Spinning the plates

I am wired for multi-tasking. Life is endlessly fascinating for me: there are always new things to experience, new ideas to try on, new places to visit, new lessons to learn. Usually in clumps of four or eight at a time.

Note the extensive use of the word "new." It's a scant disguise for the word "chaos."

Yes, I love "new" but when I allow myself to indulge in new-new-new-new-new-new-new, I have so many New Things in my life that none of them mature fully into DONE. I don't get to really experience them because I am hopping off in another direction to explore more "new" things.

And often, it's only when I accidentally bump into the original "new" thing -- which has now lost its shiny veneer and is officially "used" or "old" -- that I come to one of two conclusions:

a) that I have totally lost track of how much I wanted to learn about/do/explore/finish that previously "new" thing; OR

b) that I must have been out of my mind to even consider trying on that 'new' thing and thank goodness I haven't wasted any more precious time on it.So, being passionate about life's exciting possibilities is good...up to a point.

It's very much like the guy on Ed Sullivan who would spin plates on wooden dowels (okay, I am really dating myself now). He'd get one started and then start another one and keep coming back to the first one to keep it spinning. Then he'd start another one and another one until there were a dozen plates all spinning on sticks and he would be running back and forth on the stage, tending to his little spinning plates.

This guy was a professional plate spinner (what kind of title is THAT to put on your resume? I guess he was self employed so it made little difference). He was paid to keep his plates spinning and not break them. Although, let's face it, the chances are good that he broke a lot of plates during the learning process (who teaches you that skill? who thinks up spinning and breaking plates in the first place?).

But if I put myself in that plate spinner's place, using my "new" interests as the logical analogy for the plates, then I have a lot of broken crockery lying around me.

It seems to me that I barely get one plate spinning and then when another more attractive plate comes along, I turn my back on it. Soon, I lose interest in that one, too, in favor of yet another new plate. And, to my horror, the shards pile up around me. Some of those plates weren't important to me anyway. Some of them were; I have lost some of the new things that could be melded into my being, things that truly were representative of Who I Am in the world.

There might be some substitute plates out there; I have grieved the loss of the originals. But perhaps the lesson is Big and Wise: to keep my plate spinning, I must focus on one at a time. Get it up and spinning steadily before I turn my back or even my head.

And I don't need to spend a lot of time getting ready to spin plates. I just need to focus on that single plate. I may decide to stop spinning the plate; it may bore the heck out of me. But I don't have to let it break,I can calmly grab it, set it aside and find a plate that is more palatable. More fun. More interesting.

I have a lot of plates spinning right now (so what else is ... um...new?). So I think I'll grab a few of them that are simply taking up my time and attention and spin the heck out of the shiny plates I really like. For now. Changeable at a moment's notice. Whew. What a relief.

Visual queues

I am reframing the piles that I, as a true ADD woman, create around me.

In fact, I have now decided to call them my visual cues. Cues to take action: on the pile of clean laundry that adorns the family room sofa, on the ripped out seams on the two caftans draped over the bar stools at the kitchen counter, on the vacuum cleaner head by the back door that awaits a trip to the vacuum cleaner doctor's office.

I am reframing them as my three dimensional To-Do list. My Visual Queue, if you will.

At long last, I have decided to work WITH this little ADD quirk instead of against it. That was getting me nowhere anyway.

I'd drop the object of my attention in plain sight, meaning to come right back to it. But then something else demanded me RIGHT THEN and I would flit around the environment (in this case, my house) until, quite by accident, I would return to the site of the original intention and find the object once again -- still waiting for me.

Now, if the object is inanimate, it lies in wait very patiently. If it lives and breathes, it has sometimes moved and is harder to find. And it is often not patient at all. In fact, it may have given up on ever seeing me again. And left the environment, sighing and shaking its head in frustration and disappointment.

Those are the hard ones to deal with. We're not going THERE today. We're sticking with the inanimate objects that somehow arrange themselves into not-so-neat piles. And when they reach a certain critical mass, they call to me. Sing loudly. Off key, which they know drives me crazy! My perfectionism hates anything off key, out of place, not done with exquisite excellence.

Which is what drives everyone ELSE around me crazy. How can I be a perfectionist and live with these darned PILES?

We are reframing, today, thank you. Those piles are Visual Cues/Visual Queues. They are Cues in that they remind me of what I am going to do...one of these days. And they are Queues in that they are things I am bound to get around to taking with me, or act upon, in a more timely fashion. In other words, things with deadlines.

Ned Hallowell, the famous ADD psychiatrist who wrote Driven to Distraction, says that ADD folks like me only have two times: Now and Not Now. So, deadlines work only when they reach the NOW point.

But can I do it differently? It occurs to me that I might create a small space on the kitchen table (now 100% covered with mail, magazines and other Visual Cues) for a basket or a placemat, something to delineate the space, that would be my Visual Queue for errands.

For instance, I just called the pharmacy to renew a prescription (and no, it wasn't ADD meds, but it could have been...). Most people (those 'normal people') would have thrown away the empty bottle and written down (or worse, remembered without writing it down) a reminder to go by the drug store tomorrow to pick up the prescription.

Not me. I kept the bottle as a Visual Cue. I now have a three dimensional reminder of my trip to the drug store. But, how to keep track of that reminder? I took it with me into the closet to get my clothes for the day...and left the darned bottle on my dresser. Didn't remember it until I was already downstairs in the kitchen, so had to traipse back upstairs to retrieve it. (I wonder how much time I could have saved in my life by remembering things the first time?)

And now that the clear amber plastic bottle is downstairs, will I remember to take it with me on my next trip in the car? Should I put it in the car? It might get lost, fall off the seat. So I am going to create a space --basket, placemat, box -- that will be my Errand Visual Queue.

The bottle will go into that basket which will be located in my line-of-sight as I leave the house to get to my car. As will the bag of dog food that had crawly bugs inside it when I opened it up - yuck - an immediate return (but when do I find the time?). And the vacuum cleaner head (but it has to go to the next town so it will require a special trip). And the too-short clothesline that I bought at the hardware store and the write-on door hangers that I didn't use at my retreat that go back to the craft store.

And then maybe I will set aside some time to just run around and do these time-wasting errands, which will get this stuff OUT of my house and I will have fewer PILES -- excuse me, Visual Cues and Queues.

I think it's inspired. Now if I can just make it work. I'll let you know. Right now I have to sift through my piles to find a basket of some kind....

Overdoing abundance

In my less enlightened days, when I found something I loved, (a well-fitting T-shirt, for instance), I'd sometimes buy five at a time (well, at least two). Just in case one wore out, got a stain or broke, I'd still have plenty to get me through. It was silly, wasteful, and fell headlong into that ugly vat labeled "conspicuous consumption," but it made me feel a-b-u-n-d-a-n-t. I had a cushion; I was protected from loss. I had MORE THAN ENOUGH.

What I came to realize is that having too much of something diminishes its value. Even when I value it highly.

My husband and I built a house together about a dozen years ago, a new foundation for our new marriage. To celebrate moving in, we bought our first (and only) bottle of $100 DomPerignon champagne.

I like champagne. The gentle bubbles tickle my nose and the first few sips bite my tongue. But I'm no expert; I couldn't tell the difference between the DomPerignon and grocery store sparkling wine. I saved the empty Dom bottle, though, a momento of our shared excitement. Even now, remembering makes me smile.

If I'd bought five bottles of Dom (assuming I could afford them), I doubt the experience would be so sweet.

I've learned that quality really does have a leg up on quantity. These days I am better at savoring my life, drinking it in small DomPerignon sips, letting the flavor linger and tantalize. Conversations with friends, hanging out the sheets in the summer heat, even cleaning up after my accident-prone Sheltie: those tiny moments point me to to inevitable conclusion: that I live in expansive abundance. Poignant abundance. Grateful abundance.

I never did need those "back-up" supplies. It was a pinprick of fear in my head that said: there might not be enough for YOU. They call that a scarcity mentality. And there are only two choices in life: to live from fear or to live from love.

I'll be drawing loving hearts on my scarcity mentality, thank you very much (do you suppose it will be scared away?). I buy one T-shirt at a time. Then I lay in a (moderate) supply of stain remover.

Pro-cras-tin-a-tion

I should be finishing up the flier for my October beach retreat and emailing it to people likely to want to be attend.

Instead, I am being my finest little ADD self and writing blogs while I am making fresh dog food and checking email and getting ready for a not-so-pleasant test (medical, not serious, don't ask) and sorting green beans for snapping and working on my website and recharging my laptop and making a new To-Do list and flipping through a magazine.

Things that distract me...and allow me to procrastinate.

That is really not an accurate description of what I'm doing, though. Look at those things I AM doing, for heaven's sake! I am being incredibly productive.

Just not in the way I need to be.

OK, OK. I'll stop writing blogs and work on the flier.

But I'm still gonna finish up the dog food and green beans though...

Neurons, anyone?

It's 6:15 am in California and I'm sitting at the pumpkin-colored Formica breakfast bar that separates the living room from the kitchen in my tiny retreat cottage. The cottage is actually a one-bedroom trailer anchored into the rocky north San Diego County hills.

I booked it to accommodate my return appointment at the Hallowell West Clinic. I am determined, at last, to stand toe-to-toe with my Attention Deficit Disorder.

I'd found out about Hallowell West at a conference for adults with ADD held in Tucson a month ago. Dr. Ned Hallowell, the founder of the clinic, is a psychiatrist who blasted open the doors for adult ADD treatment with his 1995 book "Driven to Distraction."

He had been a keynote speaker at the conference and mentioned that he was establishing satellite clinics around the country. The first one had just opened in southern California. I made an appointment immediately. My son lives in San Diego; I had planned to visit him anyway.

I had no shame about seeing a psychiatrist. I had consulted with several over the years, but without exception, they had missed my ADD. Trained to look for clinical psychosis or neurosis, they usually diagnosed depression. Just like my mother. It's genetic, right?

They tried hard to help me fix myself, but in retrospect, they seemed to be clenching that broad hammer that transforms everything into a nail. Sleeping too much? Take antidepressants. Not sleeping at night? Try antidepressants. Overwhelmed with work? Antidepressants.

Even when an astute psychologist noticed that I might have some ADD traits, psychiatrists dismissed it as peripheral rather than central to my struggle with procrastination, tardiness, juggling 20 projects at a time but finishing only half of them. No wonder I had "low self esteem."

I listened to therapists for a long time. After I while, I realized that I'd never be finished; there was always a new crisis, a "lot going on" in my life. I dropped out for several years. But reading "Driven to Distraction" (first with relief, then with denial, followed by sadness-could it be depression? and finally determination) was a turning point for me.

I realized that ADD, specifically ADHD, was the primary issue in my psychological/brain life. I could thank ADD for my limitless creativity, but it also impacted my friendships, marriage, parenting and work. And not always in a good way. I was ready to deal with it and move on.

When I first met with Ken Selzer, the psychiatrist heading up Hallowell West, he agreed that I seemed to have ADD characteristics, but he recommended that I undergo standard neurological testing. I had been diagnosed from a function standpoint, not a neurological one. So I came back from the East Coast to take the tests.

As it turned out, testing was not my finest hour. More accurately, it was not my finest two hours. I was nearly 30 minutes late for the appointment. How predictably ADD is that? I hate being predictable.

The reason I was late? I had forgotten the directions to the retreat center and then had to find my way to the clinic. I had forgotten both the exit name and the address. ADD. Predictable again. Rats.

By the time I battled Friday afternoon traffic and hurried through the clinic door, I was tired (three hours of sleep) anxious (late again), distracted (I had broken my toe the day before the trip) and out of sorts (my face was puffy from laser surgery). And then to be faced with a battery of tests? Near torture.

It became very clear to me that I had some challenges that couldn't be explained away by my sub-par state of mind. I did a miserable job on some parts of the test. For instance, I just hate putting together puzzles that are "brain teasers." Why tease my brain? I tend to avoid puzzles. But on the test, I was forced to endure them, play the game.

And I discovered with a shock that the reason I skip over those tasks is that I am really not very good at them It was a humbling experience for someone who is accustomed to acing tests. Heck, I got so frustrated on a couple of occasions that I didn't even attempt an answer to the question. That's just not like me.

It sure was "me" on Friday, though. I go back on Wednesday morning to hear the results of the testing. Stay tuned. Let's see if we can get this ADD monster under control.

My poor brain sure needs the encouragement right now. Ironic, considering that I am building my coaching business as an "encouragement coach" for women with ADD. Hmmm. Teach what you need to learn?