It’s summer. I don’t remember when exactly, but sometime in the nineties. I’m at Heathrow Airport. I’m hot, sweating and out of breath. It’s not the weather, I’ve just had a mad dash across London. Just made the last call for my flight, but only just. It was a very important one. A well paid work engagement with the flight paid by the client. I couldn’t afford to fuck this one up, but I almost did. Not that I cared because I was in love. I’d just been with my love and time had stood still. I had to tear myself away and rush to the airport. I didn’t care that I was minutes away from disaster, in fact I wasn’t really thinking about the job at all. All I could think about was my new obsession, and I couldn’t wait to get this trip over with and get back home to be reunited with the new love of my life…
Adobe Premier Pro.
Adobe Premier Pro is the dogs bollocks of video editing software if you’re not familiar with that sort of thing. This was not sexual. I’m was not about to marry my computer (although it has been arguably the most constant thing in my life for many decades), but it did feel almost like being in love. I have come to learn that what was happening is what neuroscientists, psychologists and educationalists call hyperfocus. Now hyperfocus has been described as ‘locking onto a task’, and also ‘complete absorption in a task, to a point where a person appears to completely ignore or tune out everything else.’ The word and these definitions have a detached ring to them, which I like, because to me hyperfocus feels like an addiction, an obsession, a weird compulsion.
This particular bout of hyperfocus back in the nineties started with another ADHD related trait of mine, packing anxiety. Packing to me suggests organisation and planning and my mind has always rebelled against such outrages. I was due to fly out to this work engagement in the early evening. I had worked out that I had to leave the house at 3 pm at the latest if I was to make my flight. I knew what I was like with packing so I decided to give myself the whole morning to do this onerous task. I got up, had breakfast, and got down to it by mid morning. “Great!” I thought, “I’ll pack, that will take half an hour… one hour tops. I’ll have early lunch and make my way to the airport with plenty of time. For once I’m ahead.” So I got out my suitcase, took a deep breath, opened the lid, and prepared myself to feed the beast. As I plodded between cloths drawer and wardrobe in a seemingly random fashion something caught my attention. A shiny DVD in a see through container. No dust cover, just a raw, home burned disk with the words ‘Adobe Premier Pro’ handwritten with a sharpie. I have a friend called Terry who, at that time, delighted in hacking software, usually ones that cost a fortune. He’d hack the install code, copy them onto a disk and then distribute them to his friends. That is if any of them were at all interested, and boy was I interested. So there was his latest DVD. Staring at me. Hundreds of pounds worth of industry standard software and I had a free copy. I looked at the disk… looked at the clock… 10:15 am…. looked back at the disk. Five hours until the absolute latest time I have to leave. “I know”, I thought, “I’ll just install the program on the computer. That takes about 30 mins tops. It’ll be ready for me to use when I get back from the gig. That’ll be fun”. “Half an hour or so to install the software,” I reckoned, “half an hour to pack. Still on course for lunch and off to the airport in plenty of time.” So, I proceeded to load the software onto my computer and, for once, it all went to plan. Program installed. I was still in the flow. “I know”, I thought, “I aught to check that the program has installed properly, you know… see if it actually works. It’ll just take 5 minutes”. So I then went into the program and started trying to join two bits of video together. After a mildly frustrating hour or so trying to wrangle the software to my will, I finally managed to splice two random bits of video together. “What great software, definitely works” I thought.
It was at this point that I believe I lost all presence of mind. As I idly scanned all the commands on the drop down menus (something I like to do with all new software) I noticed a menu called ‘effects’ with a command called ‘crossfade’. I looked at the rough join of the two bits of video I had spliced together. Not aesthetically pleasing at all. I knew what had to be done. “Just five more minutes,” I thought, “then down to the packing and a now hurried lunch before 3.” More frustrating wrangling and fevered clicking and in what seemed like no time at all, viola! A rather beautiful crossfade. “Job done,” I thought “on with the packing.” I glanced up at the clock and the room seemed to spin. I couldn’t quite believe it. The clock said 3 o’clock. I looked at the empty suitcase… looked back at the clock. It’s definitely saying three o clock. I looked again at the empty suitcase, and then…
PANIC!!!!!
The rest is a blur. I don’t know how I did it, but I just made that flight. I got away with it. Dodged the bullet. I remember being truly shocked at the time. How the fuck could I loose five hours? It felt like no time at all. Time really did stand still. Most people would learn from this but not me. My brain had discovered the joy and excitement of leaving things to the last minute. The adrenaline buzz of doing everything like Aneka Rice in Treasure Hunt. Mundane things became a quest, an adventure. Focus! adrenaline! speed! It was the only way that my brain seemed to get in gear. So why was I so drawn to this shiny DVD? Why was I compelled to do this task immediately. A task that obviously could wait. I guess it’s all about the dopamine, or lack of it. I had never used video software before and this made it a mental challenge, and my brain loves a juicy puzzle. So the simple act of joining two bits of video together, with a crossfade, was a challenge that I was determined to conquer, no matter what. I fell down a rabbit hole that day. One that I couldn’t get out of, at least not quickly.
All of this puts me in mind of one of the darkest and deadliest weeks in the history of Mount Everest. In a few days in mid May 2019 over 800 climbers found themselves in a fatal traffic jam on the mountain’s infamous death zone. Adverse weather conditions had severely limited the window of opportunity to summit during that season. Many were inexperienced climbers. They should have turned back, but they all just pushed on, determined to reach the top. 11 lost their lives. This determination had made them blind to the fatal decisions that they were making. This is what is known as summit fever. At times hyperfocus feels like that to me. I lock onto a mental challenge and, for days and days and days, spend every waking moment trying to conquer it. I soke it all up, try to learn everything about it, all at once. It’s my very own mental summit fever, and my sometimes crippling sense of perfectionism means that the summit is never reached. I also feel an intense urge to share, right away to the next person I meet. whether they are interested or not, but I digress.
Make no mistake hyperfocus can be exhausting and at times depressing, but it’s not all bad. It has it’s good side. Dare I say it, it’s a shit load of fun. Discovering I had ADHD was shocking yes, but also baffling. Attention deficit?… no, err… I’ve never really had that. For all of my life if I’m interested in something, I mean really REALLY interested in something then I feel compelled to focus on that one thing with every fibre of my being, shutting out the rest of the world completely. I love learning, and boy do I learn quickly if something interests me. During lockdown, when most people seemed to be dazed and confused, I had the opposite experience. A strange clarity took over like never before as. Unhindered by any mundane thoughts of earning a living, (or indeed having any sort of life) this inner summit fever had free reign and took over my whole life. I read books about building science and designed a straw bale tiny house. I learned microprocessor programming and designed bits of audio electronics,. On the breadline I still found room on my credit card for the essential purchase of a 3D printer, which led to learning computer aided design so I could design the enclosures for said electronics. And of course I invented (in my head) a theatre company (complete with it’s own website) that would change the world. All of this needed attention. A shit load of attention. I ate, slept and dreamed these projects. Attention deficit? I don’t think so! I would get up mid morning and work on them until 11 at night, or sometimes well into the small hours. It all went by in a flash, time had no meaning. I meant to do other stuff. You know the sort of thing, exercise, phone my friends, actually plan how I was going to survive after lockdown, but I never seemed to have the time. A fascinating series of problems begot and even more fascinating series of problems, which, when solved, led to yet more, and so on. These intellectual problems bread like mind rabbits. That’s learning for you. The more you know, the more there is you don’t know. And so the summits of my learning stretched out into infinity. It really did feel at times, like some sort of feverish compulsion. Perhaps this total immersion was not the most healthy thing, but hey. I learned a lot. I managed to ignore all of the other shit that was going on in my life, and it’s not like I had anything better to do.
Of course, I was not aware of such a thing called hyperfocus. I put it down to the extraordinary circumstances of the pandemic, but when I look back I see that my mind has always worked this way. It was this unawareness of hyper focus and how it related to me that was the problem. When the pandemic finished my mind continued with these habits, but post lockdown was, however, not lockdown and things unravelled quite quickly. I hyper focused on starting a theatre company, and after two years of working full time for less than I would be paid for working two days a week, exhaustion and disillusionment followed. So I then focused on designing electronic audio equipment that I had no means to make, and had no intention of selling. As I feverishly tinkered with MOSFETs and op amps I let my business go and personal bankruptcy loomed. It was around this time that I discovered my ADHD and that has proved to be a god send. Hyperfocus can be your friend, if you can learn how to turn it off. I use online co working a lot to try to get my brain to focus, but I also use it to get my brain to stop focussing. Rabbit holes are fine. For me they are a really comforting place, if you don’t go down too deeply at any one time. Knowing about ADHD has told me that I can walk away from a problem that’s unsolved. I don’t have to keep working at it until summit fever takes hold. Even today I still regularly tinker with an electronics problem, or write, or come up with show ideas, or look at youtube videos. “Just for half an hour or so”, I always tell myself, but I still sometimes end up doing it until 1am in the morning. But thankfully not EVERY time.
During the recent general election here in the UK after much soul searching I decided not to tactically vote. I would vote green, after all that has been where my political heart has been for many years. I went on the party website to look at the manifesto. Suddenly in my overthinking mind just voting for them was not enough. I had to help them get elected, maybe even run for a seat on our local council. After that run for a seat in Westminster. Who knows, maybe even become the first green Prime Minister in history. With this inspiring daydream firmly in my head my cursor hovered over the ‘join the party’ button. I didn’t click. “Maybe that’s one for the future,” I thought. Rabbit hole avoided. That’s progress.
Oh and by the way. I WILL build that amplifier…. someday.