Heather Rae Scott

As menitoned before, my home office isn’t done yet. It becomes a catch all for the bulk supplies of toilet paper and paper towels, or the pots and pans that used to reside in cupboards that are no longer in my kitchen from the bathroom remodel. My husband works 40 plus hours a week and now that Hunting season is around the corner, there’s no fix in sight. I’m not complaining, I’m simply making do. For three evenings–sometimes more–a week, I’m next door being a caregiver to my elderly neighbor. Remembering to grab everything before I leave if I want to write isn’t always easy. I have ‘those’ kids. The ones that will be home for hours and never say anything about needing lunch money or papers that need signed until I’m getting my stuff ready to go out the door. OR my stuff has been buried under something or worse, moved by my husband or kids. I’m sure there a lot of people nodding their heads in agreement.

I’ve never been a very organized person. I always worked better in chaos and under duress. As I get older, I find that I want to be more organized, that the clutter and chaos stiffle my creativity and stresses me out. When I’m stressed out, I can’t write. I used to be able too, but thinkgs have changed, so now I need to adapt. I found One Note by microsoft on my last computer and I dabbled a bit with it and then got a little frustrated and went back to hand-writing out stuff. I still do that and it’s usually a white-hot-mess. I have chicken scratch going in every direction of the pages, scribbled out things, arrows, underlines, circles and it’s a nightmare. Apparently, it’s how my brain works and I still do that, only now, I have a place to put it where the papers aren’t getting ripped, or crunched up because I’m tossing them in my tote bag. They’re not being used as a coaster or buried underneath a cookie sheet.

Before:

After:

I’m sure I’ll learn how to do more things with it. I can add photos and make seperate pages and you can print this out if you need too. It works just like a notebook, only it’s a virtual notebook. It’s been helping me, so I hope it can help someone else out there. I’ve heard there are other products out there like this and I plan to still scribble on paper, because it does help me plot. I just needed a place to keep everything I need and be able to take it with me. One Note does that for me.

I think the majority of writers are obsessed with office supplies. Pens, paper, post its, highlighters, dry erase boards….I could go on and on. My husband laughs at me sometimes when he looks at my supply of Post-Its or when I get uber excited when he buys me more for my birthday or just because he’s seen them and thinks of me. I’m an office supply geek!

But when your office isn’t complete, and you take your jobs with you on the laptop, Post Its will only take so much abuse and they can get lost or left behind. On my new Vaio, I have an application called Sticky Notes. For someone with ADHD, you need something to remind you of things. Sticky Notes is totally working for me. They’re portable, they’re good for the environment because you’re not wasting trees by using them and they’re fun.

Here’s what my desktop looks like now. There are some fun things on there like “Finish the Damn Book!” or the reminder that I need to take my DD214 to the courthouse to have it registered before my aunt kicks my ass. There are dates that I need to keep in the forefront of my mind and once I get something else done on here which I’ll talk about next.

A lot of people use their dry erase boards to do help them write. You could essentially use your desktop the same way. I haven’t figured out if you can change the colors of your sticky notes for plotting, but I think I could live with it if you couldn’t. Putting important plot parts for the place you are in the story for me will be an enhancement to my writing process.

It surely can’t hurt.

Does anyone else out there use Sticky Notes? Has it helped you?

My Aunt suggested that perhaps talking about writing would get me back in the swing of things because not talking about it isn’t working.  I watched Dr. Oz the other day because I put the television on for noise during the day while I’m working online or attempting to clean up the house and I just happened to be walking by when I heard something that piqued my interest. The show was called, “Is ADHD Ruining Your Marriage?” It was extremely enlightening to me and you can watch it here. I think I may even convince my husband to watch it with me. We’re quite a pair, because we know he has OCD. How we haven’t killed each other is beyond me–haha! Some how, we’ve managed to make it work.

It was a woman who complained about asking her husband to do things–multiple things, he’d say yes and she was lucky if he did one. They asked her a series of other questions and the guest said, “Your husband has Adult ADHD.” Everything she said yes too, I realized I do. And when I’m stressed out–which I have been a lot lately, my symptoms are worse. They talked about structure. When I served in the USAF, my issues were barely noticeable. I had structure. The busier my life becomes with the kids the worse it gets. My other job, I work nights and I’m rarely getting a full night’s sleep, if I’m tired, my brain just doesn’t function and my sleep schedule is Fubar and unfortunately, that isn’t going to improve any time soon.

With the new computer, there are new programs that I’m finding extremely helpful, so over the course of the next couple of blog posts I’m going to talk about how they’re helping my life and how I plan to use them in my writing because I honestly have to laugh at myself some days when I think about Heather Rae Scott, the author. And who knows, perhaps I can even help someone out there who suffers the same thing I do and someone reading this might have suggestions as to how they cope with ADHD as an adult.