The Impossible Task

ADHD Part two: The impossible task.

In part one, A Thousand Problems, I present an abbreviated history of my life with ADHD.
The scope of the condition's effect on my life can not be understated. The difficulties have been
compounded by its failure to be diagnosed. My ADHD was missed by educators and myself.
It might have stayed hidden except for my current underemployment.


I'm in my longest period of full time employment. This is a long term period of stability, a massive relief after unemployment, and precarious employment. The job that took me out of precarious employment is a straight forward manufacturing job. In some ways I'm a pair of robot hands for turning wrenches. The job offers, steady hours, decent benefits and survivable pay. It was exactly what I needed at the time, though that is less and less the case now.

After two years of temp work I was nearly burned out. When I took the contract that would become my current job I was deeply exhausted. It would take months to climb out that fatigue. I was tired enough that early on sweeping the floor at the end of week was confusing. Become a full time employee removed many stresses, but I still feared that I would be marked expendable at any moment. The worry that carried forward shaped my work for a while. I knew poor sleep, and stress were making things harder. This stressed mindset diminished over the first year. Eventually stress dropped to a normal background level.

Life was feeling normal, a sense of security started to develop. Without the uncertainty and associated
stresses, I expected a overall improvement in performance. Mostly I did. Still I made errors frustrated
me and my supervisors. There is nothing sufficiently difficult about my work. It should have been easy for me to learn. After making some avoidable error, or missing an error done by someone else a
supervisor rhetorically asked, "what was wrong with you?" Internally I started to work on answering that question.

Repetitive work and an uninteresting pop radio station left my brain plenty of spare cycles to ponder this. I started the examination with the anxiety stemming from the uncertainty baked into me from temping too long. While it did provide explanation for some bad days, it did not cover enough. Depression followed a similar path, I could account for moods well enough to know, neither anxiety or depression were the main drivers for bad days. Another explanation was needed.

Other? What is my brain doing differently. Why are simple things hard. A slight historical aside. For a brief but significant period I was attempting to have a career. I had worked in exploration geology, a job that needs the backing of a Earth Sciences education. I have a bachelors of Science in Earth and
Environmental Science. That this career was doomed when I failed to pursue my professional association registration is beside the point. It was work that demanded some specialty knowledge and
some skills. It falls under my list of hard things. Also on my list of hard things, going to university and BCIT, and working as Geographic information Systems tech.

The tautology that hard things are hard may have delayed my asking, how hard should they be. ADHD limited the context I could observe. I could see that hard things were hard for me, I was not seeing that they were easier for others. Only in my current job did I have the opportunity to ask, why are the easy things hard too.

Multiple times I had to receive instruction on how bend a set of wires so they make a nice shape on the workpiece. Intellectually I knew I should be able to retain this information. Why did that information fall out of my head? I could watch the demo and two minutes later do work that looked like a drunk toddler did it. Every so often I would get it right, but I couldn't reconstruct how. This should have been simple. Questioning why a simple task in a job that requires no formal training was impossible was an important moment. Asking why easy things were hard too was an important part of the path to diagnosis and treatment. It would not be enough on its own it would take an Impossible Task to push me to that.

My right knee has an old injury. Its 90% managed by healthy amounts activity and keeping my weight down. In the winter of 2008 I got my boot suck in a pallet. I managed to pivot around on my knee, don’t do that. In the summer of 2017 I was doing too much. I was trail running, biking and a bunch of other things. Over the space of a couple weeks, I ignored pain signals that said slow down. I did one too many things. My knee got to the size of a small mellon.

The doctor told me largely what I expected, no new injury. Don't do it again, and you should get physio. X-rays confirmed it was an activation of the old injury. I agreed that physiotherapy was logical. Physio should have been easy to arrange. There's a clinic a block away from my apartment complex. Its hours can support after work sessions. The benefits package ways to offset the cost. Work would likely have been accommodating if I needed some time for it. All the pieces were available and obvious, I could not act on them. Somehow the simple three step process, book physio, do paper work to reduce costs,  and do physio was impossible.

The impossibility of a healthy logical, accessable, affordable, and beneficial service was what pushed
me to call my GP. I knew people all around me were fitting in after work activities, I should have been able to fit in an activity that could hasten my return to full mobility. I could not reconcile why I could not connect the parts and get the help I needed. So called my doctor to book an appointment.

My knee was injured in late July of 2017. I called my Doctor's office in the middle of October.
I would not see the specialist until late April 2018. Those 8 or so months, are now worthy of their own post.

Story continues, in part three the Long wait.