Last night I saw... what was my point?

Yes, I am aware I haven't blogged in a while.

I have tried to write, really I have, but I've been losing steam. I start a post and halfway through I forget my point, or realize I have no point, or just get tired of typing and log out of blogger. That used to happen to me occasionally, but now it happens every time I sit down to blog. I thought maybe it was because I didn't have much to say, but that's not true - I have lots of ideas. So what the heck is wrong with me?

Oh yeah. I have ADHD.

I am exhausted all the time. It's not the lack of sleep thing anymore - I've sorta developed a schedule. This is more mental exhaustion than physical exhaustion, and it's because I exert an extraordinary amount of mental energy trying to stay focused and on-task during the day that I am completely wiped out by the time I get home. Consequently, my brain does what it does naturally - gets bored easily, loses focus, and bounces from idea to idea. Unfortunately, it also means that I can't stay on task long enough to finish an entire blog post. I'm getting incredibly frustrated just writing these few paragraphs, and this is pretty short compared to the other stuff I've been writing.

I have a bunch of brilliant posts in progress I promise. Maybe someday I'll actually finish them...

ADHD, medication, and motherhood - Part 2

In Part 1 of this post, I gave some background about my struggle with ADHD and the conflict I felt between taking medication to advance my career at the expense of becoming a mother. Even though that post has no comments, I've received more feedback and emails about it than any other post I've written. I interpreted that to mean that I touched on a couple of important issues for women, but these are issues that we're still not comfortable discussing publicly. For that reason, I think this is going to be an issue I'll be revisiting often, but hopefully from a different angle each time.

This post is going to pick up where I left off last time and fill you in on my thought process while I was making my decision. I was considering whether to take medication for my ADHD. I left off wondering whether a PhD and a career in academia would be fulfilling or if I would regret not having children. I sought out advice and guidance from others, but encountered more frustration than support.

I'm a reflective and instinctive person by nature, so even though I talked about my struggle with others, I knew that my answer would have to come from what I was feeling and not what I was thinking. On an intellectual level, I knew there were women who balanced work and family. I knew medication could be a short-term solution and that I could stop if I were to get pregnant or wanted to get pregnant. I knew I was legally entitled to disability accommodations. I also knew I had nothing to be ashamed of, that ADHD is real despite the public misperceptions. Intellectually, I understood this.

My intelligence and rationality couldn't overcome my gut feelings, however. I knew there were women who balanced work and family, but I felt like my ADHD would never allow me to fully balance the two in a way that would work long-term. I knew that I could stop taking medication to have a baby, but I've always felt that I will have difficulty getting pregnant and that "medication break" could extend for years. I also knew that even though I had a right to accommodations, the faculty looked down on me for asking for them and they treated me like I was dumb or incompetent. Even though I knew I had nothing to be ashamed of, I felt ashamed.

On the other hand, I didn't have the biological drive toward motherhood that I thought I should or that I felt I should. Kids bugged me. That's not entirely true. I adore my niece and nephew (they're the greatest kids ever but I'm sure I think that because I get to spoil them, feed them sugar, and send them back to their parents) and I enjoy spending time with my friends and their kids. I don't enjoy the temper tantrums or the child-centered conversations or the general adjustment of my life to suit the needs of kids. As much as my breeding friends assured me that having children was worth all the sacrifices, they often expressed jealousy at my life and resentment toward theirs, especially when I got to do things they wished they could do, from the simple, like going out to nice dinners whenever I wanted, to the extravagant, like going to Spain. I couldn't ignore those feelings either. I love my friends, but I did not want to become them.

All of these issues created the confusion and the conflict I felt, but my husband was really the one underlying force behind my decision-making. He has always been incredibly supportive and encouraging of my career path, but I also know that he wants children. In a lot of ways, he is a big kid and for a while I was concerned that I would end up parenting my husband and my child, rather than have a partner in raising a child. That concern was misguided. He will be an amazing dad and any child will be lucky to have him as a father.

My hesitations had more to do with his job demands than any concerns about his parenting skills. His job is incredibly unpredictable in terms of hours and travel, so I can't always count on him to be home at a certain time. This is annoying but generally fine when it's just the two of us, but if there was a child involved, I don't think it would be okay. There could easily be days when he wouldn't see our kids, leaving me as the primary caretaker for the kids. Of course I could have help - I would need help - but I also know that help doesn't come cheap and I'd probably be working to pay for a nanny. I know my work would suffer because I couldn't be at every meeting, go to every conference, or travel to collect my data because I wouldn't have the flexibility. One of us would need to have a job that had consistent hours, jobs that didn't require a fifty-plus hour time commitment each week. I knew faculty jobs - especially tenure-track faculty jobs - wouldn't meet this criteria. I knew my husband would never be satisfied in a job that fit that criteria either.

As much as I believe in and am thankful for women's liberation and equal rights, the reality is that marriage isn't about equality - it's about partnership. Sometimes one person has to make a sacrifice in order to do what is best for both spouses. In our case, one of us was going to have to sacrifice our career ambitions in order for us to have a family. When I honestly looked at the dual-career couples in my field who were making it work, I saw that one person had a stable 9 to 5 job and the other had the PhD, and I knew that would never be my husband and me if we continued on our current paths.

So in addition to the concerns I had about taking medication and what that meant for me professionally and personally, I also had to decide if we did have a child, could I ask my husband to give up his career so I could pursue mine, or was I willing to give up mine so he could pursue his?

Stay tuned...

Because I'm bored, that's why

You may have noticed an increased frequency in my postings lately, and perhaps the new layout. Or maybe you've noticed that all my posts now have labels. Wanna know why?

I'm bored.

But this is the good kind of bored. Oh, you didn't know there are multiple kinds of boredom? Well, there are. Because I said so.

This kind of boredom is the kind when my ADHD brain is working overtime and I have 8 million thoughts flying through my head, but they are flying through my head slow enough that I can actually process a few of them, but there are still 7,999,997 that I can't process and those keep me from doing anything that is actually productive, but I have still have enough hyperfocus to write about the few thoughts that I can process and it just seems like I'm creative and insightful and have a lot to say.

See how rambly that sentence was? That's my ADHD brain, but multiple it by 8 million. It's understandable if you read slowly, but it really could use some punctuation to make it coherent. You know, the kind of punctuation made by pharmaceutical companies that allows me to follow the "rules of grammar."

But anyway...

I've also had a lot more to write about lately. I haven't done anything that is more housewifey than before, but I have noticed when I've done these housewifey things and made a note to write about them. That's part of the reason I started this blog in the first place - to encourage personal reflection on my new life in my new town.


Charlotte is a cool city, and I like exploring all that the area has to offer. I like having visitors because I have an excuse to visit different places in Charlotte that I would probably never go to on my own, and each time I learn more about this awesome place that I call home. And selfishly, I like to show off how cool Charlotte is so that my family and friends understand why I like Charlotte so much, and why I'm not eager to return to the Midwest to be closer to them.

You know, besides the obvious that it's the end of October and I'm still wearing shorts. And we've got 70s and 80s in the forecast for the next week.

My new role in life, however, is proving to be more challenging. For one, I am a housewife but I don't have children, and I find it hard to relate to housewives with kids. It's not that I don't empathize with those housewives, it's just not my experience. My day doesn't revolve around my children's schedules or meeting their needs or stimulating their minds. I have to fill my day with my own stuff, and that's not something that most housewives relate to. I often hear from friends that they're jealous of my life, and how much they would love to have an entire day to themselves, hanging out at the country club. I understand that. But my life as a housewife has been day after day to myself, with little interaction with others who share similar interests or experiences. It's not that I haven't met people, but the women who are home during the day generally have kids, and the women who don't have kids aren't home during the day, or they're single and looking for Mr. Right (Now). Or they have grandchildren my age (Hi friends from water aerobics!). There aren't a lot of social groups for trailing spouses without kids in their early 30s.

I sometimes wonder if I'm experiencing more of an empty-nest syndrome than a childless housewife dilemma. My life has revolved around kids for the last ten years. Granted, they weren't my kids, but I was still largely responsible for their schedules, meeting their needs, and stimulating their minds. And in turn, they dictated my schedule and stimulated my mind. I don't have them around me anymore, and I miss them terribly. I keep up with many of my former students on Facebook, but it's definitely not the same as working with them every day.

That's why things like volunteering for college fairs and issues like bullying prompt me to post. I can draw upon my personal and professional experience to hopefully write something informative or provocative that hopefully entertains my readers as much as blogging about these topics intellectually stimulates me. Blogging has provided me a forum and an outlet to connect with others and share some of my thoughts and sometimes my expertise. I know it's not modest to say, but I was a pretty darn good social worker/higher educator, and I really enjoy sharing what I know with others. Yes, I am aware that higher educator is not a real term, but higher education professional or student affairs professional is lame. We need to come up with a better name for our profession, fellow higher educators.

Yes, I know, I could get all this if I had a job. I'm trying!

Until that time comes, I have a blog to keep me entertained and keep me intellectually stimulated. I may be a housewife in Charlotte, but I'm still ME - an intelligent social worker/higher educator who is called to help at-risk students get their college degrees, who likes to cook but hates to clean, who sometimes struggles with ADHD, who misses her family and friends, but loves her husband and the life we've created very much.
And I hope this post is proof that there is a good kind of boredom - the kind when there's nothing much going on in my life, so I actually have the opportunity to just think and write and get to know myself a little better and share these things with you.

Yeah, sometimes being a real housewife isn't so bad.

ADHD, medication, and motherhood

This may be one of the most personal posts I'll ever write on this blog. I've been debating about whether to write it, but I feel like it's an issue that needs to be shared, and this is a forum to do it... even though my sisters will probably be the only ones who read it :) Still, it's an important issue that needs to be discussed, particularly by women.

I have ADHD. Legitimately. I was diagnosed by a psychiatrist and everything. I was prescribed medication, which was the reason I sought an official diagnosis in the first place. I really felt like I needed the medication in order to complete my doctoral studies, and I really wanted to do this, but the one hour I was in the psychiatrist's office brought up a host of issues I never considered before.

I was diagnosed with ADHD: Combined, which is both hyperactive-impulsive and inattentive. It's the jackpot of ADHD.

Hyperactivity in adults isn't necessarily the same as in children. For me, it's a need to be busy all the time, as well as a general feeling of agitation. Other people notice that I shake my foot constantly, and it gets worse the more agitated I get (like when I'm sitting in meetings for too long). As the incomparable Allie Brosh said in her blog, Hyperbole and a Half, "Hyperactivity is like being forcibly injected with way too much crack-cocaine and then being tied down to a table and made to watch a documentary about sea snails." That pretty much sums up how I feel when I'm sitting in a meeting or in class. I feel like I'm going to explode, and yet I can't go anywhere. And so I start shaking my foot, chomping on my gum, violently biting my nails, or pulling on my hair and pretty much distracting everyone around me. Or, if the people around me are lucky, the inattentiveness kicks in and I space out.

Inattentiveness is probably what you're thinking of - the inability to pay attention, focus, and listen. If something is not interesting to me, it's difficult to learn or stay focused enough to complete a task. The flip side, however, is hyperfocus in which ADHDers can focus intently on something that does interest them. Hyperfocus is a very real part of my life, and I can become fixated, almost obsessive, over projects and topics that interest me. This has served me well in my doctoral studies because I can immerse myself in topics I find interesting. Hyperfocus often appears to be intense concentration, which is awesome when tasks need to be accomplished. However, the flip side of hyperfocus is the inattentiveness and for me, once the hyperfocus is broken, the inattentiveness takes over completely. Simple things like checking email has completely destroyed my productivity because I either become overwhelmingly distracted or I become hyperfocused on a topic in the email.

I remember trying to explain this to a professor, who was upset that I didn't respond to her email for a few days. I was experiencing some amazing hyperfocus and was cranking through my work, so I wouldn't allow myself to check email for fear of breaking this amazing productivity. I was feeling proud of myself for getting so much work done, while my professor didn't understand why I just couldn't respond to her email. I tried to explain "being in the zone" and not wanting to disrupt this productivity with other tasks. Instead of listening to what I was saying, she tried to make me promise to check my email every day which I couldn't do.

Situations like these make me angry. I tried to explain hyperfocus to this professor, and tried to explain why I couldn't always behave the way she wanted me to, but I couldn't seem to get through to her. And to be fair, it wasn't just her - it's hard to explain what it's like to live with ADHD to someone who doesn't have it. (I think a lot of this has to do with misperceptions about ADHD that focus on energetic kids - not ADHD: Hyperactive type, but kids who eat too much sugar and are forced to sit still and not talk in a classroom. But that's another rant I'll touch on sometime.) But it's incredibly frustrating to have to explain to someone why I need to do things in a certain way and for that person to reject my reasons or worse, make me feel incompetent or stupid for not being able to do things the way she prefers.

I really wanted to do well in school and I tried to do things the way that others expected me to, which is what led me to seek medication. I knew the benefits from my time as a school social worker, and I knew that I would recommend it to myself if I was my social worker, so I made the appointment and prepared for the headaches associated with obtaining ADHD medications as an adult (it's a HUGE pain, brought on college students snorting Adderrall and the fact that it's a Schedule II narcotic, in addition to the idiots who don't believe adults can have ADHD). What I hadn't considered, however, was that my psychiatrist wouldn't prescribe me my medication without some assurance that I would use birth control.

There aren't any conclusive results with respect to ADHD medications and birth defects, but research on amphetamines and research on rats has shown relationships between ADHD medications and low birth weights, impaired bone development, mental impairments, and other birth defects. So generally speaking, medication = bad for pregnancy.

Therefore, when the psychiatrist told me that I had to use birth control, I honestly panicked. One, I'm Catholic and have been taught to believe that contraceptives are bad. However, I personally believe that's a bunch of hooey created by a group of celibate men who don't truly understand or appreciate sex, women, family life, or economic stress because they don't experience it at all or experience it in the same way. Regardless, I told the psychiatrist that I am Catholic, and she essentially belittled the Catholic beliefs about contraception, which I found offensive - not as a Catholic, but as a social worker who was trained NOT to impose my beliefs on my clients. I knew in that moment that even if I did take the medication, I was not going back to that particular psychiatrist.

Catholicism aside, taking medication for my ADHD meant that I had to give up, or at least postpone, having children. That fact smacked me in the face that day, and brought my priorities to the forefront. I felt like I was being asked to choose - career or motherhood.

I left the office that day with my prescription and had to do quite a bit of thinking. The first thing I did was math - if I took the medication, just to help me get through school, it would only be for a short time, and I could still have kids if I wanted. I'd be 33 or 34 and while that was older, it wasn't unheard of for having children. But then I thought some more, and I realized that if I earned my doctorate and became a faculty member, I'd probably need to continue taking medication in order to complete my research. Suddenly I was 40, and I was childless.

On the other hand, I never really saw myself as a mom. Children seemed like a lot of work, and I didn't think I was responsible enough to have them. Plus, I had a great life and a great relationship with my husband that I was afraid would change for the worse if I had children. I also watched as friends became parents and suddenly had nothing to talk about but their children and potty training, and I feared that I would become "Mommy" and cease to be "Me." I didn't want to lose Me - I liked Me.

When I first got married, I thought we'd have kids but my husband wasn't ready. In the meantime, my career and my career ambitions developed and suddenly kids didn't really have a place in my future plans. However, the idea of not having the choice to have children made me re-evaluate my priorities. Did I really not want to have kids? Would a PhD and a PhD career be enough?

I'm reaching the point where my inattention is taking over from my hyperfocus - or maybe because Harry Potter is on tv again and my hyperfocus is shifting and I have uber hyperfocus when it comes to Harry Potter - but I'm starting to lose my way on this post. I'll pick this up another time, but leave you with these final thoughts:

I'm thankful for the women who fought against discrimination in order to allow me to have this choice. I'm lucky to have all these options available to me - to have or not have a career, to have or not have kids, to take or not take birth control. But that doesn't make it easier.

Many people don't understand how truly difficult this decision is or even recognize why it is difficult. When I broached this issue with a few of the faculty, I was told that if I couldn't do school without medication and I decided not to take medication, perhaps I didn't belong in academia. When I've requested accommodations, I've been made to feel stupid. When I've talked to female faculty about the decision to have children, they often point out the other women who have had children and still been successful in the program. Of course, those women didn't have ADHD.

My experience with ADHD, and my experience of discrimination in academia as a result of my struggles with ADHD may explain why I loved my little hockey boy, and that job, so much. Maybe it's because I felt like I could help him in a way I couldn't help myself, but I think moreso it's because I wish I had someone like me in my corner as I navigated through each challenge.

Or maybe - Haha, pincers. Oh Harry...

Nothing to say

I have sat down to write a post at least once a day over the last week, but haven't been able to formulate a complete idea. I contemplated writing a post full of the random things that pop into my head, but decided nobody needed to be exposed to the unedited ramblings of my brain. At least not yet.

Instead, I've been staring at my little box on Blogger, trying to figure out what to say. And I still have nothing much to write about, so I guess I'll just fill you in on what I've been doing over the last week.

Nothing.

That's not true actually. I've been very busy writing an article for publication, and my writer's block seems to be lifting. However, my interest in the topic I'm writing about is rapidly decreasing, so that has the potential to be a problem. At this point, I just want to finish it so I don't have to worry about it anymore.

I'm also applying for jobs. I think I sent out five resumes in the last week. I don't think I'm cut out for this housewife business, at least not long term. I've been at home for almost a year, and I think I'm reaching my limit. I can't say I'm more "housewifey" than I was a year ago except that I am actually in my house more than before we moved to Charlotte, and I don't think that really counts as a housewife activity.

I also watched Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince about sixteen times last week. It's in the HBO rotation, and I have 14 HBO channels so it's on television quite a bit. Most people would probably get sick of a movie if they saw it sixteen times in one week, but I still felt the need to watch it On Demand this afternoon. Nevermind that I also have it on DVD. And I decided to re-read the book. I believe that is what is known as hyperfocus.

If only my research or cleaning were as exciting to me as Harry Potter...

Just one of those days

I've had a couple of bad days recently and I'm not exactly sure why. I've been feeling a bit... useless is the word coming to mind. That's not the right word but it's the only word that seems to fully capture how I've been feeling the last few days. Let me back up and explain.

I think this is the part of being a housewife that I struggle with the most: I don't contribute. My husband works incredibly hard and makes money, and I do nothing but spend his money. That's not entirely true, but that's how it feels. This message isn't coming from my husband, it's the voice inside my head that tells me I'm not doing my part. I try to compensate by cleaning (blech), cooking, and entertaining, but I still don't feel like I'm doing my part. Maybe if I had a child I could justify being at home, but I don't, so I really don't feel like an equal partner while my husband works so hard.

Yes, I have a job and I get paid for it. However, my job involves writing a lot and I have a serious case of writer's block, at least when it comes to the topic I'm supposed to be writing about for my job. So I'm not really doing my job right now either. I am, but not well, and that contributes to my feeling of uselessness.

So here I am, a useless housewife in Charlotte.

It's days like these that make me remember that I once felt useful and that my daily life once mattered, that I was needed even. I miss those days. I liked feeling like others depended on me, that I made a difference in the lives of others, that I somehow contributed to others' well-being. I was rewarded for this contribution both spiritually and monetarily. My role as a housewife brings me neither spiritual nor monetary fulfillment and without anything to fill me up, I just have this feeling of emptiness... and uselessness.

Like I said, it's just one of those days.