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....