Random - it is how life seems to move most of the time. It is also how my thoughts flow here. I am always finding the next tangent and following it to a different subject.

Todays subject - speaking of random - is ADD in adults. The last time I brought this subject up to a group, it was met with responses like "ADD? I just call it multi-tasking." and "...just another cop-out so that people can get out of actually working...". These were about average for the ensuing conversation. They are also about as accurate as other group labels. That is to say - not at all.
I have enough experience to know the way ADD effects people with it. What are the best ways I have heard it described.
- It is like those commercials for those hearing things, where the person can't seperate out the TV or conversation from the noise in the surrounding room; except all the noise is coming from the same place as the conversation... and it's all in my head! -
- Multi-tasking is watching things on several TVs at the same time, but you only have to watch what you think is important and you have control of the remotes. ADD is the same, except you don't know what's important and the remotes are in the next room... on auto-surf. -
- You know, some people have a one track mind. I have a twenty track mind, which would be good, except that nobody knows where the trains are going, when the tracks switch, or when they might just dead-end in a black hole. It's very confusing. -

Even with descriptions like this, it is hard to know what it is really like if you do not live with it. It is hard to get people to even talk about what it is like because adults with ADD typically do not want anyone to know because they are afraid. They do not want to be ridiculed, patronized, dismissed, or any other form of discrimination that may be heaped on them.
They do not want to be LABELED any more than any of us would want to be branded.

And so I go on, collecting random bits of information and trying to solve the puzzle.