Executive Dysfunction is a Hole in the Bucket
Living with poor executive functioning is utterly exhausting. It seems like 90% of my already very limited energy vanishes down the drain of trying to figure out the correct order of operations for everything I need or want to do (it’s so much easier in math!). Or in making mistakes and then having to expend more time and energy correcting the errors or redoing things. Often, it turns into a recursive loop that makes accomplishing anything at all feel nearly impossible. Every day, it’s like I’m living through the song “There’s a Hole in the Bucket” over and over.
If you’re not familiar with this comedic folk song, it’s a call-and-response where two people, Liza and Henry, try to work through a problem: their bucket has a hole in it. A hole? So fix it. With what? A stick (or piece of straw in some versions). But the stick/straw is too long. You need to cut it. How to cut it? Well, with a knife. But the knife is dull. We need to sharpen it. To sharpen the knife, we need the whetstone. The whetstone is too dry to use. We need to wet it. With water. Which means we need to fetch water. How are we going to fetch water? With a bucket, obviously. But there’s a hole in the bucket….
(Aside: I worry a bit about Liza and Henry’s relationship. I think they could benefit from counseling. Honestly, Henry sounds like he might have trouble finding his own…
