Duly Noted: Turn Me Up, Turn Me On.

By Jarrett in : Duly Noted, Jarrett Hill // Jun 24 2010

The same day the preacher who inspired “Duly Noted: What I got I paid for…” was speaking, he said a few words that sent me off in another direction as well. ADHD really is beasty.

He’d asked if we knew where our thermostats were. If they were outside on our sleeves, accessible to anyone who chose to approach and manipulate it, or if they were tucked away, covered with a case that required a key to adjust. You know, like the kind you see in many public and industrial places where the thermostat isn’t something everyone should be touching.

I started wondering about my thermostat. Are people able to turn me up or turn me down at their leisure? Can people make me feel happy or sad, angry or otherwise passionately about something based on a few words, a gesture or the absence of one, or just the lack of effectively communicating? Hmm.

I’d like to think that my thermostat is a mix of things – you know me. My old place has a pretty cool heating and cooling system. My place is three stories, and has two independently programmable thermostats, allowing for all kinds of configurations of hot, cold, fan blowing… I think it even makes margaritas in the summertime. What can I say, I’m cool. Ish.

The thing I liked about the set up was being able to only heat and cool the places where I am. If I was upstairs and the rest of the house was empty, I could just heat the top floor, saving money, energy, and more quickly and effectively using the resources. Similarly, if I was having a party I could cool the downstairs floors where the party was, without having to go into an icebox upstairs when it was time for bed.

I’d like to think my personal thermostat is sort of something like that. But it hasn’t always been. Lately, I really try hard to police my temper…ature. I’ve never been much of a hot head, ready to fire off at the slightest transgression, but now I’ve been able to take that a step further. If I don’t want to be bothered by other people’s drama, their anger, or (insert feeling here), I’ve gotten pretty good at simply saying “I don’t want to be involved in that.” Sometimes it’s literally said aloud, sometimes it’s more of a feeling and consequent accompanying action. I’m glad to say that things don’t seem to make me upset as quickly as they once would. Things take much longer to really get under my skin. BUT.

Ask a close friend of mine and they could probably tell you that things can pretty easily annoy me. I’ve been getting much better at the outward expression of my plight of annoyance lately, but some things, people, or situations can sometime really run me.

[Jaycabulary moment: run (v) to exhaust, overwork, or otherwise drain a resource, person or thing. “You run me when you talk about your baby daddy.” “She runs me low.” “I’m on the treadmill, sprinting.”]

Where’s your thermostat? Who has access to it? Do you need to change the list of those with access codes to your adjusting mechanism? Do you even have access to it yourself? Hmm.

Note it.