Mashing Potatoes

[Tiddler]

LOL I love this thread.

I’ve had the same thoughts. How does everyone else think? I never imagined though that other people’s heads were quieter than mine though until I was on holiday in Greece a few years ago. Over 40 degrees and too hot to move. Too hot to think. It’s the only time in my life my head has been quiet. If it had occurred to me to mention it to the friends I was with it might have struck me sooner that other people’s heads aren’t constantly burring away like a radio with all the channels on at once.

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[Anonymous]

Just to revisit this thread. I was sort of “one foot in one foot out” about my diagnosis and figured that the true “test” would be how I felt after medication.

I can now confirm that my mind is just as active, but it’s not jumping around all over the place. I feel like an alien who’s starting to learn the language of the local natives and learn their behaviors/studying them. It’s been an interesting experience so far. I still feel like me, but I feel more empowered to do all those things that were already in my head, and do them much better than I was able to do them before.

(So I think that makes me a freeking genius now right? )

Seriously though, I am thankful for my crazy exciting, “racecar” brain and I’m thankful for you all here being a great sounding board for me and everyone else just “waking up” to this thing. I think that my life (if it keeps going like this) is going to get a lot more fun even if I don’t take the easy road, it will at least be interesting and not as stressful as it’s been so far.

I’ll probably still think about more than mashed potatoes, but at least I won’t wander off to look up something on the internet in the middle of making them because of some burning curiosity. I’m a good cook already, (though I rarely follow recipes save baked goods) so imagine how awesome stuff will come out now! ;p

Ok… enough from me. Again, thank you all for taking part and being so fun and interesting to talk with.

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[Amy]

Heh, love this post. Sometimes my internal monologue will run like kc5jck’s, and it’ll drive my husband crazy when I blurt out something that seems to have no relation with what we were talking about. He’ll say, “How’d you come up with that??” or “Where’d that come from?” and I’ll run through how I got there.

Like Monk (the old USA show) says about his OCD, “It’s a gift …and a curse.” It’s helpful when I’m drawing or coming up with comic ideas, but it’s a curse when I have so many thoughts running in my head that I can’t concentrate or get stuff done.

http://acatwithadhd.com <— speaking of comics, here’s my new website… hope you all don’t mind me posting/spamming

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[Anonymous]

I love this topic, too. My mind never stops. In fact, I’m almost certain that it is impossible for me to get bored. How could anyone get bored with a world full of ‘stuff’ all around us. There’s always something that I can be thinking about- even if it’s the way the floor tiles in my kitchen have been laid down. Are there any 2 tiles that are identical? Do any of the lines and patterns on the tiles remind me of how a river delta would appear in a photo taken while flying over head in an airplane?

If I ever have a random ’empty’ minute up there in my head (like THAT would ever happen!), then all I need to do is turn my head this way or that and I’ve got a whole new source of entertaining mind fodder. MY husband just shakes his head in amazement when I start to verbalize my mind trips.

Can you believe this? HE can come into the bedroom, lie down on the bed and fall instantly asleep. I can be dead tired and still take up 3 hours to fall asleep. My mind has so many things to think about. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stop! I love my thinking times. I can’t believe people want to go to bed early. They are missing hours and hours of mind trips every day of their life!

😆

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[kc5jck]

Quizzical said: I’d just assumed everybody had all kinds of silent conversations with themselves.

I don’t think I assumed that everybody had silent conversations with themselves, but I know that I sure do. It goes on from the time I wake up until I go to bed. Then when someone is talking to me it’s like I have two conversations to try to listen to. Actually, I try to pay attention, but my brain keeps interrupting the other person with totally off topic chattering.

I rarely have trouble getting to sleep though. My mind chatters all day, and in the evening I get on the internet, read, or stay busy with something until I am mentally and physically exhausted. Then I get into bed and maybe fire up one of Barkley’s long you tube videos on my iphone with 2-5 cats piled in with me and maybe the wife and I am asleep in ten minutes.

The cats do seem to be getting a better understanding of me after hearing Barkley night after night.

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[Anonymous]

I’m like Bill “I can forget whether it was a half or a full cup of flour during the time it takes me to get the flour out of the cupboard, or was that corn starch? But you know what? Sometimes those thoughts give me an answer to a question at work or an idea for a party or a way to get the thermostat working” and carsonky “I think I do tend to think about what I am doing UNTIL a trigger happens. It’s kind of like a spider web. A question will pop into my mind which may lead to another”

I think the only time i’ll actually be thinking about mash potatoes is when i start smashing them but then I get entertained by how im smashing them so i try smashing them all kinds of ways then i’ll start pretending the the spoon is like a cyclops crushing a mountain….so basically im still not focusing on mash potatoes but i start playing with them haha 😆 these are really big eyes -> 😯 😈 <- reminds me of the count from sesamie street “1 ah ah ah”

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[Anonymous]

Now I’m really confused 😯 I thought everyone had a constantly chattering mind, also known as ‘monkey mind’ when trying to meditate. Does that mean only people with ADHD have problems meditating? I actually mash potatoes with a masher because my electric mixer is packed away in a box in my parents patio room because I got divorced and sold my house and didn’t have a new house and had to unexpectedly move in with my new partner who broke up with me two months after I moved in, about the same time I got my diagnosis and started treatment and it was all a bit too much to handle all at the same time…. so I sort of went into denial about everything for a while and that’s why I’m still mashing potatoes with a masher. I add a little bit of the instant mix with onions for extra flavor.

I will be moving soon, I’m looking forward to reuniting with my electric mixer

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[quizzical]

I’m with zsazsa – I’ve always been proud of the fact that I was never bored, because I had my wandering thoughts to entertain me! In fact, there was probably a time in my life when I would have never considered myself to be ADD because I was not bored; in my view it was the ADD folks who were prone to boredom, because they were always so restless, and craving excitement. I guess that’s the hyperactive component, which I don’t have.

I suppose you could say my brain is restless, because it definitely meanders!

DaniV, I like your descripton of “one foot in, one foot out” regarding your diagnosis, because that’s been me the last year, even after I got the diagnosis six months ago. What’s funny is my husband was the less convinced of the two of us that I had it, until 1) The doctor diagnosed me, and 2) I went on meds and 3) he started reading the books I was bringing home from the library. Now he is 100% sold, to the point that I’ll turn to him for reassurance when I sometimes get the notion I’ve been barking up the wrong tree.

Which still happens, for all kinds of reasons. And while the meds do help me, I’m still prone to my old ways; there are habits associated with the way my mind has worked all these years, and at age 46 those habits get pretty tightly twisted around my day.

In fact, last night I mentioned this topic to my husband, because it’s still of great interest to me, this notion of what other people’s minds are doing all day long. I still have trouble believing that people don’t – at least some of the time – let their thoughts drift about. I mean, folding laundry, come on! It’s so boring, so repetitive! What do you think about when you fold the laundry? I asked my husband last night, and guess what? He said “I think about folding the laundry: This goes in that pile, this goes in this pile…”

Oh my god! Really? I just find that ASTONISHING. But it explains why he gets it done so quickly. It takes me a minimum of a half-hour to fold and put away a single basket of laundry. Ironing and/or spraying and hanging wrinkled items not included. And that’s if I’m on meds and doing it properly, as in, folding and sorting it upstairs on the bed, standing up, instead of schlepping multiple baskets downstairs to fold sitting front of the TV, which was how I typically did it, and sometimes still do, because I don’t WANT to have to focus on Just the Laundry, because, well, UGH!

I can tell I’m getting obsessed with this topic, so for now I’ll post and…hey, I’ll think about it some more while I fold the laundry!

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[kc5jck]

Quizzical – I think your husband has EMD – empty mind disorder

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[Anonymous]

Being the curious and inquisitive creatures we are, the brain is just a big puzzle, and ours is like a Rubiks cube. (It sounded like a good analogy for the moment.)

I’ve always been interested in toying with words, ideas, puzzles, the way the body works, how the mind works etc. It is entertaining, but despite all the thoughts in my head, I do get bored easily and I do get those intense “I’ve got to DO something” moments which usually result in some new project or other that I’ll get bored with shortly after if I can’t complete it all in one sitting.

It just never occurred to me how very different my mind (and ours) works compared to everyone else. I always knew I wasn’t relating on the same level and that I was “weird” (I love being weird), but thankfully, I think I’ve always been an interesting weird and not the “creepy girl” (now woman) weird. (I hope at least.)

I’ve discovered too that since taking the medication (day two now), I feel like I’m still very much me, just more so than before. I’m not getting in my own way. I still feel very creative, and it’s allowing me to keep track of everything I’m doing daily much better and really feel like I’m in control of things at work. So, I guess in Rubik’s terms, my brain is checkerboard pattern right now instead of completely mixed up.

I too love this thread. Am I allowed to do that if I started it? ;p

BTW, Number 7 DX, I would love to have a hand masher on hand. There are times that I’m just too lazy to use the electric (which seems totally contradictory.

Not to bring up a totally different topic, but it goes with the “lazy” remark above (see? I’m staying in line here ;p). I was a responsible parent and breastfed my children. I used to tell people that I did it because I was too lazy to clean bottles etc. Obviously that wasn’t the entire reason, but I remember people giving me odd looks about referring to it as the “lazy” way. I always figured, no bottles to clean, nothing to mix or prepare or warm up, meant it was easier (not to mention healthier to my mind.) I never realized that people thought my way was the “hard” way. Again, this isn’t to bring up any debates on what’s best, but just an interesting observation on how my mind worked out that it was choosing the easiest/most convenient means.

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[quizzical]

@kc5jck: ! I wonder if there’s a support group for that.

At times I thought maybe it was a guy thing, sort of in that old Mars-Venus way that guys supposedly talk primarily to give and receive information, while women talk for all sorts of reasons. It made a certain amount of sense that maybe the internal conversations work the same way. But then I’d always remember my brother (I strongly suspect he’s ADD as well) and how he clearly has all kinds of daydream-type thoughts going on.

My husband is also a very pragmatic guy from a very pragmatic family. I can’t picture any of them daydreaming about anything.

So I guess my question is: do non-ADDers daydream? Do ADDers daydream more frequently than non-ADDers? Do we daydream for longer periods of time? What, exactly, is the relationship between daydreaming and ADD? I realize it’s sometimes listed as a symptom but I’m curious to understand just how much, or how little, a non-ADDers mind might wander.

Especially when I see the ad on TV for eBay. There’s a guy watching a grade-school play, and all he can think about is getting new tires for his car, as evidenced by the fact that suddenly all the kids on stage are wearing tire costumes and the scenery morphs into

an engine….obviously if only ADD folks’ minds were capable of being elsewhere that ad wouldn’t pass the demographics test!

So maybe it’s true, hubby has Empty Mind Disorder!

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[Anonymous]

I was daydreaming as I read your post – what did you say?

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[Bill]

“If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what’s an empty desk the sign of?”

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[Anonymous]

“If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what’s an empty desk the sign of?”

A very very bored ADDer.

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[Scattybird]

So if non ADDers only think about one thing at a time isn’t that like being in an inadequate state of hyperfocus all the time – but without the hyper

So I am completely fixated on this topic and spent most of coffee break today asking my non-ADD (I presume) colleagues what’s in their minds. Most people said they only think about the one task they are doing. Some said that they get thoughts about other things flitting into their brains whilst they are concentrating on a task but they dismiss those thoughts and get back to the task in hand. When I asked how long it took to get back to task they said a few seconds. So they have the busy mind (some do anyway) but those that do are able to control those thoughts. It seems to me that there are three things going on here: The first is that lots of people have empty brains; the second is many people do have intrusive thoughts, but we ADDers probably have more of them and the third crucial thing is we don’t dismiss the intrusive thoughts like they do and probably just go off and act on them. It certainly takes me more that seconds to refocus. It can take me days!

So I think my mind is more interesting than theirs and being seen as a bit eccentric is fine – as someone said of my chaotic life style “it’s not boring being me”. Not sure if that was a compliment or not.

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