Creativity

I think I got the following ideas from one of Doctors Hallowell and Ratey’s books that themes in ADHD include “inconsistency and inconsistency again, creativity, provocative behavior, winning personality, varying motivation, exasperating forgetfulness, disorganization and indifference, underachievement, impulsivity, and the search for excitement  rather than discipline.” Whichever of their books, it is a keeper of a quote.

A typical response from my husband to the above would be, “I resemble that remark.”

Let’s begin with the notion of creativity. Besides thinking of weird new wording for familiar songs and poems, my husband is highly creative, as are his siblings.

 Where I see one or two resolutions to a problem, my husband will see two or three additional ones, and he describes them as turning my resolutions about 180 degrees. It is not only me. He generally thinks he can improve on much of what other people do. He says he sees what people are trying to accomplish, and he see where can improve on it. As he once said tome, “Of course, that may be my ego coming through.”

Much of his creativity happens in the kitchen. He desires to cook and cook well. As I may have mentioned earlier, though, he is not creative when it comes to cleaning up after himself.  His artistic endeavors also expressed themselves during his pottery phase and the years when he built woodworking projects in high school.

 I think of his creativity when he puts a new interpretation on a familiar theme or word. For instance, Murdock becomes Mudrock. I remember when he learned sign language in order to communicate with a neighbor’s son and persons in our church who were deaf.  He used those same skills to teach a deaf coworker CADAM and CATIA. Husband learned a principle, then immediately shared  it with his coworker. For Husband, it was an easy and sensible fix to helping this coworker prepare for a job.

The majority of his adolescence and young adult years, he liked the excitement of being with people, mostly friends. He was seldom at home and was always on the go, which he called boogedy-shoot. We spent the first 18 months of our married life walking malls, going to see friends and family, and generally boogedy-shooting because he could not stand to spend time confined in our apartment. It did not allow enough space for him to move around. He wanted space around him for his brain to focus in many different directions.

 I focus on the fact he is more forgetful than creative, and I sincerely wish it would not bother me as much as it does. Doctors Hollowell and Ratey said it is exasperating ( as in tiresome and tedious), and they could not be closer to the truth. My husband constantly forgot major things such as his wallet, the last place he laid his keys, his need to put gasoline in his car. He forgot to put away his tools or mow the lawn. I bought him attaché cases or brief cases where we made a “home” for the items he forgot every morning.

However, I could not put chores in his brief case, and his forgetting to do a chore for me or follow through with a promise convinced me he was basically indifferent to my inner needs.

His indifference to things which are highly important to me almost got him nailed in a crate and mailed back to his father and stepmother.

In our earlier days, I was convinced he did not have a notion about the meaning of the word self-discipline. After all these years, I remain convinced that he did not.  It is a concept he learned through successful, but painful practice. He was too old for us to use a behavior management chart. His rewards came with verbal praise and from my telling him how much it meant to me when he followed through. I cannot tell you he actually learned from those rewards or responses because such learning is gradual, and he is still in the process of “getting it” gradually.

As I think back to his earlier adult years, he struggled to figure out who he was and what he wanted out of life. I suspect his parents did not know any more who he was than he did. Confusion bred confusion in that household.