Perhaps there is a deeper bigger picture meaning to it. Perhaps not. Some People are too quick to ascribe bigger picture reasons to everything that happens to them in life. As if the original reason — the original cause that elicited the effect — is not enough. From a rational perspective obviously that cannot always be the case. Sometimes we break our arm falling out of tree because we were in a tree and shouldnt have been, period. But sometimes the doctor who treats us in the ER turns out to be the love of our life and we marry them. Providence. Serendipity. Synchronicity. Depending on one’s over all belief system all three of those words mean basically the same thing. And there’s no getting around the fact that these paradigms exist.
Motion Sickness
Dear Kristen,
Sorry to hear about your little one’s motion sickness. I have NO idea how on earth you heard that I have it — talk about the end of privacy in the modern age! — but you’re right. I do. And no, I don’t mind taking a few minutes to share how we handle it. You are right, I am someone who travels a lot. And that makes it all the worse. But there are ways to treat it. Like your two year old son, I have suffered from motion sickness since i was a baby. At first my parents thought that i had contracted some sort of flu, until a doctor recognized that it was probably just motion sickness. Decades later I am still “dealing” with it.
Hyland’s Motion Sickness tablets as you mentioned are slightly helpful. But being a homeopathic product, and therefore very “subtle” on the bio-system — they are probably just not strong enough for your little one compared to how severe his motion sickness is. I use that product regularly — whenever traveling (even in cars, but also planes trains and subways (forget about boats — I cannot get near them) and it does seem to make a difference.
It may be in my head, haha!, but it seems to help. BUT… i must add that it is in addition to taking half a tablet of non-drowsy formula Dramamine (the ingredient is called meclizine hcl, 50 mgs and you can get the generic version of it much less expensively than the name brand Dramamine). I buy them from Amazon.com in bottles of 100, usually three bottles at a time. I basically live on the stuff in order to not feel dizzy. Sucks. But it’s just the way it has been for me since I can remember.
I usually do not require the full strength Dramamine anymore. The non-drowsy formula does just fine for me. I will take a half of one an hour before traveling (letting it dissolve under my tongue for better absorption, because they’re chewable) and another half about 30 minutes before traveling. They almost always do the trick. I believe the Hyland’s also just helps in some way. Seems to anyway. Regarding other medications, I have tried them all. I was on Scoplomine for a long time, and quite honestly I would never give that to a child. In fact, I would never even give it to me again. I found the side effects much to severe and frankly I am not even sure it wasn’t making matters worse. It makes your vision so blurry that you cannot even read after a few days on it. Horrible stuff. I would say the same applies for all the other meds out there for it.
I will assume that you know all the rules and tips and tricks to battle motion sickness since your child has it, but just in case I will list a few here. The sea-bands they sell (including expensive watches now) that are supposed to work on your meridian pulse points I have never found to be very effective for me personally. Although I know people who swear by them. Make sure your son is always sitting in the front seat. Difficult for a 2 year old I know, but it makes a HUGE difference. The back seat is horrible for someone with motion sickness. I’m not sure if it’s illegal where you live; I assume it is in most States. But the less he’s in that back seat the better.
Obviously make sure he never reads, watches TV, or uses a game or cell phone while in the car. That’s just asking for it. And that he always looks straight ahead, out the window when you are driving. Really makes a difference. We also always keep salty crackers in the car. Just in case one of us starts feeling a bit dizzy. For whatever reason, a few crackers (with some sodium content — low-sodium crackers never seem to do anything) really help take the dizziness away and prevent it from getting worse — as in elevating to nausea. Having a carbonated beverage on hand such as Sprite really helps too. But (and this might be obvious if you are health conscious already) avoiding all caffeinated drinks while traveling also really helps. For whatever reason, caffeine tends to make motion sickness worse. Coca Cola or Pepsi for instance are killers when it comes to increasing dizziness. Yes I have heard about people using ginger. But frankly when one has motion sickness really bad, that’s just not going to touch it compared to Dramamine.
They say motion sickness is usually inner-ear related and is genetic and hereditary, and thus there is nothing that can be done for it. I’m third generation at least, maybe longer. At least one person in every generation of our family has it. I have seen specialists all over the world for it and participated in countless tests and experiments and so far have never found any that have been able to offer any tips better than these. Dramamine seems to be our best defense.That and lots of rest. For some reason I find that if I am tired or sleepy before traveling it tends to potentate it.
Regarding sleeping in the car or bus or wherever, I find that it’s usually the best method of relief once it comes on. Or to prevent it from coming on. So a homeopathic calming tablet or two is also good for that. Just to relieve the anxiety that comes with knowing you might get motion sick when entering a moving vehicle. Sometimes I think the anxiety of worrying about getting it actually causes it. (go figure… ha!) But I’ve had plenty of experiences where I wasn’t even thinking about it and it still came on. First the dizziness, then the sweating… and well, you know. Best thing you can do is always remember that even though YOU aren’t susceptible to it or feeling it in the moment, it doesn’t mean that your son isn’t. Many try to “suffer through it” because it feels so ridiculous and can easily ruin a good time with family and friends. But it’s a very real dis-ease. Love understanding and compassion from others work wonders. And PS — some people actually grow out of it they say. Let us hope that’s the case with your son.
Cheers,
Fishy
Motion Sickness
Dear Kristen,
Sorry to hear about your little one’s motion sickness. I have NO idea how on earth you heard that I have it — talk about the end of privacy in the modern age! — but you’re right. I do. And no, I don’t mind taking a few minutes to share how we handle it. You are right, I am someone who travels a lot. And that makes it all the worse. But there are ways to treat it. Like your two year old son, I have suffered from motion sickness since i was a baby. At first my parents thought that i had contracted some sort of flu, until a doctor recognized that it was probably just motion sickness. Decades later I am still “dealing” with it.
Hyland’s Motion Sickness tablets as you mentioned are slightly helpful. But being a homeopathic product, and therefore very “subtle” on the bio-system — they are probably just not strong enough for your little one compared to how severe his motion sickness is. I use that product regularly — whenever traveling (even in cars, but also planes trains and subways (forget about boats — I cannot get near them) and it does seem to make a difference.
It may be in my head, haha!, but it seems to help. BUT… i must add that it is in addition to taking half a tablet of non-drowsy formula Dramamine (the ingredient is called meclizine hcl, 50 mgs and you can get the generic version of it much less expensively than the name brand Dramamine). I buy them from Amazon.com in bottles of 100, usually three bottles at a time. I basically live on the stuff in order to not feel dizzy. Sucks. But it’s just the way it has been for me since I can remember.
I usually do not require the full strength Dramamine anymore. The non-drowsy formula does just fine for me. I will take a half of one an hour before traveling (letting it dissolve under my tongue for better absorption, because they’re chewable) and another half about 30 minutes before traveling. They almost always do the trick. I believe the Hyland’s also just helps in some way. Seems to anyway. Regarding other medications, I have tried them all. I was on Scoplomine for a long time, and quite honestly I would never give that to a child. In fact, I would never even give it to me again. I found the side effects much to severe and frankly I am not even sure it wasn’t making matters worse. It makes your vision so blurry that you cannot even read after a few days on it. Horrible stuff. I would say the same applies for all the other meds out there for it.
I will assume that you know all the rules and tips and tricks to battle motion sickness since your child has it, but just in case I will list a few here. The sea-bands they sell (including expensive watches now) that are supposed to work on your meridian pulse points I have never found to be very effective for me personally. Although I know people who swear by them. Make sure your son is always sitting in the front seat. Difficult for a 2 year old I know, but it makes a HUGE difference. The back seat is horrible for someone with motion sickness. I’m not sure if it’s illegal where you live; I assume it is in most States. But the less he’s in that back seat the better.
Obviously make sure he never reads, watches TV, or uses a game or cell phone while in the car. That’s just asking for it. And that he always looks straight ahead, out the window when you are driving. Really makes a difference. We also always keep salty crackers in the car. Just in case one of us starts feeling a bit dizzy. For whatever reason, a few crackers (with some sodium content — low-sodium crackers never seem to do anything) really help take the dizziness away and prevent it from getting worse — as in elevating to nausea. Having a carbonated beverage on hand such as Sprite really helps too. But (and this might be obvious if you are health conscious already) avoiding all caffeinated drinks while traveling also really helps. For whatever reason, caffeine tends to make motion sickness worse. Coca Cola or Pepsi for instance are killers when it comes to increasing dizziness. Yes I have heard about people using ginger. But frankly when one has motion sickness really bad, that’s just not going to touch it compared to Dramamine.
They say motion sickness is usually inner-ear related and is genetic and hereditary, and thus there is nothing that can be done for it. I’m third generation at least, maybe longer. At least one person in every generation of our family has it. I have seen specialists all over the world for it and participated in countless tests and experiments and so far have never found any that have been able to offer any tips better than these. Dramamine seems to be our best defense.That and lots of rest. For some reason I find that if I am tired or sleepy before traveling it tends to potentate it.
Regarding sleeping in the car or bus or wherever, I find that it’s usually the best method of relief once it comes on. Or to prevent it from coming on. So a homeopathic calming tablet or two is also good for that. Just to relieve the anxiety that comes with knowing you might get motion sick when entering a moving vehicle. Sometimes I think the anxiety of worrying about getting it actually causes it. (go figure… ha!) But I’ve had plenty of experiences where I wasn’t even thinking about it and it still came on. First the dizziness, then the sweating… and well, you know. Best thing you can do is always remember that even though YOU aren’t susceptible to it or feeling it in the moment, it doesn’t mean that your son isn’t. Many try to “suffer through it” because it feels so ridiculous and can easily ruin a good time with family and friends. But it’s a very real dis-ease. Love understanding and compassion from others work wonders. And PS — some people actually grow out of it they say. Let us hope that’s the case with your son.
Cheers,
Fishy
Think Less Do More
Which Self Improvement Course Do You Recommend?
One of the many aspects of this profession is answering a constant onslaught of questions that come in from other people. It is an endless chain of a nearly infinite collection of topics and subjects that comes in 24 hours a day from all over the world. They come in the mail. They come through email (no matter how often I change email addresses). And they come through social media such as Facebook and Twitter, or in Comments on various websites we run such as this one. Most I do not have the time to answer. Most are ridiculous to be honest. But some are intensely heart felt and thought provoking. For the most part I try to answer a few per day. Especially if they are substantive or from someone that I know. Bare in mind that I “know” many people, as my ever tolerant wife continues to remind me.Lately I have been entertaining the idea of answering the questions that come in (if appropriate) publicly. It might help minimize the flow, and in the bigger picture I hope it serves to help more.
But it didn’t work out that way for me. I’ve written about it in past entries. The story has already been recorded. One can only have so many super-natural experiences that betray what our mind wants to believe versus what we, as our full beings, actually experience before they give in and accept that things aren’t always as what we want them to be. In my case, I didn’t “find God”, or religion. God(Goddess) found me. And hasn’t let me go since. I cannot say I am unhappy about this. Frankly I have been thrilled since the moment it happened and thank God everyday and every moment I remember to for the miraculous gift it is to have such an open connection and communication with Him/Her/It.
True Love
Hit me like a ton of bricks on the head. All at once. Just bam in the moment. Watching one of those Ed Burns New York period films. NEWLYWEDS I think. Anyway at one point there’s this woman on the screen, a closeup, just her face. She’s an older woman who’s been married for 18 years who has a son who’s about to go to college and getting divorced.
I’m kicking back watching this movie and staring at this woman’s face, who’s perfectly normal looking, in fact she’s the epitome of plain, nothing wrong with her. But she’s old. Probably mid to late forties. But not bad looking. And she’s talking about now that she’s divorced she’s going to go out with all these men. So as a man myself I’m staring at her and thinking “there’s not a chance I would ever go out with that chick. Look how old she is.”
And then it hits me. I’m married. And to a woman who’s older. With kids even. The Associated Press interviewed us last year for an article about “cougars and cubs” for Gods sake. And yet I totally love my wife. I mean I am madly in love with her. Always have been. Since the moment we met. Kids and all. And I had a strict “no kids policy” the entire time I was a single man. Never even entertained the idea. Not once. Not one girl in 20 years as a single man.
And yet here I am. Married for almost three years. Kids and all. Wanting to have more kids even. And happier than I’ve ever been in my life. And that’s the thing. The age thing. That may matter when you’re watching a movie and you’re in your head and thinking about whether or not you’d be attracted to some strange girl you see on the screen. Same with looks and size and facial or body features or maybe even where the persons from or what they do for a living.
But in real life it doesn’t work like that. And that’s a good thing. A real good thing. In real life none of that matters. When you meet the one you just know. And it doesn’t matter where they’re from or how old they are. You turn around and look at your special someone and you get that feeling inside. Your heart melts just a little bit more. As it always does. And you know.
You know that as hard as we try when we’re single and searching and wondering who are perfect mate is going to be that none of those thoughts we have really matter. They’re almost completely insignificant. You can make list after list. God knows I did. And you can spend hours upon hours at the local diner talking to your friends about it over brunch every Sunday.
But none of it matters. Because when you do meet you just know. Something bigger than your mind’s perceived preferences and qualifications takes over. Sure it’s chemistry in the beginning. But it’s more than that. Way more. And it’s got nothing to do with what’s on the outside. Call it magic. Fate. Destiny. The invisible hand of a mysterious power as of yet undiscovered that brings the two of you together and bonds you in a way you’ve never experienced before. It makes you understand why humankind created the term soul mate.
And I’ll take that any day over a perceived perfect match based on outer shell characteristics like age height weight education religion nationality or even gender. All of which in the bigger picture don’t even really play a role in how you feel about the person once you’ve met and realized how much you love and cherish them.
One might call it true love. And to be fair that’s what I believe it is. And it sure as hell has nothing to do with anything we think it does till it actually happens to us. We just can’t really understand this till it does happen to us. That’s the thing. But when it does… Well then. That’s when we finally get it. That’s when we know.
True Love
Hit me like a ton of bricks on the head. All at once. Just bam in the moment. Watching one of those Ed Burns New York period films. NEWLYWEDS I think. Anyway at one point there’s this woman on the screen, a closeup, just her face. She’s an older woman who’s been married for 18 years who has a son who’s about to go to college and getting divorced.
I’m kicking back watching this movie and staring at this woman’s face, who’s perfectly normal looking, in fact she’s the epitome of plain, nothing wrong with her. But she’s old. Probably mid to late forties. But not bad looking. And she’s talking about now that she’s divorced she’s going to go out with all these men. So as a man myself I’m staring at her and thinking “there’s not a chance I would ever go out with that chick. Look how old she is.”
And then it hits me. I’m married. And to a woman who’s older. With kids even. The Associated Press interviewed us last year for an article about “cougars and cubs” for Gods sake. And yet I totally love my wife. I mean I am madly in love with her. Always have been. Since the moment we met. Kids and all. And I had a strict “no kids policy” the entire time I was a single man. Never even entertained the idea. Not once. Not one girl in 20 years as a single man.
And yet here I am. Married for almost three years. Kids and all. Wanting to have more kids even. And happier than I’ve ever been in my life. And that’s the thing. The age thing. That may matter when you’re watching a movie and you’re in your head and thinking about whether or not you’d be attracted to some strange girl you see on the screen. Same with looks and size and facial or body features or maybe even where the persons from or what they do for a living.
But in real life it doesn’t work like that. And that’s a good thing. A real good thing. In real life none of that matters. When you meet the one you just know. And it doesn’t matter where they’re from or how old they are. You turn around and look at your special someone and you get that feeling inside. Your heart melts just a little bit more. As it always does. And you know.
You know that as hard as we try when we’re single and searching and wondering who are perfect mate is going to be that none of those thoughts we have really matter. They’re almost completely insignificant. You can make list after list. God knows I did. And you can spend hours upon hours at the local diner talking to your friends about it over brunch every Sunday.
But none of it matters. Because when you do meet you just know. Something bigger than your mind’s perceived preferences and qualifications takes over. Sure it’s chemistry in the beginning. But it’s more than that. Way more. And it’s got nothing to do with what’s on the outside. Call it magic. Fate. Destiny. The invisible hand of a mysterious power as of yet undiscovered that brings the two of you together and bonds you in a way you’ve never experienced before. It makes you understand why humankind created the term soul mate.
And I’ll take that any day over a perceived perfect match based on outer shell characteristics like age height weight education religion nationality or even gender. All of which in the bigger picture don’t even really play a role in how you feel about the person once you’ve met and realized how much you love and cherish them.
One might call it true love. And to be fair that’s what I believe it is. And it sure as hell has nothing to do with anything we think it does till it actually happens to us. We just can’t really understand this till it does happen to us. That’s the thing. But when it does… Well then. That’s when we finally get it. That’s when we know.
Dyslexia: Observations
As discussed numerous times in the past, I’ve had dyslexia since I was born (so we’ve been told). They say it stems from or at least often accompanies ADHD; both of which I was diagnosed with at an early age. ADHD has been the greater challenge to be sure when comparing the two. Especially since the ADD portion of it had not yet even been discovered (or invented as some argue) and definitely not yet understood or labeled back then. I, along with millions of others, was instead just labeled as being “particularly special” or a problem or a trouble maker or learning challenged, and usually placed in a variety of different “Special Ed.” type programs. (To make matters more confusing for us all, especially pour moi and my young mind, I was also ironically made to begin school a year early, skip the first grade entirely (both of which made me ridiculously smaller, more immature and less hairy than my peers — but that’s a different story, albeit a funny one), and placed in what they then called the “Gifted” programs due to higher than normal test scores. Yes, indubitably my first 16 years of life were a mind boggling roller coaster of fuck all confusion and chaos.)
To be fair to others, in order to better understand the context of anything i might say here, it should be noted that although it was recommended repeatedly to my parents throughout my school years, they chose to never put me on medication for these “challenges”, always insisting that with just a little more effort I could do just as well as the next kid. I just “needed more discipline”. This isn’t really the area I intended to focus on here, so let’s leave the pros and cons of that argument to the side for the time being and perhaps come back to it at a later date.
Ok fine, now that I’ve got us thinking about it, yes I do believe that that was a terrible mistake, though I’m sure an innocent one out of pure ignorance on my parents’ part, and indeed I most likely would have fared much better during those years had they at least tried a few medications as suggested. I will never forget that moment, on the floor of my mother’s office, seeing my transcripts for college at the age of 16 for the very first time — 11 years of school and never a grade higher than a D or F on every report card. I was more than shocked. Which illuminates the problem of the condition of ADHD itself perhaps better than anything else one might come up with: my mother God bless her couldn’t understand my shock, casually remarking “Well Fishy you know you’ve never done well in school. You’re very lucky your father and I were able to get this college to accept you.” To which I replied “Well… I knew I wasn’t an A student… But I had no idea I spent the last 16 years producing over 40 report cards filled with D’s and F’s my entire life. My God! Why didn’t you all DO something mom?!?” “Honey we tried! Do you have any idea how many visits to the principles office I have made on your behalf since you started school?!? I practically lived there!”
And she was right. She had practically lived in the principles office since I could remember. The telling point is that up until that moment, for whatever reason… There must have been something different about that moment… I was never “aware” that I was a “bad” student or made bad grades. Even though all the adults around me knew it, assumed it to be true and tried everything they could to help me. That in a nutshell is what having ADHD is all about. You’re here. And yet you’re not here. You appear to be here to everyone else. But you’re just not really here. So people assume you know things that you just don’t know. In fact you don’t even know there are things that you’re supposed to know but don’t. It’s that bad. At least it was for me.
So as not to cause inadvertent influence in a direction unintended, I will state for the record that since those early years I have tried every medication known to humankind for these challenges and have found none of them to be a benefit enough to surpass the detrimental side effects of them. An important side note I believe.
As an adult I am still struggling with the three main aspects of these “conditions”, e.g. a weakened ability to control my attention for more than a few seconds or stay “here” spatially, mentally or in here-now time; a challenge to sit still or focus on any one thing for more than a few seconds, a propensity for constant repeated movement (the appearance of what they call “hyperactivity”), an inability to finish sentences or stay in a focused conversation without run on sentences or infinite digressions and side roads I find interesting(can you tell?), and a severe challenge with reading and writing in a linear fashion.
Case in point: this Diary entry started off as a simple Status Update on Facebook about an hour and a half ago whereby I intended to make a simple remark about how I have noticed that I have been consistently misspelling the same words when i write my entire life inadvertently even though I know how to spell them. It quickly became too long and was thus moved here to the Diaries and here we are an hour and a half later still writing, and covering way more information than originally intended.
Of course as a writer i have been told that i should find this to be a more than helpful benefit, a bonus really. My beautiful (and more than patient and tolerant) wife often remarks that I have an uncanny ability to find anything and everything “interesting” and can write about even the most mundane things and make them seem important or interesting. I know it can be a brutal burden when another is confronted with this strange tendency at 3 am in the morning when one is trying to sleep and I’m still rambling on about the fall of The British Empire wide eyed and excited as a lark at sunrise. But from a writer’s or songwriter’s perspective and equally from a performer’s perspective I am well aware and none too shy about admitting that all of these so called challenges put me leagues above and beyond other so called “normal” people.
It takes the equivalent of copious amounts of horse tranquilizers to get me to go to sleep in a 24 hour period — versus staying awake for days at a time which is what I would do without the supplements I take to sleep and wake a “normal” cycle as everyone else does. This provides me with ten times the energy and thus productive output of “normal” folk. I’ve also never experienced what people call writer’s block. Can’t even relate to or understand it honestly. On the contrary, I often pray, beg or use affirmations (or simply drug myself into a stupor) to NOT write a song or two a day, or a short story or play or poem or blog or start a new novel or screenplay or invent something or start a new company (of which we currently have tens and tens of for example). So to me personally, in the bigger picture the detractions and challenges of this “illness or disease” are pretty much balanced out by the myriad super natural like benefits of it.
But alas none of this was what I originally intended to write about when nearly two hours ago I told one of my bandmates to “hang on a minute, I’ve got to make a quick note. I’ll be right back.” What struck me this morning while composing a simple thank you note to someone was how I noticed yet again that I had misspelled the word ‘pleasure’ putting the a in front of the e as I do every single time I write that word. And it was from there that we first entertained the notion to jot down a quick list of observations about the dyslexia aspect of ADHD. (I’ve also read that a small fraction of those individuals afflicted with the challenge are prone to referring to themselves in the plural — such as “we” and “us” versus using the seemingly more appropriate singular pronoun “I”, so I’ve never taken this too seriously.)
The dyslexia doesn’t affect my reading half as much as it does my writing. Luckily i do not have any of the symptoms of those who read words backwards or see letters turned around. Never have. The worst part for me in regards to reading is that it may take me having to read the same sentence or paragraph three to ten times in a row in order to understand it because I “space out” while reading it and cannot for the life of me remember what I just read. But that is due more to the ADD portion of it all, not the dyslexia aspect.
Over the last few years particularly I’ve become very determined to integrate this whole thing and get control over it. The first step was to start attempting to fully observe how it manifests, as if from afar, so I can teach or train myself to stop before I make the mistakes. This has helped. Though it frustrates the hell out of me that no matter how slowly I write or how much I attempt to focus I still misspell the same words over and over again, always in the same manner. NOT through misspelling them, but rather through making mistakes in writing the letters in reverse by mistake. From here it will be easier to just go to listing the observations.
Observations:
– we are talking about both handwriting — script and print– and typing.
– I know how to spell the words. My hand makes the mistake. As if by habit. It happens right in front of my eyes even if I whisper aloud to myself “spell it right, be careful, don’t get it wrong, write more slowly, don’t forget…”
– at some point in those few milliseconds my mind blanks out and my eyes notice that my hand has placed an l where an e should be in the word ‘meet’. Even though I was deliberately focusing on not doing it.
– I then have to go fix it. When handwriting it makes my notes and letters look like chicken scratch, with tons of words crossed out or lined through or bold letters scratched into the middle of a word as if they’ve been unnaturally crammed in there, making nearly everything i write illegible — even to myself; as if I am some sort of retard or mad scientist and have barely a brain in my head. All the while I know perfectly well how to spell and in fact don’t often come across any words that I don’t know the spelling of, in a variety of different languages. It’s just not a spelling issue. Though it may appear to be so from a distance if one didn’t know that it’s more of some kind of neurological glitch.
– Yes, though I’ve not taken the time to submit it to a formal clinical trial, there does seem to be one particular set of words that I consistently misspell every time I go to write them. Always the same thing, omitting a letter I know should be there, or switching letters around in a word, or writing a letter in a strange way like backwards or elongated.
– In other words it is not random. It is very much interdependent on specific words I’ve just not completely identified which words they are in total. But I’ve got a good idea of many of them. When typing for example I always type a space between the o and the u in the word you. So much so (as in every time) that I created an auto-correct macro in Microsoft word that turns yo u into you so I no longer have to deal with going back to correct it every time.
– Yes, you’re not abnormal if by now you are thinking that I’m crazy strange or have a severely rough go at it. I hear it all the time when people learn these things. But I’m so accustomed to living this way that I don’t notice it as much as others do and I am also happy that I’m smart enough to create work arounds to deal with it and resilient enough to not get discouraged by it.
– in fact I don’t have muc patience for people who get discouraged by the challenges the we’re born with. I often wonder if this isn’t also just another aspect of the same malady. This impatience being a sub-symptom of the hyperactivity.
– Yes I’ve had numerous tests and been to many of the most respected and renowned medical facilities and labs in the world over the last twenty years to get all these things tested.
– I had brain mapping done last year where they hooked 21 different electrodes to my scalp with this temporary glue and monitored my brain activity for 30 minutes each for a few days each week for a few weeks to see if they could ascertain why i had so many weird mental emotional and cognitive anomalies. The doctor, a fellow who has several specials on PBS on the subject, was astounded to see that the print outs consistently showed that my brainwaves are in reverse order of what is considered a “normal person’s” brain, i.e. Where I am supposed to exhibit amplified activity of beta waves I instead have hyper activity of theta waves, and vice versa.
– Though his conclusion is still ongoing as we continue to study this, he did offer some help when explaining that this is why valium and other sedatives tend to make me hyperactive and super creative and excited and caffeine makes me feel sleepy and pass out sometimes. This was actually a relief to discover. Though I note the it isn’t always this way. It’s quite random. Sometimes caffeine makes me quite wired and valium or Xanax makes me quite sleepy. It’s pot luck really. I just never know what I’m going to get from medications.
– For whatever reason natural supplements for both energy and/or relaxation seem to work better, as in more consistently for me, but they too usually tend to have an opposite effect on me. So I’m a terrible person to ask “how does such and such work for you?”
– Drinking half a glass of tea makes me literally pass out within minutes wherever I happen to be. Even if sitting in a chair in a public place. We now know it is the L-theanine in the tea, which is relaxing to everyone, but combined with the caffeine has a synergistic effect on my body so intense that I cannot keep my eyes open.
– According to our mom, who has been very helpful and caring through these last few years that i have decided to tackle these issues head on in order to correct them, I have always been a night owl since she can remember, choosing to want to stay awake all night and sleep all day even as a baby. Now as an adult, during the day I feel sleepy and groggy and anxious all at the same time, and come nightfall I begin to “wake up” and feel at my best and most confident and creative. I have heard every reason in the book offered as the reason for this. None of them seem valid or have been helpful except that offered by the primary psychiatrist who has been handling this project since 2008 — his solution was “Being in New York City, I have plenty of clients Who work in the entertainment industry and a few of them have this same condition. My advice is for you to accept it. Why not go to sleep at 4 or 5 or 6 am when you feel sleepy? And wake up around noon or 1 or 2 pm?” This is how I have lived for most of my adult life since about the age of 16 years old. His suggestion for me to accept it got my attention and judgment off of it, which is always a good thing. And it allowed me to “choose” what I wanted to do. Seeing that I am now married and have a family (and enjoy seeing them and spending time with them) and more than a full time job, I chose instead to use medication to attempt to go to bed and wake up at semi-normal hours, usually bed by 2 or 3am and awake by 8am with a one hour nap at some point in the afternoon to catch up on the sleep I lose on this schedule.
– Mysteriously I was able to attend college, two actually — music, music business, and audio-engineering school, and regular university afterwards, and I did remarkably well. I made honors by my first semester, became a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and participated in primarily small classroom inter-disciplinary classes which I did much better in compared to regular lecture like classes. This proved that I could in fact use my will to do well in school if I was determined enough. Though it was an incessant challenge for me. It was never “easy”. Not even one day. I must admit I accomplished much through sheer charm and force of will rather than through the proper channels of study.
– I am unable to read, write, study, or focus on anything if there is the least amount of noise or sounds in my vicinity. This makes it unbearably inconvenient for others around me since I do almost nothing else but read write learn and study in my day to day to life.
– During the day I have the uncanny ability to fall asleep any time and anywhere. No matter what’s happening around me. In broad daylight. My family thinks it odd and hates that I spend the few brief days I have at home each year over the holidays with everyone “asleep on the couch.” And likewise I have extreme difficulty falling asleep at night. So I spend most nights working till almost sunrise while everyone else in the house is fast asleep.
– The fact that I turned into such an avid, one could fairly say obsessed learner and studier as an adult shows that the report cards from my school years as a child were not indicative of any kind of academic weakness or lack of interest in learning (even then I was independently learning and studying at a rabid/rapid pace — just not necessarily what was specifically required of or dictated to me at that moment), but obviously due more to these neurological anomalies we’ve since learned more about.
– The implications in the bigger picture, for others, is that if they or their parents or guardians can catch this at an early stage in their life and create deliberate fixes and or work-arounds — even if it means special schools designed for those with these challenges — they might be able to entirely avoid the problems I experienced as a youngster and do quite well in school.
– When brain-mapping the labs and clinics also tried several new experimental therapies such as shooting low wave electrical pulses into my brain through the electrodes for thirty minutes at a time. Unfortunately these tended to only make me more sleepy and depressed for days afterwards. I quickly decided to stop participating in the experiments after a few sessions and continence instead with my own methods, e.g. extreme quiet and silence, requesting more alone time and isolated environments when needing to work, and using my will to force myself to focus when necessary, etc.
– The goal now, forgetting all but the dyslexia portion if the challenge is to create a list of all the words I consistently misspell on a regular basis through these momentary glitches; see if we can find any others who struggle with the same words or the problem in general, and in the meantime, spend more time slowing things down when I write to focus on each word I write to see if I can overcome the errors one word at a time.
– I am also interested to see if any work has been done on this particular subset of words by any groups or communities in various fields of study to learn if there might be some scientific explanation for why only these words and why these specific mistakes with them. My guess is that there has to be some sort of correlation between the words themselves, the errors being made, and a specific neurological misfiring so to speak that connects it all together. If this turns out to be the case then there is hope that through some form of therapy, my guess would be either northern or southern polar magnetic stimulation of certain meridian lines, we could recalibrate the brainwaves that are operating in reverse and set them straight, thereby negating the need entirely for me to have to train myself to force my brain to focus on not making the same mistakes with the same words and letters every time I write them. That’s the hope at least.
Dyslexia: Observations
To be fair to others, in order to better understand the context of anything i might say here, it should be noted that although it was recommended repeatedly to my parents throughout my school years, they chose to never put me on medication for these “challenges”, always insisting that with just a little more effort I could do just as well as the next kid. I just “needed more discipline”. This isn’t really the area I intended to focus on here, so let’s leave the pros and cons of that argument to the side for the time being and perhaps come back to it at a later date.
Ok fine, now that I’ve got us thinking about it, yes I do believe that that was a terrible mistake, though I’m sure an innocent one out of pure ignorance on my parents’ part, and indeed I most likely would have fared much better during those years had they at least tried a few medications as suggested. I will never forget that moment, on the floor of my mother’s office, seeing my transcripts for college at the age of 16 for the very first time — 11 years of school and never a grade higher than a D or F on every report card. I was more than shocked. Which illuminates the problem of the condition of ADHD itself perhaps better than anything else one might come up with: my mother God bless her couldn’t understand my shock, casually remarking “Well Fishy you know you’ve never done well in school. You’re very lucky your father and I were able to get this college to accept you.” To which I replied “Well… I knew I wasn’t an A student… But I had no idea I spent the last 16 years producing over 40 report cards filled with D’s and F’s my entire life. My God! Why didn’t you all DO something mom?!?” “Honey we tried! Do you have any idea how many visits to the principles office I have made on your behalf since you started school?!? I practically lived there!”
And she was right. She had practically lived in the principles office since I could remember. The telling point is that up until that moment, for whatever reason… There must have been something different about that moment… I was never “aware” that I was a “bad” student or made bad grades. Even though all the adults around me knew it, assumed it to be true and tried everything they could to help me. That in a nutshell is what having ADHD is all about. You’re here. And yet you’re not here. You appear to be here to everyone else. But you’re just not really here. So people assume you know things that you just don’t know. In fact you don’t even know there are things that you’re supposed to know but don’t. It’s that bad. At least it was for me.
So as not to cause inadvertent influence in a direction unintended, I will state for the record that since those early years I have tried every medication known to humankind for these challenges and have found none of them to be a benefit enough to surpass the detrimental side effects of them. An important side note I believe.
The Science of the Avatar
Just caught this DVD — surpringly filmed in front of a small audience way back in 2004 — presentation of a lecture by William A. Tiller, the physicist, wherein he presents proof through clinical studies and formulas that human beings through intention can significantly affect physical reality. Another grand leap for science into territory that has normally been reserved for spiritual, new age, occult or paranormal paradigms and often dismissed by the scientific community.
Of course Dr. tiller’s discoveries are not new to the world of science. Those who have been following this exciting vectoring and merging of the two assumed disparate fields remember well the infamous book The Tao of Physics, to name but one. But Dr. Tiller’s work here only adds to what many outside of hard science have known for millennia, that there is much more to our human potential than just doing our best to navigate the events that “happen to us”… But rather it is us who are actually creating those events. They may “happen”, indeed; but not without our direct or indirect intention in one way or another.
Harry Palmer, the discoverer, inventor and author of the Avatar series of knowledge and techniques — books, DVD lectures, and most importantly courses — has been the chief proponent of these theories over the last thirty years, long before the concept took hold and became hip as a pop culture phenom. [Palmer wasn’t the first to propose the idea that beliefs precede experience or that human beings create their own reality.
One can find the idea hidden in a variety of esoteric teachings centuries old, from Madame Blavatsky and her Theosophy theories, her prodigy Krishnamurti, Lester Levinson and his pioneering work with the Sedona Method, the noble men who brought us NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) and Anthony Robbins and many others. Some people even propose that Jesus of Nazereth’s orignal teachings were tilted this way but were then deliberately and maliciously changed as a controlling mechanism by the Roman Empire who annexed his work in order to create their “Catholic Church”.
But Harry Palmer holds a special place in the history of this human evolution (and now cosmological) movement in that he was the first person to create functional tools and processes that allow just about anyone, given the right setting and with some practice, to access and make use of this emerging paradigm of evolving knowledge. That collection of tools and techniques is called “Avatar” or The Avatar Courses. Based on my own study of the field, I have still not come across anything even remotely as powerful in regards to the transformational and impact potential this particular collection of knowledge and tools has. While others study, teach, present and preach, — think Dr. Wayne Dyer or Deepak Chopra… book after hook of factoids, anecdotes and opinions — Palmer was busy developing simple (and sometimes quite complex) techniques of doingness so that one could take advantage of the discoveries of this work and knowledge. The Avatar tools take the theories out of the abstract and bring them into day to day reality, out of the realm of thinking and the mind and into our lives as daily activities of real life experience. If you’ve ever baked a cake from scratch before, then you already understand the difference between eating a cake, reading about cake, and learning how to bake a cake step by step. Avatar, so far at least, is the only system we have on earth that can teach a person the step by step instructions on how to manifest reality using their attention, will and intention. It’s miraculous stuff to say the least.]
I myself have been studying and teaching the Avatar materials for nearly twenty years now. Again, long before it became “a thing.” Back when I first started, I was just a wee lad and when you suggested to someone that it might possibly be they who were creating their reality — as opposed to reality randomly (or through some sort of destiny) just “happening to them”, you would usually be met with anything from a blank stare, a confused look, or a downright nasty and defensive rebuttal. Over the years I have observed that it was a very small percentage of folks who were even the least bit open to the idea, which necessitated them understanding the idea in the first place. Bear in mind i am blessed to live and work in a very special and unique community. The world of arts and letters, entertainment and communications, is possibly one of the most liberal, open minded and intelligent communities in our global society as a whole. And even then one still finds that most people were or are usually quite skeptical about this theory that we create our experiences based on our beliefs, rather than our beliefs stemming from our experiences.
But through the years I have watched the world wake up to these ideas. It has been a remarkable experience, watching this slow awakening. What was once a non-thing turned into a thing but a “ridiculous notion”, then an intriguing possibility, then an underground pop culture phenomenon, and mow a mainstream fad that’s so enraptured the public at large that even her holiness Oprah Winfrey is scouring the earth to attempt to learn the secrets of what Palmer might call deliberate reality creation. She’s come close a few times. Walked on hot coals with Tony Robbins. That’s a good start. Eventually she’ll get there i bet and millions of housewives all over America will gasp when she finally discovers the core beliefs that are at the heart of her weight challenges, or cathartically takes personal responsibility for her troubled childhood. But this is big stuff, deep, a path that takes immense courage and a more than open mind. The point being, when something reaches Oprah, you can safely state it is no longer “underground.”
But up until the last few years, though hundreds of thousands of people all over the earth have experiential knowledge that we can indeed create or discreate our realities at will using the Avatar tools, we still did not have a scientific system that explained what exactly we were doing. Therefore it still seemed the stuff of mysticism or the paranormal. Just think of the average person’s view of people “being psychic”… The majority think it bunk, or worse… (I just laughed out loud but I’ll save you the LOL, ha!) But it does tend to make one chuckle, because I’ve been using the tools for so long and thus understand that it is quite real, just as real as say tying our shoelaces or snapping our fingers, tools we learned years ago as children in a step by step manner that once seemed utterly impossible to us when we were toddlers. And we still hear people claim that they believe that “psychic powers are evil” every now and then too, which is even funnier still. But for the most part we just hear people talk about it as if it is theoretical or questionable. primarily because they do not yet realize that these abilities are real, they haven’t studied it yet, they haven’t learned how to do any of it themselves, they’ve not had an experiential experience of it yet, and they don’t yet know the science behind it.
Science is a funny thing. Or perhaps it is humanity that’s the funny thing. Tell someone they can fly and they’ll bet their child’s life that they can’t. But if they wake up the next day and read in the newspaper that scientists have discovered that human beings can in fact fly, they’ll be flapping like a bird all over their neighborhood. Such is life. Well now more and more scientists from a wide variety of different fields of research are all coming to the same conclusion: “We are all capable of performing what we think of as miracles. We have plenty of critical experimental data, wherein at least under special conditions, human intention can robustly affect physical reality.” –Dr. William A. Tiller Ph. D. Stanford University Professor Emeritus Physics
Dr. Tiller’s work is just one of many now in the world of science that has found proof that these ideas are a possibility, that they were real all along. I would guess that most of them have no idea how far we’ve already come in advancing the theories into day to day practices in other areas of human endeavor, such as Avatar. To the scientists of the world these are still theories, provable, and thus potentially realistic, but theories still. Wait until they realize that they arent just theories, but in fact modern day tools that thousands of people are using everyday. When these two trains meet… It’s going to be one hell of an explosion one reckons.
I personally never needed a scientific explanation to explain to me how or why it was possible to create or discreate beliefs or experiences or reality in my life. Being able to do it has always been enough for me, that’s what mattered. But i still find it a fascinating journey watching and learning along with the scientists of our day as they slowly discover the physical mechanisms of what makes these seeming miracles possible. This DVD mentioned above is a good one if you share in this.