In 1775-ish-or-so, a German physician named Melchior Adam Weikard published a medical text called Der Philosophische Arzt (The Philosophical Doctor). Inconsiderately, he did not translate this text into English for me, so all I have to go on is the one excerpt that is translated in a scholarly paper that is generally behind a paywall. But presumably, in this text, Melchior talks about a lot of, you know, medical stuff. Among the stuff is a condition he calls Lack of Attention (Mangel der Aufmerksamkeit), or Attentio Volubilis, where “volubilis” means something like “rotating” or “spinning.”

 

He wrote some interesting stuff on this, but here’s the main description:

Description of the illness. Those, who have a lack of attention, are generally characterised as unwary, careless, flighty and bacchanal.

[…] Like children, who are distracted by a hundred minor matters, when they are perused or conversed with about a serious matter. A young chaplain for example is supposed to meditate about the saviour’s sufferings. Every humming fly, every shadow, every sound, the memory of old stories will draw him off his task to other imaginations. Even his imagination, if and when it is copious, entertains him with a thousand minor subjects. […]

Coincidences and features. An inattentive person won’t remark anything but will be shallow everywhere. He studies his matters only superficially; his judgements are erroneous and he misconceives the worth of things because he does not spend enough time and patience to search a matter individually or by the piece with the adequate accuracy. Such people only hear half of everything; they memorize or inform only half of it or do it in a messy manner. According to a proverb they generally know a little bit of all and nothing of the whole. Compared to an attentive and considerate person such a jumpy person may act like a young Frenchman does in comparison to a mature Englishman. In science he lacks thoroughness, punctual accuracy and correctness. People of his type are the hussars in the republic of pundits. They are mostly reckless, often copious considering imprudent projects, but they are also most inconstant in execution. They treat everything in a light manner since they are not attentive enough to feel denigration or disadvantages.

Barkley, R. A., & Peters, H. (2012). The Earliest Reference to ADHD in the Medical Literature? Melchior Adam Weikard’s Description in 1775 of “Attention Deficit” (Mangel der Aufmerksamkeit, Attentio Volubilis). Journal of Attention Disorders, 16(8), 623–630. doi:10.1177/1087054711432309

All of which, basically, is a fair roasting of my own personal self. Granted, I can’t say much about whether I am more like a young Frenchman or a mature Englishman,¹ or a hussar in the republic of pundits,² but uh–the humming flies, the messy manners, the inconstancy, the erroneous judgments, and…the copious imprudent projects? Good god, the copiousness of the imprudent projects. I’m buried in them. Drowning in them. It’s like existing in a swarm of drunk locusts. And I can’t kill any of them, or catch any of them, or use any of them to generate money or a job, and they keep breeding more, and they won’t stop eating all my goddamn barley.

I’m not here to deliver an opinion on whether this the “earliest” description of ADHD as a medical condition or not. I couldn’t tell you, because a) I can only read English, so how would I know if, say, someone in Cambodia described this problem a thousand years prior, and b) both the categorization and the medicalization of something are whole Topics that are messy and gross, and I’m not interested in sticking my hands in it.

I only bring up Melchior here because his description pretty aptly corresponds with my own personal bag of shit.³ He does have more to say on the causes and treatments for this problem, which is perhaps on shakier ground in the department of factual quality, but is still really interesting reading, in a way I will heroically restrain myself from going into further at this particular moment.

Anyway, the other day I was once again pondering these colorful qualities that I have, and once again doing the internal equivalent of smashing my face into the wall over and over again, trying to think of how to make it stop. I have tried many, many ways of reining myself in, of controlling or culling all the whims that I am constantly being yanked between: making lists, making more lists, organizing the lists into separate lists; keeping journals; keeping a separate reminder journal from the task journal; making schedules, making time-block plans; setting daily goals, weekly goals, monthly goals; whiteboards, sticky notes, computer apps, writing stuff on my arms in Sharpie; rewards systems, punishment systems; yelling at myself internally, yelling at myself externally, trying to get my friends to yell at me; taking supplements, antidepressants, stimulants; setting timers and alarms with notes below them that say SERIOUSLY YOU HAVE TO DO THIS NOW. SERIOUSLY. DON’T FUCKING IGNORE ME I SEE YOU IGNORING ME GODDAMMIT in all caps,  so on and so forth, into infinity, into an endless void of general fuckup and things unrealized or forgotten.

I was exhausted. I was out of ideas. And I thought, you know, what if I just…stop trying so hard?

What if I go follow whatever humming fly my brain latches on to, and just roll with it, at least as long as it doesn’t actually ruin my life?⁴ What if I just don’t care quite so much if it doesn’t come to anything? What if the piles of stuff from all the unfinished intentions that currently haunt me like angry little poltergeists were just sort of…part of my home decor?

Still, it’s hard to let go. I spend so much time chasing these humming flies, and it’s not just that I never catch them. I also rarely learn from the experience, because I usually forget the experience. It is often difficult to finish a thought, in fact, without it getting lost in a turbid fecal cloud of other semi-thoughts, let alone commit it to memory.

 

I have read so many books and articles and learned so many things out of raging uncontrollable curiosity only to forget them completely, or for them to slink around as vague shadows of things I once knew in the back of my brain. I have to learn the same lessons over and over again, sometimes in subjects I forgot even existed. I still regularly burn my hand on the toaster oven, despite having learned many times that I should not stick my hand in the toaster oven. Sure, life may be more about the journey than the destination, but if your journey is just to go in circles on the same roads, or to wake up in the morning in a different hotel than you fell asleep in with your memory gone, or you’re repeatedly waylaid on your journey because you suddenly realize you left your credit card at the hotel and your phone is dead and you didn’t bring any water and now you can’t buy water at the gas station and their plumbing is broken so then you drink from a puddle on the road and probably get a horrific giardia infection that is going to ruin your pants again—

Okay. Sorry. I’ve absolutely lost control of that sentence.

The point is, we only have so much time on this earth, and while I could be okay with having nothing to show for it, I am less okay with not even remembering what I did. I do things with my time, I’m quite sure, but I couldn’t really tell you what. It mostly just evaporates. Which is why I usually answer the question “so what did you do over the weekend?” with a lot of weird stammering and noises that are not words, followed by a resounding “stuff.”

So I thought–what if I write these things down? Here? On the internet? In front of people and/or their cats? So that I am forced to document it in some sort of vaguely linear and allegedly sensical way before it escapes me like a silent fart on a windy day?

I know. Terrible idea, right? But most of my ideas are, and I’m trying to be cool with that.

¹I’m not totally sure what this means, exactly; I’m choosing to interpret it as a Lumiere-vs-Cogsworth situation from Beauty and the Beast, in which case I’m afraid I have no exact analogue. I mean, I wouldn’t openly make out with a sexy feather duster, but would I consider it? Sure. But in that situation, probably everyone has considered it. Cogsworth has probably thought about it. The oven has probably thought about it. Mrs Potts has probably thought about it, even though I really see her more in a relationship with the dresser. Even one of those random faceless spoons from the dinnertime musical number has probably thought about it. They must have had to find something to do with all that time, you know?

²I can tell you that a hussar is some sort of weapon-wielding horse-riding mavericky probable-stubble-having dude with a jaunty hat. As for the republic of pundits, though, I can’t say. I’m going to guess it’s something like a room of stern-looking men with extremely un-jaunty hats and responsible fiscal habits who have meetings about which types of smells should be illegal.

³And also a little bit because I think the name “Melchior” is rad as hell.

⁴It could, of course, actually ruin my life, if I just let go entirely. Without at least some stopgaps or restraint, I would immediately become so deeply in debt that I’d never come out, I would lose my job, and I would quickly come to live in such squalor that the humming flies would cease to be metaphorical. But there’s always sort of a middle ground, in these things. I hope.