You Hate Me Until I Hate Me More - Is That Your Idea Of Karma?

I'm getting really tired of the online negativity surrounding ADHD. I've been to a wide variety of Swedish blogs on the topic lately. It's the second stage of trying to understand the condition I suspect I have. First I just read research and general overview information, and now I've moved on to reading people's personal experiences and debates. The general feeling I've gotten out of it so far is that there is this widespread notion of ADHD persons not really being "sick". There isn't a single blog I've been to that hasn't encountered this notion during their history of either being diagnosed or being close to someone with a diagnose.  And that tells me many things.

I'm not an expert. The more I learn about this illness, the more questions I want to ask. Still, a single search on Wikipedia or Google and a quick five minutes of reading gave me a general overview of it, enough to make me realize many myths about ADHD are unmotivated. If I could learn that in five minutes I don't understand why anyone else couldn't bother to check their facts before wasting everyone's time on uncalled-for hate comments (and by anyone, I mean those who keep the myths alive, online and irl). It would literally take me longer and use more of my energy to write a comment of their hateful calibre than it took me to initially research the topic to begin with. I don't really get what anyone who doesn't have ADHD gains from pretending they know what ADHD is - and how to deal with it. I'm up to my ears in these stereotypical comments to the extent that I feel I need to take a breather so as not to start tracking down IP adresses and barging in to people's houses. I'll be armed with some compassion to try and hammer into their heads.

However, as real life goes, I'm gonna blog about my frustration instead.

Here's the main fact I want to underline: if you don't have ADHD, you don't know what it's like to be us. You're not our doctors and you're not gods. STOP ACTING LIKE YOU KNOW WHAT'S BEST. We know that we're terrible at things. We can have a hard time sitting still, distract you, talk way too much or jump between topics. We can miss appointments, misplace objects, or lash out at you over a petty detail. Is this why you hate us? Are we all that one annoying kid in class to you? How do you think it feels to BE that annoying kid? To do and say and forget things even when you really try to focus; and then spend hours every night beating ourselves up about it because we feel out of place, we feel dumb and failed and, yes, hated. Even when we're only surrounded by people who love us!

Let's sort some things out and illustrate:

1. ADHD isn't one single diagnosis. It's an umbrella term for three different types of disorders falling under attention and concentration problems. Two people with different types of ADHD can be as different as night and day. One could be that annoying kid in class never sitting down, always running around. Another could be restless inwardly, racing thoughts with resulting migraines. Hating on ADHD because you've encountered one type of it is like hating on worms because a snake once bit you.

2. ADHD is believed to be caused by a chemical disturbance in the brain. The substances and bloodflow in the brain are abnormal, which causes forced behavior. Blaming ADHD on bad parenting during childhood is like saying a worm could have been a bird, if only its worm mom and dad had taught it how to fly.

3. ADHD is not all bad, and isn't only about restlessness or forgetfulness or disorganization. High intelligence, ability to multitask, curiosity and creativity are all positive traits associated with ADHD. Just because someone can't fit into the 'norm' of paying attention over time, listening patiently or just not fiddle with things, they are dumb? Viewing all ADHD as stupidity is like Einstein said, judge a fish's ability to swim by how well it climbs an oak (something like that).

I could go on, but I'm growing weary. My main point was just this. There is general hatred and distrust in ADHD afflicted persons in society today. It is often questioned as a legitimate condition despite originating from a chemical brain malfunction. It frustrates us because we know we are capable people, high achieving, we just need to feel accepted and encouraged. With this common notion against us, we can never feel accepted and encouraged. The more we fail, the more of the "bad" sides of ADHD will come out, and we'll feel bad for THAT, and feel like failures again; and it's repeated again and escalates, and no one who ever "has to" deal with us benefits from that. Not you, either. By badmouthing us and hating on us you are only fuelling us to hate ourselves. (Is that what your goal is? Because that's psychopathic).

That was a rant, and not even in my native tongue as I'd planned; but I'm a little scared to show my face publicly anywhere near those comments on the Swedish blogs. Anyone know any not so hateful blog in English about this topic, please share. I need some encouragement.

I'll be blogging about this myself for a  while now, so I can deal with everything I'm feeling.
YOURS TRULY,
POET in the BRAIN TRAIN CART

Of Angels & Men - A Glimpse Of A Draft

It's funny how once I decide to truly commit to something, everything happens at once and delays the process. I've lost track by now of how many projects I've started and abandoned over the years. But there are a few, who never really leave my mind; projects that I connect especially with, and though months pass by without anything being done, they are always in my mind. One of those is the project I'm recently using as my kind of 'relaxation' project: the text game I'm developing during April's Camp Nanowrimo. It goes under the project name, "Of Angels & Men". Most of the material is from previous Nanowrimo novels, that I've already written tons about on this blog (the concept being to write a novel in 30 days). Writing a novel in such a short time has its benefits, like forcing you to forget your inner editor, and coming up with vast amounts of material for later editing and polishing. But it has its downfalls too - like losing track of the main story, writing various passages that have no purpose or are written poorly. The process I'm focusing on now right now is finetuning some of that old material into a new and modernized format - the text game.

For anyone who hasn't already tried it, the narration tool Twine is a true gem for experimental writers. It doesn't matter if you're an author or a game developer, if you know how to write text and move around blocks of it, you can make a narrative with Twine. Some people have made advanced narratives like RPG's, yet others have made their first attempts at creating interactive narratives. As for me, I find the tool convenient for the modernization of my old texts that I have in mind. The result of my work will hopefully be a text-based game told in 2nd person (a terrible choice for someone who's never done it before, I've found), allowing for player choices and at the same time including more traditional passages.

To help with my process, I decided to do two things at once when pursuing this project (surprised? I'm not. Even when I tell myself to keep it simple my ambitions overshadow my performance) and joined Camp Nanowrimo for the first draft of the massive text material I will need to compile. For the first few days I did well and wrote ahead of my schedule, but then the everyday life got the better of me. I kind of crashed, hit the wall, call it what you will. It has been tearing on my mind to be unemployed and the uncertainty about whether I will ever have a future has made it difficult to find my muse. I'm hoping throwing this blog post together will help me get started again after a week or so of no writing. It can be hard to get back into the game. I've deserted too many stories not to know this. But there is a key point to writing during a Nanowrimo event, such as Camp Nano - you write, even if you fall behind; you push on, so that on the last allotted day of writing you can look back and be amazed. I remember what it felt like when I finished those novels that I'm now trying to cleanse and refine - I want to go there again, experience what it's like to pull something off. Something of a greater scope than just the short stories I usually entertain myself with.

So, without further ado, I'll throw myself back in the game, no matter what it takes - I am not waiting another year to join another Camp Nano, even if I don't have any time limit on my game project. This will take time, blood, sweat and tears - and it will be beautiful.

That is the nature of writing.

Yours truly,
POET IN THE JAR OF METAPHORICAL INK

Tangible, And Terrifying

They're back again, you know. The nightmares. They had been oh so beautifully rare for such a long time; I had almost forgotten how lengthy, intricate and absolutely terrifying they can be. It's not that I dream of monsters, although I do - I suppose they are the brain's metaphor for things we're worrying about - it's that these dreams are so REAL. So tangible, like I could touch them. Sometimes I dream something that's perfectly safe, and maybe it isn't technically a nightmare; but it becomes one as I try to reason with myself in the dream. I've tried lucid dreaming and the techniques for achieving that, it doesn't work. The only time I consciously managed to effect what I see and experience on a deep sleep level of dreaming was when I was sick and tired of being chased by spiders in my dreams (one of those metaphorical monsters...). I repeatedly told myself while awake that if a spider showed up in my dreams again I would automatically be able to materialize a weapon and blast it to pieces. That worked for a while and I can still somehow get my hands on weapons in my dreams by using this "rule", but I guess I was never persistent enough in any of the other changes I tried to make to my dreams. Either way, does it matter? There's just no way that I could make up enough rules to cover it all, anyway. 

The problem, the nightmare feel, as I said, doesn't come with the fact that I dream of unimaginable evils. It comes when I try to reason with myself and it's not linked with lucid dreaming. It comes when everything in the dream, that seems so incredibly real to me - so real that I accept it as real without ever questioning it, no matter how wacky it gets - is too bizarre to be possible. When that happens, I can hear my brain tinkering with the unsolvable logic of it. I can feel it. When that happens, I reason thus. Since the dream events instinctively feel real and I can not question any of it while I'm dreaming, I have to assume the next logic step. That I am insane. I am bat-shit crazy, wack in the head, I am lightyears from normality. The realization that I am insane becomes bizarre in itself, the whole dream world shivers, as if it felt me caving in under it and is about to seek me out to deal the final blow. The dream, the world, the whole universe is out to annihilate me, masking it in surrealism so I won't see it coming. THAT'S when the dream ceases to be a dream and becomes a nightmare.

And if you set this whole reasoning aside, I'm left with the fact that when I recall the dream, it IS bizarre, or deceivingly simple. It's often a long and intricate series of separated events that have nothing to do with one another. I rarely dream that I'm being me. I rarely dream something that can be summed up in a single sentence. In my dreams, I've been a man, a woman, a mother, a father, I've been children, I've been inanimate objects. Once I had a terrifying nightmare that had me waking up bathing in sweat and shivers. The dream? I was a chunk of meat lying in a blazing frying pan, looking up at a giant chef cooking me, and I was boiling. 

You might attribute it to the fact that I have a very vivid imagination, but in that case, where does this imagination come from? Why does it take the form of nightmares? Why does it make the nightmares take the form that they do? 

You might attribute it to the fact that when you're in a life crisis or pondering something in particular, your mind needs to sort it out while you sleep, but in that case, what is the crisis? What is it that I'm not willing to think about when I'm awake? I have met with much suffering in my days, but I attribute them all, I see them as pieces of the puzzle that is my self-awareness. I acknowledge them all, and even the things I don't write or talk about, I think over in my head. So what is it? What's the missing piece?

You might attribute it to current or recent events, my feeling of a doomed Earth and constant notions of being a failure of a person; but in that case, how do you explain that they started as I was a kid? How do you explain that my mom, after hearing me recount my dreams, wanted to force me to go to a shrink?

Is that the answer? Either something happened in my childhood that I didn't process - and believe me, I have heard all the tales, and I have processed all there is to process - or I am simply insane? Just see a shrink and I'll be fine? The dreams will stop?

I believe the nightmares are a sign from my mind that I'm miserable. But what does that help, really? I'm taking every step that I can to become somewhat happy again, I know this is a work in progress, and I know I'll manage somehow, eventually - so why do I need reminders from the dormant parts of my brain, when I already ponder all of this while I'm awake?

Do people in general have these periods of nightmares, and periods when they have calmer dreams? Do they have times in their lives when they do not dream at all? I can't remember the last time I had a dreamless night. It doesn't happen. Even if I forget the dream as I'm waking up I can always remember the fragments. My dreams have such an impact on me that I remember dreams I had as a child. When I dream I sometimes revisit known places. It's like my dream world is a complicated network of places and people that are seemingly unconnected or the events are impossible, but when I'm in the dream I know that they are meant to exist like this. When I'm in the dream I believe it all and don't question anything. It's as if my dream world was a videogame, a created universe where nothing is unthinkable, a universe that has its own made up world laws, rather than the workings of the real world.

I'm tired of dreaming. You could say the dreams are a muse. That they inspire me to write or create or think. I'm sure they do, to some extent, but there are many dreams I'd rather have done without. Why let me dream of a boy who fell naked down a drain pipe and is forced to live there forever, naked and alone? So I can paint it, and then feel terrible and grieve for him whenever I see the painting? That happened a few years back. The painting is in my room the very moment I'm writing this. Thanks, dreams. What the hell was the purpose of that specific creative outburst?

I could spend the rest of the week recounting dreams and still never finish. I might tell you everything I've ever dreamed and achieve nothing but giving you nightmares, too. There's really no use in passing on every graphic detail. If that's what you want, if you want me to point to examples, because when I say "crazy and very real" it doesn't tell you anything specific; go ahead and read about that time I dreamt about a city made of quilts (click here!).

I guess I've got a lot of sleepless nights to look forward to. Cheers,
POET IN THE JAR OF DREAMS

Errands, Camp Nanowrimo & Narratives

Well, today was unusually productive. Managed to do a ton of errands. Made some calls, paid some bills, got some paperwork out of the way. Applied for a job. Finally handed in that late book to the library. Mailed some letters, threw out some trash. Topped it off with a couple of hours of browsing for good tutorials and figuring out some scaling standards in Blender. I recently rejoined a project that I've been away from due to all the things I've been writing about earlier and this time I feel like I am actually up for the task. The scope of the project scared me off a little last time, and as soon as I ran into problems in Blender I just gave up. Then everything just crashed down around me in my personal life and it just got worse. It feels good to be back on a project again.

Somewhere in between all these things I had time for a Skype meeting and a coffee at a friend's house. He proposed something interesting - that we spend an hour a day learning something/studying something. At first he wanted it to be maths but I wasn't too thrilled about that, so we compromised and said one hour of studies of your own choosing. I'm gonna let my Blender studies cover that one hour for today, and probably tomorrow as well.

Anyway, joining Camp Nanowrimo for the second time and hoping to achieve something this time around. I have the lowest word count goal and will be working with converting old novels into a text game, for which I'm also making all the code and assets, so the scope of words is mostly for show. I just want some support and motivation from the fellow cabin people to get any writing done at all. I will probably join some writing prompts during the next few days even though what I'll jot down will most likely be drafts and notes. Who cares? I gotta have some kind of main script anyway. It seems bulky to write it all in Twine directly (an amazing tool, by the way; I'm going to blog about it later). 

So yeah, now for some writing and gaming to top this Tuesday off. I'm a little sad that nothing ever seems to change for me, for us, so I've decided to start making changes to my life. Blogging regularly again is one of those things. Cross your fingers for me.
POET IN THE JAR