Eric and the 1000 Words

This is what it has come to.  I’m punishing myself, at the very least, I’m withholding joy from myself until I accomplish something.  I have filled my life with distractions.  Facebook, reddit, podcasts, tv, video games, and pretty much any other projects the happen to pop into my head that aren’t actually productive.  As long as it isn’t writing I will throw myself headlong right into it.  I don’t know why I need to escape from my brain, but I do.  I have been aware of this need for several years; I’ve even written about it before, but that was a long time ago.  I obviously haven’t learned how to prevent myself from falling into that trap so I’ve come up with a plan.

I am not going to allow myself to look at the internet (unless it’s specifically for research or a job search for that matter), play any video games, watch tv, or listen to podcasts until I have written 1000 words every day.  I will allow myself to listen to music, read, play with my children, etc…  These distractions are important to my soul.  This might be overly ambitious for someone who hasn’t written more than a total of 3 paragraphs in the last 8 months, but it’s the kind of drastic measure that I need right now.

This is the first 1000 words, and it’s harder than I thought it would be.  I should have expected this though, considering I spent 45 minutes staring at my computer screen last night.  I only wrote three sentences.  I have a pretty big piece planned.  I’ve been working on it for most of the last 8 months, but I’ve only been working on it in my head.  I’ve written it and re written it over and over and never put any of it down on paper (screen?).  I don’t know why it’s so easy for me to compose these words when I’m busy doing other things with my hands, but then I draw a complete blank when I’m confronted with the keyboard and screen.  I think I’ve been building pressure over the last year and now I’m at a point where I’m terrified to fail.  I believe that this is my last best hope for happiness.  If I can’t write, If I’m not a writer then what am I and why have I been lying to myself for all of these years.

I didn’t want this post to be about writing.  I have a lot of ideas about myself that are tied to me being a writer, but I wanted that to be in the bigger piece that I was talking about earlier.  If you’ve read this far and you are bored I’m sorry.  I knew that this first post was going to suck, and I pretty much set out with the plan of it sucking.  I needed to lower the bar for myself and prove that I could, at least, suck for 1000 words.  I promise that I won’t be posting every 1000 words that I write, but i’m putting this up to show where my head is.  I guess I can tell you what my life has been like for the last year.

The plant that my wife and I worked for closed down on December 17, 2015.  We had both worked there for several years.  Neither of us particularly liked our jobs because it conflicted with our personal politics, but we liked the people and we were pretty good at what we did.  I guess that last part is a matter of opinion, but we were good enough for them to keep us around until the day they closed the doors.  We both spent the next six months on unemployment searching for a new place to pay us to live.  She was hired the week before her unemployment ran out, and I have been staying at home taking care of the kids while draining my 401k.  It’s been stressful, but not as stressful as you would think.  Don’t get me wrong, I have a new found respect for anyone that stays at home to take care of children.  They are a nightmare, but I thought I would be more stressed about not knowing where my next paycheck was going to come from.  Sometimes I think the lack of stress is from a deep depression that I can’t pull myself out of, and sometimes I think it’s God telling me that everything is going to be okay.

I know that I am depressed and anytime I even think about writing I talk myself out of it by pointing out that everything I write is narcissistic nonsense that no sane person would give a crap about.  I also know that since I started going to church again back in April 2016 I have felt a shift in my attitude.  At first I was angry every single week.  I was angry at God, at the people, at myself, and just angry at the situation.  I only started going because my mom asked that we all come on Mother’s day, and I didn’t want everyone to think that was the reason so we started going 2 weeks before that day.  Something convinced me that I needed to be there.  I told myself it was for my kids, but it was just as much for me and my wife.  Every week I left the service pissed off at something someone said or did.  I don’t know why, but my politics seem to greatly differ from the leadership's politics.  That hasn’t changed but I am less offended by it now than I was then.  My anger began to subside and I would alternate between feeling motivated one week and pissed off again the next week.  Now I’m only angry a fourth of the time.

I’ve also felt myself forgive things that I thought were unforgivable, by me anyway, but I’ll have to talk about that later because that’s been my 1000 words.

Eric Anderson

Eric and the Plant-Based Diet Part II

I really didn’t like being on Lipitor.  I don’t know if it was in my head because of all the horrible reports about it that I had read online, or if it actually made me feel awful, but, either way, I wanted off of it.  I went back to my doctor in June of 2014 and begged her to let me stop taking it.  I told her that there was no way anymore cholesterol was going to enter my body because I was done with 98% of animals and their by-products.  She said something about my body producing its’ own cholesterol, which I am sure is true, but I was doubtful that it would be an issue.  However, I am not a doctor because I didn’t go to medical school because I am lazy and because people are gross (ok, I’m done stating obvious things).  She finally agreed to compromise with me, and let me take the medication every other day.  I don’t know why I let my doctors have so much power over me, but it’s probably because they are actually doctors, and they have the advantage of having been trained to make me doubt myself and Google—also, probably in medical stuff too.  So, again, I don’t know if it was all in my head or if was real, but I felt better.  I was on the lowest possible dose of Lipitor, and I was now only taking it every other day.

I spent most of the rest of 2014 working, watching tv, playing video games, listening to podcasts, dealing with our new surprise, adorable, yet medically improbable child, and trying to discover every type of junk food on the planet that was, as Peta calls it, accidentally vegan.  There is a ridiculously large amount accidentally and intentionally vegan junk food out there.   Now, it’s not very healthy and sort of defeats the purpose of why I started this diet in the first place, but you can be a vegan, and never eat a singe vegetable for the rest of your life.  There’s also a ton of meat and cheese “substitutes” that certain desperate people will tell you are very close to the real thing.  I disagree with those people, for the most part.  I haven’t really had anything by itself that made me think it was meat, but when it’s mixed in with other things it can be hard for my brain to distinguish the difference.  As far as the “cheese” goes though, I haven’t found anything close, and, besides ice cream, that’s the thing I miss the most.

When I started this diet I really believed that the lack of unhealthy choices would force me to lose weight.  The more research I did, and the more online communities I joined, the more I learned that there is going to have to be more self control on my part than I originally had hoped.  Some people, myself included, might have thought that just abstaining from all animal products completely would be all of the self control that one could muster.  I can’t tell you how many stories I have read where the person went vegan, and lost all the pounds without even trying.  I guess my life doesn’t work that way.  So, that year and all of the next my weight hovered around 380 lbs with about a 5-10 lb fluctuation here and there.  I’m pretty disappointed in myself being the only overweight “vegan” that I know—I only know one other vegan, my wife, and she didn’t convert until September of 2015.

My doctor sent me a letter in September of 2014 informing me that she was leaving her practice to go work on a new specialty or something.  I have tried really hard not to take that personally.  This was actually pretty good news for me because I really hated driving an hour and a half away to sit in a waiting room for another hour waiting to see a special doctor that I had only chosen because I thought that she could magically cure the headaches I was having 5 years ago (she didn’t, but she did try, I still like her).  There was no way I would ever work up the courage to leave her, but I certainly did complain a lot to everyone else.  I got a new doctor in early 2015 and she is a super cool lady.  It took me a few months, and some blood work, but she let me quit taking Lipitor at the end of 2015.  She is awesome and my new goal is working on her letting me get off of the blood pressure meds, but that’s going to take some doing.

After we lost our jobs in December of 2015 I gained 17.8 lbs, like an idiot.  It sucks because when they announced to the plant in August that they were going to shut it down I made a mental note to myself that I needed to cut out all of the bad foods, count every calorie, start exercising, and write again.  I did exactly zero of those things in that 5 month period.  I don’t know why I’m so self destructive.  I am now currently doing 2 1/2 of those things regularly.  So, that’s something, right?

In March I made several changes to my diet.  I cut out all processed food that had either, oil or sugar in the top 5 ingredients (that’s the 1/2 in 2 1/2), I started counting every single calorie that I consume (which is way more work than it should be, but it’s a real eye opener too)(that’s 1 of 2 1/2), and I stopped eating any food 3 hours before I go to bed (I’ve read that this does absolutely nothing for weight loss, but I feel better in the morning when I go to sleep hungry.  That’s probably just in my head, right?).  Also, and this isn’t diet related, but I have obviously, finally started writing again (that’s 2 of 2 1/2).  As of this morning I weight 367.6 lbs which means that I have lost 30.2 in the last 2 1/2 months.  That sounds better than it is because the first few pounds were much easier to lose, and now I am at approximately .1 lb lost a day on average.  So, here I am, on a plant-based diet, counting all the calories, and losing weight at a glacially slow pace, but at least I’m writing, something, and I don’t have to take Lipitor anymore.

Eric Anderson

P.S.  To be continued again…

Eric and the Plant-Based Diet Part I

In early September of 2013 I went to my doctor for a routine blood pressure check up.  She told me that I had borderline high cholesterol, and if I didn’t cut back on the meat she would have to put me on medication.  I said “sure doc, no problem”, and I left.  Then I spent the next 3 months eating nothing but ground beef, sausage and piles and piles of cheese (there was probably other stuff in there too, but that’s not relevant to this story).  Sure, I hated the idea of being on any more medication, specifically that medication (I had read a few things about it that I didn’t like), but meat is delicious.  She had scheduled me to get more blood work in mid November so I just crossed my fingers and hoped my gluttonous behavior didn’t come back to bite my ass.  Two days later I got a call from the nurse.  “She wrote you a prescription for Lipitor and I already called it in to the pharmacy” she told me.  “But…” I said “…I don’t want to be on Lipitor”.  She told me that she was sorry and I decided I was going to become a vegan, maybe, probably, after Christmas (what’s the rush?  I’m already on medication).

A year or so earlier my boss had watched a documentary called Forks Over Knives about plant-based diets (sneaky vegan phrasing).  He decided to compromise and he just became a vegetarian, mostly, for a good deal of time.  At work we all gave him a lot of crap for his refusal to eat that oh so delicious animal flesh, but it didn’t phase him because he was concerned about his cholesterol.  His son and daughter-in-law were already full on vegan, but more for ethical reasons than health concerns, although, I’m sure that’s an added benefit.  I thought the idea of not eating meat was absolutely ludicrous.  God gave us the animals, right?  Man was not meant to eat carrots, right?  That’s what I was always taught anyway.

I made it through Christmas and told my wife that I was going Vegan on New Year’s Day.  I didn’t really know much about veganism other than the abstaining from animals and their by-products part, but I was determined to do whatever it would take to get off of this awful medication.  I don’t really know how she felt about it when I told her.  She seemed mostly ok with the idea, but she was also used to all of the crazy new diets that I had tried over the years.  I imagine that she thought that this was probably another fad that I would give up on after 3 months or maybe sooner.  We had a week to prepare.  We already had the essentials for survival.  My bread was vegan so I could live off of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but I also found a vegan protein powder, and we bought almond “milk”, quinoa, and a couple vegetables.  On New Year’s morning we got up and watched Forks Over Knives first thing (I had never seen it before) to give ourselves the motivation that we would need to see this thing through.  After that my wife told me that she would be a vegetarian, but veganism was a step too far, and she certainly wasn’t going to push it on the kids.  I was mostly okay with that because this is about me and my cholesterol, but I knew it would be harder with that stuff in the house.

I went back to my doctor in the second week of January and declared that I no longer needed to take cholesterol medication because I was no longer eating anything with cholesterol.  She told me that my cholesterol levels were better, but that was probably because of the medication and not because of my insane diet choices (she was concerned that veganism was going to make me a diabetic).  She decided that I should stay on the medication a while longer.  She was also concerned that I had gained weight although that wasn’t the case at all, this time.  You see, there was a problem with the scale in the examination room that I normally used.  The scale always said that I weighed quite a bit less than I knew that I actually weighed, but I didn’t want to argue and over the last couple of years it had become way too awkward for me to say anything.  It just happened that on this day they decided to put me in an examination room where the scale actually worked for my enormous size.  I explained all of this to her, which was rather embarrassing for me, but I had to defend myself.  She was skeptical to say the least.

On January 1, 2014, when I started my plant-based diet, I was the heaviest that I have ever been in my life.  I don’t know exactly how heavy I was because there were no scales in my house that could actually tell me, but I know I was pretty heavy.  I couldn’t weigh myself until I got to the large shipping scale at work on the 6th.  I was 425 lbs by that point.  Based on how quickly I was losing weight during that first 3 months of my new diet I figure that I was at least 435 lbs.  I got down to about 380 lbs, and then I just stopped losing weight.  I don’t know if it’s because I discovered that Fritos, Oreos, and many items at Taco Bell are Vegan or if I just… hmmm, no, that’s probably it.

Eric Anderson

P.S. to be continued…

Eric and the Velleity

“I need to make a change in my life, in my way of thinking, I need to either pursue this thing full on, whether it be good or bad, or just give it up and be happy with my lot in life.” - Eric Anderson February 22, 2012 at 9:19 AM (4 years 2 months 19 days 21 hours 41 minutes 0 seconds ago)

When I posted that, 133,224,060 seconds ago, I didn’t realize that there was a third option.  I had no idea that I would give up writing completely and also be miserable and unfulfilled creatively the entire time.  2,220,401 minutes ago, I thought that I was motivating myself to dedicate more time to this thing that I have almost always wanted to do with my life.  When I posted the last thing that I would write on the internet for 37,006.6 hours, other than a few insignificant tweets or facebook updates, I thought it was a new beginning and not an ending.  As those 1,541.9 days, 220.6 weeks, 50.6 months, and 4.2 years went by, I did not go a single one without thinking about starting to write again, but I guess that was a wish not strong enough to lead myself to action (Velleity).

Whenever I think about why I quit writing I can’t really narrow it down to a specific reason.  I was depressed, angry, terrified, and I just didn’t feel great about things in general.  I was unhappy and stressed out at work, I was fighting with pretty much anyone that pissed me off, and I was too lazy to get up and make myself do it.  I thought my writing was too whiney and sad to share with the world, which it was.  I just re-read, re-edited, and took notes on all 37 of my old posts, and there was a lot of crying in there.  I have known all along that I need to be doing this though, because it is my therapy, and my brain isn’t going to get better unless I start working out my issues (on the internet, for the world to read).

In early 2012 I started working every day of the week.  This continued for the entire year and took up 95% of the Sundays in it.  I decided to use that as an excuse to stop going to church.  I didn’t want to go anyway so that worked out, but I could have gotten off of work early enough to make it.  The day after Christmas of 2011 I wrote something about a person I had been fighting with since September on my health blog (I was trying to track weight loss and other health issues, probably stress, but it was super boring mostly).  Even though everything I wrote was 100% factual, in my opinion, it hurt some feelings and turned into a thing.  We argued about it for over a week, other people got involved, it was dumb, and it just upset me so much that I didn’t want to go back to church.  There were several people involved that I just didn’t want to see there.  I kept writing for a couple of months after that though.

I spent an inexcusable portion of 2012 illogically concerned that the world might end before the year was over.  If destruction wasn't reigned down by the Mayan demon death dragon (or whatever was supposed to happen) then it was surely coming from the crazies that believed in that nonsense.  I knew it was irrational at the time, and I know it even better now, 3 1/2 years later.  I probably shouldn’t admit that even a small part of me was terrified.  As soon as 2012 was over, and the planet not destroyed, so were the 72 plus hour work weeks, and all that sweet sweet overtime pay (We only thought we were broke before that time).

Then, 2013 started with a layoff at the plant and a major cut back on hours for those of us that were “fortunate” enough to stay.  The next three years were filled with rumors of layoffs, hour cut backs, slight hour increases, more hour cut backs, actual layoffs and finally a notice of plant closure last August (2015).  It was both a relief to finally know our fate and terrifying to not really know it at all (I am still unemployed along with my wife, who also worked at the plant).  We finally closed it down in December and the 4 1/2 months leading up to that day were some of the hardest of my life.  During all of that time I still didn’t go back to church.  It was much easier to just continue not going after I didn’t go for a year already, and I was (am) still angry.

In that past four years things haven’t really been bad for me.  We have been very fortunate.  I mean, sure, every time someone tells me what’s on the news I get depressed, angry or terrified all over again, but there have been plenty of good things that happened too.  I started a plant based diet (98% vegan, but I’ll get into that later), we had a surprise 99% impossible child (she’s the 1%, but not in the way that normally means), we bought a house that we love, I lost a job that I didn’t even really like (now, I am still unemployed, but maybe it was still a good thing and I should be looking at it as an opportunity), I still have a beautiful wife, and, now, three adorable children.

Since I quit officially writing, my brain has been sneakily getting me to write other places that might not have been entirely appropriate.  I wrote extra long meeting notes and speeches to my employees that I never actually gave.  I wrote long angry letters to companies that pissed me off, city officials that pissed me off, and to my HR rep about coworkers that pissed me off.  Apparently, when I am angry or fired up about something my grasp of the english language multiplies tenfold.  Also, it is apparent that I have anger issues that I need to work out.

So, now, 2016 is here.  Four years is a good length of time for me.  I got married to my wife after not seeing her for four years, and that has turned out pretty great.  I started going to church again almost 3 weeks ago (I’m not any less bitter or angry, but I need to try to let that stuff go).  I decided that I was going to start writing months ago, and I have spent that time doing everything I can to avoid actually doing it.  I both love and hate writing.  It gives me a headache, but it makes me feel better after it’s done.  My brother texted me back in January or February that he wanted to start blogging in addition to his short stories.  I half jokingly suggested that we should start a website together.  He seemed excited about the idea, and then it was too late for me to change my mind.  So, here I am, with a new website, and a journal full of private thoughts that I, for whatever reason, feel I should share with the world.  I have to whine here to, hopefully, avoid whining so much in my real life interactions.  I would say that it isn’t for you, and you don’t have to read it, but I will be checking the site metrics at least 42 times a day to see if you are.  That’s not really your problem though, is it?

Eric Anderson

P.S.  All the time math was done by this guy.  Thank you math cats.

Eric and The Career Choice

If I was truly committed to this writing thing I would stop watching television, stop playing stupid waste of time nonsense video games (anything that ends with the suffix –ville) and focus on reading and writing and exercising my brain (and it probably wouldn’t hurt me to exercise my body as well), but I can’t.  Television is so easy and awesome and I don’t want to miss anything (plus it is probably the only thing my wife and I have in common).  Reading is hard (everything distracts me).  Writing is hard (much harder than I thought it would be).  I’m never inspired at convenient times either.  I’ve discovered about myself that just getting the basic ideas down isn’t always enough for me later because I’m not in that same mood when I actually sit down to write.  How does anyone with a job, family, Xbox, and television addiction ever become a writer?  These are all things that I should have gotten around to after I became successful enough to have a quiet place to spend my day writing and not being pestered by employees (at home on my cell phone), coworkers (also, at home on my cell phone), wife, kids, other family members, TV, and pretty much life in general. It’s too late for all of that now, though.

Sometimes I look at my kids and they say (the big one) or do (the little one) amazing things and all I can think is that they are leaching my talent away from me.  That’s probably not how it works though, it is?  They’re just young and they have that thing that I used to have, what’s it called? Oh yeah, imagination.  I guess you just lose that over time as you “grow up” to become an “adult” or whatever.  I don’t want to be an adult; I don’t want to be mature and responsible.  I want to have those sparks of weird creativity that I used to have without overanalyzing everything.  I don’t want to think about whether it’s been done before, if it makes sense, or even if it’s entertaining to anyone besides me.  I feel like my psyche is slipping away from me.  I feel like every day I’m fighting my way back from the precipice of full on depression.

I need to make a change in my life, in my way of thinking, I need to either pursue this thing full on, whether it be good or bad, do it or just give it up and be happy with my lot in life.  I watch these people come to work and they are excited. They’re excited to have a job, excited to be a valued member of this place and society in general, excited to see their coworkers, and excited to just talk about their weekends and whatever’s going on with them outside of here.  I want that.  I want to just be happy and be the best whatever I do here possible, but there’s this idea that’s holding me back.  This tiny flicker in the back of my brain that says that I’m better than this, that I’m better than this place, that I absolutely should not settle on this, but that tiny flicker hasn’t gotten me anything but a deep depression so I need to shut it up.

This was not something I intended to write when I woke up this morning and I don’t have a conclusion at this point. Sorry

Eric Anderson

Eric and The ADD (or Eric and his Damaged Brain Part III or II)

                I found out that I had ADD when I was 17 (I know, we were a little behind on that); the reason that it took so long is because I lack the hyperactivity usually associated with the ADD.  My mom started reading a lot of books on the subject because she’s a school teacher (maybe that’s why she’s too busy to read my blog).  She started paying closer attention to me and my little brother’s behavior and decided that she should take us to a psychiatrist to get tested (I say tested, we only talked to a dude and he handed us some drugs).  For the past 14 years I’ve heard all the arguments about how ADD is bullshit and Dr.’s and pharmaceutical companies are just trying to make money and lazy parents are just trying to drug their children into being quiet.  Those people piss me off and I want to punch them in the throat (but I would never do that because I’m a nonviolent person).  I will concede that I do believe that it is an overly diagnosed disorder and maybe closer attention needs to be paid to those children to make sure they are getting what is best for them.  My argument for those people however is “do you have it?””do you know what it’s like to live in a brain where it is nearly impossible to focus on something that doesn’t interest you even if your livelihood and your family’s livelihood depend on it?” “No?” “Then shut up!” (sorry about that, I just got really angry for a moment there)  sure, doctors are liars and pharmaceutical companies are evil but when I took Ritalin all I could do was focus on the task at hand, but it affected my creativity so there was a trade off.  That didn’t really matter though because I wasn’t doing anything creative with my life and I needed to do my damn homework.

                Here are some symptoms of ADD that I displayed and continue to display; some of them are more obvious than others.  Unable to focus (let’s call that one obvious), and here’s a list I found online at http://helpguide.org/mental/adhd_add_adult_symptoms.htm (I added the notes)

1.    “zoning out” without realizing it, even in the middle of a conversation. (this happens to me a lot, but I usually realize it and just can’t help myself)

2.    extreme distractibility; wandering attention makes it hard to stay on track. (Duh!)

3.    difficulty paying attention or focusing; such as when reading or listening to others. (I’m sure everyone has this problem, right? Do you know how hard it is to read the same thing 37 times in a row and not retain any of it?  I’m sure you do. And do you know how hard it is to listen to the preacher on Sunday morning without losing track of whatever it is he’s talking about? You do, right?)

4.    struggling to complete tasks, even ones that seem simple. (If a task is boring then yes it’s really hard to complete, problem is that everything is boring to me, even things that interest me tend to lose my attention about half way through or sooner)

5.    tendency to overlook details, leading to errors or incomplete work. (Yes, it’s because I get tired of reading something about a quarter of the way through and generally just say “screw it, it’s good enough”)

6.    poor listening skills; hard time remembering conversations and following directions. (I actually have a pretty awesome long term memory, but following directions can be difficult for me)

7.    poor organizational skills (home, office, desk, or car is extremely messy and cluttered) (Holy Crap! Ask my boss, teachers, mother, wife etc… I can’t organize anything, over the past 2 years I have purchase no less than 16 organizational apps for my phone that I never use.  I buy folders, file cabinets, binders, whatever the stacking trays on my desk are called, calendars, and nothing works…at all…ever…seriously!!!!!)

8.    tendency to procrastinate (I just fell out of my chair laughing, I can’t even begin to explain how bad a problem procrastination is for me so I won’t try until later)

9.    trouble starting and finishing projects (are the people who wrote this list reading my journal)

10. chronic lateness (I am actually quite good at forcing myself to be on time for things by using external motivators [being fired is the main one], but I’m late for everything else.  I worked at Braum’s for 4 years and I was late every day for that whole time [I wonder why they fired me?] because they didn’t enforce the attendance like my current job does and I’ve never been on time to church)

11. frequently forgetting appointments, commitments, and deadlines (No, yes, and definitely)

12. constantly losing or misplacing things (keys, wallet, phone, documents, bills) (I have handled this problem by keeping all of my important items in the same place every day so that when I wake up in the morning I can just grab everything I need for work and go.  I used to just throw things places and would forget them every day)

13. underestimating the time it will take you to complete tasks (YES)

14. frequently interrupt others or talk over them (I don’t do this so much on account of the social anxiety and fear of humans)

15. have poor self-control (I’m 350 lbs. and in debt up to my eyeballs, what do you think?)

16. blurt out thoughts that are rude or inappropriate without thinking (this is the thing that gets me in more trouble than I care to admit)

17. have addictive tendencies (I’m going to have to point back at the 350lbs thing)

18. act recklessly or spontaneously without regard for consequences (That really just depends on my mood, but if I get overly excited of upset I have been known to make an ass of myself)

19. have trouble behaving in socially appropriate ways (such as sitting still during a long meeting) (I’m pretty okay with sitting still and pretending to pay attention, I’m just not paying attention at all, no matter how hard I try to focus my mind will always drift [and holy crap is it embarrassing when they ask me a question and I have no idea what they are talking about])

20. sense of underachievement (CHECK!)

21. doesn’t deal well with frustration (does anybody? Because I don’t…not at all)

22. easily flustered and stressed out (Of Course)

23. irritability or mood swings (Ask my wife, parents, coworkers, bosses, employees, teachers, and anyone else who has had the pleasure of meeting me)

24. trouble staying motivated (Are these symptoms getting repetitive?)(Motivation is the thing that I lack the most)

25. hypersensitivity to criticism (I don’t know if I can accurately explain how on the nose that is)

26. short, often explosive, temper (I think I’ve gotten better about this one, I feel like I’m more in control of my temper than I used to be, but I do relate to this one)

27. low self-esteem and sense of insecurity (my self-esteem is lower and I’m more insecure than a teenage girl)

                Okay, that exercise might have seemed kind of pointless and a little too repetitive but I needed to explain what it’s like in my brain (also, I should mention and I don’t know why but I added the numbers so if you going looking for the list on the hyperlink I provided it will look differently but the info is all there plus some that helps explain some myths about adult ADD…which is a real thing).  I understand that everyone reading this will probably relate to some of these symptoms some of the time, but I feel most of them the majority of the time and it sucks…or does it.  I mentioned that I’ve been on drugs for this and they helped me immensely to fit into society the way that I am supposed to fit, but they also killed my daydreaming and creativity.  My creativity seems to me to be a different than the useful kind that helps you to design building (my middle brother), or make art (also my middle brother), it just makes me see the world in a funnier way that is entertaining to me and a few other people I’ve been friends with over the years, but is almost impossible to do anything with that will help me contribute to society.  So I have to get a job and try to blend with the normies (is that how you would spell that?).  I want to do something with this writing thing but it’s hard with all of the distractions in my life (wife, kids, employees, etc…).  It is almost impossible for me to write at home without the radio blasting so that I can pretend that I’m the only one here.

                The point that I’m trying to get to, and failing miserably, is that I don’t necessarily think that this ADD is a bad thing.  I believe that maybe God made me this way on purpose and I need to find a way to make it work within this society that we live in or I don’t know screw those guys I guess, except those guys have the money that I need to survive so I take that back. I did a lot of research (by a lot I mean I half read a few articles on the internet and tried to remember what the doctors and my mom told me when I was younger) for this post, I’ve been planning it for months.  I’m not happy with how it turned out entirely but I can’t keep messing with it because I need to move on.

                One of the symptoms that I don’t think it mentioned is my inability to let anything go no matter how small or stupid it is or how little the rest of the planet cares about it.  That might be a symptom of my undiagnosed autism/ Asperger’s but I guess that’s a whole other post or not we’ll see.  During my research I read a study that said that sometimes people are diagnosed with ADD when they are actually mentally retarded so that’s something I might want to look into considering in my early years of elementary school I took an achievement test that actually said I was retarded (I’ve since taken many many more tests that disagree, but that thoughts always been in the back of my possibly retarded brain)

Eric Anderson

P.S. In case you don’t want to visit that website here’s something I found interesting for all of the haters out there

You don’t have to be hyperactive to have ADD / ADHD

Adults with ADD/ADHD are much less likely to be hyperactive than their younger counterparts. Only a small slice of adults with ADD/ADHD, in fact, suffer from prominent symptoms of hyperactivity. Remember that names can be deceiving and you may very well have ADD/ADHD if you have one or more of the symptoms above—even if you lack hyperactivity.

Myths and Facts about ADD / ADHD in Adults

MYTH: ADD/ADHD is just a lack of willpower. Persons with ADD/ADHD focus well on things that interest them; they could focus on any other tasks if they really wanted to.

FACT: ADD/ADHD looks very much like a willpower problem, but it isn’t. It’s essentially a chemical problem in the management systems of the brain.

MYTH: Everybody has the symptoms of ADD/ADHD, and anyone with adequate intelligence can overcome these difficulties.

FACT: ADD/ADHD affects persons of all levels of intelligence. And although everyone sometimes has symptoms of ADD/ADHD, only those with chronic impairments from these symptoms warrant an ADD/ADHD diagnosis.

MYTH: Someone can’t have ADD/ADHD and also have depression, anxiety, or other psychiatric problems.

FACT: A person with ADD/ADHD is six times more likely to have another psychiatric or learning disorder than most other people. ADD/ADHD usually overlaps with other disorders.

MYTH: Unless you have been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD as a child, you can’t have it as an adult.

FACT: Many adults struggle all their lives with unrecognized ADD/ADHD impairments. They haven’t received help because they assumed that their chronic difficulties, like depression or anxiety, were caused by other impairments that did not respond to usual treatment.

Source: Dr. Thomas E. Brown, Attention Deficit Disorder: The Unfocused Mind in Children and Adults

P.P.S. this is the end of my damaged brain trilogy or the beginning because I don’t know what order you read them in.  I hope you have been enlightened or at least entertained and if not then what am I supposed to do about it?

Eric and The Company of Men

            People keep telling me that I need to spend more time with men and that I need positive male influences to teach me how to be better at being a Godly man who is the spiritual leader of his family and all that.  Here’s the thing, I don’t like men very much of all the people that piss me off in the world most of them are men.  And it’s probably because of where I live there aren’t the right kind of men around for me to hang out with but that’s just how I see things in this small horrible town that I live in.  I don’t have anything in common with men, I don’t like cars, Nascar, wrestling, sports, shooting harmless animals (not that I have a problem with that, because God know I’ll eat the hell out of a steak, it’s just not the environment I like to be in).  I don’t like racism (this is Texas so it’s everywhere), I mentioned that I don’t like sports before (shocker) but let’s talk about the biggest sport for a second.  I hate football; it is the stupidest thing that has ever been invented in the history of things.  Except for maybe war and Howard the Duck (don’t act like you don’t remember).

Do you know how dumb it is to intentionally run into another running person who is running towards you? That can’t be good for anything inside of you.  Children should not be allowed to play it, with all of the studies out there now (by now I mean that this is a fairly recent discovery, see the P.P.P.S.) that talk about the long term side effects to getting hit in the head when you’re a child playing football, the parents and school administrators and coaches should all be arrested for child abuse (okay, maybe not arrested, but at least sternly talked to).  I don’t mine full grown adults killing themselves for millions of dollars out on a nationally televised football field (they deserve what they get), but the fact that it is still legal to let our children do these things to themselves and the fact that we encourage it so much is truly horrible.  We lift these young impressionable minds up to be “heroes” and we treat them like they are “soldiers” out on a battlefield just because they can run around on a field and hurt one another while we pretty much ignore the kids who like to read, learn and be artistic in any way at all.  Not only do we ignore these children we let the football players beat them up and pick on them constantly (high school was hard for me).

Now I know that the argument will be that everything is bad for something and that is true.  There are tons and tons of extremely dangerous retarded things that we all do on a regular basis, but this one just doesn’t make any sense.  Breaking bones is one thing but our brains are crazy fragile and this is dumb.  I keep seeing things about how our body is a temple and that the good Christian thing to do is take care of it (I’m obviously the worst about this because I’ve absolutely destroyed my temple, but that doesn’t make giving yourself a concussion okay)  Why can’t they just play soccer?  You don’t even want to hear what I have to say about the funding issues.  So I’ll stay away from that as it’s not the point of this particular rant.

            Now that that’s been said, let’s talk about the things I do like: most nerdy stuff, video games, science (although I’m not that good at it), technology, music, photography, movies, TV, books, comics, comedy, etc… mostly things that most men, at least around here, don’t give a rat’s ass about.  I don’t know how to relate with other men.  Every time I see a guy I don’t really know that well they’ll ask “so where you workin’ now?” as if that’s the most important thing in my life.  I don’t want to talk about my job I want to talk about the new batman or star trek movie.  I want to talk about the newest death cab for cutie album or how the scientist over at CERN might finally find the Higgs-Boson this year (again, something that’s very hard for me to understand but fascinates me none the less).  I want to talk about the walking dead or how the series finale of lost disappointed me more than I let on but it didn’t sour me on the whole series (and after weeks of reviewing it over and over in my head I grew to appreciate it) because it was truly one of the greatest most think inducing television shows that I’ve ever seen in my entire life (nothing ever made my brain try so hard to figure out what the crap was going on like lost did). I want to talk about how portal 2 has changed the way that I look at the world of gaming and how it’s the awesomest and funniest thing that I have ever experienced in my life.   I want to talk about battlestar galactica or doctor who or the elder scrolls, but I think you’re getting the point.  There are too many references to cram into this thing.

            Basically, I don’t get men and men don’t get me and I’m totally okay with that it just makes it hard for me to have any positive role models in my life.

Eric Anderson

P.S. I’m sorry that I hate football (I’m not really sorry that I hate football)

P.P.S. I’m sorry that I lied in the P.S.

P.P.P.S. in case you think that I’m making this stuff up here’s one of a million things talking about it http://www.webmd.com/parenting/news/20100830/sports-related-concussions-on-the-rise-in-kids and you can google the rest.