Your line about the slope of the conversation going flat got to me—felt loss and regret. There’s circumstantial evidence I had ADHD as a youngster, but life beat it out of me. Now it’s like a guilty pleasure.
Michelle, muse. I am no machine. If you asked me yesterday, I may have made a caveat, but today, I am nothing if not animal. I long most deeply for immersion similar to that you describe at Whale and in nature. (Off topic thenceforth) As I move and breathe and scream through life, I feel I am under some marvelously ambivalent yet sympathetic eye: my own inner dialogue. A professor that I worked for self-reports having a "rigorous internal dialogue." She is a poet, who regularly chastises me for not being one, that is the department head at a junior college. At the time, I remember thinking (ha!) that I either have poor meta-cognition or an unimposing inner dialogue, but now, I don't think either of those things are true. I want to see myself outside myself. Today, I wrapped my great-grandmother’s prayer beads from Jerusalem around my knuckles for work. I carry rocks in my pocket. I keep pain cream in my handbag. I keep nail polish bottles on my bathroom counter. I keep a stack of books I am “sipping” by second-hand blue and white china dishes full of inherited jewelry. I put these eraser-head sized enamel pins of a ladybug and a yellow pear, that my mother pinned on her scrubs, on my work bag. I don’t think in long lines, but I feel in every direction. My focus is on self, on creating some mood where I can think beautiful or complex or horrible thoughts or laugh them off just so. I have to see myself so I can think. See myself in my music, my clothes, the way my papers are scattered, the flush of sunlight across my desk. To set a table for my thoughts. To be immersed in my thoughts, trinkets, worry stones, and the “blue mood in the air.” To litter the world (even a world as small as your desk!) with my thoughts.
Omg I feel this so hard. Thank you. The wall of awful is a real struggle for me.
I am diagnosed with ADHD and am constantly thinking about these issues and wondering if my diagnosis is real or if I’m in a world that doesn’t work for me...
Astral Codex X blog on Substack also wrote about this same topic today and linked it to the FTX people who were all on ADHD drugs.
As someone who recently went through a formal diagnosis for ADHD, I think back to when I was going through the process of connecting with the symptoms, even while doing research on developmental disabilities and urban planning (which includes ADHD, autism, cerebral palsy, among others). And, to be an amateur armchair sociologist, there’s a pendulum to swing between individual and societal causes. It’s swung heavily towards the individual, enough that it makes us feel that it isn’t a pendulum but a stationary statement that “I” am the problem. For me it’s been hard, hard to ask colleagues to repeat a task they’ve asked me to do multiple times because I couldn’t balance between listening, writing down the meeting minutes, and making cordial noises. Hard to feel like my whole life I’ve had to try 2-3 times harder than people around me just to get to “average”, when maybe everyone felt that way themselves. I’m still at the very beginning of a journey I don’t think ever ends. I think your article is great, and it’d be interesting to build on top of this with the concepts of ___-centredness (i.e. disability-centred) where its progressiveness rests upon the existence of its opposer (is there a metaphorical third door where we don’t need to operate as either or?) I’m okay with this label, and I’m also okay with this label being a symptom of a much larger issue/rebellion towards how we view “normal” rather than something biologically/socially set in stone to identify ourselves.
just jotting this fun fragment down ... "making the uncanny approximation of eye-contact that is only possible in the parallax between two webcams" wtf dude
I always felt a little silly: I couldn't help but take a beloved book with me when I left to work remotely at a coffee shop each day, though I rarely read them. I mostly just left them on the table beside my drink, as I coded away the hours.
Thinking with Type, The Best American Infographics 2015, Understanding Comics, The Medium is the Massage.
There is just something so magical, so grounding about having the books beside me. I couldn't fully explain it. Perhaps they reminded me who I am, what I value, or maybe just of beautiful things that make the world feel rich & wonderful.
After reading this wonderful essay, I think I realize that having these physical books with me connects me to vivid parts of reality, & helps me feel able to focus on other things. They provide something real, something I can hold as I float in the digital.
Michelle, thank you so much for this essay, it's one that will really stay with me...
This post reminded me of how solitary confinement, in a plain cube, is a punishment. Seems like current aesthetics are oddly in the direction of adopting these principles, and acting as if we can be productive in it. I'm definitely an animal. I live in the forest, and think that part of the mental processing needed to focus on something amongst the chaos is exactly what the brain needs on a daily basis.
As someone who has always had trouble focusing, whose desk is a messy travesty, whose need for stimulation is a defining feature of life and who perfers audio over visual Zoom calls, this essay resonates.
Just dropping this to let you know I'm returning to this essay, months later, as I work on some of my own upcoming pieces. Your work is deep & thought provoking, Michelle. Thank you.
"Nicholas Carr argues that not since Gutenberg invented printing has humanity been exposed to such a mind-altering technology. The Shallows draws on the latest research to show that the Net is literally re-wiring our brains inducing only superficial understanding. As a consequence there are profound changes in the way we live and communicate, remember and socialise - even in our very conception of ourselves. By moving from the depths of thought to the shallows of distraction, the web, it seems, is actually fostering ignorance." Nicholas Carr, the Shallows. Networld trains the mind to always seek more experience, but not depth of experience.
Your line about the slope of the conversation going flat got to me—felt loss and regret. There’s circumstantial evidence I had ADHD as a youngster, but life beat it out of me. Now it’s like a guilty pleasure.
aint it just the sines of the tvmes
big heart
I have adHd but its kinda a power at times like im allergic to some b.s. degree programs
:|
Michelle, muse. I am no machine. If you asked me yesterday, I may have made a caveat, but today, I am nothing if not animal. I long most deeply for immersion similar to that you describe at Whale and in nature. (Off topic thenceforth) As I move and breathe and scream through life, I feel I am under some marvelously ambivalent yet sympathetic eye: my own inner dialogue. A professor that I worked for self-reports having a "rigorous internal dialogue." She is a poet, who regularly chastises me for not being one, that is the department head at a junior college. At the time, I remember thinking (ha!) that I either have poor meta-cognition or an unimposing inner dialogue, but now, I don't think either of those things are true. I want to see myself outside myself. Today, I wrapped my great-grandmother’s prayer beads from Jerusalem around my knuckles for work. I carry rocks in my pocket. I keep pain cream in my handbag. I keep nail polish bottles on my bathroom counter. I keep a stack of books I am “sipping” by second-hand blue and white china dishes full of inherited jewelry. I put these eraser-head sized enamel pins of a ladybug and a yellow pear, that my mother pinned on her scrubs, on my work bag. I don’t think in long lines, but I feel in every direction. My focus is on self, on creating some mood where I can think beautiful or complex or horrible thoughts or laugh them off just so. I have to see myself so I can think. See myself in my music, my clothes, the way my papers are scattered, the flush of sunlight across my desk. To set a table for my thoughts. To be immersed in my thoughts, trinkets, worry stones, and the “blue mood in the air.” To litter the world (even a world as small as your desk!) with my thoughts.
This is brilliant. It speaks to my heart.
I'll have something more creative to say when I've read it ten more times.
Omg I feel this so hard. Thank you. The wall of awful is a real struggle for me.
I am diagnosed with ADHD and am constantly thinking about these issues and wondering if my diagnosis is real or if I’m in a world that doesn’t work for me...
Astral Codex X blog on Substack also wrote about this same topic today and linked it to the FTX people who were all on ADHD drugs.
As someone who recently went through a formal diagnosis for ADHD, I think back to when I was going through the process of connecting with the symptoms, even while doing research on developmental disabilities and urban planning (which includes ADHD, autism, cerebral palsy, among others). And, to be an amateur armchair sociologist, there’s a pendulum to swing between individual and societal causes. It’s swung heavily towards the individual, enough that it makes us feel that it isn’t a pendulum but a stationary statement that “I” am the problem. For me it’s been hard, hard to ask colleagues to repeat a task they’ve asked me to do multiple times because I couldn’t balance between listening, writing down the meeting minutes, and making cordial noises. Hard to feel like my whole life I’ve had to try 2-3 times harder than people around me just to get to “average”, when maybe everyone felt that way themselves. I’m still at the very beginning of a journey I don’t think ever ends. I think your article is great, and it’d be interesting to build on top of this with the concepts of ___-centredness (i.e. disability-centred) where its progressiveness rests upon the existence of its opposer (is there a metaphorical third door where we don’t need to operate as either or?) I’m okay with this label, and I’m also okay with this label being a symptom of a much larger issue/rebellion towards how we view “normal” rather than something biologically/socially set in stone to identify ourselves.
just jotting this fun fragment down ... "making the uncanny approximation of eye-contact that is only possible in the parallax between two webcams" wtf dude
I always felt a little silly: I couldn't help but take a beloved book with me when I left to work remotely at a coffee shop each day, though I rarely read them. I mostly just left them on the table beside my drink, as I coded away the hours.
Thinking with Type, The Best American Infographics 2015, Understanding Comics, The Medium is the Massage.
There is just something so magical, so grounding about having the books beside me. I couldn't fully explain it. Perhaps they reminded me who I am, what I value, or maybe just of beautiful things that make the world feel rich & wonderful.
After reading this wonderful essay, I think I realize that having these physical books with me connects me to vivid parts of reality, & helps me feel able to focus on other things. They provide something real, something I can hold as I float in the digital.
Michelle, thank you so much for this essay, it's one that will really stay with me...
This post reminded me of how solitary confinement, in a plain cube, is a punishment. Seems like current aesthetics are oddly in the direction of adopting these principles, and acting as if we can be productive in it. I'm definitely an animal. I live in the forest, and think that part of the mental processing needed to focus on something amongst the chaos is exactly what the brain needs on a daily basis.
As someone who has always had trouble focusing, whose desk is a messy travesty, whose need for stimulation is a defining feature of life and who perfers audio over visual Zoom calls, this essay resonates.
Just dropping this to let you know I'm returning to this essay, months later, as I work on some of my own upcoming pieces. Your work is deep & thought provoking, Michelle. Thank you.
"Nicholas Carr argues that not since Gutenberg invented printing has humanity been exposed to such a mind-altering technology. The Shallows draws on the latest research to show that the Net is literally re-wiring our brains inducing only superficial understanding. As a consequence there are profound changes in the way we live and communicate, remember and socialise - even in our very conception of ourselves. By moving from the depths of thought to the shallows of distraction, the web, it seems, is actually fostering ignorance." Nicholas Carr, the Shallows. Networld trains the mind to always seek more experience, but not depth of experience.