Yes, I Could Be Punctual If I Tried, But I Just Love Inconveniencing Others!
2394 words | ~ 12 min read | Sep 14, 2020 | last modified Oct 21, 2020 | disability regret
This post is making the rounds of some blogs I read, who have linked to it with approval. To be fair, it is pretty funny.
It also just about made my blood boil, and I think I need to explain why.
I have a neurobehavioral disorder that makes it very difficult for me to plan out what I need to do to get to a place on time. I don’t really know how long tasks take, even tasks that I do a lot, until I’ve timed them, with a timer or with my watch. But even if I have that, I may not have a full expansion of everything-that-needs-to-happen-before-I-leave. I may have a vague sense of “oh I’ll pack my backpack and then I can go”, but there are also totally unexpected steps like putting on shoes and a jacket that I forgot to include in this plan, and therefore they’re not part of the time estimate. So it doesn’t really help to know the door-to-door time; there needs to be some buffer, but computing how much of it there should be is not a thing my brain will do on any mode other than full manual.
I know being on time for things is one of the most basic adult skills, I know it’s how you show respect to people, I know this already. I want to be on time for things. I want to be a reliable person who doesn’t rudely hold everything up. I have put so much fucking effort into getting better at being on time for things – whenever I put something on my calendar that I need to leave the house for, I ask Google Maps how long it will take me to get there, and multiply that number by around 1.5, and add 10-15 minutes to account for it ~mysteriously~ taking me longer than I expect to get out the door, and I block out that time for travel and then give it four different calendar alerts. I have alarms on my phone and alarms on my smartwatch and alarms on my calendar and even alarms on my alarm clock (actually, alarms on three different alarm clocks) so that I get to things on time. When I lived on campus, I lived in a dorm that was a 2-3 minute walk to most of the EECS buildings, because “oh shit it’s 10 I need to leave for my 10AM class that actually starts at 10:05” is simple enough that my brain can reason about it.
And I’m still very frequently late.
My neurobehavioral disorder also makes it hard for me to start or stop tasks, where “tasks” is defined as nearly everything a human does in the course of a day; on the other hand, dead (unoccupied) time is so horrible I’ll slide off within thirty seconds to go do something else. So the calendar alerts need to hit at just the right time, so that I have enough time to stop whatever I’m doing but not enough time to get distracted by something else.
I am constantly paranoid that I have forgotten something. I hate trying to get work done in days when I have meetings partly because they break my flow but mostly, if we’re being honest, because at least 20% of my brain is occupied in having anxiety about missing the meeting. But if I do manage to distract that part of my brain, I will be late.
Have you figured out yet that I’m talking about ADHD? Time-agnosia is one of the most common symptoms of Goofy Dipshit Disorder, of Trouble Sitting Still Disorder, of Inconvenience-to-Real-Adults Disorder, of I Know I’m Incredibly Annoying So I’d Better At Least Be Funny Or I Will Have Literally No Friends Disorder.
And before you ask, yeah, I also suck at making phone calls. And sending emails. And doing laundry (there are so many opportunities to totally forget about it, all of which will end up in it mouldering or getting wrinkled or thrown all over the floor by someone else who understandably wanted to use the laundry machine and got tired of waiting for me). And following up on not receiving things. And maintaining any organization system for my physical crap that doesn’t include at least three boxes of Misc Stuff and Stuff That Lived On My Desk Until I Realized I Barely Had Any Room For My Pad Of Paper And Then I Arbitrarily Scooped It Into This Box and I Don’t Know Why I Have This Stuff But I Can’t Throw It Out. And remembering literally anything that isn’t written down before it blows up dramatically in my face.
So I’ve gotten very good at writing things down. My Google Calendar is terrifying and if you even contemplate messing with my Asana categories and tags I will bite a chunk out of your arm. I’ve taken so many notes about everything at every internship I’ve ever done, and I recently got complimented on being so “organized” and “having everything written down” and “remembering stuff from last meeting”. You wanna know my secret? It’s a notebook, but the secret behind that is that if writing everything down in a notebook was a Hot Tip that made every single adult in your life suddenly not hate your guts when you were a kid, you’d get really good at it too.
Do you know how many times my mom got mad at me for asking, in the car, “By the way, where are we going?” Because of course she would have told me my whole schedule for the day verbally when I was already in the car without anything to take notes with, and of course it went in one ear and out the other. I was a kid at the time and I internalized that it was my fault for not being able to bully my brain into remembering things it is constitutionally incapable of remembering. I know now that the difference between me and my mom is not that I am Just Not Trying Hard Enough, it’s that she has enough executive function for 3 people and I have enough executive function for maybe 0.4 people on a good day.
I already, and I cannot stress this enough, am aware that I have Inconvenience to Adults Disorder. I strive harder to be on time than you will ever realize and I will still very frequently be late. How neurotypical, and I say this with as much disdain as I can muster, to think that if I just “cared more about other people” I would inconvenience them less!
Honestly, why am I even trying to write about this? theunitofcaring already said it better in three sentences way back in 2015:
“you’re late every time and it makes me feel like this doesn’t matter to you.”
no it’s okay I’m late for airplanes and final exams and job interviews too. the broken part is the part where ‘this matters’ is supposed to connect to ‘this happens’.
Hang on, you may say, the original article wasn’t even talking about people like you, who are still trying your Best. It’s talking about people who call themselves “freewheeling” and “whimsical” as an excuse for being late all the time.
I have one thing to say to this: When you have Will Not Be On Time Disorder, you can do one of two things. You can put massive and draining amounts of your already limited energy into being on time anyway. You can constantly work to “get better” at it, and apologize to people when (not if, but when) you fail, and hope they cut you some slack because you’re at least Trying. (And oh boy are you Trying. But at what cost?)
Or you can just give up and take the social consequences, because you know already that you’re probably going to fail, so why bother?
I really, truly can’t blame anyone for deciding that the price of Option A is too high. I truly can’t blame anyone for picking option B.
Here is what the article has to say about people who pick option B:
…she is a fully Jokerfied sicko…
I want to leave room for the possibility that Jessica is being funny, here… The alternative—the absolute only alternative—is that Jessica is an asshole.
When you are late to that thing, and that thing cannot proceed until you arrive, you are imposing yourself on those other people’s time. […] [T]hey, unlike you, feel some bare-minimum responsibility for how their actions affect other people, whom they consider real.
Ah, yes, sorry, I forgot those. Jessica (or in this case Shiloh) Is An Asshole Disorder. Doesn’t Feel Any Responsibility For How Their Actions Affect Others Disorder. When I am constitutionally incapable of doing something, and I tell you that, but to your tiny little mind the something is so easy that you simply cannot process the idea that I am constitutionally incapable of doing it, you assume that I am making the conscious choice to not do the something on purpose, probably to annoy and victimize you specifically, because I am an asshole. The only possible answer is that I am an asshole. Because, and let me reiterate this, of a neurobehavioral disorder; having the brain that I was born with makes me an asshole.
Well! I’ll certainly take that one under consideration.1
A few loose change thoughts:
The idea that there are two main responses to being societally expected to do something that’s incredibly difficult for you, and that these responses can be summarized as “expend way too much energy trying to do it anyway” or “give up”, is something I’ve also seen mentioned in other aspects of ADHD. From ADDitude, on Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria:
People with ADHD cope with this huge emotional elephant in two main ways, which are not mutually exclusive.
They become people pleasers. They scan every person they meet to figure out what that person admires and praises. Then they present that false self to others. Often this becomes such a dominating goal that they forget what they actually wanted from their own lives. They are too busy making sure other people aren’t displeased with them.
They stop trying. If there is the slightest possibility that a person might try something new and fail or fall short in front of anyone else, it becomes too painful or too risky to make the effort. These bright, capable people avoid any activities that are anxiety-provoking and end up giving up things like dating, applying for jobs, or speaking up in public (both socially and professionally).
– ADDitude, Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria and ADHD
Now, I’m kind of skeptical of RSD as it is commonly theorized to exist. In particular, these two social outcomes seem like a really natural outgrowth of most authority figures, during your childhood, defaulting to disliking you over something that was mostly out of your control. There’s the approach of trying really hard to get them to like you anyway, and the approach of giving up and trying to at least not be very noticeable. (Becoming the class clown or a freewheeling Bohemian or whatever should be seen here as another endpoint of the “giving up” approach that I’m really frustrated the ADDitude article fails to mention, especially since it’s, like, the stereotypical ADHD presentation.)
I also really wanted to fit in this quote, but I couldn’t get the post to flow right:
I need to silence my most reliable way of gathering, processing, and expressing information, I need to put more effort into controlling and deadening and reducing and removing myself second-by-second than you could ever even conceive, I need to have quiet hands, because until I move 97% of the way in your direction you can’t even see that there’s a 3% for you to move towards me.
– juststimming, Quiet Hands
Which is – just such a perfect statement of the THING, where neurotypical people typical-mind themselves into not even realizing that your problem is a possible thing that could go wrong with the human brain, and all of their “why don’t you just” suggestions inevitably presuppose that the missing link in your brain works, because they can’t really imagine it not working, what would that even be like? And these are the majority of the people you encounter in life, so the “why don’t you just"s are like sandpaper, and after a while even the most kindly meant “why don’t you just” hits you where you’re raw and makes you strongly consider switching careers to arson. But I didn’t want to get into a digression about Quiet Hands, and unusual methods of information processing that the traditional school system (and broader society, but schools tend to be the most aggressively authoritarian about it) deals with in awful, harmful, abusive ways, and all that, so.
One of the other things I got reprimanded about was that I was always doodling or sketching in class when I should’ve been “paying attention”. Doing something with my hands, for me, is a prerequisite for paying attention; optimally I would knit or something, but if the only thing you’ll let me have is a piece of paper and a pencil, well, don’t be surprised if it turns into doodling. But apparently full-page sketches are “distracting to the other students” (why do the other students care? Why are they so invested in the contents of my notes that the lack thereof is a distraction?) and Not To Be Borne.
This is a lot less of a big deal than Quiet Hands, but the principle is: the behavior you might find distracting might be the thing another person needs in order to process the information they are trying to take in.
Anyway, one reason why I blog a lot about disability, and why I try to include as many examples as possible in those posts, is that I want to share with you some small part of the fantastic diversity of ways in which people experience the world. I think the best way to combat the typical mind fallacy is through lots and lots of training data.
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A Captain-Awkward-ism. Example usage:
↩︎“Huh, thanks, I’ll think about it.” (This is not a lie, you will think about it and then not do it.)