I just re-watched it myself. 233, not including the 35, 10 and 500 bonus points. As for my school reports, I think they all said something about applying myself. I talked with my mum last week, and apparently my primary school teacher said that I was one of the best students and could handle everything pretty easily, but I was only “there” for about one week a year. However, I am getting much better at it. I try to exercise every day, both running and taking the kids to and from school by bike. That at least provides some structure and blood flow to the brain. My son hates being late, so I’ve improved a lot just for him. I have to buy the food and cook most of the time, and since my family needs to be properly fed, I think a lot about proper nutrition. I don’t eat lunch though, as that’s too distracting. It takes me 10-15 minutes to buy food, but I am buying it for 7 people.
A big thing for me is eliminating mental load, so I have no car, work from home, set up automatic payments etc. I also noticed a while ago that if I was going to spend 30% of my time looking for things that I’d lost in any case, there was no point beating myself up about it. I have about 5 things that I take with me everywhere (depending on the season), and almost everything else is eliminated. If I leave something behind, I’ll go back and collect it if I need it (which is much easier if everything is in one building), but I refuse to feel bad about it. The same thing goes for being late or any other symptom. Interestingly enough, this helps me to eliminate or at least reduce a lot of the annoying symptoms for me and other people. I forget much less than before, and am more organised and less irritated because I’m not always correcting my mistakes. Since I started medication, I’m more engaged with other people too.
I embrace the chaos to some degree, so I try to find work that I can adjust depending on my level of engagement. Our house is almost all tiled, so it’s easy to clean and a quick sweep through is often enough if I don’t have the time to properly clean it. A number of people in the house can cook, so I don’t have to be that consistent. My family likes travel and change, so I’m not dragging them along with me if we go somewhere new. Translation actually works really well for me (apart from the taxes and other administration part). There’s very little paperwork, I can choose which projects I accept and it allows me to be a bit inconsistent without changing my job all the time. Nowadays I refuse most short projects, because they’re just distracting in large numbers and take me far too long for what they’re worth (a couple of years ago a company praised me as their best translator, then dropped me a few months later because I would forget projects and make mistakes). The best projects are something technical where I can obsess about a topic for a couple of weeks before moving on to something else. Hunting laws in different states in Germany? Great, I can learn all about different animals, kinds of guns, hunting seasons etc. Next, I’m learning about tunnel construction, then shipbuilding, then farming equipment. I impressed a project manager once by explaining the difference between different crop spraying equipment when the client had queried a term (the termbase was wrong and I was right). I can also work from anywhere with an internet connection, so sometimes I go to a few locations during the day, or take my computer touring on my bike and work half days. If I get bored, I can just learn a new language or move country.
Sometimes I wish I could be more consistent (and believe me, I’ve tried), but it is at least an interesting life. Next month I may be helping to sail a large yacht from another German port into Hamburg. We have other people in the house who can cover for me during that time, so my wife is pushing me to do it.
Have you heard about the hunter vs. farmer hypothesis? The (non-scientific) idea is that ADHD is more suited to a hunter lifestyle, where you can go for long periods of boredom before switching into hyperfocus, then go without eating and sleeping because you are so absorbed in your task. The tendency to get distracted by small details (“squirrel!”) makes much more sense when it can make the difference between eating and not eating that day, although it’s less suited to a farming lifestyle that emphasises consistency and planning for the future. It also supports a more nomadic lifestyle and less focus on social norms and organisation.
I just remembered that your cat’s name had a “K” in it.
