With the previous post still fresh as a daisy in your little pate, I'm going to build on that a bit and talk about one (out of the vast repertoire) of compensating behaviors that many of us ADDers often find ourselves unconsciously doing in an attempt to emotionally salvage ourselves when faced with a larger than usual FoF (Fear of Failure).
Often, when we are in the middle of a situation that is requiring us to either a) try with 100% of ourselves or where b) failure is not an option or c) both, we panic. We freak out. We freeze. And when we freeze up, it means we are starting to get stuck. And for ADD folks, 'stuck' is extremely nasty business.
You know how, when your car breaks down on the side of the road, how most folks can just call a tow truck and get unstuck? Ok, well for ADD people 'getting stuck' is more like this...
True story, btw...
One time, when I was living in Colorado, there was a snow storm. I know...crazy! Anyway, at the time I was driving a little Volvo. A little white Volvo. So on this particular, snowy day and for reasons I can't remember, I made plans (God knows why) to do something at a specific time...in Denver...which was, like a frigging hour away. So I'm ready to leave and I go outside and, I don't know...I must not have been paying attention to THE WEATHER...cause I go outside and I realize that I can't see my car...it's already been partially buried from what I called snow, and from what other's (I later discovered) called an ensuing blizzard. For NT's (neurotypicals), this probably would have been the first, and only, sign that they needed in order to realize that maybe they should rethink their game plan for the day. But for me? Fuck no, it was just something in my way that I needed to plow through (excuse the pun). I wasn't going to let a little bliz...I mean 'snow', keep ME from doing the responsible thing by making me renig on whatever obligation I had committed myself to...in Denver!
So I start frantically digging out my car cause I know that once I get out of the driveway...things will be JUST FINE. It's Colorado for pete's sake...they keep their roads plowed...they scoff at us Southerners for our snownoia. Coloradoians....they only close the schools for snow so that they can take a 'ski day'...and wrestling with an old lady for the last gallon of milk at the Ingles cause there's 2 in. on the ground? Unheard of! So I dig out my car (after I find it), cause I know I'll be fine...I was responsible...I put chains on my tires and everything! What could go wrong?
I get my car dug out, get in, get it all cranked and heated up and I quick get on the road...cause now I'm in a bit of a hurry due to a few tiny miscalculations I may have previously made while trying to solve the equation
Amount of Snow x Rate of Digging = Time Needed To Unearth My Car
But that's ok, I was a bit flustered, but I was certain that if I made a few adjustments, my new calculation:
Distance x Increased Rate of Speed - Ongoing Raging Bliz, um, Flurry = On Time Arrival
...would get me back on track. And 'staying on track', that's what responsible people do, right? And, by God, I'm going to prove to myself that I'm one of those people...that I can not only exist, but excel in their world...that I'm not the Tiny Tim of Time Management, always peering into their windows, asking for more time gruel and limping around on a leg of lateness, propped up with a broken alarm clock...hell, no...not me...not any more...
So I'm zipping down the highway to meet my obligation and everything goes fine...for a while...
I don't know what happened...in retrospect I now see that my plan of driving 15 MPH over the speed limit in a white car in the middle of a full-on White Out could have used some tinkering...that maybe my calculations were a bit...well, fuck, I was an Art Major! Everyone knows Art Major's can't add!
Yep, that's just what I was thinking when I got shoved off of the road and into a snow bank by some crazy Coloradian in a gigantic SUV who apparently wasn't watching where I was going...in my little white Vovlo...in the middle of what I had just begun to accept, was a FUCKING BLIZZARD.
But, you know, the Universe is merciful and sometimes, just sometimes, Fate is on your side...
I'd only been in the snow bank for about 5 minutes when, to my joy and amazement, I see a tow truck pulling over, in my rear view mirror. Oh, happy day! It's a sign from God that all is well, a little caviot, a helping hand to get me where I needed to go. A little Cosmic Nod that my efforts to be responsible by doing whatever it took to meet the obligation I insisted on making (despite any logical reasoning)...that it had all been duly noted. And this miracle tow truck? It was a gift from the Universe, sent to help me succeed.
So the tow truck guy gets out, gets my car hooked up, I get in the truck with him, he lays on the gas...
And the tow truck, with my car attached...it was like the hand of God reached down and just pushed the whole kit and kaboodle straight sideways, further into the snowbank that I had been to start out with. And then I think I heard God say something like "I said...STAY!" (or maybe it was the tow truck guy saying "You OK?" It was all a bit fuzzy...
So then tow truck guy #1 had to call tow truck driver #2 to come tow us both out. Which he did. Then he towed me back to my house, because, by then it was really late and I decided it would probably be prudent to reschedule my appointment, especially since it was now snowing really hard, all of a sudden, out of the blue. And I'm sure getting towed cost a fuck ton of money since my house was almost an hour away...money that I probably had to borrow from my dad or my brother...cause I didn't have AAA (who wants to be irresponsible with their money and pay for AAA after already paying for those snow tire chains?).
It was one of the first lessons I remember learning about how trying to be responsible isn't only hard, it's expensive!
Luckily, other than costing me (or someone) a lot of money, and besides all of the negative self-talk I'm sure I beat myself up with about how I didn't fulfill an obligation, once again, other than all of that, things were fine. Which was good. Because I had two jobs and I needed that car so that I could keep being responsible by paying my bills. The importance of which I had apparently not fully recognized when I willingly jeopardized it, and thus, my ability to meet my most pressing responsibilities just so I could feel good about myself for meeting a much smaller one.
But that's what ADD people do...when faced with the challenge of having to choose between doing something that is very important in our lives, something that requires 100% effort and/or has no complete guarantee of success and/or is something that can't be finished immediately vs. doing a bunch of little 'nice idea' things that only require 50% effort, but which they are certain they are able to do and which has a quick complete time...ADDers will often choose the latter. Those 50% tasks are the Crack of the Time Management. They instantly feed our wounded egos and give us a false sense of pride in a 'job well done'. And they are usually tasks that involve other people. These little Crack Tasks are usually ones we intentionally create and then label as imperative' when, in reality, though they may be nice, they are usually completely unnecessary to our survival.
This is how the usual Crack Task is created...
We need to concentrate on an Imperative Task and it's daunting, or frustrating, or confusing and our ADD brain realizes this and starts to freak out. The Amygdala hears this and starts sending some little FoF zaps to the our inner ADD self. But our inner ADD, honestly, it's not the most astute pencil in the box...it doesn't really realize what's happening, if it did it could just yell over to the Amygdala to quit being such a bully. The Amygdala is ALL talk. But inner ADD, she doesn't know this, she thinks all of those silly threats are actually real. She doesn't know she's being manipulated, so she just stands there mumbling 'This is bad. Very bad.' And the seed of a new Crack Task is planted...
And when this happens, what WE do is get up and go immediately hunt down the next potential 50% task like a junkie looking for a fix. We'll go out there and find some poor, unsuspecting 'nice' person and we will convince ourselves of how 'nice' it would be if we did some (what is now monumentally imperative) 'nice' thing for them...now...right now...because, you know, we're 'nice' and they're 'nice' and wouldn't it be such a 'nice' thing to do? So we find our 'nice' mark and we create a 'nice' obligation for ourselves, and then we proceed to stab them in the eye with our Dagger of Goodwill...whether they like it or not.
And, as we are flying around, caught up in the middle of what usually turns out to be a spastic frenzy, freaking out because we have now realized that this little monster we have created to avoid our Imperative Task in sucking up WAY more time than we had anticipated, we realize that, yep, that Imperative Task...it's still...waiting...patiently...yep...still there...Thank goodness we decided to take this little detour so the we could avoid feeling anxious and frustrated and confused! We are so smart! And nice! We rule!
Except for those times that we end up freaking out so badly we fail at most of the 50% Crack Tasks AND fail at the Imperative Task, simultaneously...It happens more than you think...you'd be surprised...
And why do I think that this particular ADD stunt is important enough to make it the Number One tip for avoiding The Ultimate Fail? Two reasons...
a) I've seen you do it twice in the past week, that I know of...do the words 'Birthday Cake' and 'Potluck' ring any bells?And before you reflexively launch that thing in your head that trumpets out all of the reasons why, this time, those Imperative' Crack Tasks REALLY were Imperative", lemme just point out that YOU, the single, busy mother, YOU are the reason why grocery stores invented the Deli Section. And before you start swinging wild about cake, and Luca's birthday and being a good NICE mother who needed to keep her word to her child so he wasn't disappointed...on his birthday of all days...I just wanna say this. He's three and, like most three year olds, he likes cake...any cake. He probably would have eaten birthday cake from a Roach Coach and been pleased as punch. And you know this, because you have a full grasp on what one is and isn't able to manipulate a three year old with. And it's not like Luca just came up to you one day and said "Mother...it would mean ever so much to me if, on my birthday a fortnight from now, you baked for me, with your own hands, a devilishly clever shark cake." No...somewhere along the way, some nice person decided that she needed to obligate herself to doing a SUPER nice, albeit, time consuming, thing for her beloved son in the middle of exam week. I have no idea what the particular Fear of Failure bubbles were, that must have been popping up, or why...but at some point a very nice mother looked at her very nice son and asked "What kind of cake do you want for your birthday?'" And that would have been fine if the implied choices were things like, I don't know...chocolate or vanilla? But those parameters weren't specified and so, instead of choosing chocolate, Luca chose Shark.
The funny part of this story (cause, I swear, it is pretty hysterical) lays in the ironic fact that you decided at some point that it was an Imperative Task...this Shark Cake thing...and, for whatever reasons, you used the same reasoning skills that I mentioned I, myself, used before during a Colorado blizzard...you used that same logicalitude to come to the decision that a store bought cake or a quickie cake wouldn't work...maybe it didn't meet up to your internal personal standards for what one should do as a 'good mother' or maybe you didn't feel right about trying to manipulate him back to a chocolate or vanilla choice and so, despite knowing he wouldn't remember it, you decided to remind him of how, last year, you'd told him that, this year, he could have a Shark Cake...I don't know...But, and here's the funniest part...
You weren't willing to manipulate him into a chocolate cake from the deli, BUT you WERE willing to manipulate him into believing his birthday was on a completely different day!
...so you could make this Imperative Shark Cake Crack Task happen! But THEN, on his Fake Birthday, something went South, some kind of Shark Cake Calamity...and so instead of making a a pan cake with a shit ton of sprinkles and some candles for him, for his real birthday, instead you decided your best course of action was to bust your ass so that you could celebrate his Fake Birthday with a Shark Cake...a day late! Oh...my..God! I'm about to pee myself! I love you! You're funny as shit! And as long as you're around, I'll never feel all alone with my crazy! I REALLY AM your big sister, passing on, to you, all of my knowledge and expertise! You're like my very own ADD mini-me!
Now, don't get me wrong...it turned out lovely... and I'm not suggesting there was anything wrong, AT ALL, with moving his birthday date around....he's three! He doesn't know the difference. I'm just saying that there's probably a sizable amount of nonADD, busy single mothers out there who would have picked Door #3 - a Fake Birthday AND a Deli Cake...You are a nice person and a good mother and you did a very nice thing for three year old child. You are a talented Shark Cake Baker and you did a very good job, You should be proud...which you were...cause you took pictures and put them on FB. That Shark Cake is something that I'm sure you, at the very least, will remember...especially if, in the end, it becomes just another time-eating Crack Task that leads to an Ultimate Nursing School Fail. But that's OK, I'm sure if that happens, Luca will understand completely...when he's 18 and ready to go to college...especially after you show him the pictures...he'll be like "Getting that Shark Cake when I was 3 was WAY better than getting a degree in Political Science! You're the nicest, goodest mom in the whole wide world!" Oh, simmer down...I'm just picking on ya' to make a point...it really was a nice cake.
But the sooner you separate your real 'self' from your ADD behaviors, so that you can laugh at crazy shit ADD makes you think and feel, the better off you're gonna be. And, hey, comparatively speaking, having an ADD brain is a hell of a lot more fun and entertaining for everyone than, say, having an Antisocial Brain...or a Paranoid Schizophrenic Brain. It's a lot easier to laugh and diffuse your shame when you do something embarrassing because you have ADD, than it is to laugh when you do something embarrassing because you have Antisocial Personality Disorder ...cause stupid shit. like losing your keys, is ALWAYS gonna be funnier than boiling your married lover's pet bunny...at least to other people.
b) and the second reason I think making this Crack Tasks the #1 Tip when trying to avoid the Ultimate Fail? Because I'm an expert at Crack Tasking. As a matter of fact, I'm Crack Tasking RIGHT NOW...because I'm doing this blog thing and have been FOR HOURS! Why? Because it's fun and because I can justify it in my brain by telling myself that what I have to say is Imperative...for you, my unsuspecting mark...
But where's my Cozi Calendar schedule I've been meaning to do since yesterday? And what''s up with all of that paperwork I need to fill out for our doctor's so they can see us for things like breast reduction surgery and dementia screening? And why is that bowl of henna sitting the fridge instead of being on my hair? And why have my clean clothes been sitting on the floor so long that I now have to rewash them? And where's my breakfast? I should probably go find it...
