Tuesday 25 February 2020

Confession: My neurodivergent hyperfocus comes at a price

Surely, the most crazy-making double-bind question a job interviewer can throw at us, is “What is your greatest weakness?”.

It should be made illegal. After all, the law requires that even criminals caught in the act must be warned not to incriminate themselves.

Fortunately our intrepid employment agents have figured out the most effective retort...  “ Just tell them you're a perfectionist”.

I figured that one out for myself decades ago, simply because I am a perfectionist... once I stop procrastinating...

And perfectionism happens to be one of my greatest weaknesses

Perfectionism, hyperfocus, contrarianism, my superpowers, my flaws, the makers of my power and misery at the same time.

Current case in point: Luckily no one remembers anything on social media for more than 3 days. So no one is hanging by the fingernails waiting for my promised new binary coinages to lighten up the neurotypical vs neurodivergent debate, which I announced with great fanfare about 4 months ago. Ditto my rewrite of my “What is Neurodiversity” tab on this blog, designed to sort out the confusions, misunderstandings, misappropriations and pollyannisation of the concept,

Both these pieces were written in a week, but then I got it into my head that no one reads these days, so we need colorful infographics in bright kindergarten colours,  including a few intersecting circles, some umbrellas, a rainbow and no hints of jigsaws.  How hard can that be?

Several months later, it's still... “I’ll just try one more tweak, and then I’ll be done”. Minutes have  turned into hours, days, weeks, months... I have taught myself Photoshop, Powerpoint, Canva, and Pubisher in the process,  yet each tweak just creates an opening wedge for more tweaks...

And now the price: I've injured my back with all that sitting like a frozen statue in front of the screen.

I have ignored my stated priority of trying to earn some income, am stony broke, and cant afford the operation, were it not for, thank Science and Socialism, Australia's Medicare System/

I am tormented by Guilt and Remorse

And I still cant get those two intersecting circles to bloody well defringe

Anyway, as we used to say in IT, those promised articles are 98% complete... Watch this space, but first, I'm just going to try one more thing with those damn circles...