funny (peculiar) day | ADHD Information
[QUOTE=TheDog]
It would be interesting to find out what really does make the difference between two similar people with add - to discover what really does make the difference between success and failure.
Knowing them both so well, what do you really think might be the reason for the difference?
[/QUOTE]i don't know but i think there are a few reasons. perhaps the main one is a question of balance. i think the wealthy 'adder' has more of a balance in his brain between the intuitive and the intellectual side --- so that he can actually access both, which helps.
perhaps a little like what annidagostini is currently experiencing with her crawling exercises???
but the architect is definitely only 'addled' - intuitively bright but has a lot of negative and self-destructive traits in him and a blockage to the 'normal' way of thinking. he is also dyslexic and perhaps the schooling and constant failure rate during his schooling... pushed him into a repeat habit of failure (the development of low self-esteem/the doubt/the lack of self-confidence)??? i don't know. he does have that ADD sense of everything must happen NOW or it will just peter out, the enthusiasm, the energy for that particular project and before it has had a chance to develop he is already onto the next design/the next idea without being able to capitalise on what he has already done...?
he drinks too. i don't think that helps - although he denies he is an alcoholic (and perhaps he is not --- he drinks frequently and once he starts drinking he can't stop until 3am sorta thing but he doesn't need a shot of vodka first thing in the morning just to face the day).
perhaps the architect developed a lot of "coping mechanisms" to deal with his ADD which ended up being destructive rather than constructive (like the drinking).
whereas the millionnaire managed to develop a more effective and less destructive set of coping mechanisms --- either down to his family/education/help he received or just luck that he had more balance to start with?
i do feel that the architect has never quite managed to make his life his own.
and with a strong similarity to me in that --- he is always referring what he does back to what is expected of him and his own expectations. and it is never quite enough. so we both never developed a proper responsibility for our own lives --- it's hard to explain (and again - maybe with success then that would have come - so it's a bit chicken and egg). the lack of success = we can't stand on our two feet or we can't stand on our two feet leads to a lack of success??? who knows? or it is just another ADDer trait of not being able to be a grown-up.
but i admire people who will just do what THEY want to do. regardless of what others think or believe that they should/shouldn't do. a childhood friend (acquaintance more) of mine who left school at sixteen to go and work with horses and everyone was "oh dear...." but then, when she got selected as a reserve for the British Olympic 3 day eventing team --- suddenly it was all "oh wow! how fantastic" but if she had listened to them in the first place... she would be that telemarketer, i guess.
i think there are a whole whack load of possible things that go into the mix of making one a failure and another a success>>>. it's hard to know if there is one deciding factor. either it happens or it doesn't for an ADDer - whereas for a normal it seems generally there is a standard path to follow of hard work and application that will lead you to being a head of your company age 50 after a series of gradual promotions etc. etc. and that modus operandi just doesn't seem to apply to ADDers at all.
not to say that you don't have to work hard. you do. but with an ADDled flair. and if it is flowing the right way for you --- i imagine it won't feel so much like work than enjoyment/life.
i love meeting successful ADDers.
but i don't think thinking about it too much helps any - you just end up self-analysing yourself up your own backside, no good to anyone! that's my problem i think but i don't/can't act - like Hamlet!
MAN ---- another long post!!!!!!! this level of procrastinating is ridiculous...........
chjones38831.1870949074 Isn't it the same with you?
i suppose we are similar in some ways --- i guess that is why we are friends. struggling through and all..........
one day. one day. something!
chjones38828.4012615741
With ADHD our motivation waxes and wanes..Creative minds yes..but the ability to get out and be a good business person..maybe not so much.
The key difference I see here is that one has a supportive, helpful partner and the other one doesn't.
My best friends husband has ADHD and is just like these friends of yours. He's so creative, a true genius. He's created an ingenious computer program that the so called "investors" stole from him. His wife had to step in and try to screen the would be vultures.
Your friend needs a woman who loves him for who he is regardless of his money situation!! I think he really needs that kind of support..to bad so many women care mostly about money before love 
i don't know why he was such an idiot over that. now he still goes on and on about her --- but he was the one who cheated, he was the one who was rude and dismissive and would go out with HIS friends on her birthday because he couldn't be bothered to turn up to her party. he was the one who always said how her lack of intelligence drove him mad. he was the one who would call her out of bed to come and have a drink with him and his mates only to present her with the bill because he couldn't pay. who would chat up other women right in front of her. he is a nice guy but he was a total freaking jerk with his girlfriends - always. always. always.
NOW - he says he has changed, he understands he was a jerk and isn't like that anymore. Now. so in that sphere of his life --- he has no-one to blame but himself. she put up with him and his miserable behaviour, rudeness, moods and all the rest for 7 years. then she couldn't take it anymore and left - would have broken her heart but i think it had already been so battered into pieces over the past seven years there was nothing left to break...
then - then he realised how much loved her. or so he says. myself i don't know --- it was the most dysfunctional relationship i have ever seen - plus he said the sex was terrible because he didn't fancy her (niiice to have your boyfriend say that about you - right). he was just such a a$$ constantly, constantly belittling her in front of other people. urgh. i liked them both a lot but i hated seeing them together because you somehow got pulled into being a tool for him to (jokingly ha ha ha - not) denigrate her and i was never quite quick enough to put a stop to it in a light-hearted way. so i would squirge with vague embarrassment and think to myself (for the 1000th time) i WILL NOT go out with these two together AGAIN. but then of course i would forget... hahahahaa-oops.
so, for sure, she did love him despite him having no money. he was just an a$$!
it can happen. and i think he really might have changed. bit late but better late than never perhaps.
[QUOTE=chjones] Isn't it the same with you?
i suppose we are similar in some ways --- i guess that is why we are friends. struggling through and all..........
one day. one day. something!
[/QUOTE]
Hey, I've been on both sides of the sitbed.
Had millions, lost millions, doing okay, will see what tomorrow brings.
The Q is: are you satisfied doing it the way you are?
As for me and my ADHD, we are.
Are there any movies or books in pop culture that directly address ADD? I can't think of any.
I don't mean that they come right out and say it, even an accurate representation would be interesting, even if it wasn't named. Main character or supporting, but more than a passing glimpse?
Know of any like that?
I actually started writing a sci-fi story where a main character has ADD. And in the story no one knows what it is because it doens't exist in the future. Genetic engineering has done away with it, but tn the story (haven't really developed it too much yet) the character is a genetically engineered clone for a man who wants a child. From the manipulation of the genes the resulting disposition to ADD type behavior emerges in the child. It perplexes all who know her because no one else acts as she does.
Not sure how to make it believeable but I want to portray the way i see the world in such a way that it is starkly contrasted against the perceived "normal" person.
I like this idea though. It is heart wrenching in two ways, because it is terribly tragic and because it is terribly beautiful as well.
One movie that has kept popping into my head ever since i made my startling discovery about myself is Mr. Jones. It stars Richard Gere. Has anyone seen it?
In the movie he's a manic depressive and he gets drug treatment for it but he ends up dropping his treatment because he misses his highs. He just can't handle the drudgery of day to day.
A Clockwork Orange also sprung to mind when I realized that a lot of my seeming talent and a lot of the good things I like about myself can also be explained by ADD. My wife brought that up too when were talking about treatment once.
Sounds like you, chJonesy.
I have a similar friend. Similar age/circumstances.
He is the most intelligent and interesting person but very difficult to realte to and horribly poor yet well educated and capable.
He is a sort of telemarketer now.
Almost all of the really stunning creative/genius types I've known, which isn't very many, are not well adjusted nor rich. Isn't it the same with you?
Like it has been said here before, our society worshipd freedom, individuality, creativity, intelligence - it just doesn't tolerate them if they aren't making money.
My gosh Chjones...what you just wrote...you made me feel what I think you were feeling...I can see exactly how this man lives...I see that grimy wallpaper...somehow it took the strength or will out of me - like i was that man. How can what you wrote be beautiful when it is so sad?
Wow, I was thinking the same thing, Auntie. No pressure, chjones, but if you kept going with this, it could become a screenplay, a novel, a story in the New Yorker. (What might happen if you DID meet them together in a pub, I wonder?) It's already a piece of art. i had a kinda funny day.i saw an old friend. a lovely, smart guy an ADDer and where he is living, and how he is living.... i don't know why it hit me so hard - that sort of thing doesn't normally but it was as though i suddenly saw it with a normals brain.
a horrible, tiny, depressing bedsit --- a room with greasy wallpaper off-cream (but grayish from grime) shiny with the grease and years of passing failures somehow embedded into it. a miserable single bed with thin blankets and no room either side.
how miserable. it was so miserable. i was so sorry that this is it. no life, no wife, no space, no nothing. forty-one years old and a crappy suitcase and and a stinking dingy bedsit. it kills me and he is so bright and his furniture designs can be seen in books around the world and his architecture has been highlighted in blueprint and all sorts of architectural/design magazines.
he is so talented and so hopeless and nothing works. and he is no different from my other friend (another ADDer) who just made 15 million pounds (not dollars but pounds! in bonuses last year that's maybe million or something). and yet look at their lives - how can it be like this. i don't know what i mean --- it depressed me.
but there is x just earning millions although (with that detached ADDer brain) he doesn't care about the money --- but in a certain way it has brought him so much by default - he has a wife who cares about the money so she has given him a lifestyle to go with it. a ten million pound house and all the furnishings and (she is so smart anyway - an Oxford phd, was a barrister, now a stay-at-home mom with their new baby).
i don't even know what i am trying to say. but there is no difference between the two in terms of intelligence or education (they both had an excellent education) or even how fun they are - and they both, i think, found what they wanted to do and they are both extremely talented but one just can't keep it together --- his designs might be lauded but he can't sell them.
and the one now has a job that keeps him motivated and meeting interesting people and his wife creates a phenomenal home life - and they get invited onto Onassis' yacht for summer holidays. and he is not a snob - none of this means anything to him, he would rather be working than partying because he loves it so much and would rather be hiking than stuck on some snotty yacht. but somehow he has a life!
and the other has nothing. really nothing. all his possessions are in that battered, crappy suitcase. he had to sell his business and his architecture - he can't get the jobs. he holds onto a few things like his Savile Row suit from when he was eighteen and his New and Lingwood shirts and one pair of decent shoes so that he can still appear to be alright if need be - or he needs to go to a meeting with a life and death grip. but nothing. there is nothing. there is nothing.
that miserable bedsit - it just reeks of failure and disappointment and broken people. it emanates from the walls. hateful. i hated to see him there.
but i guess it is just like that. i don't understand. i don't understand any of it.
why the one and not the other --- and they are so similar in a certain way, if you were to meet them together in a pub you wouldn't recognise one as the millionnaire and one as the pauper, they would seem the same - in intelligence, wit and charm and age (as it goes). but it is not just the money - it's that thing about being able to get a grip on life or just somehow let it drift through your fingers like a wraith... although it would slip through x's fingers too despite the money but his wife catches it for him and creates a home and a solidity.
oh i don't know. but suddenly it seemed so sad. so sad. all that potential and just a soul-sucking bedsit as the result - what a waste.
and it seemed that money was so important after all.
chjones38827.1815972222
It would be interesting to find out what really does make the difference between two similar people with add - to discover what really does make the difference between success and failure.
Knowing them both so well, what do you really think might be the reason for the difference?