💾 Archived View for tilde.club › ~oldernow › 2023-12-07-10-17-08.gmi captured on 2023-12-28 at 15:38:20. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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It occurs to me my hyper-attention to attention itself could well be due to having possibly been massively ADHD back to at least my late teens.
I say that, because last night my wife showed me a pictorial attempting represent the difference between an ADHD mind and a non-ADHD mind relative to having several things to accomplish.
The vast majority of what I want to call "my downfall" in the last several years is without question COVID causing her to work from home, which meant my no longer being able to work alone. And it was even worse than that, because the layout of that dwelling was such that in all ways other than to the benefit of my sanity, it made the most sense that her desk was behind mine in the same room.
I don't know why at that time I didn't correlate that with my tendency to "lose my mind" when having to think in the presence of others. But I'd even told her many times before those days that I've long had trouble attempting to accomplish something (other than performing music) "for an audience", by which I actually meant anyone in the vicinity. But thinking about it in the context of ADHD (which don't pretend to understand..), what happens is my mind goes into a sort of "round robin flitting" between what I'm supposed to be thinking about in order to do it well, and varieties of thoughts about those in my physical presence - eventually including what they're thinking about my *now* not being able to think straight in their presence.
My wife inadvertently "turned up the heat" on all that by at some point suggesting I was trying to avoid/escape her, or her awareness of "what I was up to", insinuating that I couldn't do things requiring significant attention around her because I was hellbent on Trying To Find Her Replacement. So, my mind took that little bit of insecurity she manifest and ran with it all the way to forcing myself to attempt to accomplish things in her presence that I couldn't due to what happens to my attention in the presence of others.
So, like, even today... I'm not posting this to "find the woman of my dreams" (*obviously*, given the pathetic content..). But I had a few loose thoughts jangling around since we had our coffee together, and I've desperately needed to hone and then write them out. But I couldn't. So when she mentioned needed to go out and shop a bit, I was suddenly elated (without showing it outwardly, of course..), but then went into my usual WHEN THE FUCK ARE YOU GOING TO FINALLY FUCKING LEAVE (within) because I knew that the honing/writing would be a frustrating waste of time until she was finally "the fuck" out of the house.
We're rather on top of each other in the current dwelling, but that's about to change in a few weeks, so I'm hoping to any available deities I can finally have my own thinking/pondering/creating/*attending* space again.