Thread by @gravislizard

the "memento brain" shit plagues me daily. I just *can't* remember anything, even with things I'm skilled with. you can give me a list of network switch ports to configure and I'll get hopelessly lost

it says to set ports 1/1/20 to 1/1/25 to vlan 123 tagged and ports 2/1/10 and 2/1/11 to vlan 55 native, and if I could just read the damn list I could do it. I know how to do these things by heart

but I can't. I *have* to buffer it all in my head, i can't work off the list. if I don't have the entire idea in my head I can't do anything. and then it gets confused in my head.

so rapidly i start mixing things up, putting the untagged vlan on the wrong ports and skipping ports. and the list is right there, but it's nonsense to me. it's just scribbles.

words are meaningless to me. there's a process of rendering words and diagrams into concepts, and once I've done it the concepts are a hot potato I'm carrying, trying not to drop. I usually drop them in seconds.

on every project i have a moment of beautiful clarity where I'm smart and perceptive and clever, and the moment I try to implement it I drop the ball and the idea turns to blurry mush and I just have to plow ahead and hope my instincts got programmed correctly

most of the time they don't. I have to go back to the beginning and stare until I think I get it an then take off running again and just find out, like a disconnected observer, what my robot actually got programmed with this time

and like, misunderstanding of how the semiconductors work isn't the problem. *that's not the problem,* i can learn that. but I CAN'T REMEMBER the FACTS. I can internalize "npn goes here if volts are here", but that's useless if I can't remember WHERE THE VOLTS ARE

it's not a matter of knowledge, I retain knowledge really well. What I don't retain is simple observations about my world for long enough to apply them, things like "this button is normally open" just *will not stay in my brain*

and that wouldn't matter if I could just say "oh, I forgot, I'll check again, sigh" but that's not what happens. what happens is my brain REPLACES the memory with a DUPE. it gaslights me. it says "you remember reading that the apple ii uses +5 buttons" when that's FALSE

and my confidence level in these false memories is really high, high enough that I don't feel the need to check them. but if I DO check them, it's like when the car breaks down and your dad opens the hood and just stares at it because he has no idea how cars work.

"i need to go back and look at the docs i read"
<stares for three minutes, comprehending absolutely nothing>
"okay! looks like i was right, it is ground-on!"

sometimes i doubt my assertions about ADHDs effects, but: this is ADHD. this is what it does to me and I would pay any amount of money to have this burned out of my brain with radiation