After a busy October that turned into a blur, the leaves have come and are just about gone in Maine. There are a few stragglers left here and there with most of the vibrant colors vamoosed until next year. Personally, I’m ready for some snow. I’m always ready for snow.
In the mean time though…
My sabbatical wrapped up at the end of September and I have been back at the IT job. I immensely enjoyed my break, but I was glad to get back into the technical realms of work. Yes, I’m a geek. Yes, I missed it. Yes, it’s further proof I’m not cut out to be a full time writer. I mean, I was already about 97% certain I wasn’t cut out for it, but now I’m 100% certain.
This isn’t a bad thing; I certainly don’t see it that way. My brain is wired so that I need to be actively juggling a few different balls at the same time for me to operate at peak performance. I haven’t been clinically diagnosed as ADHD, but there are a lot of indicators that support my self-diagnosis. It’s all about managing the juggling game and developing coping skills. Hell, I wasn’t clinically diagnosed with a reading disorder until I was in my last semester of grad school. K-12 plus 9.5 years of college to get a diagnosis? Sure. That works. Took a while, but that’s fine. I just finally had a “name” at that point for what I’d always had and worked around. So my attention span issues fall into the same bucket.
I’ve learned to cope.
I thrive when I’m doing multiple projects at once. And I’m not talking about multi-tasking. What I’m referring to is picking up on giant task/project (like a novel) and working on it for a while then changing gears. Since going on the road with IT, I learned to compartmentalize my days of the week. Monday through Thursday, I’m all IT. The technical brain gets its fill.
Friday becomes a split day with the morning being IT and the rest of the day busywork like errands and mindless stuff with an occasional sprinkling of creative pursuits.
Saturday and Sunday are my creative days.
I get the best of both worlds each week. So by being away from IT for three months, the geeky part of my brain was a bit deprived. It is now happily monkeying around in databases and picking data apart Monday through Thursday again. And my creative brain gets to mull over writing and other creative outlets until sometimes Friday but goes into overdrive on Saturdays and Sundays.
Can’t say my system would work for everyone with attention span issues, but it works for me. And since today is Monday, the geek is in and the creative brain gets a break after writing and editing over the weekend.
Photo by me, Abol Bridge, Maine, near Mt. Katahdin. I forget the year.