ADHD

Recently, I was discussing my turbulent high school experience with someone who thought I was embarrassed about it. I explained to them that not only am I not embarrassed, I'm actually quite proud of it. The way I see it, my education was mishandled (to put it mildly) every step of the way from Nursery to 12th grade. Yet, I persevered. I was told that I would never graduate high school, get married, get a decent job, or make anything of my life. I've done all those things and where I'm at now, the future looks even better. One of the strangest things in my schooling is that I was never (as far as I remember) sent to a therapist. I was recently reading about ADHD (when Chris Davis got suspended for not reporting his ADHD medicine) and everything I read about it sounded like it was talking about me. Below is a quiz to see if you have ADHD (there are tons of them online), with my answers filled in. Of course, answering all the questions a certain way doesn't mean you have the disease, but it would make sense to see a professional if you have the symptoms and need help dealing with them.

1. I have difficulty getting organized.
Difficulty is an understatement, I cannot get even close.
2. When given a task, I usually procrastinate rather than doing it right away. 
Either that or I start it right away only to start a new task or 5 in the middle and never finish the first one. 
3. I work on a lot of projects, but can't seem to complete most of them. 
Almost always true, although I did recently complete a 1,000 piece puzzle!
4. I tend to make decisions and act on them impulsively — like spending money, getting sexually involved with someone, diving into new activities, and changing plans. 
When I was getting my first car, I researched for month and made a decision on what I wanted. Then I saw a TV commercial for a different car and went out bought it the next day (it actually took a couple weeks to complete the purchase, but I started the process that day). I also bought a house without ever seeing it in person and there are many more stories where those came from.
5. I get bored easily.
Very. I need constant change and excitement. I always wondered how if I couldn't keep a car for more than 24 months without losing interest and trading it in, I would be able to marry only one girl (I'm sure this is very reassuring to Nehama)
6. No matter how much I do or how hard I try, I just can't seem to reach my goals. 
Semi true, I reach a lot of my goals, by working really hard, but I have a lot of goals and this is true for a lot of them. 
7. I often get distracted when people are talking; I just tune out or drift off.
I thought I didn't have this symptom, because I can focus on something that I find interesting for hours without stopping, but apparently that's part of the symptom.
8. I get so wrapped up in some things I do that I can hardly stop to take a break or switch to doing something else.
Reading 1,500 page technical manuals in a couple days, taking 6 month courses in a couple weeks, yep.
9. I tend to overdo things even when they're not good for me — like compulsive shopping, drinking too much, overworking, and overeating.
With great effort, I managed to stop the overworking part. :-)
10. I get frustrated easily and I get impatient when things are going too slowly.
Yep
11. My self-esteem is not as high as that of others I know.
I like to think I'm just really humble.
12. I need a lot of stimulation from things like action movies and video games, new purchases, being among lively friends, driving fast or engaging in extreme sports.
Maybe, but for the most part I entertain myself.
13. I tend to say or do things without thinking, and sometimes that gets me into trouble.
Case in point, this post.
14. I'd rather do things my own way than follow the rules and procedures of others.
"Rather", is a rather understated word for this. Should be more like "I always do things my own way".
15. I often find myself tapping a pencil, swinging my leg, or doing something else to work off nervous energy.
Not so much, because those things bother me when other people do them. I just daydream.
16. I can feel suddenly depressed when I'm separated from people, projects or things that I like to be involved with.
Not sure
17. I see myself differently than others see me, and when someone gets angry with me for doing something that upset them I'm often very surprised.
Always.
18. Even though I worry a lot about dangerous things that are unlikely to happen to me, I tend to be careless and accident prone.
I'm afraid of window air conditioner units falling on my head, but I've done electrical work on live circuits and shocked myself countless times.
19. Even though I have a lot of fears, people would describe me as a risk taker.
No doubt about this one.
20. I make a lot of careless mistakes.
Yep.
21. I have blood relatives who suffer from ADD, depression, bipolar disorder, or substance abuse.
With a family as big as mine, how could I not?

If you answered yes to 15 of these questions, it is likely that you have attention deficit disorder (ADD ADHD). However, you can still have ADHD even if you answered yes to fewer than 15 of these questions
18 with 2 maybes, it's not a guarantee or anything, but...

It doesn't really matter so much if I have ADHD or not, I find ways to accomplish what I need to anyway. I guess it would be good for my self esteem if I knew that I accomplished everything I did in spite of being at such a disadvantage. If there was a way to make the symptoms go away, I'm not sure I'd take it. Sure, life would be easier, but I like being me and I'm not sure I'd be the same person. What bothers me is that I was given such a hard time in school and nobody thought "hey, maybe it's not entirely Dovid's fault". I can blame the schools and teachers and I do. I can blame my parents and it's probably true that all our problems are caused by our parents. But, that means all our parent's problems were caused by their parents. So, I'm thinking we should blame our grandparents. It wouldn't be fair to blame great-grandparents, because how many of us get to know our great-grandparents? It wouldn't be fair to blame someone you don't know. So, grandparents it is. Hey, if we're going to make them pay for their grandkids tuition, might as well tack on blame for mental issues.

Pesach in Israel

When I bought the restaurant, the first mistake I made was buying it two weeks before Pesach (Passover). We thought it was smart to take over before Pesach, so we could get the profits from the Pre-Pesach rush. We might have had a chance if the two key employees hadn't quit right away. Long story short, it was a disaster and I was going to sleep every night at 2-3AM panicking about how I would get through the next day. Needless to say, I didn't have any time to clean my house for Pesach. I don't know if I ever knew how the house got cleaned, I think my mother and sister did most of it without telling me. When Pesach finally started, I felt such relief. For a little over a week all the stress of the restaurant was gone and forgotten. Ever since then, Pesach has been my favorite Yom Tov (holiday). With my parents owning a bakery, Pesach was also the one time a year that the whole family was on vacation (more or less). 

Now that the restaurant is temporarily closed and I'm living in Israel, I wasn't sure how I'd feel about it. It's kind of a tough holiday. Cleaning for a month week ok fine it was only about a day for me, eating tons of Matza and drinking tons of wine (wait, was I trying to say this as a bad thing?), coconut fingernails in everything! Turns out, I still love it (not the coconut). Even though I don't have much work related stress these days, I still felt the relief when Yom Tov started, maybe it's like muscle memory or something?

On Erev Pesach, I went with my Father in-law to burn the Chametz. In Bayit Vegan there is one big city approved fire that the fire department ensures is done properly and safely and he insisted we go there as opposed to one of the hundreds of (illegal) fires around the neighborhood. Normally, I'm not one to be overly concerned about rules, but based on what I saw around town, I completely agree with this one. You would think in the aftermath of the tragic story from Brooklyn where 7 kids died in a fire, we'd be a little more careful than normal around fire, sadly not. There were fires everywhere, with young kids playing around them unsupervised. Then entire city smelled and just in my quiet neighborhood I saw two fires that rekindled over Yom Tov, as they were not extinguished properly. Oh well, I still have Lag Baomer to look forward to. 

Pesach is an enormously expensive holiday. I only bought matza, wine and snacks for our house and spent a fortune. I did splurge a little on the matzah and wine and I have to say, I've never had better. We ate all the Yom Tov meals by my in-laws, who were nice enough to host not just us, but my sisters and their friends as well! I don't know how they did it, we didn't even make it over there to help prepare (I hope my mother isn't reading this). 

Eating with the in-laws brings up a few complications. As permanent residents of Israel, they only keep one day of Yom Tov and we keep two. Still, they made us a whole seder for the second night. They're also sefardim and can eat kitniyot on Pesach, while we ashkenazim cannot. Once again, they sacrificed for us. Going off on a tangent, because I was less busy this year, I had more time to see what was going on in the world (ok, fine, just the internet world) and lots of people are going crazy over kitniyos! Personally, I don't get what's so hard about going a week without, but people are freaking out. Quite a few ashkenazim (especially in Israel) have done away with the minhag and started eating kitniyos. I'll keep my opinions about that to myself. What bothers me is that I see some of these people insulting others for being so stupid as to continue their minhag to not eat kitniyos. Why is it so hard to respect other people's choices, especially when you want people to respect your choice to eat it? Things like this drive me crazy, I'm even considering making Schlissel challah this year out of spite. 

One fun part about keeping two days Yom Tov is that I got to lead the second seder for my wife, two sisters, two seminary girls, my Mother in-law's friend Harriet and cousin Joe (everyone knows cousin Joe, right?). I thought I'd speed through the seder and get to sleep early, since we stayed up till 5am after the first seder talking about...leaving Egypt or something. The downsides of keeping a second day are that 1. The closest shul with a minyan is a half hour walk up the mountain. 2. All the lights on the stairways of the apartment buildings were turned off and we had to climb the stairs in the dark. 

On Chol Hamoed we hoped to go on a number of outings. The first trip we planned was to Masada. We were going to go on Monday, the first day of Chol Hamoed for us and the nicest weather day of the week. Unfortunately, Nehama couldn't walk so well due to an unfortunate issue related to her trying to wear fancy shoes for Yom Tov, so we delayed until Tuesday. The forecast was for 90 degree sunny weather, so I wanted to go early in the morning and be done before the sun was at it's peak. Oh well. With delays and traffic, I started climbing just after 1PM when it was already 90 degrees out. The rest of the family took the cable car to the top and I thought I'd meet them there after a short 2KM hike. The guy by the entrance to the hiking path told me to expect it to take an hour to walk up. Of course I was determined to do it in 45 minutes or less. Due to an unfortunate mix up between the 2KM distance and the pace I set with my iPhone in minutes per mile (not KM), for the first 15 minutes I walked significantly faster than I needed to and burned myself out. I ended up needing to stop for breaks every time I found shade (which was not very often). All told it took 45 minutes of walking and 20 minutes of breaks to make it to the top, but I did not die! :-) One of the more interesting things about the trip was hearing my FIL's take on the story of Masada. He doesn't believe the popular story to be correct. It's very interesting and I would share it with you, except this paragraph is very long already and I probably won't remember it accurately. 

We planned several other trips, but ended up staying local, going to the Kotel and that's about it. I made Fried Matzah (or whatever you might know it as) for the first time and I couldn't believe how easy it was. I think it's going to be a regular year round meal for me. We were worried about what Matis would eat over Pesach, but he loved my mother's recipe for Matzah Apple Kugel so much that I had to make two extra 9 x 13 pans for him (I have my suspicions that someone else might have snuck a few pieces). 

For the last days, we only had my sisters as guests, so it was a bit quieter. Also the last day for us fell out on Shabbos, so it was almost like my in-laws were also keeping it also, we didn't have to walk up the stairs in the dark, which was nice. I didn't take as many pictures as I normally do, but here are the few that I got. 

Best part of Chol Hamoed 

Random happiness

At the starting line

Almost at the top!

I did NOT die :-)

If Cleveland wins the Championship, we'll know why.

First trip to the Kotel! 

When I grow up

What I want to be when I grow up

I may be 30 years old, a husband, a father and I may have been working full time for over 12 years, but who says I have to be grown up? The way I see it, it's never too late to grow into whatever you want to be. One of the main reasons we took this "year off" in Israel was to give us a chance to figure out what we want to do with our lives for the foreseeable future. I've been thinking for a while about my career options and not so shockingly there are a wide range of careers I'm interested in. So, I figured I'd make a list and post it here and y'all can tell me what I should do.  Warning: Not everything I write should be taken seriously.

1. Airline Pilot:
Pros: This is my dream job and has been for many years. The pay and benefits are decent after a few years and once you have seniority, you can make your own schedule. There's going to be a huge shortage of airline pilots in around 5 years, due to mandatory retirements, which means newer pilots will advance their careers much faster than in the past.
Cons: I would have to redo quite a bit of my flight training, since I haven't been flying in so long. All major  airlines require a 4 year degree (which I don't have). For the first 4 years or so, I'd be making less than $30k, some years significantly less. It may be impossible to get an airline job without working on Shabbos. I posted a question on the largest facebook group for pilots asking if there was a way to get around working on Shabbos, the overwhelming response was "you're Jewish, go to Israel", very friendly and accepting group </sarcasm>

2. Doctor
Pros: $$$$ and helping people
Cons: School and school.

3. Lawyer
Pros: $$$
Cons: School, school and lawyer jokes

4. Network Engineer
Pros: Already have over 10 years of relevant job experience, training and knowledge. I do enjoy most aspects of this job and the pay can be decent. In high demand for the foreseeable future.
Cons: Can be kinda dull and the cool companies want someone with a 4 year degree.

5. Network Security Engineer/Cybersecurity
Pros: Somewhat related to my job experience. Decent pay. Depending on the specific job can be a lot more interesting and fun than the Network Engineer option. This position is fairly new (in a sense) and still evolving, there's a huge shortage of qualified professionals and most companies haven't even realized they need specific security engineers instead of just tasking Network Engineers with security (which they're not adequately trained in). Salaries are going up.
Cons: I'd have to do a good amount of additional training. The really cool jobs want 4 year degrees. It may be a while before companies start budgeting properly for security, which could mean fighting a losing battle.

6. Toll Collector
Pros: Whenever I go through a toll booth that doesn't take EzPass, I think that I can do the job significantly more efficiently than the current toll collector. Suprisingly, even after being forced to take huge pay cuts, toll collectors make more than pilots do for the first 5 years of their careers.
Cons: I'd have to learn how to not be nice to people, that's not allowed in this position. No matter how efficiently I did my job, I'd always know EzPass can do it better. After the first hour, I'm pretty sure the novelty would wear off.

7. Truck Driver
Pros: I enjoy driving and traveling. Kosher hard boiled eggs at most truck stops. Pay is not horrible.
Cons: Kosher hard boiled eggs at most truck stops. Traffic. Road rage.

8. Real Estate Renovating and Flipping
Pros: I really enjoy this kind of work, it's hard, fun and can be lucrative.
Cons: High risk, unpredictable. 

9. Police Officer
Pros: Power trip. Meow game. Traffic stops. Pay and Benefits can be decent.
Cons: Racism. Vigilantes. ACLU. People trying to kill you. Domestic disturbance calls.

10. Restaurateur
Pros: I enjoy food; eating it, cooking it, serving it to other people, etc. It's always exciting.
Cons: Everyone knows how to run a restaurant better than those who run them. Restaurant employees are notoriously unreliable. A handful of d-bag customers take all the fun out of it. People think it's ok to steal from restaurants, b/c "one time, they forgot to put ketchup on my hot dog and they charged me full price" (what do you expect from someone who puts ketchup on a hot dog?). Yoshon people.

So, what do you think? Should I get a college degree, do some more technical training? Run for public office?