https://runawaybrain.substack.com/p/that-runaway-brain-what-exactly-is written by the talented and very helpful
UPDATE; This is very appropriate too
So, seems I have it. Sounds ridiculous still. Someone commented on a video asking if I’d ever been diagnosed as ADHD to which I laughed at the ridiculous suggestion! Then I spoke to my best chum Mark and he says ‘they might have a point’. Me and Mark have been super close for 20 years and outside of my family he’s the one that knows me best. In some ways he knows me better than I know myself. No one except my mother knows me better. We have long questioned wether I’ve something like this, Seeing my personality up close first hand Mark says ‘I’ve always known you’re on some kind of spectrum’(!) and we have a running joke about my frequent and many obsessions.
This is me entirely, except loving dancing! That will make my friend laugh as he finds it faintly comical that I never dance, even stood in a field watching a huge act at Glastonbury. I’m like a buttoned up Victorian gent.
Again this is me me me. I’ve always found it strange my seemingly contradictory states of being. I’m happiest driving a coach or lorry across Europe. Im happiest doing local supermarket deliveries. I’m happiest snowboarding. I’m happiest on a city break. I’m happiest in the countryside. I’m happiest in the city. I’m happiest by the sea. I’m happiest up a mountain. I’m happiest lying on my sofa (which is just as well really)
And thus we come to my obsessions. It makes Mark chuckle, mostly, when I go off on one of my obsessions! Once I get involved in a subject I totally immerse myself in it. I hover up every bit of info I can. On the opposite end of spectrum if I don’t have an interest in a subject I totally ignore it. I’m opinionated but don’t have a wide spread wealth of opinions on everything like many. I sometimes get criticised as argumentative but that’s because if I have an opinion it’s because I’ve consumed everything I can. If I’m not interested I have no opinion. There is no in between. I’m obsessed or not interested, there’s not a single subject in the middle. And like it says when engaged in something I don’t stop. It’s not unheard of me to not eat till 4/5pm because I’ve been working on my blog or other things.
On the opposite side of the coin it can mean you don’t feel fear or understand risk. Fear is an alien concept to me, which has served me very well in some areas and really not others. After all fear is a necessary self preservation reaction. This picture sums up how I’ve used this in my career. I was 22 here, first time abroad as a driver on my first tour, to Norway! In 5 Star hotels in a super luxury coach with airline seats! I look back and think that should have been scary but no, wasn’t at all, no job ever has been. my attitude my whole life has been turn up and work it out as we go. Thinking about it this probably links with no concept of time. You cant be fearful of a future you never think about. My most common phrase when asked to do something new? ‘Yup, no problem I’ll give it a go’.
Not much to add to this. Every single line could have been written by me.
As I read more and more about it it all started to make sense, my entire life & my strange ways started to have an answer. Niamh I talked to via Twitter and she even picked up some very ADHD turns of phrase. I began to realise that ADHD has a public image problem, it’s thought of to most very differently to actual fact, which is why I initially laughed as I had the standard image painted in the media of basically an excitable child. It’s way way way more complex than the simple ailment some think.
This is so very true. Reading this is when huge unexplained quirky, to put it politely (weirdly to not) sections of my life suddenly had a reason. As that person who-kicked all this off said you may see symptoms in my videos. None of my videos have written scripts or are thought about much beyond basic ideas. I simply pop the camera on and see what I say, what I say is as much a mystery to me as to the viewers until I say it. Also worth noting that probably 95% of my videos are first and only take. I’ve tried to write scripts recently as since accident the easy flow I had from mind to mouth stalled occasionally but I just can’t deliver a script well, you’ll have noticed that too. But I’m pleased to report it is improving. It’s similar when I write, I spend a day with the topic floating around my head then knock out 1,000 words in 10/15 minutes. None of this is a boast I hasten to add, just a fact. My intelligence is very average, I just think a lot more than most which I now understand is ADHD. As my friends and family have always known I could talk the hind legs off a donkey. They often wish I’d shut the f**k up!
Sums it up perfectly
My levels of empathy are insane. I often feel physically pained on behalf of people in the news. I often cry watching or reading the news. Today it was this heartbreaking image. Their plight makes me weep for them.
I live relentlessly in the present, which some find strange but I’m grateful for. The only time I look at old pictures for instance it to put them on my blog. The highlight of my career was driving the Virginia 750 all over Europe, my dream job, and I often get people asking if I wish I could go back. Never. Not for a millisecond have I ever wanted to go back to a point in time, never missed it. Likewise people ask if I regretted leaving a particular job and again no, never, This I think is really positive as I always find it sad how many lorry drivers long for the past, for better times, times they have great memories of. So much so that it makes their present miserable and the sad thing is they can no more change that than I can this.
Likewise the future, it doesnt exist, the past is gone. Both only exist as a concept. I need deadlines. Give me a super tight deadline, say for a long distance delivery or a piece for a magazine I come into my own. Easy or no deadlines? I just can’t get going.
Again, this. Especially - ‘More friend than foe, I have grown to love my ADHD brain and its speed, sharpness, enthusiasm and myriad interests’. My brain is running flat out every single waking minute, and some sleep too! It can be exhausting but never is it dull. I can live such rich and interesting times entirely in my head lying on my sofa or driving down the motor way.
It’s turned out to be a fascinating thing to discover that I almost certainly suffer this. Suffer being the wrong word though as in many ways, most even it’s a positive, even though many wouldn’t see it that way. Plus if my friends take the piss out of me I can yell ‘LEAVE ME ALONE IM A MENTAL’ (probably not very PC)
So yeah, hope you found that interesting. Put myself out there a bit more than I usually would.
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