There's a New ADHD Boss in Town

There is a new boss. He came in from left field several weeks ago, and serves as "the Great White Hope" and a shield to my colleague and I from the top She-boss. He is as middle America as Wonder Bread, and kind of resembles the Pillsbury Doughboy. He's as energetic as an overeager puppy, and from day one he whirlwinded in and amongst the pile of verbage he spit out, said that he had ADHD.

This is the first time a boss has said the words "ADHD", and I wondered, at first, if he was kidding. He's an extroverted ADHD sort. Every morning we sit around and bat about ideas like a cat to a mouse. It's lots of fun shooting the breeze, shooting around ideas. He loves to talk. The 20-minute meetings extend to 2 hours. He's got a small-town friendliness about him, so even when he does the Bill Clinton thing it is forgivable.

But it gets more complicated than that. We are not working in a vacuum. There are another five or six colleagues on the team too -- and now work feels like a game of cat and mouse. The new boss wants to make changes, to exert his power over the ways things used to happen. Sure the corporation has problems and there is disorder. Nothing is perfect; but, he's moving at the speed of light and running a lot of people over -- including my former boss who no longer wants to work with me.

There are common projects, a multitude of them that we all need to get done; but, there is resistance from the ex boss. She and her posse are not answering the phone, not getting back to me, to us.

I feel like a salami stuck between two pieces of bread, what do I do? Why can't we all get along. In the meantime too, there just aren't enough hours in the work day to deal. This politics game is not my forte, and I tell the new boss that. In the end it goes in one ear and out the other. He just doesn't get it, not yet.

Part of the gift of ADHD is an intuition that I have of good and bad things to come and I have a bad feeling of how things are going down here. The bottom line is that nothing good can come out of a war. I just want to be left alone to do the work. I wonder why that just isn't possible in this game that is clearly being drawn out and will continue. Lucky me that I always end up in these sticky situations, thrown into areas that I suck at.

I go home feeling stressed, dream of things like houses burning down, and searching for seemingly insignificant things that are really significant, and not being able to find them. The Adderall is once again running low and the search for the next shrink continues.

I keep telling myself to make the phone call and just do it. I need to do it, to keep help. The boyfriend, shall we say, is on the sidelines. We had a big fight over the weekend. I really wanted to see him; but I sensed resistance. No, he's too busy, his work is crazy, doesn't have the time. I pendulum between wondering if this is my own insecurity or am I dealing with yet another commitment-phobe. I will simply need to take that risk I suppose, as with war between the bosses. I just hope I come out alive.