it all falls away

today was a good day. i had focus. i can chalk this up to writing. when i am writing something i am into, everything else can fall away. i can miss lunch and not even know it.

in a rare case of convergence, i wrote a story for a client that could have just as easily been posted to my work blog. walked right away from that conflict o' interest though. an ex-coworker just got canned from her new job. she sent ME an email asking me for some input on a document she created. her IT and legal folks gave her walking papers to HR.

now, her employer is certifiably whacked out. this is a known fact on the street (read: in the industry. i live in cincinnati and am most certainly NOT street). but it occurs to me that if i ever want to leave my current place of work, i will need to change my very bad work habits. my employer is very informal. at least, there are a lot of things about my current employer's work environment that are informal. and besides, this was just the right thing to do.

when i get into writing zones like this, i think about my ADD. in a recent "med check" with my psychiatrist, he shared with me that he does not think i have ADD. i am touchy about this as ADD is misdiagnosed. Even less is known about adult ADD so odds are good it is also misdiagnosed. and a ton of people think i am full of shit when i tell them i have ADD. but reading some articles about adult ADD have literally helped give me some of my identity. i was in those articles.

the psych looks at it this way. i was not responding to the ADD-only meds, but rather the anti-depressants. anxiety disorder can manifest itself in symptoms similar to ADD. he has never seen anyone with ADD respond to the meds I am responding to.

well, i knew he did not think i had ADD and pushed him to this statement. but in the end we agreed that regardless of what we call it, the meds he is giving me help.

at the very least it pisses me off as now i have to study up on anxiety disorders and i hate reading non-fiction. :-) but honestly, knowing i had ADD helped me out in many ways. it helped me explain a lot of shit in my life. and by this i do not mean write things off in my life to ADD or to use it as a badge, crutch, excuse etc.

but the writing zones like i describe above when i can tune everything else out and really focus, are not a given with me. and i wish it were a switch i could turn on and off.