ADHD -- Captured on Video!

So I’m in the middle of this video project that’s like any project any of us do for money -- demanding, nerve-wracking, and, well, hard. I know -- why do you think they call it work? And I know I’m luckier than I deserve to be, that this job fell in my lap in the first place because we need that money yesterday. And I’m not complaining -- I’m more like spinning in front of my computer freaking. And then complaining, but about the freaking -- which doesn’t qualify as an ungrateful, selfish attitude that’ll get me fried by a lightning bolt from God -- so that’s alright... (I started spelling “all right” as one word when I wrote TV. I don’t think other TV writers do it. I think I fell into the one-word spelling from overuse because all my TV characters were so weak-willed and passive that they acquiesced to every other character’s desires continually -- “Alright, whatever you say...only if it’s alright with you...alright, it’s my fault...are you alright?” But I don’t think that it’s really a word unless it’s one of the ones that got in because the dictionary people got tired of trying to make people spell it correctly -- “Alright, we give up already!”)

So, anyway. I’m freaking about the video project, but not because it’s hard and demanding. I do hard and demanding every day. It takes concentrated effort to remember to rinse the conditioner out of my hair before I step out of the shower and start rubbing a towel into the pink goop -- and yeah, I’ve tried 2-in-1 shampoos, but they don’t work on the Alfalfa-like cowlick that sticks up from the back of my head. Okay, okay I’m vain. But I’m a sixty-year-old, ADHD ex-truck-stop cook and TV hack trying to live out my life with dignity, so how about giving me a break, alright?

You know what’s also hard? Remembering to take your afternoon ADHD medication. I’m always forgetting until about three or four p.m. and I’m already an insomniac so I’d like to skip the meds by that time. But if I do, dinnertime will be a mess for the whole family with me forgetting, getting all tense and yelling (the dark side of ADHD Dad) -- if I even remember to make dinner.

Of course, my skipped-meds consequences don’t hold a candle burning at both ends to my to my bi-polar friend’s skipped-meds consequences. Try a four hour phone conversation convincing someone you care about that the only way to keep the black hole behind her bed board from sucking her into oblivion is to get her prescription out of the purse in the hall no matter how impossibly far away the purse or any possibility hope and meaning in life are. “They’re in the purse, alright? Meaning and hope are right under those child-proof caps waiting for you.”

But, okay, about the video project...It’s an exercise video -- real good trainer, a smart, thoughtful woman. It’s not her. It’s me. I direct, light, and shoot the footage. Then, I get home and capture it into the editing program. Now, as the editor who’s got to make the end product out of whatever was shot, I look at the footage and I can’t believe what I see. I forgot to match lighting on consecutive scenes, I forgot insert shots, I didn’t see the huge lighting instrument reflected in the mirror right behind her while she’s talking to camera, and -- look at this! -- a whole scene shot without sound because I forgot to turn on the lavaliere microphone.

It’s hard enough banging around through life with an ADHD brain leaving little piles of burnt disasters in your wake without having to watch video evidence of your lame disasters repeating in front of you in digitally corrected color. But I’ll fix it in editing, somehow. Maybe do a reshoot for that sound glitch. I’m not complaining -- okay, I am -- but the client’s coming over to look at a cut, my hair looks stupid, and I need to take my meds.

Next time, I’ll be more together, alright?