In The ADHD Life, One Thing Always Leads To Another

Or this, that, and the other

All I wanna do is write some prose.

I say I’m a writer when people ask me what I do. Never mind I barely make any money from it. It elicits more questions than if I said, “I deliver prescriptions for Albertsons.”

I’m supposed to be retired; it’s just that I didn’t plan for it. Follow me to learn how not to do things!

There was only one thing I wanted to do today when I got home from my “real work:” and that was to write. What I’m currently working on is becoming a monster. It’s way too much for one story. How am I going to do it?

So I went for my second commode sitting for the day and came up with the answer. But that didn’t change anything for today. Over the past few months, I haven’t come up with much new content. I need something now.

If it weren’t for the dang ADHD.

In the summer of 2015, I went to see my psychiatrist (read: pill dispenser) for my regular med check. As a lifelong drug “experimenter” (that sounds much better than abuser), I was interested in knowing if Adderall might change my life. The behaviors I spoke of sparked him to conduct an ADHD test on me.

At that time of my life, I had a pretty demanding job that required a lot of travel while at the same time being somewhat of a “house-husband.” In other words, my ex wasn’t going to do it, whatever “it” was, so I did it. Trying to do well at both was overwhelming.

The psychiatrist administered a couple of tests in the office. Like a teacher, he took a few minutes to score them, then turned around and said, “You have ADHD.”

Yay, I get Adderall!

I took it as prescribed, but the effects were very subtle. So then he wrote me a prescription for Vyvanse.

Boo!

Vyvanse is said to work the same way as Adderall, but it does not have amphetamine in it. It did nothing for me, and after reporting this, he switched me back to Adderall. I’ve taken two 20mg tablets every day since.

After success on the toilet, I remembered something that needed to be done. As I walked in from “real work,” I noticed that the groundsmen had come because there were layers of dust and leaves between the two doors.

They don’t even pick up the leaves; they just blow them into the street! So ridic.

I went to get the broom to clean up the mess and thought, “I better check the front door.” It was in the same shape, so as I decided the entire front porch needed sweeping, I noticed the petunias were still blooming after several freezes. “Better water ’em; maybe they’ll stick around until next year.” I refrained from doing any further yard work as it was getting dark.

Once inside, I noticed the vacuum cleaner was still out and plugged in from two days ago. Better finish that up.

I got to my office to begin writing but noticed two strands of Christmas lights that had been on the floor for two weeks. I’m taking one strand to my mom’s house in Texas next week. She’s been ill and hasn’t decorated. But first, the lights had to be tested.

Things went fine for a split second. The first strand lit up, then a light bulb exploded, and all went dark. I replaced the light bulb and then checked the fuses. They were spent, so I replaced them as well. Who has extra fuses for strands of Christmas lights on hand?

Yup. No need to run to the hardware store.

The first strand never came back on, so on to the second strand. They worked, but several bulbs had burned out, and some were missing altogether, so I used some bulbs from strand one to complete strand two. Then, I noticed the colors were out of order. You can’t have the same color of bulb next to each other. So, I removed all the bulbs and reordered them in green, red, white, blue, and orange.

Green, red, white, blue, orange.

About to plug strand two in, I checked and noticed it had no fuses. I was really thinking ahead of myself five years ago when I last used these lights. I put two new fuses in, and voila! Well played.

Making my way to the kitchen to make an adult beverage to accompany my writing, I looked at my mama pineapple plant, which had a lot of dead leaves. (It’s actually three plants, but when I was separating the “pups” from the “mother” plant a couple of weeks ago, I couldn’t get the last two to extricate themselves from mama.) The other pups are currently rooting. With shears in hand, it was showtime.

Then I noticed a trail of ants going up and down one leaf, crawling on one of the two growing pineapples. The leaves shouldn’t come into contact with ant spray, so I shook the plant as well as possible to get the ants off, then got the vacuum cleaner back out and hoovered them up. Next, I went through the gardening department (which occupies half of my kitchen) because I knew I had one ant stake left.

Found it!

“Shit, I forgot to call Mom!” So there went another 45 minutes.

I began to get hungry, but I didn’t have room to make it for all the dirty dishes and miscellaneous items that were in the way. By 9:30, I was finally eating dinner at my desk, clearing email, and at 10:35, I got to writing. That’s five hours and thirty-five minutes later. And I was toast by midnight.

Different day, same crap. And this is with medication.

I really need to organize the gardening department.

More from Arthur Keith:

Author’s Note: I have a 270-plus story back catalog of articles dealing with subjects I like to write about, and I hope you’ll find something that piques your interest. They include aviation, music, geography, gardening, pop culture, LGBTQ culture, The Southwest/Megadrought/The Colorado River, and my late son. I often weave my journey into each. It’s worth $5/month or $50/year to read stories from all the great writers on Medium.com. Consider it like your own magazine!