Do I still struggle with my own ADHD? Yes I do!

I thought that I would write a brief piece about things that I still struggle with in regards to ADHD.  My reason for doing this is that I would like people to understand that everyone struggles with some aspect of ADHD no matter how long they've been managing it.  When I was first diagnosed I went through a euphoric period of time where I thought I had finally "figured it out" and a new golden age of organization and productivity was upon me.  After a couple of months I realized that this was not the case.  There is a deep desire within all of us to have clarity and firm boundaries in our lives.  We all have a fantasy that if we make X amount of money we will officially be successful, or that when we graduate from college we will officially be an adult.  Unfortunately life simply doesn't operate that way.  Managing ADHD is a daily task that will lead to improvement, but it will not make us who we are not.  Finding a way to manage daily life and coming to understand and accept our limitations is a critical step in treating ADHD.

Here are some areas I still wrestle with:

1. Transitions: I'm much better at moving from one activity to the next, but I still struggle with the transition from sleeping to wakefulness, from work to rest, from focus on my professional responsibilities to my family responsibilities.  I am able to make the transitions, but there is a brief period of uneasiness that used to cause me to procrastinate or avoid things.  Now that I understand it better I'm able to work through the uneasiness and move to a new activity or sphere of my life.
2. Organization: I am organized in the sense that I try to structure my day and I meet my appointments and obligations on time.  My personal spaces can go through periods of clutter and chaos followed by periods of neatness.
3. Task initiation: If I know how to do something, or I know where to begin doing something I can generally get started without any problem.  If I'm confronted with a task that I'm unfamiliar with or seems like there is no easy sense of where to begin I tend to struggle.
4. Interruptions: If I'm working on something like this blog post and I'm interrupted I can usually get back to where I was without too much trouble.  If I'm repeatedly interrupted my concentration dissolves and I find myself becoming irritable.

Will the above areas ever improve?  Sure, I think over time they will.  The key thing about these things is that I'm aware of them.  Now I know that I need help if a project requires a lot of organizational work.  I know to shut off my phone and close my email if I have a project to complete.  Being aware of our limitations and finding the right set of coping strategies is the key to living a better life with ADHD.  You can't change your brain and how it operates, but by becoming self aware you can begin the process of  making your environment and support structures more appropriate for who you are.