Can something be salvaged from the wreck?

[allan wallace]

I won’t ‘beat around the bush’. Is it possible to be wrenched from the jaws of mediocrity? After a lifetime of chronic underachievement, a propensity to self-destruct, and condescension and derision from every quarter is it too late to ever amount to anything for a person in his mid 40’s?

For a while I hoped that people would be right and that I’d mature at some point and responsibility would suddenly dawn upon me, but as each year excrutiatingly passed I just knew that it wasn’t going to happen of it’s own accord. Why do the basic concepts elude me? Why is it that I have zero motivation, and ambition is nothing more than a word with dark conotations for me? I have read of so-called strengths of those with ADHD, but what are they exactly? The only ‘powers’ that I have been alerted to are the ones that indicate an almost magnetic attraction to ‘trouble’, and fucking things up. When one is told often enough that one is just completely useless often enough, and for long enough, one begins to accept it. How many times have any of you people wished that you had a ‘permanent shut-down switch’ that you could activate and just sleep forever, and never have to adopt and learn the robotic way to function effectively within the sterility of robotworld? If I had such a switch it would have been utilised before I even hit my teen years…

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[ipsofacto]

Allen, I think so much depends on luck. Doing well with undiagnosed/ untreated ADHD is very dependent on being in the right place at the right time. And, if you don’t recognize that good fortune, a little bad luck will set you back again just as easily.

So part of the therapy is to create your own good luck and positive mindset.. I wish i was mid forties. Ten years younger, and my options would be so much better than they are. I know someone in their sixties would say the same thing of me.

Try not to be so judgemental of yourself and others.This is what it is. Think of you would want to do, and what terms you could actually do it on, if unencumbered by all the emotional baggage you carry around with you. It’s not easy, and I do know, but taking step forward feels so much better than standing sill.

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[Anonymous]

allan –

i feel you.

i have just recently decided to redefine mediocrity. I chose one thing, a tiny thing (putting away my laundry after I wash it, so you can see it really does seem inconsequential in the big scheme of things) to give a little more attention to. I currently live out of laundry baskets because I can never manage to finish the job and get the folded laundry put away. This makes my room a disaster (I have enough papers, shoes, dog toys, homework, ‘to do’ piles laying around, I don’t need 6 full laundry baskets in the middle of my floor too) and makes it hard to find anything, which in turn makes me late all the time since I can’t ever decide what to wear, which in turn compounds the feeling of being a big stinking pile of failure!

I hung a big sign on my wall, ok, my friend finished and hung it for me because it was sitting on my floor, ‘Responsible parents put clothes away’, and I set a goal to put away at least half of any load of laundry that I do.

Each time I meet my goal, I put a tally mark on the sign. Sometimes I give myself a tally mark if I really didn’t feel like putting any clothes away but I still put away a few things anyway, and sometimes I give myself two tally marks if I put more than half of the load away.

Realizing that I can occasionally set and meet a goal even if it’s not a fun goal involving hyper-focusing has made me feel slightly better about myself. I can now say that I am not mediocre because I am meeting my own personal goal. I know it seems small, but that’s because it is small. Give me a large task to complete and I will just go take the dogs for a walk or something, but I can handle a simple task with minimal issues.

Maybe next month I’ll increase my goal to 2/3 of the laundry getting put away (yeah, probably not…), but I’ve decided to use the ‘Start low, Go slow’ motto to guide my goals if I want to try this with anything else. The point was not just to pick up my laundry, but also to actually accomplish something, and there was no point in going my usual route of setting a completely unrealistic goal for myself and then being devastated when I don’t meet it.

I still feel like my box of life skills is empty, and I still could use a large injection of self-confidence, but this tiny change has made a positive impact nonetheless. I have more self-confidence. And a cleaner floor. And a visual reminder that I can reach goals that I set for myself even when they are the boring and responsible type.

Hang in there.

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[trashman]

SAYWHAT, thank-you for sharing this. it is so true,and so easy to forget!

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[Tiddler]

Thank you, SayWhat. This is why I come to this site – these little things that amount to such a huge amount of support.

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[Geoduck]

Crap. I gotta do laundry. Sigh.

Hey, doing laundry before I run out of underwear is a goal, right?

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[allan wallace]

Goodness, more replies! I thought that I had overstyed my welcome! Well, Saywhat, you’re right! These last few weeks have seen me more determind to understand myself better, and last week was the most productive week that I’ve ever had in my life. I did the housework every day. I went to a doctor about my back injury that I’d been procrastinating about since 1989. I went for my CT scan, and BACK to the doctor, on the right day at the right time and got the results! Just knowing that I’d finally done something that I’ve been intending to do for over 20 years made me feel like I’d conquered Everest in my own way….my wife couldn’t understand why I was unusually happy on Friday night and when I told her she looked at me and said ‘so what?’ We did end up fighting a bit, but I told her that she wasn’t stealing my victory, and that I’m not aiming for mediocrity anymore, and she’d better get used to me feeling triumphant for a change. I’m sick and tired of being and feeling like a loser all of the time!

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[Anonymous]

Geoduck – doing laundry before you run out of underwear is a very practical goal! And it will prevent your nine year old son from telling the secretary at his school that he is late because he didn’t have any underwear to wear until his mom finished the laundry. This situation is purely hypothetical, of course, and has NEVER happened to me….. ever…… <coughcough> 😉

allan – Congrats on the productivity!! It’s like a deep breath of fresh air to get something important finished that’s been procrastinated for so long! Congrats on keeping your victory too! It can be hard (in my opinion) to stay focused on the little victories, especially when there is still so much stuff left to do and ‘the normies’ just don’t appreciate how hard we are working. Normal people just don’t understand feeling a sense of accomplishment because I remembered to put my car in park before trying to get out I say celebrate all you can, because there is always going to be a line of situations/people that will make you feel like you’re chasing your tail in circles.

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[allan wallace]

Thanks ‘saywhat’! Yeah, I’m still on a high from last week. I anticipated the usual boring humdrum procedures which is why in retrospect I think that I procrastinated about it for so long, but it was so much easier than I thought it would be! I also forgot to add my other achievements from last week!!! I joined this forum, I have arranged to join a support group (I’m off to my first meeting shortly) and I stopped gambling a few weeks ago. Trying to spend less time online is my next big thing as I’m addicted to 3 minute games of internet scrabble, and if I don’t get my daily fix I get very irritable….wow, last week really was a Mt. Everest moment for me, and I’m going to savour it for a long long time. Usually I fuck everything up and don’t complete things once started, but I saw that back thing through to it’s bitter end. Only a procrastinator can truly know what it feels like to see something through for once, and man, it feels good!!!!!

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