Half Dad, Half Misfit

Written about a Mother/Mother-in-Law, but pretty well explains any dysfunctional or dramatic family or organisation. From Reddit: Don't rock the boat. I've been thinking about this phrase a lot lately, about how unfair it is. Because we aren't the ones rocking the boat. It's the crazy lady jumping up and down and running side to side. Not the one sitting in the corner quietly not giving a fuck. At some point in her youth, Mum/MIL gave the boat a little nudge. And look how everyone jumped to steady the boat! So she does it again, and again. Soon her family is in the habit of swaying to counteract the crazy. She moves left, they move right, balance is restored (temporarily). Life goes on. People move on to boats of their own. The boat-rocker can't survive in a boat by herself. She's never had to face the consequences of her rocking. She'll tip over. So she finds an enabler: someone so proud of his boat-steadying skills that he secretly (or not so secretly) liv...

 An interesting audiobook, which describes human interaction from the viewpoint of someone with ADHD and Autism. I'd probably have benefited from this book a lot more in my 20s and 30s than I did now. The metaphors for explaining humans using ideas such as "resonance" and "proteins" helped me to look at relationships in a new way and I'll be reflecting on these for a long time yet. 5/5, for outstanding similes and metaphors for the bewildering types of people who surround me.

As an uninformed idiot, I think, if I got myselft tested by a medical professional, I would be diagnosed with ADHD.  Everything I read about it just seems so familiar. The "strategies for coping with ADHD" are things I had to work out for myself several decades ago. ADHD isn't a problem; modern society is. Modern society requires that you focus on the thing other people want you to focus on, at the time other people want you to focus on it. Modern society requires that you don't have any control over your own focus. You have to think to a schedule at school and at work. Ritalin helps you to conform; it's benefit isn't the conforming; the benefit is that by conforming your self-esteem isn't eroded by constant failures to focus where other people want you to. If Leonardo Da Vinci had Ritalin, he'd have probably been a really successful mediocre administrative drone for the Medici family.