Legit got an official diagnosis yesterday. Starting non amphetamine meds tomorrow. On a wait list for an occupational therapist to help me adjust my spaces to work better for me.
I am 50. This is so weird.
I was diagnosed at the age of 63. My kids were diagnosed long before I was (although that started the process of recognizing it in myself, and then to a much greater understanding of my late father).
That said, I haven't gotten around to cleaning my desk yet.
The thing that made me finally get tested as an adult was meeting other adults with diagnosed ADHD and realizing that they to the things that I do that annoy other people and we didn't annoy each other at all
I want to love the musical, because I love musicals. And I haven't read the book but I watched a movie 30ish years ago based on it. But part of the reason I don't like the musical is I can't stand to hear Sarah Brightman or Michael Crawford sing. 😆
I can handle him in Hello Dolly and A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum. Maybe the breathy quality of his voice was less grating when he was young 🤔
Oh my goodness, thank you for saying this! I feel bad every time I think it but like, the musical just doesn't do it for me, and the book is SO interesting and good!!
having a big lol at the premise of this as a social media post. i too write about being annoying (this is good though people get so wound up about the sound of a crying baby lmao)
Loved your essay, and there's a lot to unpack here and a lot I know I can relate to and have thought about myself--what kind of impression I'm making, if I myself am annoying anyone, but I guess it comes with the territory of having Asperger's Syndrome...
...and how I'm still recovering from from whatever thorny experiences I've had online myself.
I guess we aren't all going to be everyone else's cup of tea, and sometimes what annoys people about ourselves has nothing to do with us personally and can't always be something we can control. 🙂
>>>The cruel irony is that being obsessed with how one is coming across can make one more annoying
And yes, I have wondered if I also have that effect on others, and I'm sure it's a habit I need to learn to break
great article...... I was in a couple plays in HS, but ultimately ended up a computer dork. I feel like I could maybe consider myself an honorary theater kid.
great job, mara! very interesting stuff. i work in mental health, so i try to be really sensitive to what’s/who’s annoying me, and why. with mixed results lol
I sometimes think about how I used to consider my younger brother "annoying", but then stopped doing so at some point... still not really sure whether that was due to a change on his end, my end, or both... or when precisely the change happened, either...
That line about Denny's reminded me of crowding into a Denny's with several a cappella groups at some stupid hour after the Harmony Sweeps finals one year because we all wanted to go SOMEWHERE, but nothing else in San Rafael was open.
There might indeed have been singing involved.
“Theater kids live at the nexus of painfully sincere and desperately performative.”
So relatable. Brilliantly insightful, beautifully composed.
Also, how dare you.
This article was great—and it also reminded me to follow @rvoronacote.bsky.social, a terrific thinker who I had lost track of in the great Twitter migration. How very annoying but no longer.
