A.D.D.

I'm gonna take this time to write about something else that's been getting on my nerves quite a bit lately. It does have something to do with music, but at the same time it affects everything in my life at least a little bit.

I'm not professionally diagnosed, but I really believe that I have A.D.D. I have a lot of trouble focusing when I'm in class and the teacher is giving a lecture (this could really hurt me in college unless I constantly take notes). Even when I'm not in school and I'm honestly listening to something that I'd want to hear in the first place, my mind always goes other places. I realize five minutes into a story that Renee is telling me that I haven't been listening the whole time. It's really hard to focus after that, but I still try to pick up the pieces and figure out what she's talking about. More often than not, I have to ask a really obvious question and she realizes I haven't been listening and gets pissed off. It's not that I don't care, it's that I really, honestly, have a lot of trouble focusing.

It's worst with music. I have to change what I'm listening to constantly. I very often listen to an album that I would find all around good if I was on Ritalin, but instead I only like the first two or three tracks and find the rest boring because my attention span is so short. This only really applies to albums that are track-based, with each song having verses and choruses and whatnot. I have absolutely no trouble listening to an album like Feedbacker, which isn't track based or 'catchy' at all. I have, on an unrelated note, realized that the new Mastodon album is really quite fantastic, but it took a while for me to really swallow the whole thing, as my attention completely wanes before the third track is over. I have to stop listening for a while and go back, starting halfway through in order to really enjoy anything past the very beginning. While this isn't a massive inconvenience, I'd really prefer to be able to listen to it from beginning to end consecutively, but if I try that, it just becomes background noise to my aimless thoughts.

It's a real bitch.