Occupation: Dreamer

Reading the New Yorker this morning - Goings on About Town - and a snippet about the actress playing Janet in the Broadway revival of the Rocky Horror Picture Show (RHPS), a sudden wave of nostalgia rushed over me like an unexpected ocean swell. My friend Hugh Cole introduced me to Brad and Janet (the New Yorker incorrectly called him "Sam") and the RHPS when I hitch-hiked to his house in Short Hills, NJ, from Maine that day, when he told me about the evening plans.  "We're going to this midnight show where people dress up and act out the parts." Okay. Didn't tell me about the whole cross-dressing thing. It made an impression. It was 1978, and we stood in a line under the dim streetlights outside a suburban village movie theatre, among other young people, some goth and lingerie-clad, slightly buzzed and ready for excitement. It lived up to the billing. People threw water and hot dogs at various times. Suddenly, there was a new, cooler version of "freak,...

I was so proud of my brother Shannon, who actually has a much stronger entrepreneurial spirit than I do, and I think I'm pretty stark-raving entrepreneurial. He came out of college and went right into working for himself, essentially, bird-dogging M&A leads for a small VC for 3 years before going out on his own. It reminded me of how I came to run my own business. I worked in corporate mortgage banking after training as a closer, then transitioned into sales, where I thought I would make the big bucks. Citibank, Chase, and several Independent Mortgage Bankers. After being recruited as a top producer to a branch manager position... I thought I was on track for executive leadership. SO PROUD! But I learned I was caught in between... a. My team - mortgage loan originators like me - whom I was trying to recruit and help, and b. the operational challenges of agency lending. Trying to bridge the two drove me over the edge, all for a paltry 7-basis-point override. I lost customers, my...

 A friend was recently bemoaning the relationship of another friend who had moved away to be with a woman he loved. There were many reasons to dislike the situation: children from a previous relationship, socioeconomic differences, and an unsettled financial situation for all of them. Did I mention he moved away? It made me marvel at the power of love. The friend in love has literally thrown everything away from his old life to be with someone. It's astonishing: I can't get people to change their ways when it makes total sense; slow down the drinking, stop spending money you don't have, get a job, clean up your life, get a haircut. No amount of logic can make a person initiate personal change, because they don't WANT to change.  Enter love.  Suddenly, the question becomes, what do I have to change about myself to be with that person? To the friend who's not in love, it looks like it's going to end badly. But how bad could it be? Love is making your friend want t...

Ignore it at your Peril Reflecting on my post-elementary and high school educational experiences, I recognize that there were influential teachers who had a profound impact on me. However, the people who exerted far more influence on me were my peers; friends, classmates, and, particularly, older students and kids. When I look at what's missing in education today - really, the education crisis - the gap is how the system focuses on the negative aspects of peer pressure while completely ignoring its potential for positive behavior.  When I got into trouble, it was usually because someone brought me into it. Drugs, alcohol, skipping school, mean pranks, and general sneaky disobedience. Except for driving cars before I had a driver's license,  I got introduced to  every one  of my bad behaviors  by one of my friends or schoolmates. It would never have occurred to me to scratch the paint on someone's car until a friend keyed a car and stole hood ornaments. I never ...

My friend Kent died last week. He'd been sick for a little more than a year. Before he died, he wrote me a really touching note about how my friendship had given him a real opportunity to enjoy having a simple connection with another human being. It made me think about how grateful I am that I don't drink anymore because I could make him a priority - reach out to him, check in regularly, and get his other friends to reach out to him, too. That's something I wouldn't have thought about while drinking because my primary goal in life was holding things together and trying to keep the world - bills, marriage, kids, business - from imploding. I wouldn't say that I wasn't a good friend, but I couldn't think about what other people were going through daily. I was self-centered. This was complicated because drinking - whether a little or a lot - meant some of my time was spent inebriated, and some time was spent recovering from it. I already didn't have enough t...

The "Character Defects" of ADD Unreliable - Doesn't follow through on promises Late - for meetings, classes, projects, bills Liar - Can't count on an accurate statement - incorrect memory of events Doing the Wrong Task - Incompetent or Disorganized Lazy - Doesn't do assignments Daydreamer - Seems to not pay attention Trouble - Impulsive poor decisions Forgetful - Misplacing items, missing appointments Bad with Money - Late Payments, Bounced Checks  Slow - Pace of work lags others We all strive to have "good character," behaving morally and responsibly in society. Behaving in any of the listed ways reflects poorly on your moral fiber. These are viewed as character flaws. However, these are all behaviors of an ADHD person.  This is at the core of the problems ADDs face, because we get feedback that we are "bad" people. As my son once said, "I suck at life." This compounds the frustration we feel about why we can't do the things othe...