The RM

A friend of mine's kid came home from his mission recently, and I had the opportunity to spend an afternoon with him while we painted his dad's kitchen. It occurred to me, as he insisted on listening to MoTab and praying over the $.99 Wendy's burgers, that I could never go back to being a missionary.

Let me back up: I came home after 10 months serving in the Oklahoma Tulsa Mission for health reasons, meaning I suffered a nervous breakdown. I came home and had to go into therapy for the things I ha
d experienced. Despite that, the window was always open to return and finish serving my mission. It's weird that it didn't occur to me until about six years and a marriage later that the window could ever be closed, and due to the residual effects my breakdown has had on my psyche even to this day I've never been tempted to go back, but now that the window is officially closed to serve as an Elder with a little name badge in a crummy apartment with another Elder, it makes me wonder what might've been. It also makes me question my motives into why I went in the first place, as well as why I left.

I don't regret serving. Not in the slightest. I met some dear friends there, including my adopted grandmother Sam, and my once roommate now dear friend and fellow Game of Thrones enthusiast Nate, and I can't not mention my buddies who I rarely see Elder Abraham and Elder Bracken. My first question is who else would I have met? Would I have found other families in need of a geeky Mormon kid to show up? Maybe I would've met some companion and formed some sort of eternal bond of brotherly love Scrubs style. Of course there's a flip side to the coin. I may've met more companions with whom I would want to wring their scrawny necks, or more families that made me want to run to the nearest clinic to get tested because I was foolish enough to sit on their couch. So I guess that's just a moot point.

I guess the biggest question I can ask is: Who would I have become? After I got home from my mission I met several people who have made some major impacts to my life, and taken other relationships to whole new levels of intimacy, including with my wife Katie. From going to college after my mission I met Neil and Tyler, who helped make my wedding actually work, and help me to this day with the trials in my life. Would I have them if I had stayed or gone back? Would they have become friends with that Joe? In the here and now I can't imagine my life without them, or without Spencer, or TJ, or Stephen, or Stu, or Bryan. or Sholom or a hundred other people I consider dear to me.

With that I have to wonder about the reason why I came home: My then deteriorating mental state. I had the option of staying but decided to go home and get treatment there, but if I had stayed, would I have been able to recover or would it have become worse? It's taken years to reach the level of stability I'm at now, which some days admittedly isn't much. I wonder if the stress of still being there would've been too much, and how far things would have progressed. Did I save my own life or did I ruin it?

Unfortunately without a Flux Capacitor, or as my more up-to-date friends would say, a TARDIS, these questions will never be answered until the next life when all truth will be freed. Despite it's flaws I love my life now. My wife and I are very happy to come to our oddly shaped home to the smell of the Crock Pot making Swedish Meatballs, sitting in our spots and watching Criminal Minds. I'm just curious what could've happened.

-JOE

ADHD and No Laptop Makes Joe something something...

Two weeks into my latest semester at the U and I seem to be running into a bit of a problem: Only two of my classes are actually in classrooms and neither of them will let me use my computer.

I know this is petty but let me explain:

I suffer from a condition called ADHD-Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. It's basically ADD on steroids. Short of it is that it's hard for me to pay attention to one thing at a time for a long period of time. It drove me nuts when I worked at Toys R Us and nobody was in the store. I would pace the aisles until I wore down the linoleum.

It's only a total of 7 hours a week, but that can be a lot to ask sometimes. My Media Effects class especially. Three hours completely unplugged has me crawling up the walls. I don't even go that long at church!

Is this a sign of the times? I was diagnosed when

This was last week's attempt to stave off boredom...

I was pretty young but back then I didn't have the wonders of the internet to keep my focus prisimed like I do now. I have to wonder: Does my constant connection to the internet help my condition or does it make it worse?

A few weeks ago I spent a week camping out of state. For most of it my cell service was spotty at best and what I could get I used to text my wife, but honestly I didn't miss it at all. I spent the entire time surrounded by my buddies laughing, talking and enjoying each other's company.

The classes of course are different. The classes are interesting enough, but just sitting still and listening to the lecture is a lot less entertaining than playing in the woods. I know people have told me to just pay really close attention but that doesn't work for me. I live in a world where if I get too bored I start losing focus in everything, and regaining focus becomes almost impossible.

I know it's popular to say that we need to eliminate distractions from the classroom, but for me it's a necessary tool to function. As much as I love complaining about my problems on the internet, I have too much pride to talk to the teachers about this particular need. It's hard for me to go to a professor and say "Hay, you're class isn't stimulating enough so I need permission to cruse Facebook while you're talking so I don't zone out and fall asleep. Is that cool?"

Nobody would buy it.

I write this not just to vent but to draw attention to a problem that doesn't get a lot of attention, or if it does negatively. I have ADHD, a condition which makes it hard for me to focus. This has made working a job an agonizing process and classes without my computer brutal that borderlines on impossible. This isn't a pity party for me, just a part of my story I wanted to tell.

-JOE