Reply To: Getting out the door on time

[Anonymous]

This is a very edifying thread and I’ve read through it with much interest.  Every single response has something I can relate to; the distractions, the skewed sense of time, the dissociation between what we ought to do and what we actually do, the lack of structure, the futility of imposing it, insomnia, morning drowsiness, good and bad rituals, and so on.  I’ll definitely try that snooze and dose strategy – thanks for that one, SayWhat.

Yes, I hear you.  The problem of getting out of the house is a major one for me, and I’ve tried strategies.  Like many of you who have posted on this thread, I’ve laid out my clothes the night before, packed a bag and made all kinds of arrangements, but even still I manage to get out of the door late.  It always seems justifiable: things pop up, obligations, things I can’t find, lost keys or wallet; a piece of clothing, a library book that I suddenly remembered that I have to return, and so on.

The only way for me to get anywhere on time is to have something to do before it; an errand, like going to the bank or the post-office.  In this way, I never get to complete that first errand, but arrive on time for whatever I had to do.  But what is disturbing – what makes me feel like I am losing my mind, or that there is some mischeivous supernatural entity playing tricks on me and rolling on the floor laughing – is that time seems to speed up when I am trying to get out the door.  The experience of time changes when I know I’m late, and it races as I race.

And then there is the matter of getting to where I’m going.  I tell people that I ride a bicycle all year to stay in shape, but that’s not really true.  It’s because I’m always late and waiting for a bus when late is such an excruciating and painful ordeal that I’d rather ride through snow, rain and ice because I know that I can get anywhere I need to go in half an hour or less.

Or I’ll stay home.  Often getting out of the door becomes such a problem and distractions pile upon delays that hours pass and at some point there is no purpose to leaving home: why study at the library, for example, when it will close in a few hours?  Such rationalizing is a path to despair.

It may be where I am in life – a Ph.D candidate teaching classes and writing his dissertation – or it may be that the Vyvanse isn’t working for me anymore.  It helps me to have some structure, but it must be imposed by something or someone other than myself.  Often another thing happens, which is that I get moments of clarity about my dissertation, and feel compelled to sit down and write, when I know that I’m supposed to be somewhere else.

I do find, however, that I am more or less on time (though I’ve been up to 10 minutes late on a few occasions) when I teach.  The idea of students waiting for me to show up terrifies me enough to make me speed through the traffic, burn through red lights, ride in between cars and narrowly avoid accidents that only afterwards do I reflect on the possibility of injury or death.  I broke my arm when I worked as a bicycle courier in between finishing the M.A. (in English Literature, after which there are few jobs) and beginning the Ph.D (in Comparative Literature after which there are fewer).  It was a great job for someone with ADHD, but on that icy day I shouldn’t have taken that shortcut through an alley covered in ice, even when carrying out what we would call a “hot shot” – an urgent package that has to get from one part of the city to another in fifteen minutes or less.  With my forearm broken clean through the two bones, and twisted like a swan’s neck, I still managed to pass that package to another courier, but you can’t do that with a class to teach.

And even writing this message… What, it’s already 10?  Shit, I’ve got to go!

… oh yeah, and my best advice: If you have someplace to go stay away from your computer!!!

 

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