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elfsIt has been fourteen days since I was last allowed to use my ADHD meds. I reassured the staff that I was still “somewhat functional” without them, and the sheer volume of text output over the past two weeks, plus writing TCDump and helping someone fix their Surface Pro 6 Camera Driver the old-skool way, shows pretty conclusively that I wasn’t kidding about the “somewhat functional” part.
I still feel pretty low. I couldn’t possibly work on anything big, like Scarlett or BFDLang, with my brain this addled with the drugs and the pain. Especially the pain. Every swallow is like being stabbed in the throat with a stiletto.
But it’s been interesting working without the medication. I find, oddly enough, that I have much more verbal output– my hypergraphia is in full swing now that I’m not on the medication. But it’s also very scattershot.
I use an older Unix window manager, one with “workspaces,” which is basically a full screen in which a single project can be held. You switch between them the way you do on a TV remote control– press an activate button (in my case, CTRL + ALT) and then use the Left or Right keys to go “up” or “down” a channel. And apparently, I must have learned to use this kind of manager years before I got treated, because it allows me to “channel surf” multiple projects at once, working a little on one until I get distracted, then going to another, then another. (In the course of writing this paragraph alone, I’ve checked Twitter, had a nurse come and give me vitamins, looked at my email, reviewed my “take” from my audio recorder last night, and called my mother.) Every once in a while I’ll just flip through the channels and go, “Oh, yeah, that. I should finish that.”
It doesn’t make for deep programming. I couldn’t concentrate for hours on an algorithm until I break it down and understand it deeply. Without my meds I’d never be capable of software architecture or the deeper mathematics that my current level of skill and training require. But it’s interesting, and it’s a bit like being The Old Elf, the guy who wrote a lot of stuff every day, because his brain had a lot to say.
I still feel pretty low. I couldn’t possibly work on anything big, like Scarlett or BFDLang, with my brain this addled with the drugs and the pain. Especially the pain. Every swallow is like being stabbed in the throat with a stiletto.
But it’s been interesting working without the medication. I find, oddly enough, that I have much more verbal output– my hypergraphia is in full swing now that I’m not on the medication. But it’s also very scattershot.
I use an older Unix window manager, one with “workspaces,” which is basically a full screen in which a single project can be held. You switch between them the way you do on a TV remote control– press an activate button (in my case, CTRL + ALT) and then use the Left or Right keys to go “up” or “down” a channel. And apparently, I must have learned to use this kind of manager years before I got treated, because it allows me to “channel surf” multiple projects at once, working a little on one until I get distracted, then going to another, then another. (In the course of writing this paragraph alone, I’ve checked Twitter, had a nurse come and give me vitamins, looked at my email, reviewed my “take” from my audio recorder last night, and called my mother.) Every once in a while I’ll just flip through the channels and go, “Oh, yeah, that. I should finish that.”
It doesn’t make for deep programming. I couldn’t concentrate for hours on an algorithm until I break it down and understand it deeply. Without my meds I’d never be capable of software architecture or the deeper mathematics that my current level of skill and training require. But it’s interesting, and it’s a bit like being The Old Elf, the guy who wrote a lot of stuff every day, because his brain had a lot to say.
