Anyways, hi and welcome to my blog. Just a quick disclaimer, this will likely be a longish post, as I will be telling you a bit about myself and then finishing the story above.
As of right now I'm unsure how far I'll be able to take this or how often I'll post. I know I won't be able to do every day yet, mainly because I'm sure that I'll pull a me and get distracted by something else, ultimately forgetting. ....oh hey, that's cool. I just noticed this "save now" button at the bottom of the page and it seems it automatically presses itself whenever I pause in typing. Sweet.
Right, sorry. I get distracted pretty easily and more often than not it gets me in trouble because I was supposed to be doing something else. I'm 25 and I currently have 5 neurological and mental disorders, ADHD being one of them. I say currently because I originally had 2, then in my teens we found a 3rd, and then in college we found a 4th and 5th. Knowing my luck so far I'd bet another is just hiding and waiting for it's time to spring out and be like "Oh hai". This tends to happen with neurological anything because the brain isn't all black and white, so to speak. If you have a disorder that is located around your Frontal Lobe it's likely affecting at least 2-3 different functions of your brain, thus creating the possibility of causing that person more than one disorder.
Unlike most people, though, I finally made the choice in college to stop taking meds. The side effects are not easy to handle and my issues aren't curable anyways. Being an artist I decided there were better ways to manage myself, that medication wasn't doing for me. Hopefully this blog will not only give me the creative outlet I'd like to have but also give me something concrete to do and thus help me maintain schedules elsewhere in life.
So, as I said, I am an artist. I graduated in '07 from a great art college, with a BFA in Sculpture. I want to do toy design, specifically plush toys. I'm really a kid inside and can't get enough of unique and fun plushies. My poor husband has to steer me away from toy isles because I just go and start nabbing things off the shelves....only to either display somewhere where we don't have room, or rip apart so I can see how it was put together. Yes, sadly I am guilty of plushie murder :( I hate doing it but sometimes I can't tell the pattern from just looking at it. Besides plush, and usually when I'm bored, I like to draw. I used to be pretty decent at it but then my interests in sculpture took over and I stopped doing it for a while. So while I guess I'm ok now, I prefer to just doodle.
Recently I decided to go back to school. I've discovered a new love affair between plush and another interest of mine, Psychology. I dabbled in this, while in art college, but never seriously pursued it like I should have then. Basically I'm now studying for a Master's and PhD for Clinical Psychology. My goal is to work in Pediatrics and use my knowledge in Art to help kids to manage their disorders, without resorting to medication right away. I think many people can work with what they have to focus on the positive attributes of their disorders, and use those to work for them and excel in life.
So here I am. Second day of classes as an artist in the medical world. It's going to be a seriously interesting adventure just getting there, as I have 1.5yrs of pre-requisite courses, a possible 2yrs in the Master's program, and (if I'm lucky) a possible 3-4yrs in the PhD program. I've decided that this blog will serve as a way for me to share my experiences during that time. There will be many doodles :D as I love to draw in class to keep myself paying attention.
Right, so, on to my story and the promised doodles.
I'm not a morning person. At all. I try, I really do. I want to feel like, just once, that I'm the same as all those other super cool and productive adults who get up at like 5 or 6am, take showers, make breakfast and pack their lunches, check email, then head to work at 8 or 9 and get shit done. At least this is how my brain likes to think it out for me the night before. There's also usually rainbows and sparkles around me as I do all this too.
However, come morning, my alarm goes off and my brain is like a split personality, usually screaming profanities at myself for even listening to it the night before because it's way the fuck too early for it to wake up...let alone actually do stuff. I play the "hit the snooze button game" until I get tired of it and finally turn off the alarm and go back to sleep. Then I wake up about an hour or two later. It's at that time that my brain shifts again and yells at me for listening to it before and not getting up, because now it's noon and you've just wasted half your day, you lazy sloth.
This is how I function when I don't have things to do, or an actual schedule to my life...things that most unemployed people don't have. This was my life for about 3yrs now...until about a week ago when I finally got a job and started going to school again. Originally I figured since no one was hiring me I should just go back to school anyways, since I wanted to merge Psych and Plush Art, and then get a Work Study on campus. Of course, as soon as I get accepted and register for classes I land a job...go figure. Lol.
So now, after 3 whole years of staying up late and sleeping till noon, I have to suddenly go to sleep around 11-12pm and wake up at 7am. Needless to say my brain is not happy, as I found out this morning. I have illustrated my morning in these fabulous doodles, which you can see below. If it is difficult to read please click on it for a larger view. :)
You can see in that last panel me answering a question in class. No, that's not me making a joke to be funny it actually happened. Basically my brain has yet again been fooling me. It's been telling me that now I'm a mature adult and therefore have a second chance to be an amazing student in school, since when I was younger I was always distracted and therefore procrastinated like a pro. So now that I'm supposedly not that I can turn over a new leaf and be this really smart model student, that the professors love and the students admire.
So far I have been doing my homework in an orderly fashion, so this lead me to actually believe my brain. I forgot, though, that after 3yrs of sleeping in it's not like my brain is suddenly going to turn that "new leaf" right away and start functioning at 9am. When my professor asked in class what a hypothesis was my brain immediately said this to me, "Oh! Now's your chance to be the first to answer, impressing your teacher with your alertness, and begin to solidify your spot as a super awesome smart student!" Maybe it was because the class was originally talking about our research papers and presentations, before that, but my brain convinced me that a hypothesis was "the starting paragraph in a paper, where you usually summarize your thoughts and what you plan to discuss in the rest of the paper". .....and that quote is exactly what came out of my mouth.
As soon as I uttered the last words I realized something was wrong with what I said, but by then it was too late. My professor looked at me strangely and said "no" then turned to another, obviously more awake and smarter, student and received the right answer. It was here that I tried to save myself and laugh outloud, saying it was too early to think straight, but I already knew it was a failed attempt. My brain was now on it's split personality, swearing at me and asking why oh why did I listen to it when I know it doesn't function in the mornings like that.
And thus my dream of being super #1 student have just been made more difficult thanks to my brain. :/
