So today I figured I'd write a little more about my history with ADHD, and why it took me until my late thirties to get a diagnosis. There is some truth to the ADHD joke that I was too distracted to actually go in for a diagnosis, but that's only part of it.
When I was in college, a counselor suggested to me that I might have what was then called ADD (ADHD is now the DSM-IV name that embraces both the hyperactive and non-hyperactive versions). I certainly displayed some major symptoms, not least of which was that every semester when it was time to sign up for classes, I'd call my mother and ask her if I should change majors. I had gone in to college as a BFA Visual Arts major, and in my sophomore year, I dropped down to the BS in Cinema and Photography, because I was afraid of the lack of open electives in the BFA. I made this first change without really consulting anyone (since I was paying for my own college, I figured it was my choice to make), but that started me down the path of questioning my major constantly.
I ended up graduating in Cinema and Photography, mostly thanks to my mother convincing me to just suck it up and finish my undergrad, since I could always pursue further education later. I also graduated with two minors, Scriptwriting and Advertising, and an additional specialization, Electronic Music. I graduated with a fairly high GPA, although in the classes within my major, I struggled. Any time a class was "optional" but enjoyable, I did well. Any time it was required, or any time I disagreed with the teacher's philosophies at all, I shut down. Thankfully the C&P major offered lots of open electives, so my grades were saved by the "A"s I scored in those classes, to balance out the "C"s from my requirements.
A year after graduating, I moved to Boston. Why did I move here? I had attended a conference in Boston during my junior year, where I met Scott. We lost touch after the conference, but we ran into each other at NYC Pride that summer. I made several trips to Boston to visit him during the next year, and then I decided to move here. I should point out that although I had a crush on Scott, the major motivation for moving was that I needed to get away from my college town, and I didn't feel I could go back home to California where my family was, quite yet. So I wanted a new landing spot.
This was challenging because I was bad about keeping in touch with friends. I made a great group of friends while living in London during my freshman year, but by the time I graduated, I only knew how to get in touch with a couple of them; the rest had scattered to schools around the world. A couple of them had made efforts to stay in touch with me, but I was horrible about writing or calling. It seemed like I couldn't really stay on top of friendships unless the person was right there with me. This problem had been getting worse throughout college, and, when I was ready to move on, it hit me how alone I was.
Fortunately, I had discovered the Internet at this point. Although it was far more difficult to use (this being in the AOL Dialup days, with our school accounts being on a VAX/VMS system), it gave me a way to be in touch with my few remote friends on a more immediate level -- either using real-time chat, which was perfect for me, or using email, which at least was quick enough and organized enough to make me feel like I could track who I needed to contact and when. Despite my early exposure to computers and my love of programming, Scott was instrumental in my learning more about how to make good use of the Internet, so I credit him ahead of Tim-Berners Lee (who comes in 3rd place) for me being the geek that I am today.
A quick self-reflective pause: notice how I started with my ADHD diagnosis and ended up talking about Scott and the Internet? This is a common ADHD phenomenon. However, one thing I've always been good at is looping back around to the initial point. My favorite authors (Neil Gaiman, Tim Powers, etc) often use a similar mode in their storytelling: they introduce one thing, go on to another, and then just when you have almost forgotten about the first thing, they bring it back. It's clever, and the kind of thing you either love or hate. I actually didn't even realize how much some people hate that kind of rhetoric until I met Andrew, who is the first person I've dated to really keep me in line about this stuff.
So, looping back to the initial point about not being diagnosed: I decided that I just was anxious and unhappy in Ithaca, and I needed to get away. Surely escaping to a new town to hang out with my best friend would take care of any worries! But no.
As soon as I got to Boston, I started worrying about money, job satisfaction, and coming up with the right image to land a good boyfriend. Writing that now, it sounds pretty silly, since I was just out of college by a year. But at the time it all seemed deadly serious. I ended up in a temp-to-perm position at a management consulting firm, but the position never became permanent, no doubt because I never exhibited enough focus in my work. When I think about how little I really did that year, now, I cringe.
Fortunately, one area where I did have some success was in making new friends. in a brave (for me) move, I went to MIT's gay and lesbian student group, GAMIT (not to be confused with GAMBIT, the lab over at MIT where I like to hang out now). I knew about GAMIT because I had attended a couple of their college dances on my trips to Boston. They seemed pretty cool and accepting, and while I knew there were other gay groups, I didn't feel old enough to be in something like the Greater Boston Business Counsel or young enough to be in BAGLY. So I figured I'd just go tell my story and see if they wouldn't mind that I wasn't an MIT student.
They didn't mind, and through a series of lucky encounters, I ended up meeting what would become my primary social circle through my 20s. I also found a great boyfriend, and after a year of me feeling tortured by my dead-end job at the management consulting firm, we moved in together and I started my first company, Active Window Productions. Around this time, I had my second bout of considering treatment for ADHD. I talked with my boyfriend about it, but he seemed skeptical. Given my distrust of any sort of mind-altering drugs, I quickly gave in to his skepticism and decided I just needed to "get it together".
A few months later, my boyfriend quit his job at MIT to help me with my company. In hindsight, I think he knew that I could never make something like that work by myself. We had moved in together, so this meant we were basically together 24/7/365. But, with his help (and money), we managed to get a nice little Newbury Street office and a few staff members -- but what were we going to focus on? My then-partner, Mark, looked to me for the creative inspiration, often calling me the "wild card" that kept things lively among our friends.
Mark is an amazingly hyperfocused person, able to zero in on a task and see it through. Anything we did, he'd do 100 times better than me. The only area where I had an advantage was singing, since he couldn't carry a tune, despite playing instruments well. I remember trying to teach him to sing and getting frustrated, the same way that when I was a kid I got so frustrated trying to teach my sister to read (sorry Leaf!). I also remember Mark working very hard on us being able to do projects together, like playing Rampal duets (he played sax and flute and a little piano, and I played piano and guitar and sang). But whatever he did seemed to come easily to him, while for me it was a struggle.
Through this all, I had conversations with my mother, who, as mothers typically do, reassured me of my "genius". Any time I would describe how I thought there was something wrong with me, she would remind me of everything I had accomplished, or of the IQ tests I took when I was skipped up a grade as a child. To her credit, she was right that I had accomplished more than I would give myself credit for. However, she also seemed to forget that the evaluations I took as a kid suggested that I could have skipped several grades but I wouldn't have been "emotionally ready".
My lack of "emotional readiness" became an ongoing theme, though at the time I hadn't yet tied it back to those key words from my childhood evaluation. Intellectually, I knew I could do almost anything if I put my mind to it (as moms always say), yet when it came to sitting down to do a task, I would be immediately consumed by worry or anxiety or a sense of defeat. There were a few things I knew I was inherently good at, but they were all recreational and not really things that I could make money at unless I could turn them into "work".
After a few career changes -- always very sudden, when I'd discover something new that I thought I could excel in -- I ended up discovering teaching at Northeastern University. I had taught little classes on computer literacy before, and in fact had been teaching people about computers informally since I first put my hands on one at the age of 7. Through computers, I had a logical system that had both clear constraints and countless possibilities. I found that I could inspire people to do amazing work using computers, often surpassing my own level of work, since they could concentrate, while I could not. I happily transitioned to teaching full time.
While I loved teaching and the loose schedule it offered me, I became more and more frustrated that I couldn't use my "extra time" to finish a novel or a comic book or anything. I had attempted preparing for graduate school at MassArt, but once I figured out that my drawing style would always be "like a crazy person", I stopped classes. I had attempted writing workshops, but I got frustrated with the group critique process. Working alone, I could get nothing done. Working with other people, I could get nothing done. Yet teaching other people was so easy!
Fortunately, my next boyfriend, Tim, gave me the additional structure that I needed. He was very focused on making a career for himself as a comic book writer/artist, and he was juggling a full time day job that required 40+ hours a week of work, but somehow he was doing it. We actually didn't start dating until after we'd been hanging out for a year. I just spend more and more time at his apartment, knowing that he would be working and I'd have nothing to do if I weren't working too. I got involved enough in comics to get an offer to write a story for Dark Horse. I rediscovered screenwriting and got the chance to be the lead writer on a feature film produced by Roger Corman. It seemed like I could finally balance my day job with art.
Then Tim needed to move away, and we broke up. Although we had agreed to break up, the closer the day came, the more upset I got. I became pretty unstable. We'd have a nice date and then I'd end up yelling at him or having a crying fit or accusing him of not loving me enough because I didn't want this to end. But he left, as planned, and I worked on trying to keep my life going in its new positive direction.
I felt myself stumbling again, and again, I considered ADHD. I looked up more information online (since now the Internet was ubiquitous), took magazine quizzes, etc. I just wish I had discovered the book "Driven to Distraction" in my searches; that would have gotten me to take action sooner! My problem with the online research and magazine quizzes was (and is) my skepticism about the validity of such sources. I had this fear that if I went to my doctor and said "This magazine quiz says I have ADHD", he would just chuckle, pat me on the head, and send me away. That fear kept me from the doctor's, and I went on with my life.
Starting my game design company, Metaversal Studios, in 2004, actually helped me to focus again. Having the stress of making enough money to keep a company open with very little outside help (besides a small "starter loan" from my last company's co-founder) while also teaching full time AND WRITING A BOOK (for which I had a contract) was enough stimulation to keep my wild mind at bay. However, eventually the lack of hours in the day for achieving all three of these things and maintaining a healthy relationship with my partner wore on me. The book deal fell apart in a few months, and while in the end, it was a healthy parting of the ways (my approach differed greatly from the publisher's), I knew that the inciting incident had been my inability to make the deadlines because there was "always something else to do".
The book deal was supposed to fund the second quarter of my company's existence, so losing it put us at a major shortfall. I had to move fast to come up with a way of keeping things going, if nothing else for the 3 students I'd convinced to join me on this crazy venture instead of taking a safer co-op job for six months.
When I started teaching at NU, thanks to being younger looking and because of my need to recapture that social time I never had in college, I ended up befriending many of my students. This meant that while I was good at inspiring them I wasn't so good at disciplining them. Fortunately, the students who helped me start my company all were more focused on their creative careers than I was, and they helped to keep ME in line. I learned a lot from my original co-founders, and although they have moved on to other careers, I will always consider them among my dearest friends.
After the book deal crisis, I became a tougher taskmaster as an instructor, giving my students penalties for being late unless they came up with a creative enough excuse that I'd laugh and give them an extra day. I found myself befriending my students who seemed similarly ADHD-oriented, who often came up with the most creative excuses. Many of these people are the ones I've managed to stay in touch with as friends after they graduated, since we have a good understanding that we'll write to each other "when we think of it".
One of my students, an exceptionally talented guy who produced both amazing art and amazing code, was the most ADHD-riddled person I'd ever met. At first, I thought he was just a slacker or maybe perpetually stoned, but my colleagues who had taught him said that he was brilliant and just needed motivation. I worked with this student in my usual manner at first, giving him lots of positive feedback on his work and trying to gently suggest that he give himself adequate time to make something good instead of rushing something that showed potential at the last minute. I finally got so frustrated with seeing his potential combined with his inability to focus that I wrote him a long email suggesting that he needed to take his ADHD more seriously (he had been open about his diagnosis early on, and I felt at the time that used it as an excuse). I worried and worried about what he'd say in return, knowing that in the past his parents had gotten involved when teachers had come down on him at school. However, he wrote me back and thanked me and said that no one had ever said it to him quite that way before. And that's when I realized the reason I could make things clear to him was that I was in the same boat as him.
That was Fall of 2005, yet it took me to Summer of 2008 to get help. Why? That's for another posting!
