3 posts tagged “adhd”

I first read "The Originist" in about 1994. It was part of an anthology called Maps in a Mirror, which my friend Alan persuaded me to read. I was captivated. The story is set in Isaac Asimov's Foundation milieu.

About five or six years ago, I recalled the story and wanted to re-read it (my memory was stimulated by my dabbling on everything2.com). But I couldn't remember the name of the story. Worse, I thought Asimov had written it, and that it had just been a vignette within one of the Foundation novels. I purchased the entire Foundation series and re-read it, looking for this story. Obviously, I didn't find it, but I really enjoyed re-reading the Foundation stories, many of which I hadn't read since high school. I began to seriously wonder if I had imagined this story. Eventually, I set the obsession aside.

Almost exactly a year ago, I started editing Wikipedia articles at the behest of our friend Katr (okay, so it didn't take a whole lot of persuasion). And my memory of this story was rekindled. I still couldn't remember it, so I re-read the Foundation series again. Again, I enjoyed it, but I still couldn't find this story.

Enter, The Google and The Internets.

With the assistance of my fabulous wife, who is the Search Queen, I found references to the story finally and was relieved to discover that I had not imagined the entire thing. I began looking for the anthology that contained the story in my local bookstores. No luck. Not used, not new. I bided my time and kept looking....

A year later (last week, perhaps inspired by Colin Fletcher's The Man Who Walked Through Time ), I gave up and ordered it on Amazon along with a few other things I couldn't find elsewhere. I finished reading it this morning, and was just as captivated by it as I was more than ten years ago -- moreso, in fact. It was well worth the chase.

"The Originist" is, as I said, set in Asimov's Foundation milieu. It takes place on Trantor, right at the end of Hari Seldon's life. (If you aren't familiar with the Foundation series, most of Asimov's fiction is set in this possible future that covers more than 20 millennia beginning a few hundred years from the present.) The main character, the originist himself, is an extremely wealthy scientist whose area is the origins of humanity -- more specifically, what qualities define humanity. The protagonist's wife is engaged in research (and other things) at the Imperial Library, where she is an indexer.

And the indexing is the part of the story that fascinates me. These people spend their days following streams of consciousness as they read through their assigned material. Words and phrases that trigger an association -- any association -- with something else are indexed (hyperlinked). The work environment is kept marvelously chaotic to encourage free association. The indexers don't even work on the same project every day, as they are assigned to different workstations every morning and pick up where the previous day's indexer left off.

In other words, an utter dream job for an ADHD philomath like me.

As an almost forty-something reader this go-round, I was struck by the doubt of Card's protagonist. At various times, he doubted himself, his wife, his friends, his sanity, and his research. His self-imposed isolation interfered with his ability to clearly see reality -- especially in his relationships with people. Yet his friends and family had the wisdom to realize that they could only gently try to cure his increasing blindness with the use of encouragement and love -- he had to see through the glass, dark as it was, for himself. Hmmm... more adult ADHD parallels.

My brain operates, um, tangentially. So for me, the World Wide Web and hyperlinking are both curses and godsends. I have been dabbling with the Web since the early days of Mosaic and gopher back in the mid-90s. Card originally published this story of the power of community associative thought in 1989 -- before Internet hyperlinking was a reality, and before sites like Wikipedia (with its similarity to Asimov's Encyclopedia Galactica) and everything2 came about. Remarkable.

Orson Scott Card is best known for his science fiction novel Ender's Game. And he is a fine novelist. He is also a brilliant crafter of short stories, from darkly creepy to brightly hopeful. The almost 700 pages of fiction in Maps in a Mirror is a feast for the story-hungry reader.

Sometimes things work out for the best.

I had planned to ride to Brownsville today, camp in Pioneer Park, and ride back tomorrow. This was to be a shakedown cruise for future overnight self-supported bike trips. I would spend the morning tying up loose ends and getting packed and ready. I'd eat lunch and then go teach my 1 o'clock fencing lesson. Ideally, I would leave right from the studio, but if I wasn't quite ready, I could come back home and finish up--and then leave.

That's what I planned.

As background information, it will be helpful for the reader to understand that I have attention deficit disorder (ADHD, inattentive type). I was only diagnosed a few months ago, so I am still learning the myriad ways in which ADHD affects me. Time sense and organization are the two big problem areas for me, along large doses of self-doubt. Now, on with our story....

I spent the entire morning tying up a variety of loose and fraying ends and didn't get any packing done. My lesson went well, but I didn't get home until three. And I had to drive, which always makes me a bit grumpy. And I got grumpier as I began to realize I would probably not have enough daylight. I began frantically working on alternate routes to see if I could shave enough time off. Nope. More go ogling ensued as I looked for a campground more close-by in a frantic attempt to salvage something out of the afternoon/evening. A-ha! Champoeg State Park has a hiker/biker camp! Great! a 25-mile ride is feasible. Now to get the bike packed.

My biggest worry had been our tent, a Kelty Vortex (2-person). I had pulled it out a couple of days ago. At 8 pounds, it's a bit heavy, but I figured it would work, and it would nice and roomy. I started thinking about how I was going to pack it and realized that I should also have my sleeping bag out so I could take that into account.

I had forgotten that my sleeping bag is about 1/4 the size of my trike. That and an 8-pound tent that was half the length of my trike (even packed) were not going to work out for bike touring.

A good deal of cursing ensued, as I realized that I was not going to be camping anywhere tonight unless it was in my own yard. My mood got worse and worse. I had a "perfectly good" sleeping bag and tent,  In an effort to shake my funk, I tried to come up with alternative solutions.

How about a bike trailer? Yeah, that'll work great! One of the folks in OHPV was a dealer for ExtraWheel, which looked like a cool product. Research revealed it didn't work with 20" wheels.Okay, how about BOB trailers? I know those work with trikes! Nobody in Salem had any in stock. Google. Bingo! REI is a dealer, and there's a store 45 minutes away. I could schlep that big sleeping bag and tent on a BOB without any problem! I could even get to REI and get back in time to still get to Champoeg! Hot diggity!

And then I stopped and said to myself, "Wait a minute, Mike. Let's get some perspective here. You are not prepared for this, and going on an overnight unsupported bike trip with inadequate preparation is a recipe for... well, this being summer, probably not disaster, but certainly a fiasco."

Reality crashed in, and my mood descended another few thousand feet. Due to scheduling constraints, the chance of getting an overnight shakedown before Oregon Bicycle Ride in August looked bleak. Not good.

Glumly, I continued poking around on REI's website. As I browsed, an idea began to form, and I thought about going on up to REI anyway. And then Kim suggested the obvious thing I had been overlooking: get what you need, and then go for a ride on Sunday afternoon and come home Monday.

After giving her a stunned look, I smacked myself in the forehead and said, "Duh!" (ADHD often makes one unable to see the forest for the trees.) And then I happily drove to REI, where I learned that it would be less expensive, lighter, and a better solution overall for me if I bought a new tent and sleeping bag instead of buying a BOB trailer (and trying to figure out where I would keep it when not in use). Fiasco avoided.

Sometimes I just need some outside perspective.

Currently reading: You Mean I'm Not Lazy, Stupid, Or Crazy?!
Miles ridden today: none
Mile driven today: 74

For you gearheads, here's what I came home with from REI:

• Kelty Light Year 3D 25º sleeping bag (2 lbs., 10 oz, long) with a lovely soft merino wool bag liner
• Sierra Designs Light Year 1-person tent (3 lbs., 10 oz.) with footprint (tent-specific groundsheet that can be used with the fly alone for a super light shelter)
  

  Sierra Designs Light Year tent
  

  Kelty Light Year sleeping bag

The weather was blazing hot, so most of my day was spent indoors working on stuff for the fencing salle. Newsletter editing, staff meeting, etc. I finally got time for a ride in the evening, but it was still almost 100 degrees. The low humidity made it quite bearable as long as I kept moving. Good training for Oregon Bicycle Ride next month, which I expect to be quite warm. Kim had a dish of wonderfully salty olives on the table when I got home. Oh, those were good!

I was very excited to get my new rear wheel (Shimano Capreo hub and cassette) for my trike today, featuring higher gearing. I immediately mounted a tire and tube and went out for a ride. It was satisfying to have additional high gears to work with, even though I didn't use them too much. Normally I cruise in one of my top three gears. Now my previous highest gear (13 teeth) is my fourth highest gear (behind 9T, 10T, and 11T). I pushed myself on my ride, setting a new personal best average speed for my loop out to Pratum. But I'm not sure how much of that was me pushing and how much of that was having more appropriate gearing. Time and an increased sample size will tell.

From time to time, I have moments of realization on my trike rides. I look around at the scenery--especially if there is a view. My body feels very alive--aglow, even--and I have no shortage of endorphins in my blooodstream, I'm sure. These moments sometimes occur at the top of a good climb; or during those wonderful descents that are so subtle that you don't realize you are losing a foot or so of elevation for every 100 feet you ride and you feel like you're flying along almost effortlessly and could ride forever like this--a feeling that is amplified if you are doubly blessed with a tailwind. But no matter when these moments capture me, the reaction is the same: I stop and I marvel, saying aloud, "It's good to be alive."

And so it is.

Currently reading: Fifty Degrees Below, by Kim Stanley Robinson
Miles ridden today: 22.41 (see BikeJournal.com entry)
Mile driven today: none (worked from home)