Why All These Words
15 Mar, 2022
Yeah, yeah… I know. I worry too much about all my words that spew forth onto the interwebs like glorious skittle-spit. But, the thing is I know I tend to say too much so I feel like I must explain; even though I don’t have to because this is MY site and I am the WEBMASTER!
Honestly, this post is not to apologize or “change my ways”, but it will actually be about my brain, and what it’s like being me for those who may or may not understand. And hopefully we can all come to appreciate our uniquenesses and stop comparing to one another because we’re all a little special ;)
An Overview
Thoughts, ideas, connections and associations float through my mind freely with ideas and distractions (more so distractions than anything) popping up constantly. I see something that triggers something else that triggers another thing that causes a distant relative of that thought to go “hey! you know you could also get distracted with THIS!” and then I try to do something about that thought but then I see a bird and I get so distracted by it’s b-e-a-utiful singing that when I come back to myself my mental train has already left for Gatlinburg in mid-July.
So when I set time aside to write an article and start writing on a topic I’ve decided, I always end up somewhere else rather than where my goal was for the topic. That or I actually do make my point (truly a time to rejoice, even though it was probably by complete accident) or there was no point to begin with.
Whatever the case, when I finish an article I always feel like I didn’t quite say what I wanted to say usually because I got so distracted by other ideas and I explored them before I finished my main idea. Probably much like this section, I’ve already forgotten what it was I was trying to convey. Oh, right, I was going to add to the end of that first sentence: I guess that’s what it feels like whenever someone makes something, like they could have done better or more than what they did. That and this whole exchange was a perfect example of what ADHD is, as of course I am Always Dancing a Happy Dance (see what I did there?).
I liken my brain to a forest. You can choose two points in that forest and you can connect them basically whatever way you need to to get from A to B, there’s no paths or “recommended course of action”. However, it’s probably unlikely to happen because little did you know this is an enchanted forest and shit gets weird once you head off from point A to reach point B.
All of a sudden your compass turns into a slice of tiramisu, and the bramble next to your leg starts rubbing you and purring like a kitten while a rabbit and a crow start arguing about how exactly one can even tell if one has a different version of reality from another person. You get so caught off guard that you get engulfed in the conversation of the Crow and Hare that by the time you’ve reached a stopping point you’re already playing fetch with the mushrooms and you’ve entirely forgotten why you were even in the forest; but at least you’re having fun!
Meanwhile someone else’s mind is more like a garden, where there are set paths between point A and point B, with nice little contained scenic things throughout the walkways to look at and observe while you’re en-route to your destination. But make no mistake! There is no monkey business there as they won’t tolerate any sillyness. NOT EVEN SPELLING MISTAKES!!
Here’s the thing about all that though: I’m Robin Hood and I have come to call my stupid forest home even though no one else understands why the waterfall in it falls upwards instead of down like a well-behaving waterfall. I mean, I don’t know either but isn’t it a fascinating waterfall??? That or why it is you can step through the Brambles of Discussions about Dairy Products and immediately find yourself at the precipice of the Cliffs of Looking Up How to Access the Dark Web, but honestly who’s keeping a map of this place anyway? It’s certainly not me, kenizl86-Hood.
Robin Hood is much happier in the forest than that bland garden with little pretty things anyway.
That said, he sometimes does envy those gardens from time to time, especially when they can seemingly stay on task so easily! But then he remembers that the reduced attention-span comes with the ability to make really weird connections between things that he just can’t for the life of him get others to understand even though it makes total sense to him.
Anyway, enough of referring to myself in the not-myself-third-person, that’s so early 1900’s of me.
A Concession
This isn’t a study in which frame-of-mind is better, they’re simply different. And the world needs different people. If the world was filled with more crazy forest-dwellers we would never get anything done. But if the world was filled with all those lovely gardens then things wouldn’t be as silly or fun, but we would probably get things done. They might even lose those pieces of scenery they previously had planted in their garden because krazy kooks weren’t there to liven things up. Likewise the forest would quickly become so wild and untamed without those bordered gardens that we’d all go mad.
Perspective
It’s all a matter of perspective. I know that it was difficult for me (and still is a lot of times) to come to terms with how I see and interface with the world, especially when so many garden-folks are out there making “self-help” books about how to become more “productive” or whatever (not bashing them, but again I’ve found that it just don’t jive bro). Really what I needed were more crazy forest hermits to come show me how the forest can actually be a useful tool; but I know they were too busy chasing down that damned pink unicorn with lazer turrets mounted on it’s back (seriously, that bugger is hard to catch!).
I’ll probably touch on this in another post sometime, but I’ve gotten so much consolation and inspiration from reading other people’s experiences and reading stories. I still remember to this day back when I had read The Lightning Thief, there was a part where Percy Jackson was just learning that he was a demigod, and how someone was explaining this to him: “You know your ADD? the way you can’t focus on things yet you can observe odd things not many others see? That’s actually part of you battle reflexes and your ability to think proactively on your toes” (I probably embellished a little there). That blew my mind. You mean that I can chose to see my “defects” as instead SUPER POWERS?!? This was revolutionary for me, and I still remember that part of the book to this day. Things like this help us see ourselves in a new light, open new perspectives that previously we had never considered before.
As Monty Python says: “Always look on the bright side of life!”
The End…..?
So there you have it, now you’ve learned about forests and gardens and why they’re important for the planet. See? I’m helping the environment. Yay for knowledge!
kenizl86 out!