The speed of life

It has not yet been diagnosed, but I believe I’ve caught a pretty serious case of attention deficient disorder. I’m showing all the classic ADD symptoms (as listed by mayoclinic.com, sort of):

• Fails to pay close attention to details
• Has trouble sustaining attention
• Appears to not be listening, even when spoken to directly 
• Has difficulty following thr
• Forgets things often
• Appears to not be listening, even when spoken to directly

And unlike the common cold germ, which can live on surfaces for up to 48 hours, the ADD bug is much tougher to elude. In fact, it’s all around all of us. Each and every day.

“But ADD’s not contagious,” you say? The h it isn’t.

The average person takes in 3000 advertising messages per day. That’s just unsolicited ad messaging; it doesn’t even include communication with family and friends or normal business dialogue. Plus, that stat is from 2007, making it completely outdated. On a side note: Does anyone remember writing papers in grade school using a bibliography page? You know the one, filled with books published in 1982 and still thought to be relevant?

Those days are gone, my friends. And while many of you may be saying “good riddance”, and others of you are saying “I wasn’t even born in 1982”, I personally miss the simpler times.

I’m most nostalgic in the morning. While brushing my teeth in the shower. Or when I decide to skip the hair dryer. Because the heater in my car can do virtually the same job if I just direct the air vents correctly. Of course, the heater can’t be on too high. Or I won’t be able to hear the voicemail messages I’m picking up on my way into the office. Even though I will be there in 10 minutes.

And man, do those 10 minutes move slowly. Why won’t those other cars just get out of my way? What are they, from 1982?

Once I arrive at the office, I can finally concentrate – on email, twitter, photos of my nieces and nephews, returning a client call, that new creative brief, a routing that’s due at 10 am, some concepts for a little thing called a new business pitch and eventually, hanging up my coat.

When I go to get water, I end up getting coffee because I can’t remember why I’m in the kitchen. I never drink the coffee because I forgot I don’t like it. So it sits on my desk, like a prop, and obstructs my view of the very important copy document I seem to have misplaced. So I go to get water instead. And end up with a soda. Which now lives next to the coffee.

Surprisingly, despite  my dehydration, I have to go to the ladies room. So I take my Blackberry with me to catch up on text messaging. Because it’s one of the few times I can focus on just two things at once.

Reading while peeing. Now there’s a simple life to be sure.