“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” — Joseph Campbell
I love my name. It’s short. Sweet. Easy to pronounce, easy to spell, and easy to remember. It’s easy to be vain when your name is this simple and short in syllables.
Plus you can’t have intimacy without Tim. Or intimidation, but let’s not think about that. Or time. Let’s write about that instead.
It’s a love that runs so deep I did manage to register timmy.org in 1998… and pay for it up to maybe like 10 years. Hopefully. I have a problem with paying things on time sometimes. Because of time blindness.
Time blindness is a thing. A very real ADHD symptom. The weird thing is though that I’m usually more aware of reasonable timelines when it comes to my current domain of expertise.
I’m managing to give myself an hour to write this. Which really isn’t that much time as I’m finding.
Especially when you’re eating banana bread. With sugar free chocolate chips.
I’m recognizing, to myself, that this is a bit of a pattern. The pattern of posting the three posts that I wanna get written before the end of the month at the end of the month.
Which is curious given that I’m going to fucking finish writing this in an hour.
I’ve lived alone in a 2,200 square foot house for over 12 years as of now, and I’ve lived alone in it for over 5 as of now as well.
Which is a dangerous thing for someone that has had unmanaged ADHD. That is also an open loop for another post.
I’ve decided to keep writing about ADHD. First, because it has had a huge impact on my life. B, because people in my life still think I’m evil and manipulative and selfish and whatever. Which is just nuts to me. I’ve been making an effort to become more emotionally intelligent for years now. And 3, because I think some of the things the unmanaged ADHD likely catalyzed are fucking hilarious. At times. Tragic at others. And worthy of writing about. Even if it is meandering bullshit.
It seems that people you’ve spent years and years with generalize who you are and decide to base the now on their perception of the past. Pity. Says the person who sometimes does that too.
When I read these posts I’ve written I think to myself, “Hahahaha. Welp… I sure am taking the circuitous path to get to where I’ve been imagining.” Then I read the posts I’ve written, are almost done, and haven’t been posted.
So close to being finished.
But not posted.
That’s an ADHD thing. You have the intention to do something. You do. Then something more interesting or important realizes itself in your life and off you go on to something else. With that initial thing you started in your mind… but frozen in time.
My months have been getting more and more interesting. They continue to be a rollercoaster of extremely emotionally impactful experiences of negative and positive sorts. Quite a lot of positive thought.
In March an interesting relationship fell into my life. Very weird. I think I wrote about it. If not I will some day. lol.
See the above.
Since we live close we’ve been able to get together a lot. Every night except two. Which is a lot of consecutive nights for a new intimate relationship.
So I’ve heard.
But once again, all those sentences up there were not what I was thinking about writing about.
Well… I guess it could be. I’ll add ADHD to the title.
Pronouns. That’s right. Pronouns. Being raised when I was raised I saw some interesting things. The advent of malleable pronouns is one of the things that I find very interesting. Having the flexibility to request that others refer to you as the gender you identify as.
I think it’s wonderful that society is slowly norming this.
And I think it’s fabulous because it allows me to love my name even harder because now I’m using “tim/tim/tims” as my pronouns.
I am absofuckinglutely serious. It’s one syllable. It refers to me, which is an individual that identifies as their current one syllable name.
One day, years and years ago, I tried to change my name to just “Tim.”
I went to the local county legal area place, went to their weird paperwork bureaucrat basement, filled out forms to be “Tim,” posted them, and waited the required period.
Then, when time passes and I’m back at the court house, I’m last to have their name called. After everyone else left. The judge comes in and says, “You forgot to put your last name.”
“No your honor, I’d like to be mononymous.” I say.
“Have you thought about the impact it’ll have on doing paperwork and the confusion it might cause?”
I say, “Yes, I did research and there are various ways to mitigate the potential problems that having no last name might cause.”
“I don’t think you’ve thought this through. I’m going to deny this. Feel free to appeal.” Is what he says.
Sigh.
I’ll try again in a few years maybe. I think that is funny.
Which brings me to the last topic of this post.
Mononymous names in the workplace.
The organization that I worked with was acquired and now the organization I currently work with changed my name from Tim to Timothy and made my e-mail address longer too.
This didn’t really sit well with me. Not only did they expand my name… they put everyones names last name first.
Which is an obnoxious default setting. Just obnoxious.
I very much dislike this. And since I identify as Tim. My pronouns are tim/tim/tims, and I’ve legitimately, legally, made an effort to change my name.
And will again.
I request for my current e-mail address to be changed “tim at new place dot com.”
As I expected, the person that got the ticket was confused by the ask… since I’d asked for an e-mail address with no last name.
Unfortunately, unrealistic project timelines for what I was working on had me make the rest of reality melt away while I focused on the success of the project.
They’d ask for info. I’d read the thing. I’d think about replying. The day would happen. I would not reply. Rinse, and repeat.
There we go. Just got distracted by life. I wanted to make cookies. But not as cookies because I don’t feel like making balls. As a layer of cookie dough on a square pan. Yum. But now I only have less minutes to meet my self imposed deadline.
Finally, the project I was working on eased up and I was bringing replying to their question back to the front of my mind.
But not quick enough. I received an e-mail on Thursday that made it sound more urgent. And then another one on Friday.
So I decided to reply.
A funny tangent, but not a tangent because it’s very pertinent. One day I started receiving random e-mails that seemed more spammy than usual. And then another day I opened one up and noticed that it was being sent to “tim at old org dot org.” So I tested things out and I was indeed able to send and receive mail as tim at the org.
Hi There!
Thanks for your patience and follow-up here. Between the project I’ve been dedicated to, the onboarding process I’ve had to go through related to acquisition, and a borderline debilitating case of ADHD, I’ve had an extremely challenging time keeping up with, and working through, some of the onboarding details that I haven’t had an opportunity to follow-up with yet.
Even some of the smaller tasks.
I’d like to use the name “Tim P” for now and the e-mail address tim at new org dot com.
I currently use tim at old org dot org – see the attached files for verification, and I noticed that tim at hmhco dot com is likely unused by sending mail using both my current timothy,p at new org dot com e-mail address and tim at old org dot org to tim at new org dot com.
I also searched through various new org portals and the org-tree for tim at new org dot com and was unable to find anyone with that e-mail address.
Since I identify as “Tim,” and will be making an effort to legally change my name to be mononymous in 2-3 years, I figured I’d make the request now so the only thing that needs to change in the future will be my name in the Active Directory.
Thanks again for your patience and support.
Have a great weekend!
–Tim
Which is the response I sent. I am very curious what will happen.
Right there. That’s very likely an ADHD thing I did there. Some people might consider it impulsive. BUT, I did it consciously and absolutely aware of what I was writing, the sentiment, and the potential outcomes, after initiating this story. Most people are just too scared to press Send. Which can have a questionable impact depending on the communication and context.
I do have a goal to have some sort of impact on the new organization. I’ll probably start “The Tim Team” and invite every Tim in the org again.
That’ll be pretty funny.
And the ones that leave… well… that sure says something about their personality, doesn’t it?