Plan the Work, Work the Plan

Finding out that I have, and in retrospect have always had, difficulty in reading textbooks has raised a slew of - well, I don't know whether to call them feelings or data bits. I've known for a long time that my prodigious vocabulary rose from the frustration of not being able to communicate what was inside my skull to the people who were running my life at the time. I spent a few decades refining that skill and parsing over my history, long past time when and gained knowledge could have rescued me from the terrors of junior high and high school, long past when these people were long gone out of my life. But I thought I knew everything that went into this history, including the clearly indisputable fact that I am a fast and accurate reader.

Textbooks, it turns out, are my kryptonite. My brain skitters over the pages like a frantic spider. As might be imagined, that makes gleaning any sort of understanding a bit difficult. Or maybe my brain does this with all books, but non-textbooks are just easier for me to catch.

Regardless, I've got to figure out some coping mechanisms for this newly-identified issue. I don't have time for careful copying out, which was my initial strategy for studying. It might have worked if I only had one or two classes, but I've got five, three of which are dillies. The other two have textbooks that are less technical and so can be cleared using my regular skills. 

It's dismaying to realize that I have no answers nor even the ghost of a clue. 

Except that in typing that sentence, I realized that I actually do. I've implemented a number of strategies that I've been discounting merely because they are coping mechanisms, not cures. I've set my computer's home page to the college's website. I'm trying out blogging as an accountability measure, and am using it regularly if not daily. I'm paying attention to clues, which is how I figured out that I'm having a difficult time reading textbooks (I'm still astonished that it took me this long to see what was bloody obvious in retrospect. This was happening in junior high! But I misattributed it, so there you are). I've started putting my bullet journal in an area that I always turn to first thing in the morning, so it will be more likely that I'll open it and actually take a look at the to-do lists I've set up. I watch youtube videos by and for people like me so I can learn more tips on how to cope. I have not collapsed in shame over being so far behind in my classes. I have not thrown up my hands and given up, either withdrawing or just accepting a failure on my transcripts. I am not giving up, I am not giving in, I am going forward and if I fall, that's the way I'll be pointed.

My plan today is my easiest two classes first, then thirty minute windsprints dedicated to each of my drafting classes in turn. It may work, it may not, but either way I'm going to learn something.

brb

Addendum

Cripes, I just realized how difficult it is for me to read textbooks. PTSD for high school, anybody? My brain just does not want to stay focused.

Going to have to examine this and see what strategies I can develop.

Accountability Post part deux

I failed to stay off of Facebook. In my defense, that's pretty much the only place some of my extended family can contact me. There is a family situation that requires being present in social media for the time being. I'll try again tomorrow - maybe I won't be able to stay off of it entirely, but maybe I'll be able to handle the required business and sign out again.

My real failure was my inability to stay away from my computer gaming. Got rid of all my games, downloaded three of them when I got home from school. Been futzing around on all sorts of time-wasters when I should be trying to get my skull around Revit. (I love Revit. I'm behind. I'm panicking. But if I fail and fall, it's going to be forward, damnit.)

My real challenge today is - again - my eventually-ex. We don't fight so there isn't that kind of tension, but we still have to share living quarters which can present interesting conundrums. I'm going to have to deal with an almost unheard of rarity: Needing to sleep in the same bed at the same time. (It would take too long to explain. Nobody's sleeping on the couch, nobody's sleeping in the metaphorical dog-house, we just have not shared the same hours in almost two decades. Not, by the way, my choice.) Normally I'd just putter around the house until he went to work but I have an early class tomorrow so I HAVE to get to sleep at a reasonable hour. It's going to be mighty peculiar in the old homestead tonight.

Hopefully this will be my last post of the day. I have about ninety minutes to get my head wrapped around what I'm going to be doing in class tonight and bullet journalling to catch up on.

Next time I think about taking on 15 units, I'm going to ask my best friends to slap some sense into me.

Accountability Post

I did absolutely lousy yesterday. I didn't get my homework done, didn't crack so much as a single CADD program, and woke up today with panic-adrenaline making sleep impossible about 4:30 a.m.

Today I deleted every single casual game time-waster from my laptop. They'll be back again at the end of the semester (probably earlier, I know I'm going to crack sooner rather than later). I realized that some of what needed to get done could NOT get done if I had any part of the internet going or any other computer-based avoidance system active. So: No internet, no radio, no music, no nothing until I got the paperwork done. I took my test, got 8/10, vowed to keep Facebook off for the rest of today. In fact, I'm thinking about going no-FB completely and seeing if my life rights itself a little.

Since I've made this blog part of my accountability system, I logged in after my test to document my hair-on-fire oh my gods I'm failing I'm a failure screaming into the void, also my yeah, you're not doing well but bear in mind you're still figuring out how to deal with an ADHD brain after decades of not even knowing you had one. You're not doing this on purpose, you're re-writing scripts and daymmmmn if it isn't painful and full of pitfalls.


Rewriting scripts, even partially, is a Sisyphean challenge especially when they're the psychological version of written in stone a spear's length deep.

This is going to be one my shorter (ha!) posts. I have to trim fingernails that make typing annoying and study for the class I need to leave for in about an hour. Then I have to come home and study for the class I have tonight, plus take a test that's due tomorrow. Whew. Just typing that out made me realize my day is cut out for me. I also have to pick up some cat litter, which is going to eat into my study time, and deal with my eventually-ex, which is a stress that has been so pervasive for so long I hadn't realized just how stressful it was until fairly recently. But that's another blog, another day, far far into the future. For now there's AutoCADD.

Sneaking Up On My Brain

I have homework.

I am behind on my homework.

Being behind on my homework causes me to panic. (Junior high and high school, thank you for the immortal script.)

Panicking makes me avoid homework.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Facebook has had enough of me today. Likewise Twitter. Ditto MSNBC. I've played a few rounds of my current favorite casual games. The Republic will not stand or fall on what I'm reading or reacting to today. Being terrified of the political situation will not, at this point, change the political situation. I wish it could, we would have had world peace yesterday.

So, I write. I note that I need to trim my fingernails because it's making typing a little fussy. I dust off an old blog and tell it just how crazy-making it is not to be able to concentrate because of fear. I pull out the little bitty meditation devices I know can work but I don't know if they will work today because they don't work all the time.

I know that, if I fail, I'm failing forward. I'm not giving up and I'm not giving in. I may not pass these classes. I will learn and I will try again. I may pass these classes albeit with grades I don't consider my best. I will learn and do better next time.

I cannot solve all of the issues I have with my life in the next 24 hours. If I could, I would drink my state's current supply of coffee and get on with it. I can, however, get on with the next step of getting on with the rest of my life.

Study. Complete assignments. Turn in tests. Check job applications. Get interview clothing in order.

In five years, I plan to be in a much happier place.

Today, I sneak up on my brain and persuade it to finish a homework assignment. If we finish the assignment, I get to write some fiction.

I'm looking forward to amassing a quantity of short stories.

Redirect, recalibrate, reconfigure, refine

Write as if nobody is reading because nobody is.

I'm in the middle of a semester I'm flubbing magnificently while trying to manage job-hunting, the divorce the job will make possible, launching adult and nearly-adult children, home-management, and a slew of items that I can't remember right off hand, while trying to reconfigure my coping mechanisms in light of the ADHD diagnosis I received three or so years ago. I have a lot of mental scripts telling me that every failure is because I'm failing on purpose, because that's all I heard from parents and the educational system for so long I internalized it. My parents are dead, my high school days are three and a half decades into the past, but that script is going to be interred with my bones.

Because I'm doing such a dreadful job managing my fifteen-unit semester I've triggered my panic-response to homework. I put it off as long as possible because I'm terrified of it, terrified of the failing grade, terrified because my brain can't seem to make my eyes sit still long enough to read and absorb knowledge, and it becomes a vicious cycle where my anxiety makes inability to concentrate inevitable and the inability to concentrate feeds my anxiety. I will play video games for hours, surf the internet, and generally do anything but my homework until the very last minute, and college is not the place to play around in the last minute.

The bitch of it is that the three classes I'm having the most trouble with are the classes I want the most. They're all CADD classes, Revit, Solidworks, AutoCadd, and I love all of them. I'm behind on the drawings, have missed written assignments, and am a middling so-so on the tests. I'm sitting here at the computer trying to get myself to crack open the books so I can get, if not caught up, at least an understanding of the concepts I'm supposed to have.

The problem of the middle-aged late-diagnosis ADHD brain is having to recognize and redirect maladaptive coping mechanisms, of understanding that, despite what my well-intentioned parents and school counselors said, I am not doing this on purpose and have zero control over how my brain is going to process the input it gets. I'm having to repurpose advice I gave the Banshees while they were growing up: What you feel is what you feel and there is no right or wrong about it. How you choose to react is within your control, however, and you're responsible for constructing framework that's as fair as possible to everybody in the situation - yourself included. My brain is going to react the way it's going to react and there is nothing much I can do about that, but it's incumbent upon me to create the framework that guides me into productive, not destructive, pathways.

So: Observation, hypothesis, gather data, adjust accordingly.

My hypothesis this week is that my fear is causing me to avoid that which must be done. Operating under this hypothesis, I'm looking for those choices that bring me closer to or keep me away from my goal. This is where I realized that I'm gaming, I'm web-surfing, my audio input is designed to keep my brain occupied by anything but homework. I need coping mechanisms that help me relax, focus, and get on with things.

Coping mechanism audio: background noise needs to be background, it can't be something that takes any part of my attention away from the tasks at hand.

Coping mechanism focus: Ritual. Breakfast, meditation, writing, bullet journal, organizing my tasks and then engaging with them.

Coping mechanism environment: Irony of ironies, the clean room my mother was always harping on is essential to my ability to concentrate. My world is too cluttered and I don't have time for an extreme decluttering, but I can make the effort to get my laundry clean and put away. The laundry piles are ninety percent of my clutter-influenced brainlock. The rest of it has be dealt with in the moment: Notice trash, throw it out. Notice book, put it back on the shelf. Not all of the trash is getting picked up in one day. Not all of the books are making back onto the shelf in one day. The little efforts will not be noticeable day-to-day but will have a long-term effect.

This blog is going to have more on it because it's going to be part of my writing meditation. I'm writing as if nobody is reading because nobody (but me) will be.

brb