ADDing

It's come to my notice, and not for the first time, that I have a bit of an ADD problem.

Now, I don't mean true Attention Deficit Disorder, or ADHD, or anything like that. I mean a facet of my personality that was probably there all along but has been exacerbated by my job and my hobbies.

I'm talking about Naturalist ADD, which I completely made up just now so please don't bother looking it up. It's the ability to become completely distracted by naturish things that most normal people really wouldn't even notice, let alone stop to be fascinated by.

Let's use the subject of today's pointless photo as an example. My two fans already know that I have a thing for spiders (weird in itself, yes), but this one isn't even a spider. It's an empty exoskeleton left behind after a spider moulted. I found it on my father's shed last week.

And proceeded to take (or try to take) hand-held macros of it with my little autofocus camera.

Macros, plural. Of an old spider skin.

Yeah... I know.

This sort of brainal weirdness is what I deal with everyday, and it seems to be getting weirder as I get older. Yesterday I took a walk with a couple of coworkers to check out reported damage to a picnic shelter we use for some of our programming, and I swear it was like taking a five-year-old on a hike. It's just so hard for me to stay focussed on the task at hand when there's so many flowers (finally) blooming, or the Tiger Swallowtails are lazily drifting through the trees, or the beavers have been out lumbering, or the Yellow Warblers are chasing each other around at breakneck speed, or (heaven forbid) there are Wolf Spiders out on the path...

Now, I've seen plenty of Wolf Spiders in my professional life. A Wolf Spider is not a novelty. I've even drawn my share of Wolf Spiders. But if I'm walking along and see something out of the corner of my eye that may just be a Wolf Spider, I have to stop whatever I'm doing and watch the spider for a while.

I'm so much fun to walk with.

Of course, yesterday was doubly (or triply) ADDish because I was walking with two other naturalists who have their own things they get distracted by... it probably would have appeared to a bystander as an attempt to herd squirrels or something. Well, maybe not quite that bad. Still, though. A serious hiker (as opposed to a casual stroller) would have found us intensely frustrating.

Too bad. You miss too much good stuff if you're in a hurry to get where you're going, I figure.

It's one reason why I'll probably never own an iPod (unless there's a really REALLY good sale). I don't have much use for plugging myself in when I'm on the trail, because if I do I might miss something. Yes, I'd be able to ignore the annoying stuff out there a lot easier, and I'd likely set a much better walking pace if I had music-to-pace-by, but I'd get a helluva lot less out of the walk itself.

Ok, so I'd probably get more exercise. But still. Exercise versus neat things to be distracted by? Come on. What kind of choice is that?

Not much of one, would be the answer I'm looking for there. I know not everyone would agree with me, but honestly? That comes out as a great big whatever for me in the end.

Guess I'll just continue to be an ADD-on wherever I go, then.






There are worse things.

Really.