OK, I admit it, I’m paralyzed at the moment when it comes to certain aspects of my life. But it’s not due to a lack of mental activity. Here’s a glimpse at the workings of my hyperactive brain:
I could compose music to play on natural objects, like that guy I heard perform percussion on a cactus!
I could compose music for dance, like the woman who composed the dreamy, slightly dissonant piano music for that ballet of Peter Pan!
I could learn how to design sounds for computers, like that guy my sister knows!
I could become a nature photographer, focusing on clouds, water, and mating insects!
I could design birthday-party kits, with archaeological digs for real fossils, King Toot emerging from his tomb to issue goofy curses, and dances choreographed to Hannah Montana songs!
I could start a school for kids with ADD, where learning occurs by means of nature study, invention, dance, and art!
I could set up an ADD counseling practice or coaching practice or support group or at least a Meetup!
I could write my memoir about life as a girl and woman with ADD! Finish my novel about donor insemination, teen pregnancy, alcoholism—and telling and facing the truth! Publish my poetry about things like a praying mantis eating a butterfly and what that has to do with DES and breast cancer! I could finish my children’s stories about a lonely letter H and about an aspen tree who can see with the eyes on her trunk!
I could co-author a book with my ex about our disaster of a marriage and its transformation into a miraculously decent co-parenting relationship! A book about living with your hunter-gatherer biology! A social history of donor insemination! An e-book about genetics and adoption!
I could write magazine articles about delayed sleep phase syndrome, my great-aunt’s internment in the Philippines during World War II, and California’s serpentine grasslands!
I could start a business consulting with HOAs and property managers about organic landscape management! Or apply for grants and start up an organic demonstration lawn, an annual organic garden tour, and an educational program for local landscape managers on effective organic methods!
I could blog about pesticide issues in my county, starting with a post about the yellow pesticide-warning flags that start appearing around the time the yellow flags (Iris pseudacorus) bloom in that swampy area along the Bobolink Trail!
I could start a blog that brings together those of us for whom modern fragrances amount to torture!
The truth is, with my mishmash of education and experience, I could do just about any of those things.
But I can’t do all of them. And, no matter how hard I throw myself at the tasks, I can’t do them all at once. Especially since I’m also raising a lively ten-year-old, trying to keep my baby-boomer body in decent working condition, doing my best to keep house, and, theoretically at least, bringing in some income.
It’s one of the curses of ADD: so many great ideas, so little time—and so little time-management skill.
Phooey.
You can get a sense of my varied, or is it scattered, background at www.kathleenchristensen.com. The truth is, my background does give me a broad palette of interesting skills and knowledge.
And, by the way, I also created a website for my pesticide group: www.pesticideboulder.org. You can tell how current I’ve kept it by the quote from Eliot Spitzer! But the site does provide a lot of good info and links.
