Another person’s FB post made me think about it . . . Besides just things like 5 major spine surgeries, Rheumatoid Arthritis (both knees replaced at the same time), Fibro, Osteo, and others we won’t talk about . . . I figured out one more disease I have . . .
I have ADCD – ATTENTION DEFICIT CAREER DISORDER
– Where the OCD turn the corner of 40 years of doing ten things at once – and 99.9 % came out perfect, or close to it (the downside is that one’s children and co-worker tend to think you are perfect, and perfect is a disease)
– one’s briefcase kept growing in size until they came out with the huge one for accountants (thankfully I figured out how to access the office computer from home, or I might be having a broken back that couldn’t be fixed with surgery)
– where I remember proudly carrying my portable computer home and back (the size of a singer sewing machine – it was a Compaq – thankfully they got smaller as I got older)
– worked all day and half of the nights while the kids slept (after cooking them dinner almost every night, and I even ate my veggies to be a good example)
– exchanged Christmas presents and talked business with the company owners I worked for at endless company social functions (that IS a social life, isn’t it? – WE DID, AFTER ALL, INVENT HAPPY HOUR when our corporate lawyers explained to us that the two martini lunch became a no-no)
– then it happened one day in my late 50’s – I noticed I had been working in circles and not getting anything done for at least eight months. Suddenly everything on my to-do list was so important it had a star next to it – and then I knew I had Attention Deficit Career Disorder
– ADCD is not a disease for the faint of heart – not for wussies
– this disease is for the OCD – Type A – Senior Citizen.
I write almost every day. I cannot help myself, I used to sneak off to lunches by myself, so I could sit there with my tuna melt and write. I am medically retired – disabled. I have a lot of free time, and a lot of pain to divert my brain from. How many of those commentaries do I actually finish each year? From 2010 forward, I have finished anywhere from zero to 12 – depending on the year.
I have decided to finish the one I started yesterday . . . currently on its 6th re-write . . . I may set a record for re-writes with this one . . . the trick is deciding it is finished, so I can publish it.
No matter how passionate I am about a hobby, ADCD is a hobby killer. This is becoming a major concern, and not just for the writing problem.
– The dining room chairs repaint project is in its 24th month. There are 4 chairs. One chair is painted twice and finished. One chair has only one coat. One chair has 80% of one coat. One chair has zero coats of paint.
– The baby blankets project I started crocheting before the Grandgirls were born is not finished. The Grandgirls are almost 3 and 4 years old.
– The switching over from the old address book to the new address book project is not finished. It began only about eight months ago. The new book is completed for A through H. (I said I wanted a new one, and my husband gifted me with one much nicer than I would have ever bought for myself.) The old book has pages not torn out yet of I through Z.
– The making of the My Favorite Recipes Little Black Book project (for my son to inherit) is not finished. I started on it about 3 years ago. I took one of my lovely old black cloth Day-Timers (from the 80’s?) and put recipe tabs and a lot of blank pages for adding recipes. To date I have transferred about 30 recipes from various recipe cards dating back to the 70’s. The rest of them, maybe fifty, are in a brown photo box waiting to be written into my treasured old Day-Timer.
You get the picture? There are many, many more for this list, but I cannot recall what they are for I have hidden them from my sight. Seeing them every day, out in the open would just remind me of how many there are. All 6 of my desk drawers are letter size file drawers. Four of them are filled with writing I have not yet finished or shredded.
Over the years, I have filled up at least 3 or 4 leaf bags with my endless writing. I have burnt up the motors in 3 shredders. I remember shredding the one and only book I have written. Upon re-reading it only five years later, I was mortified at how ignorant I had been just five years earlier regarding Politics and Religion. I figured if it was not polite to talk about them, I could at least write about them.
If we are truly learning something new each day, my written works were bound to be obsolete at some point. I have found the fallacy in that thought process. Once we become well learned and mature in those two subjects, our basic views do not change very much in substance. I am thankful and proud to have come to maturity – now, I wish, and wish, and wish I were capable of finishing every essay I begin. Getting stuck in perpetual re-write is one aspect of my own special disease that I have discovered – ADCD. I thought it would be the one disease to be cured when my medical retirement became unavoidable. But alas, it is as incurable as any of my other diagnoses. I might as well get used to Attention Deficit Career Disorder, or perhaps rename it ADRHD Attention Deficit Retired Hobby Disorder. Every time you see a published commentary from me, know that it is a VICTORY in my ADRHD life.
texas lady juanita 