This wasn't supposed to be an episode.

I've been trying to find more ways to overcome my strange block to creating content here, and one suggestion I got from another content creator was "just put on a mic or a camera and just talk. No expectation of creating something worth publishing -- just getting used to being recorded."

On the afternoon of Friday, May 1st, I had to drive out to the VA to (ha!) pick up my ADHD meds for the next month. It takes about thirty minutes to get to the pharmacy there, and I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to put this into practice.

What it turned out to be was a textbook example of working memory failure, distraction, and the ways our systems we create to externalize executive function can both fail spectacularly and also mitigate the consequences.

Honestly, there's nothing I could say or edit that would make the point more clearly, so I am presenting it here in its unedited, live, on the spot glory.

Enjoy. And, if you can empathize...I see you.

Read more about ADHD at http://adhdopen.space -- and if you want to learn how to use paper-based thinking to help your brain, you might enjoy http://papermancy.art !

A lot of maxims, truisms, corollaries, and such got left on the metaphorical cutting room floor. In the interest of completeness and inclusion, here are some of the related phenomena that have epitomized my experience of ADHD:

Originally published as an article on Medium.com .

For the last few months I've been writing down things that help me function with ADHD. These were short phrases, kind of like mantras: hurrying is kryptonite. Nothing is on the way to anything else. Choice is friction.

I started calling this my "Rules of ADHD", and planned to write them up — but when I got to number sixteen, I realized that would make for a pretty complicated article. Also, who's going to remember sixteen different rules, especially when there were likely to be more?

I'm lucky enough to be friends with Amber Beckett from The Hello Code and she suggested I look for over-arching themes, groupings that might simplify these rules into basic concepts from which the rules could be extrapolated to fit different ADHD experiences.

With a bit of searching, I discovered there's a word for that: axiom. After the obligatory "If you don't know, why don't you axiom?" joke, the following six Axioms of ADHD emerged:

1. The Axiom of Stuff
2. The Axiom of Transitions
3. The Axiom of Magical Thinking
4. The Axiom of Options
5. The C.R.A.S.H. Axiom
6. The Final Axiom

Curious to know what they are and how they can maybe help you navigate this world? Listen to the podcast and find out!

As always, comments are welcome here or emailed to gray@adhdopen.space .