Busy = Happy?

I think I'm happiest when I'm busiest. With a few footnotes...

• I need to be working on something I believe in
• I need to maintain my work/life balance

Other than that, life never seems quite so good as when I'm knee deep in stuff to do. It even makes the infrequent days on the beach so much sweeter because I can appreciate the feel of a job well done.

I hope you are happy with the level of busy-ness that today finds you at.

Do the Pieces Fit Together in Your Life?

Making My Own Touch Screen Gloves- Take 1

Tectouch Gloves

I love my phone. I hardly go anywhere without it. But there's a small problem. It's getting cold outside and my hands really hurt when the temperature drops. I'd love to buy a pair of touch screen gloves, but I'm a little on the cheap side (If you're not, check these out!) I read this Instructables post a while back and have been planning to make my own touch screen gloves.

Gloves, Thread, Needle, Phone

I was so excited about this project because I figured it was a perfect project to blog, too. It's simple, it's a good way for me to demonstrate some of my living with ADD steps, it's tech-y, and I figured it would also photograph well.

I've learned that it's a really good idea for me to practice Mise En Place aka "Everything Set Up." The process of gathering my materials and getting them in one spot seems to center my mind. It also ensures that I have what I need at hand. Today that meant getting my gloves, the roll of thread, and a needle. I put my phone in the pic because I knew I'd be testing the gloves on the phone.

It Didn't Work!

A couple of quick stitches and I was ready to go!

Actually, I wasn't. Even though I followed the Instructables guide, my "new" touch screen gloves didn't work.

And I'm still blogging it.

I'm taking this as my daily lesson in humility. I figure it's much more interesting than telling you about how I messed up dinner because I forgot to get the super important ingredient that was whole reason I went to the grocery store in the first place. Plus that kind of story doesn't have cool pics.

What? Still reading? Well, as you probably expected, there's more to this story. I found a neat overview of the different types of Conductive Thread at Fashioning Technology. As for me, I'm thinking about buying a 10 ft thread card from Lamé Lifesaver.

That's it for today. Have fun and thanks to #NaBloPoMo I'll see you tomorrow, probably right around this same time.

#NaBloPoMo

I Get It

Malcolm Gladwell wrote in Outliers that it takes 10,000 hours or approximately 10 years to get really good at something. I'm pretty hard headed, so it might take me an extra 5,000 hours. But I think I'm starting to get it now.

You have to understand first of all that sometimes my brain amazes me. The other day I punched in the number of an old high school friend...even though I'd last dialed that number in 1992. And sometimes my brain disappoints me, like when I forget what I came into the kitchen to get even though it's just a few steps away from the living room.

Finally "getting it" also means that I'm not arguing with myself that I oughta know this already. It means accepting that for me it sometimes takes a little bit more effort. Or a lot.

I get that I have to write everything down or it may not stick in my brain.

I get that I need to have a combination of a distraction and a focal point to get repetitive tasks done. Hello Podcast!

I get that I miss interpersonal cues. For me to get a message I either have to have all my active listening skills set to "ON" or have someone hit me over the head with a 2x4. The good news is that after 15000 hours of practice I'm getting better at this. The bad news is that it's still work, and it probably always will be.

I get that sometimes I have trouble stopping myself. Those are the days when it's better to go shopping at the flea market than at the mall.

I get that adding people to my mix increases my stamina and enthusiasm. If Aunt Polly asked me to whitewash the fence by myself I'd totally pull a Tom Sawyer and try to get out of it. Well, sorta.* But if I'm working with someone else I'm like the energizer bunny and just keep going and going.

I get that I have no concept of time. Not only does everything have to go on my calendar, I have to set every single reminder option so that time doesn't get away from me.

Most of all, after 15,000 hours of turning on my ears and using my calendar and grocery shopping list and doing a load of laundry a day and checking for my keys every time I walk through a door ... I get that this is who I am and that I'm really good at being me. You see, along with the distraction comes some really cool creativity and amazing energy. Since everything new draws my attention I've had the chance to meet all kinds of really cool people and do some really neat things. I am so thankful that I've been able to remain positive through everything. Even though I haven't always been thrilled with every thing that has come my way, things really work out once you rub a little persistence, creativity, and positive energy on it.

And I finally get it.

*I couldn't exactly do like Tom and collect marbles and a dead cat while my friends whitewashed the fence. But I might tweet about it

Ow

I'm sore from tip to toe.

One thing that is very ironic is that usually I can't focus on anything.  Pain doesn't go away for things like ADD though.  It yanks your attention right back to - ow - hold on, it's calling my name.

The impact was on the driver's side of the vehicle, and the side airbags deployed.  I have a colorful bruise on my left arm and I can feel a swathe along the left side of my back that is probably doing a rainbow impression, too.  I haven't looked at it yet.  Yes Jenn, I will go in and get checked out.

Have I mentioned how happy I am that we're doing #NaBloPoMo this year instead of #NaNoWriMo?  I don't think I could create any fiction at all this year.  Maybe next year I'll just write a daily journal.  The last three Novembers have been far more twisty and turny than any fiction I've ever read.

Now if you'll please excuse me, I'm going to go conduct some research on the effectiveness of Ibuprofen, Aspirin and their relatives Tylenol and Aleve. One at a time, of course.

Surfing Sandbar Style

I'd much rather be at the Sandbar.

Where am I?

Have you ever been completely mentally “away?” Not just daydreaming, but mentally fully immersed in a completely different situation? This happens to me a lot. My understanding is that this is why what my brain does is called Attention Deficit Disorder . It’s not that I can’t maintain focus, it’s that I have a disorder that makes it difficult for me to switch between a deep focus when intermittent focus is needed or switch out of intermittent mode when I need to be focusing deeply on something, like you know, my next blog post.
Something that has helped me understand this brain mechanism better is meditation. Apparently there are two basic kinds of meditation – I’m going to call them the orange and nitrogen because I have no idea what they’re really called.

The Orange:

In this form of meditation you take a single item, like an orange or a raisin or an action (your breath) and you focus everything on that. You consider the folds and the valleys and the color and the stem and every single thing related to that orange. You train your mind to exclude all other stimuli so that you can deeply concentrate on the scent and the weight and the texture of that orange. Just like a muddy stream settling after a storm, gradually all the sediment in your mind settles and you’re completely clear. It’s amazingly powerful and I’ve finished this kind of a meditation feeling as though I’ve awaken from the deepest most refreshing sleep.

Nitrogen:

In this form of meditation you focus on everything in and around you. It helps me to think of nitrogen – it’s everywhere in our environment, and as a gas it gets into our bloodstream and our lungs and fills every space that we move in. When meditating like this you keep yourself grounded in the here and now, becoming deeply aware of all of your thoughts and your feelings and all the sights and sounds around you. I have deep trouble doing this. For whatever reason I start out focusing on the mundane activities of life around me and the next thing I know my mind is a million miles away. I pull it back and bring my focus back to the spaces that nitrogen has crept into and I’m gone again, thinking about how I need to add fertilizer to my plants. My personal theory is that I’m already uncommonly aware of the things around me, and as such this kind of meditation doesn’t help my brain settle.

So what’s my point?

Anchors help me. As I write this I have a printed sheet of paper across the room with my top three priorities on it. As my mind wanders off my gaze lights on my priority list and it narrows my focus back onto my priorities. At home I’ve taken a slightly different tack: rather than have a priority list tacked to the wall, I remove the distractions. The TV set is tucked into a back room and I keep the computers closed up unless I specifically need them for a task. My phone ringer and calendar reminders are on, but text message notifications are off. I know where my mind goes, and I’m learning how to direct it where I want it to go.