How ADD informs my life decisions
I have ADD, that’s no great mystery or secret, especially to anyone who knows me. I was diagnosed in fourth grade and ended up in a special ed class with my friend Erin, who also had ADD, for a few hoirs a day. You can probably imagine that this didn’t sit too well with me. Anyway…
Over the years I have alternately dealt and struggled with my ADD with varying levels of success, and before you go off saying there’s no such thing as adult ADD, let me I’ve you my take on it. When kids have ADD it’s quite apparent, but as they grow up, like me, they develop coping mechanisms that make it seem like their ADD has gone away. It’s all still there, you can trust me on that. Is this post starting to sound a little scattered? That’s because I’ve been out of Ritalin for almost two weeks now, but that’s just illustrative of my point.
Back to the subject of the post, I’ve been thinking about my pattern of work of the course of the last twenty years, give or take, and I realized something. If I have a job where I’m doing something new every day, or learning something every day, I’m happy. If my job involves repetitive, non-engaging work like call centers or clearing trouble queues I will become bored and restless as soon as I have finished learning how to do the job. This is one of the problems I am having with my current job - I’ve learned everything I can about the stuff that comes into the shop on a daily basis, and it’s getting boring. I just do not understand how anyone can do the same mindless work day in and day out and not have it drive them crazy. Like, I feel like I am somehow wired up differently from them, and I feel kind of bad that I can’t turn my brain off and just shuffle papers all day. It singles me out, at least in my own mind, just like being the kid in the special ed classroom did way back in the beyond.
How does this inform my life choices? Well, for one I find I’m always happier if I have a problem to solve or something to figure out and fix, so I have been aiming for jobs that are a little more in the repair-oriented field. As far as degrees go, an EE, CpE or even a CS degree will put me in a position to know how things work, and to be able to fix them, or even build them from scratch. When it comes time to graduate, you can guess what sort of job I’ll be looking for, if I haven’t started my own business doing bespoke gadgets by then.
That’s the secret to keeping me happy: mentally engaging problems to solve and a variety of different things to do.
Originally published at Tinker, tinker. You can comment here or there.