dysFUNction

Did you know there’s a term for the skill set needed to plan ahead, follow a set of directions despite interruptions, stay focused in the midst of distractions, and self-regulate? It’s called “executive function” and, in my inexpert opinion, it’s the biggest reason autism, ADHD, and other forms of neurodivergence are considered problematic.

I read a story once about a couple who decided to do an experiment. In order to save money, they would buy virtually nothing for a year. They spent a couple of months calculating how much food they ate, toothpaste they used, and so forth, then bought what they expected to be 12 months’ worth of groceries in bulk at a discount. Just recalling this story now makes me feel itchy. 

While I definitely place myself in the second category of the two kinds of people, the first of which can extrapolate from incomplete data, the idea that I’d have a good handle on what I’d need over a whole year after just two or three months of monitoring my use seems like it would be wildly inaccurate. What if those three months were over the summer, when I’d be likely to eat a lot more salads than casseroles, so I underestimated how much cream of mushroom soup I’d need?

Yes, it’s a joke. Pretty well the only recipe I make using cream of mushroom soup is that green bean dish with the fried onions on top. And I only ever do that at Thanksgiving because frying your own onions and stirring up condensed cream soup from scratch is a huge hassle. The only reason I make it at all is because I need a good hit of nostalgia once a year. I also make cranberry sauce and stuffing and pie from scratch at Thanksgiving, which is generally why it’s the only holiday I celebrate with a big homemade meal.

But, getting back to executive dysfunction, I will try to narrate an example of how it makes my life challenging. My room is a mess right now. Let’s be real, my room is a mess most of the time. I spent a good chunk of my life believing I was just a lazy, disorganized person who lacked the moral fortitude to prefer tidiness. The fact that, occasionally, I could take an afternoon or a day and actually clean everything up, well, that just reinforced what I could do, so my refusal to do so regularly was clearly just a choice on my part.

The real issue is that “cleaning” is not just one thing. It’s a whole series of separate steps. It requires clearing out things that should have made it into the trash can, but for whatever reason are under the bed. Picking up clothes that need to be laundered. Putting away clean clothes that have been living in the laundry basket—oh, wait, that needs to be done before I can pick up the dirty clothes on the floor. Making space for all the books and craft supplies I got out to use, but got distracted halfway through my project and now the place they used to be got filled in with something else. Meanwhile, I need to review the projects I’d begun so that I can make sure I reset things in a way that will allow me to complete that project later. Or not. If the yarn has gotten too tangled, it may not be worth it, which is something I have to decide right then and there before I can keep it or toss it. Because a random pattern I saw on Facebook isn’t necessarily worth spending half an hour detangling and rerolling, but a baby gift for a dear friend (whose child is probably approaching two by now) might absolutely be worth the effort. And we haven’t even made it to the bag of cat food on my desk, the panda bear that belongs to my daughter that’s sitting at the end of the bed, the art work that should probably be hung up, but is currently resting on top of the bookcase, and the three boxes of stuff I’ve been collecting for the garage sale this summer. And once I deal with all of that, I still need to change my sheets and sweep the floor and probably buy a new set of hangers, because apparently I didn’t have this many clothes the last time I bought hangers. 

And I haven’t even mentioned the tools on the dresser, the Post-it notes I bought because I adore the colors, but I don’t have a place for them to live yet, the stuffed animals I love, but don’t all fit on my bed and probably need one of those nets hung in a corner, and I bet I could crochet one of those that would look cooler, and then, before I know it, I’m poring over patterns on Ravelry, and talking myself out of returning the tools to their box, because I’ll need that hammer to put up the corner toy hammock (as I’ve discovered they are called), or maybe a screwdriver would be better, ooh, or Command hooks, but how much weight do those hold, I’d better look that up, and that’s why my oldest came in to find me in the bathroom trying to balance my entire collection of stuffed animals and a ball of yarn on my scale.

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