Practical Obsessions

It can be a great boon if one is able to tap into latent obsessions. As a sufferer of ADHD I know well the procrastination and doubt that comes with perfectionism and discomfort avoidance, but I have always found comfort in silent, uninterrupted meditations on the fixation of my choice. The issue is maintaining practical interests. Save for approximately 1.25 years of my life I have been a non-starter. I was so afraid of the discomfort, so petrified of the possibility that my efforts would reveal my own ineptitude that I simply did not try to succeed. Projects and jobs that involved prolonged thinking and action were aggravating to me. This is merely a symptom of the inability to utilize my mind's natural affinity for order and consistency, obsessed as I am with negative consequences.

That one year was a productive one for me, although it did not attain the perfection I sought. Attuned though I was to the study of English and history I would write far more than was required of me. A simple one-page assignment on Mongols would lengthen to ten or more pages; a creative writing story was overdue a week but rang in at an enriching 18 pages. A biology lab was deemed the opus of my teacher's classes; she recovered a copy and used it as an example for classes to come. But when my interested was not piqued I meandered through the assignment, dismissing the significance of being on the honour roll for the entire year, and not just when it was easy. My spare time was spent transcribing vocabulary words into my private database, an effort I took on without much issue. But after this unremitting focus collapsed I was back where I started. There is no hopeful conclusion here.