The fog of ADHD is messing up my life

My inabillity to concentrate is causing serious problems.

Illustration created by Microsoft Design AI using prompts written by the author.

I’ve lost my ability to write.

I worked as a newspaper reporter and columnist for 27 years, several of them covering breaking news and sports, which had the toughest deadlines in the business.

I am not a full-time journalist anymore, so it stands to reason that some of my deadline prowess would soften without regular use.

But this inability to finish something — anything — runs rampant through my life like a fast-spreading virus for which there is no inoculation.

---

---

My mental health professional diagnosed me with attention deficit hyperactive disorder inattentive type in November.

I wrote about it at the time. The revelation of yet another wrinkle in my already lumpy mental health status saddened me.

The more I read about the disorder, the more I saw how the actions I took and behaviors I’ve displayed for years have disrupted or destroyed so many of my relationships.

My actions have hurt people, cost me friends, and wrecked every romantic engagement I’ve ever had.

I understand that some of that was not my fault, at least not directly.

There’s a malfunction in my brain chemistry and I say and do things — or don’t do and say things — that cause problems both in my relationships with people and my work.

I don’t wish to write off every time I behaved as a jerk or failed to do what I was supposed to do — even what I wanted to do — because of ADHD.

I must take responsibility for the mistakes I’ve made regardless of their origin and do my best to both make amends where possible and improve for the present and future.

That process of analyzing and owning my shortcomings of what I say and do has been exhausting.

One might fairly conclude that doing postgame analysis on events that took place years or even decades ago likely provide no useful results in the present.

This is true, but my present is riddled with problems for which I seek relief.

As I write this, a fog creeps into my thoughts.

The fog drifts into my brain without warning and how long it will stay is also unknown.

The fog comes regardless of where I am or what I am doing.

The workday is done, but I sit in my chair for hours unable to do anything productive.

My intellectual brain screams at me to plan the next week’s lessons, grade some papers, or at least get up and go home.

But my emotional reaction is numb and indifferent.

I want to work. I want to accomplish. I want to achieve.

Yet I sit idle, like a stripped-down, rusted old truck sitting on blocks beside a barn somewhere in the Midwest.

I have been known to leave work as late as 10 p.m. without having accomplished anything of significance since contract time ended at 3:45 p.m.

I can and do work, but the periods when concentration holds are both brief and rare.

It’s not just work that is interrupted by ADHD. I have been known to sit in my car for hours after I’ve gotten home just fiddling with my smartphone in a kind of trance. I’m aware that I should go inside and make some dinner or get ready for the next day.

Still, I sit.

Writing was always my escape, my great gift. No matter what troubles I had in life, I could always write.

This is no longer true. I struggle to write. My concentration evaporates like sweat in the Arizona sun.

Just now, a moment after I typed that line, my eyes closed, and I was thinking about a reboot of “24” in which the hero Jack Bauer was in a coma.

Why would. I think about that show in the middle of writing a column about life with ADHD?

That is the nature of the disorder.

And, dear readers, I have to tell you it is really messing up my life.

Teachers need to plan and I’m not doing a good job.

I need to write, and I haven’t been able to produce columns that I’ve promised to the Iowa Writers Collaborative for three weeks.

I’ve had ideas. I’ve started. But every damn time the fog drifts into my brain and I fall away from the keyboard.

I tell you, dear readers, in all honesty, I am scared.

I have always had writing and with that faltering, I don’t know what is left of me.

I am not suicidal, but I am absolutely unmoored.

Between grappling with all the harm I may have caused to the people I love and work with and trying to burn new schema that will help me circumvent the latest affliction of my mental health, it’s almost too much.

I am exhausted.

I’m supposed to meet my friend Randy for lunch in 14 minutes.

I’m going to finish and post this column.

It’s not polished or clever, things I like my columns to be, but at least it will be done.

Done is a place I rarely find myself these days.

Please don’t let the fraught tone of this column frighten you.

I am OK.

But I am struggling.

What is life if not struggle?

---

Daniel P. Finney is a member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative, but don’t hold that against them. Please visit their page to view a full roster of writers and consider subscribing to their columns. Writing is hard work; people ought to get paid for it. If you enjoy it, throw them a couple of bucks. They earned it.