ADHD or Ennui

So my post on NEEMO gave me the impetus to finally research and write the one post I had intended since the beginning of this blog. If I'm always going off on tangents, do I have ADHD or am I easily bored?

In the book Driven To Distraction, Edward M. Hallowell described an experience of the "hyperactive" aspect of the ADHD disorder from a patient's perspective:

...It's like being super-charged all the time. You get one idea and you have to act on it, and then, what do you know, but you've got another idea before you've finished up with the first one, and so you go for that one, but of course a third idea intercepts the second, and you just have to follow that one, and pretty soon people are calling you disorganized and impulsive and all sorts of impolite words that miss the point completely. Because you're trying really hard. It's just that you have all these invisible vectors pulling you this way and that, which makes it really hard to stay on task.

Its almost impossible in this day and age to avoid multi-tasking. Technology will not allow it. If you need to function in society today, I'm not sure what hope you have.

Below are a few of the indicators identified by the Hallowell Center (tell me how everyone does not have ADHD):

1. A sense of underachievement, of not meeting one’s goals (regardless of how much one has actually accomplished).
2. Difficulty getting organized.
3. Chronic procrastination or trouble getting started.
4. Many projects going simultaneously; trouble with follow through.
5. A tendency to say what comes to mind without necessarily considering the timing or appropriateness of the remark.
6. A frequent search for high stimulation.
7. An intolerance of boredom.
8. Easy distractibility; trouble focusing attention, tendency to tune out or drift away in the middle of a page or conversation, often coupled with an inability to focus at times.
9. Often creative, intuitive, highly intelligent
10. Trouble in going through established channels and following proper procedure.
11. Impatient; low tolerance of frustration.
12. Impulsive, either verbally or in action.
13. Changing plans, enacting new schemes or career plans and the like; hot-tempered.
14. A tendency to worry needlessly, endlessly; a tendency to scan the horizon looking for something to worry about, alternating with attention to or disregard for actual dangers.
15. Physical or cognitive restlessness.
16. Inaccurate self-observation.

Good Lord! If you read through my blog past/present/future, you'll see very easily that I should be a case study for ADHD researchers. All my favorite quotes are about change. I've moved alot (jobs and locations). Tangents. If being ADHD is wrong, I don't wanna be right.

By the way, isn't indicator number 16 contradictory to the entire list? I mean, if you answered yes to numbers 1 thru 15, then get to 16 and say 'yep, that's me. I am always inaccurate when it comes to self-observation', doesn't that imply (or overtly state) that you misdiagnosed yourself on the previous 15. Or is that like a double negative thing, because you answer 'yes' to number 16 but that means you are wrong about it too so it is really a 'no'. I think we may have hit an infinite loop.

It felt good to finally post my real thoughts on this post and the last. I hope you will stick with me as my blog continues to evolve. Evolution is good, right? Or is it bad because it means change? Yikes.