you should have been more specific.

If the three humans of the household had grown up now, we would all be labeled what is now called "twice exceptional" ("EE" or "2E" for short). I know that I've always been super smart, and also I get over-stimulated or overwhelmed and I shut down and retreat inward. And I have ADHD, and it turns out the old joke isn't actually a joke.

"Knock, knock."

"Who's there?"

"ADHD kid."

"ADHD kid wh—"

"LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!!!"

Anyway. I have to keep learning things, not from any kind of principle, but because it's who and what I am, and I could no more stop learning than you could stop breathing. I once sought out boring podcasts I could fall asleep to: histories of Byzantium and philosophy, two topics I find hyper-detailed and dull. They stopped putting me to sleep after one or two dozen episodes, because my brain adapted and started the process of enthusiastic learning. It's who I am. I have to roll with it, or suffer needlessly.

Luckily, the world has more stuff than I could learn in a thousand lifetimes! I've long thought it would be fun to know (at least a little bit) how to fly a plane, but I do not want to actually fly a plane. It's grotesquely expensive, the radio protocols are not friendly to my brain which often blips on audio, and the noise, vibration, and sickening motion of small planes hit me pretty hard. The most intensive flight simulation rigs can have VR, an eye tracker, and several monitors, enough to qualify for real-world training, and still be a fraction of an actual plane. So I bought the best-cheapest flying hardware (a Logitech joystick) and X-Plane, the biggest simulator for Macs, famous both for being cross-platform, and for having a physics engine enabling users to create the Space Shuttle, or the enormous wings of an airplane on Mars. Maybe someday I'll upgrade to more complex hardware, but for now I'm enjoying a light involvement, at the Indiana Jones level.

Attention Deficit HEY LOOK A SQUIRREL

Amidst the many-faced train wreck of the past few weeks, it emerged that I have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). This came up because I had an adrenaline-filled day at the end of December, and once I started digging into the problem, I found the adrenaline was granting me a state of hyper-focus that I haven't experienced in a long while. If your thinking is scattered, and a stimulant un-scatters you, well. We don't quite know why that works, but there it is.

This explains many long-running mysteries of my life: Why were my grades erratic when they could have been perfect? Why do I fidget? Why do tasks like taxes or bills go un-done, even when I know exactly what to do?

How and why do I read books the way I do? In the days of paper books, I would be in the middle of six or more books at a time, switching between them in a single sitting. E-books have taught me how many books I can actually be in the middle of and still remember the context when I pick one up: 20-30. I read some pages, flip to a different book, read some pages, change book, etc.

Why did I take a semester of Mandarin Chinese in college? I needed the stimulation of learning something difficult. Why didn't I continue with it? Because memorizing is hard for me––because it's boring––and learning Chinese is an endless vast quantity of memorizing arbitrary pieces of information. (I cannot recommend highly enough the self-descriptive essay Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard.)

ADHD shows up a little differently in super-smart people, in ways that are still being refined for the next DSM. One challenge is that the diagnostic criteria up to this point have included "If it makes living a fairly standard life impossible," so they're adding refinements to include "Can hold down a job, but causes a lot of suffering." And it's masked by being super-smart, which has let me lurch through a college education (albeit finishing with a 3.2? 3.4? GPA) and out into a successful career. If I weren't super-smart, I would probably be living in a van down by the river. Most likely an unregistered van, having failed to file the paperwork.

The difficulty of task initiation explains another life oddity: I'm terrible at mathematical proofs. Learning how the math works, using it to solve problems, I'm fine with; but if I sit down to try even the most basic proof (proving that √2 is irrational is the usual introductory example), I just can't get started. It's not math anxiety, as usually thought of; I just have trouble getting started. But I can, even now, explain the basics of differential and integral calculus, and I promise I've had only basic use for differential, and zero use for integral, since I graduated. Would I have learned them on my own? No. Is it fun to know them? Well, yes. I like learning and knowing stuff, and I'm really good at it. I have a long list of hobbies and random stuff I've learned, to prove it.

(While I was in Chile, Anna was driving J someplace, and he asked a question about the moon. She said, "I don't know, but I bet Chris would." To which J replied, "Yeah! Chris is like a Google, but one you can Skype!", which I think says a lot of true and wonderful things about our relationship.)

Anyway, yeah. ADHD. Possibly the easiest thing I've dealt with this month.  I do love a good theory that fits the facts.