Timeblindness

To describe timeblindness to someone without ADHD feels like making a shit ton of excuses. I think I’m painting a picture of a person who tries their very best to stay in the present moment and participate in life, but to the audience I’ve just lobbed a shitbomb of laziness at a canvas, farted in their general direction, and called it a day.

Those three actions–lobbing, farting, calling a day–would actually be a lot more than I’ve accomplished in the months since I wrote an “introductory” post in this space. I had intent, yes, but intent is more meaningful when one has a day-to-day structure. In this case “structure” doesn’t just mean “a schedule in which to slide blocks of action,” but everything around it, like “other people to report to” and “tasks that must be done or the whole thing doesn’t go” and “people whose job it is to constantly needle me about said tasks until it’s second nature.” I have always cringed at the phrase “self-starter” or “self-motivated” because the things that motivate me aren’t marketable, and I’ve never been able to articulate a singular, passionate ambition because I’m some kind of dilettante goblin cursed by polarity, drawn to every passing potential hobby or interest with the pull of a trillion magnets. Occasionally these intense attractions occur in such volume that the sheer overwhelm of choice forces a creative shutdown, and I can’t land on a single thing I want to do more than any other in that moment.

What happens then is nothing. Like here. Like the barren expanse of time between this post and the last. Despite my general drive to express myself, without sufficient external motivation and at least one interdependent creative partner to nudge me back into my lane when I’m snoozing at the wheel, it’s easy for me to forget that the road even exists. Even now, explaining these things to whichever lovely person is reading this, I have my doubts about managing any kind of consistency. The number of step-by-step lists and plans I’ve written in the pursuit of consistency could fill an incomplete book.

(I realize that “self-motivated” in employment parlance basically means “be able to do this job on your own and anticipate your boss’s needs so they have to do less,” which for some reason is slightly more important than “be able to do this job competently or even quite well even if it requires some specific feedback and direction from management here and there,” but it’s a phrase that also implies someone is on a career path–a word that conjures up for me a whole other bag of psychological battles, that, as much as I want to explore them, I won’t get into right now. Be sure to check back in about six months to see if I’ve made the leap from “chicken scratch index card” to “half-ass but somewhat complete essay.”)

As for motivation, what makes me start doing anything is usually just a very specific personal need (a curiosity that must be fulfilled, something I want to see/read, an item I need to corral another item) that doesn’t serve any kind of mass-marketable purpose. The facts of my being able to pull niche abilities out of my ass and having a couple of special interests that give the overall impression of a complete skillset do not guarantee that I have the rest of my shit together in an actionable adult way. It might look to a stranger that I am a capable and competent person simply because one day I decided I needed a thing (in this instance a cardstock sleeve for a tarot deck) and made it–but they have no idea that other very simple things (like “schedule a doctor’s appointment” or “call back the pharmacy about that prescription”) just sit in the middle of my life path like menacing cane toads, daring me to remember why I even mosied down that way. Or that the most accurate depiction of my life to date is this Demi Adejuyigbe vine, “guy who keeps forgetting about Dre,” only instead of “Dre,” it’s “literally everything I’ve ever had to do that might have propelled me forward, but I got distracted, or forgot, or woke up one day seven months later and remembered aw fuck I was supposed to do that thing and the time has actually run out on it.“

As I sign off most of my long-form correspondence: uh, I’m really bad at conclusions, so, uh… bye.

P.S.: there actually is an intent to just get the fuck along and do the fucking thing, including VIBES ONLY BOOK REVIEWS and THE MIDDLE AGED TEENAGE GIRL BASEBALL CARDS PROJECT and HELP ME, RHONDA: TAROT READINGS FOR BROKEN PEOPLE WHO STILL SMILE WHEN THEY HEAR A BEACH BOYS SONG, so do feel free to check back.