Totally distracted
Ever try to do something and find yourself helplessly distracted from the task at hand?
That’s about how I’ve felt since quitting caffeine. I’m perhaps the biggest opponent of medicating people to help them concentrate. I’m convinced that “medicine” has invented “disorders” like ADD. Here’s a hint people, the body does things for a reason, just because someone doesn’t operate just like you doesn’t give you the right to say they’re defective and need chemicals to help them be like you. How can you be so sure you aren’t the one that needs chemicals or are abnormal?
The mind and body isn’t something we should go attempting to ‘fix’ if it’s not obviously broken. I guess I’m pretty liberal in this regard. Physical problems like defective joints, ripped tendons, things that are obviously problematic, degrade the quality of life, etc and can be ‘corrected’ in a manner that won’t have potentially lasting psychological effects I’m all for taking care of. I have an implant in my left foot to fix a joint that go so badly inflamed I physically couldn’t stand. My leg would spasm from pain and give out.
I don’t know why I’m going off on this right now. But I feel like doing it. These commercials I see for “Adult ADD” completely piss me off. Why is there such a rise in adult ADD? Perhaps because we’re drugging the crap out of our children that exhibit “ADD” behavior? Think about it. If we suppress their natural abilities and thought processes throughout their formative years, they’ll never learn to cope, live with, or control the processes. Then suddenly they grow up, quit taking the medication, and wham. They can’t cope? So what do we have now? A bunch of people with zombie-brains who can’t focus without their daily “fix”. This, ladies and gentlemen is a pharmaceutical company’s dream come true. Life-time legal addicts.
I’m not saying there aren’t mental disorders that should be treated with judicious use of chemicals. But for the love of pete, we’re totally over-medicating people these days.
Anyhow, about the weekend-of-code. Yeah it didn’t turn out to be much of a weekend of coding. I slept in really late, went to a cookout on the 3rd, and cleaned my apartment and watched a bunch of rubbish on TV on the 4th. In short, it was a failure. My life has gotten pretty crazy the last few weeks, and will probably only get crazier in the coming weeks. I don’t know that I’ll get much of anything done before waltercon. Depressing as that is, there’s just too much going on right now.
Things may not calm down anytime soon. I’m stressed out. I can tell. My face is breaking out with acne, and my hair is falling out again. Tell-tale signs I’m stressed. I just downed a Mountain Dew. I have laundry to do, and a few letters I need to write tonight. I padded the heck out of my bass drum, snare, and high-hat on my drum set tonight. It’s quiet enough that I can actually beat it around a bit and not make much (hardly any) noise. Excellent stress relief.