Kitten for Hoku

Well, Hoku's been kinda bored. I'm gone most of the day and she's left to sort out her own way to relieve the monotony until I come home from work. Despite being the brilliant conversationalist that I am on the evening and weekends, she's still alone 40 hours a week.

What Hoku needed was a companion to keep her company (I know that was redundant, but it was either make a parenthetical comment here or interrupt the flow of my freeform writing and think of something more clever, thus derailing my train of thought. Crap. Now I've done just that. Anyway...) and I thought that I would get another dog. But that in itself presents problems. It's not bad traveling with one dog and a simple matter to take Hoku to my parent's home when I have to travel, but 2 dogs complicates matters a lot more than one. Hoku is already a handful at races and meets, and having two dogs to look after would be a challenge. Addtionally, I thought that dumping off two canines at my parent's home would be too much for a couple of retirees, and seeing as I'm going to be gone for three months next year, making my dad take care of 4 dogs was too much.

So, what then? Something between a dog and a gerbil that is mostly independent, won't destroy the place and won't mind at all if left alone while Hoku and I go to the races. The obvious choice was a cat. Hoku loves cats and not in that "they're delicious" kind of way. That decision made, I went off to the Berkeley Human Society in search of a pet for my dog.

Right away I was drawn to a very cute kitten whose colors were described on the tag as "dilute tortoise" whatever that meant. Here's what a dilute tortoise looks like:
She's already integrated herself and made the apartment her playground and she's only been here 2 days. Upon meeting Hoku for the first time, she made the requisite hissing sound, something I would probably do if I'd never seen a dog before, but she didn't run or even growl at Hoku any further. It was probably more like a hiss born out of surprise more than warning. After that, the new kitten's curiosity got the best of her and later that evening she went and gave Hoku a very close sniff. Hoku, being the dog she is, treated the new cat as almost dangerous, and has been taking great pains to give her a wide berth, until she figures this new roommate out.

It didn't take long, and after 48 hours in the same apartment together, managed to conspire against their benevolent mutual guardian to hijack the couch.
Funny thing is, they even have similar facial expressions.
My next dilemma, one that has bugging me ever since I decided weeks ago before I got a kitten, was what to name her. Getting out a pen and paper (I recently re-discovered writing with pen and paper, something that lends itself well to brainstorming in a way that a neatly arranged keyboard can't) and played around with a few anagrams. I wanted something unique that would be a combination of letters from the names of other pets I've known over the years. I thought of Shandy and Isis. Shandy was my very first pet, a rat that I had while I was living in the dorms. She was perfect in every way except her lifespan. Isis was a cat that I adopted when I was living in my first off-campus apartment. Everyone loved her and she was a great cat, capable of some extreme cat toy driven stunts. Rearranging the letter in "Shandy" and "Isis" gave me a number of interesting combinations, however the only one that made any sense as far as being a name for a cat was...Daisy Shins.

It made sense in some weird way. Hoku and Daisy Shins are going to get along just great. They're already beginning to emulate each other.

I'm such a GTD convert

Adult Attention Deficit Disorder.

Yeah. Check. Got it.

For years I struggled with the ups and down, confused by my apparent lack of concentration for some things and my days-long laser beam focus on others. Like most people I really believed that ADD was a lack of attention to anything and everything. I thought that I couldn't have ADD since I had moments where my concentration was so incredible that I blamed a lack of motivation for the times I couldn't or wouldn't concentrate. I fell for the most common misconception about ADD.

As an example, I remember when I directed Heidi Chronicles for a small theater in Berkeley. Not only did I direct the thing, I also did most of the costuming, all of the music, some of the lighting, built some of the set, and acted. All while maintaining a 40-hour a week job. It was even more hectic for The Sisters Rosensweig. When I directed that play, I also did all of the things I did above in addition to being the play's stage manager. I distinctly remember not sleeping for three days while I worked to get the set done, the music edited, and the painting and wallpapering done. I invited my then-manager who was a theater buff to come see it. His first reaction was one of disbelief. He had trouble equating the tardy, late with projects basket case he knew at work with the fanatic workaholic that produced the play he just saw. That's ADD's Jeckyl and Hyde.

There's a reason that I've had fifteen jobs in 12 years. I either had the foresight to get out while I still had a good reputation, was smart enough to take an assignment that only lasted as long as it took for me to get bored, or found something more bright and more shiny and more interesting. Right about now would have been the time for me to leave my current job, but a coworker sat me down and had a long and enlightening talk with me. He actually had me pegged as someone afflicted (blessed?) with ADD and made some suggestions about what methods I could employ to help me exploit the Jeckyl and wrangle the Hyde aspects of my ADD.

One of the things he suggested was I try David Allen's "getting things done" methodology.

Ha! Right. That's all I need, some self-help guru telling me how to "get things done."

I borrowed the book Getting Things Done and thought that it was pretty boring. How was this going to help? Fortunately I didn't chuck GTD out of my life just yet. I figured I'd at least try to listen to the mp3s that were given to me.

What a difference that made. It was one thing to read the boring dry book and quite another to listen to David Allen's enthusiasm through my iPod.

In a nutshell, GTD has shown me how to "dump my brain" onto paper and onto my computer so that I can finally think. I hate analogies because they're weak, but think of your brain as RAM. If your psychic RAM is filled running endless loops of everything that vies for your attention, you might just have enough processing power left to brush your teeth in the morning. That was me until I started using GTD and writing things down.

One of the most startling things I learned was that your brain makes no distinction between promises made externally to others and those made internally to yourself. If you flake on yourself, it's as bad as someone breaking a promise to you. Crazy, but true.

Go ahead and check out what others have been saying on the web about GTD.

I now carry a small notepad everywhere and with GTD it's changed how I look at and process information. It goes beyond task lists and action items.

Works for me.