Chemicals askew...

One expects certain behaviors from professional peers. Mistakenly apparently, but I thought I had reasonable expectations. I don't know what I was thinking. I make no secret of having ADD. It's a fact. It is part and parcel of who I am. It goes a long way to informing others as to why I think in the slightly askew manner I do. Which often times catches me off guard that other do not indeed think the way I do. Mostly I notice this when some one else and I say the same thing the same way at the same time followed immediately by a look of stunned horror slamming across their countenance only to be peeled away as they attempt to find humor in this.

Or so it seems to me. I may be interpreting the event a bit askew.

In regard to my ADD and a less than ideally structured work environment and how I struggle to manage all the paperwork details, minutia about which what goes where when and for whom... none of which was ever adequately explained (anyone ever heard of an Employee Handbook? I hear they're all the rage ever since these guys came up with the concept of desktop publishing)So, me and ADD, anyhow, I had a coworker say to me "I know just how you feel."

Uh huh... reeeeaally?

Those words are forbidden in my profession. See, I do NOT emphatically DO not KNOW how you, or anyone else for that matter, feel about anything... eh-nee-thing. Anyone who says otherwise is lying.

I know how I might feel in similar circumstances, but it is all conjecture and supposition. It is the difference between sympathy and empathy. A person may be going through a difficult time. A difficulty of their own design and thus are merely getting their come-uppance. Do I sympathize? Nope. However, they are having a difficulty. I have had difficulties. I can empathize with how that sucks, is demoralizing... etc etc etc [insert counselor blather here].

My coworker does not have ADD. She does not know what it is like for me in my head when the day's demands have dragged the last vestiges of a coherent train of thought out into the parking lot and kicked the living daylights out of it and handed me back as spinning, foggy, dazed pre-frontal cortex that wants nothing more than to become blissfully unconscious for 15 to 20 minutes. My brain just wants to reboot.

It would be like me saying I know just what my mother, sister, wife and daughter went/go through with their period merely because I've been around them my entire life. Not friggin likely. All I know is I want some of them to take The Pill so they are not homicidal and I want another to stay away from it for the exact same reason.

Point... I know I had one. If this daffy bint is going to say to another professional something patently wrong wrong wrongitty WRONG... what is she saying to her clients? I shudder to think.

Language... it's all about language. I listen to the words people utter about their loved ones... about themselves... about hateful things done to or by them... about humanity in its chaotic manifestations... I listen to words said by a mother to a daughter that cuts deeper than anything she has done to herself... memories of fathers years missing... of wondering why what was done was done... words uttered in attempts to make sense of acts insensible.

I do not know what it is to feel these things they feel. But I know what it is to hurt. I can listen and witness. I have seen it make enough of a difference to know it is not wasted.

Does it play a role in my own struggle against depression? I'm sure to some degree. At times, it also helps. It provides perspective. Helps me remember it is just chemicals in my head... chemicals that are slightly askew. Only in this case, not in a good way. And there's the difficulty; finding the edge where one bleeds into the other and stepping back... I find I have wandered far beyond the edge and into a landscape I had left behind years ago. Familiar and desolate... comfortable and discomfiting...

Chemicals askew... "Oh bother," said Pooh as he worked to hide Piglet's mangled corpse.

Inquisitive do-gooders

I am not as mysterious and opaque as I imagine I am. Well, maybe mysterious. But my coworkers quizzed me today about my mood. They'd noted a distinct lack of "me" lately. Which I take to mean my sardonic, cogent and insightful banter has been less couched in witticisms and bon mots of late.

Yeah, well there's nothing like a good case of anhedonia to bring a mood down.

It's hard enough to feign caring with clients who need some clinical help (versus those who are merely using up oxygen and hastening the Universe's headlong dash into it's ultimate entropic state... which since nothing changes at that point, can it truly be called an end?) let alone muster my dwindling resources to get all rallied up for the manufactured crisis looming just across the horizon; moving offices and divvying resources.

Ye gods... we are professionals. Let's not cry over which figurines get put in which play therapy room. Really. I kid you not. I couldn't give a shit and if your clients can't cope with that sort of change, there's some serious shit that needs to be addressed. And I for one do not have the energy to friggin help you manage your fragile, sad, nervous, whiny pathology.

So when they ask me what's up? I shrug, roll my eyes and try to decide how real to be with these people.

I have little reason to be depressed. I have a job... it's an ok-ish job. It has the plus of being a job anyhow. Bills are being met, more or less on time. Some money is being saved to replace the rapidly disintegrating couches. I can put fuel in my bike... yeah, and yet, there it is; depression.

And not the fun kind of melancholia either. Navel gazing and sophomoric philosophizing Byronic moodiness this is not. This be full on righteous despairing of purpose against the corrosive weight of time... mmmm, tasty.

I wonder at times which came first; my existentialist angst or depression. Is the ADD genius confined by the realities of the interstitial existence and the inherent limitations of biology (hence the ADD) and that feeds the depression? Or does depression arise from some ineffable quality that is itself then expressed ADD-ishly thus creating a wicked feedback loop of frustrations vs accomplishments?

I see my daughter struggle with school. Not with learning, with the crap of school, of conforming to that regimen and how she does not fit. Lord knows they will not do shit to help it fit her... Sorry, teachers, public schools are not the place for the odd kids. Not your fault. You've got to help the middle of the bell curve. Get a standard deviation away and there's gunna be trouble. On the low side, there's tons of help. On the 'gifted' side there's... more stuff to do, but only if you can organize yourself and haven't already been crushed into ennui by the inevitable "Teacher Who Just Doesn't Get It"... we've all run into them.

Mr. Assenheimer... Mr. Maybower... Yeah, I'm talking to you. Failed me in freshman English and totally messed up my chances at having Algebra make sense...

Eat it! I've got 2 Master's degrees... assholes.

I see these things and I despair.

I try not to.

But I do.

I think I hide it well.

But I don't.

And inquisitive do-gooders notice and ask how I'm doing. And I have to decide how real to be with them.

Some days I'm more real.

Some days I shrug and hope my ride home sweeps some of the weight away. For at least a little while.

Oh, lookit! A thought!

So, a friend pointed me to this article http://www.marketingvox.com/kids-online-time-jumps-63-in-5-years-044616/

To which I said so? Big whoop. If I read it correctly they are talking about a jump from 7 hours to 11 hours PER MONTH. I shall wait for the oxygen to refill the room after the collective gasps hoovered it up... Right. And the stat 65%... ok. Um, for a headline it's sensational, but what is it really? Is that a number to really be alarmed about? Or should we be concerned that the average kid spends 1600 minutes a week watching TV vs 3.5 minutes of meaningful interaction with their parents? (I'll cite that as soon as I find the article, it's at work) 3.8 hours a day of TV vs .5 minutes of substantive interaction with parents...

Not Five minutes... POINT 5 minutes otherwise known as 30 seconds. Holy CRAP! I feel like I ought to apologize to my kids for bothering them so freakin much. Ya know, actually asking them how their day went and l i s t e n i n g. Sure, maybe it's because I'm a counselor... or maybe I'm a counselor because of it.

See that's where the whole "Internet use up 65%" alarmism is so damned misleading. It's meaningless! Is it because schools are encouraging kids to do research online? Isn't that a valid and good reason to do something? Maybe it's because they are chatting with their friends and don't have cell phones to txt their little minds into oblivion? Oh, heavens! Not internet chat! Worry worry worry! Good god, maybe the parents ought to be more involved and thereby lessen their childrens' exposure to unknown elements beyond their control. But if the kids aren't chatting/playing games online/being social at a distance, parents better not groan when the kids say A) "I'm bored", B) "There's nothing to do, or C) "Would you drive me to (where ever) or "Can (whoever) come over?"

And besides 7 hours to 11 hours a month. Who's kids are these? Mine must be screwing up the curve something FIERCE. 30 days in a month = 720 hours. So previously kids were on line about 1% of the time. Now... 1.5% of the time. Hmmm, THAT's a statistic that seems meaningful. Why? Not just because I came up with it, but because it has context. There's more than just numbers. There's a sense of how much of a month that ends up being. It's like... 15 minutes a day up to 25 minutes? Or so. My math is sketchy.

Bah. I've spend more time being bemused by this that your average kid ages 2 to 11 spends on the net.