Hunting and Gathering

This city never sleeps, it is one big colorful explosion of noise and color, of consumerism at its peak. For the ADD me, everything looks like candy, on the way to work, the bookstore I pass every morning, the pet store, the new coffee shop with 100 flavors, the massage boutique, the manicurist, ideas grow like weeds after a rainstorm. I can't stop them. The comedic ADDer calls it pinballing, you could call it creativity, or genius, in reality it's a pain in the ass. In choosing between add and being as boring as toast, I often wish I were on the other side of the farm.

The route to work becomes a row of diversions, on a recent morning I waltzed into the bookstore tempted to buy yet another notebook to organize myself. The closet is already a graveyard of trapper keepers, colanders, rolodexes, filofaxes, monthly, weekly, daily, half day, minute by minute ways to organize, it is the easiest way to drive my add self mad. In desperation there is also the fly lady. After I buy all of Staples I will turn to the Flylady in the same way a Catholic who sins turns to a confessional.

It makes me feel better that I am doing something to organize myself even though it is just a notebook. At home the notebooks pile up like a stack of pancakes, they are hidden in the closet, under the computer, I start one and inevitably forget about it and start another. That is life as the adder, it is a life of beginnings without a middle and end. I walk into the pet store I buy a blueberry colored Betta fish, and then on another day I walked in again tempted to buy another. I believe there's a spirit out there an invisible drill sergeant with a whip stick though that keeps me in check. On the day I almost picked up Betta fish two it turned out the double tank I bought had a crack in it.

I pass the street hawkers, the Africans with flashy belts, cheap purses, faux plastic made in china jewelry and impulsively buy a purse, a wallet, the Christmas gift for next year or maybe even the year after. I am like a hunter, I love gathering. I make excuses and tell myself it's okay because I'm splurging on someone else.