing suicidal ideation contributed as well.

What was most fascinating to me about this article was the mention of Dialectical Behavior Therapy – a drivative of Cognitive Behavior Therapy. I don't know enough about it to understand how they differ from one another, but it's something to look into.

Oh, hello! It's been a while, hasn't it? I've had all I could do to manage my family life, manage my disabilities, and prepare for and attend a writer's conference. It took a heavy toll on me. I'm still ticking and neurologically out of it six days later, but I'm glad I went. More articles soon. Thanks for reading.

Where Do You Go to Find Peace from the Stress of the World?

A different treatment of my new
favorite place - using CameraBag
Originally uploaded by Darkstream.

Such busy weeks these last few have been. I've been busy wrangling contract details with a magazine, rewriting the first three chapters of my novel, saving my marriage, saving the world, dealing with drama, ticking, forgetting stuff, and being thoroughly distracted that I haven't blogged much. Twitter has taken up the full brunt of my creative output.

That's a bit sad, isn't it?

As I finish reviewing some manuscripts for a writer's conference ( WIFYR) I'm attending all next week, I thought I'd share with you a photo from my new favorite place.

Sitting on that log I happily played my pennywhistle above the roar of the river beyond that fence. What a truly peaceful moment. I hope to visit it again tomorrow. I invite you visit my flickr photo album of Wheeler Farm - a place I've been to for years but recently rediscovered in wonderful new ways.

With luck I will have a new article for you next week. It's a fiasco to top all fiascos in a way that can only be fueled by the ever lovable ADHD.

In the meantime, please let us know in the comments what your favorite places in the world are. See you next week!

Please share in my joy. I'm FREE!

Big news. We crossed a milestone yesterday.

Mobile post sent by TheLaughingImp using Utterli.  Replies.  mp3