ADHD

Getting lost while talking to someone because my mind left the chat.

Walking back and forth to do something and forgetting what I was going to do and then switching to a new task only to find out I had to do the first thing before I could do the second thing and then maybe repeating that.

Why is there X item, food or otherwise, in the freezer when it should be in the fridge or in a completely different room? How I learned to defrost potatoes.

Looking at phone while watching a movie because I can't remember the name of the movie that same actor was in 10 years ago. Surprise, we are watching that same movie.

Where are the groceries? Damn it, these tacos made me forget to take them out of the car. I presently want tacos.

I have no idea how long I have been preheating the oven, at least this time there wasn't food in it. pRoGrEsS.

Mid-sentence brain farts, trying to finish your sentences, extreme procrastination, projects started but not done, a thousand hobbies.

That's just the easy to see ones.

forgetting what I was talking about mid-sentence

asking someone what they just asked me to do 30 seconds ago because I didn't write it down fast enough

doing requests immediately even if they're not urgent because otherwise I'll forget

procrastinating showering long enough that my hair is visibly dirty 😞

Complete and utter inability to start anything outside of a last minute panic.

Getting lost mid-sentence because my train of thought was taking another rail and forgot to tell my tongue, and then remembering neither what I was talking about nor what I was thinking about.

Forgetting everything, everywhere, at all times.

Inability to discern details in a space. Spent 15 minutes once desperately looking for my cane. Mother asked me what I was doing, I said searching for my cane. She pointed out it was on the chair, in plain sight. I couldn't have helped but look directly at it several times during that search, but my mind passed it over as a detail not worth registering.

Executive dysfunction. Nothing ever got done. Most things didn't even get started.

I doodle incessantly. Like whole pages that are 20% notes, 80% doodles. I had a teacher in middle school who got mad because it seemed like I was constantly distracted (true) and had me stop, but then discovered it was 10x worse if I was not doing something with my hands. Meanwhile my most recent boss looked over at my pad during our first in-person meeting and said, “ah, so you have ADHD too?”

Start talking about something and get so lost on tangents trying to explain all the precursory information they need to understand that original thing I haven’t explained yet that I’m now debating something entirely unrelated and have forgotten the original point I’m trying to make.

Bonus points if I end up losing my train of thought during one of the tangents and now don’t even know what I said two seconds ago and have still forgotten the original point I was trying to make.

Also not being able to do simple things I plan/need to do, like laundry or writing an email, but then spend 4hrs straight building something incredibly complex from scratch just to test a random theory I had that has no other usefulness.

Forgetting to take my meds?

Read something and not registering what it said. Only realizing it after a half page or more. Then going back, reading it again, only to still not have a clue what it says. Then trying to read it aloud, because surely that will keep my mind on task enough to register it. But no. My mind decided that some tangent was way more entertaining.

I usually just give up at that point. I can't wrangle my mind back and have it be interested at that moment.

Over sharing and making random noises (stimming maybe?). If someone is telling me something I’ll just repeat a random word from their sentence back to them 😂. Or I’ll just make random noises like dum dum dum for no reason.

People also don’t notice stuff that I do. Like we watching football and I’ll be like huh what does that logo represent on the socks. Everybody else how did you even notice that? Me well I don’t really like football so I’m keeping it fun by reading everything I can see.

Being mentally paralyzed and unable to execute on anything other than doom scrolling for 4 years.

The leg shakes, or beat the devils tattoo

Wife has started to expect oversharing, she corrects me when it's just us two, and then I am not sharing enough. When going into social situations, she reminds me of thinking about what is okay to share before I share.

I need to fidget when I have to sit and listen to things. It can seam like I don't care about the topic, but if I am using all my focus on not fidgeting I sometimes can't focus on what the other person is saying.

A Very Simple one- I'm constantly interrupting people during conversations. I do it because I want to get out a thought before I get distracted. I've improved over the years, but I still do it, often.