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Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Late Fate

I am always late. I have been late my entire life. I don't know how to be on time. I've been working on this problem for my entire existence. It is the nut I cannot crack.

It's not like I run hours behind, usually not. No, my every day problem is that I am running five or ten minutes late. It seems like this should be an easy problem to fix. Just get ready for whatever ten minutes sooner, right? It's not that easy.

I have tried every possible hack to get out of the door on time to no avail. There is some internal disconnect in me that makes time management very hard. I have no instincts here. Whenever I try to start getting ready to leave such that I will be on time, I have to fight all my internal clocks screaming that it is a ridiculous amount of time, that it should not take nearly so long, then time melts into the ether, I don't know what happens, and I am late again.

I do not have the ability to accurately measure the passage of time. I read once that a classic symptom of ADHD is to ask the person to estimate when three minutes have passed. The person with ADHD will say that the three minutes is up when approximately 90 seconds have passed. I have the opposite problem. I call three minutes after five or six minutes. Time not only flies, it evaporates. I do not know how to fix this.

I'm not looking for tips here; I'm explaining the situation.

But occasionally, the stars align. Somehow a miracle happens and I leave the house on time. Not wink wink, drive like a madman on time, but regular person regular on time. Do you know what happens almost every time this minor miracle occurs?

There is an unforeseen and unavoidable traffic jam, and I'm late anyway. That's what happens.

All my heroic effort gets rewarded with the exact same outcome: late as usual. It makes it hardly worth trying.




This post brought to you by the traffic tie-up on a road I wasn't even driving on, which made the dump truck drivers crossing at my intersection feel entitled to run their red light and block my road through three light cycles.

I'll also note there are other cultures in the world in which my deficits would not be considered moral failings. I wish I lived in one of those.

2 comments:

mandamum said...

this is ME TOO!!!! In fact, my oldest daughter has said it's safer for everyone if we just leave late, so no one has to have an accident to ensure our lateness. We can get there about an hour early, or 5-15min late.

Jenny said...

You don't know how much better it makes me feel to hear this. When I try to explain this problem to normal people, I get eye rolls and assumptions that it is just a big excuse. I am glad to hear that maybe this isn't my imagination.

I mean, I am sorry you are similarly afflicted.