Live, laugh, read - wait, why did I come into this room?

Yesterday, I was part of a social media conversation about adult ADHD and how to cope with it. I read through the comments to see if anyone had any good ideas, and I added my own: the Pomodoro Method. I think I’ve written about it before. It’s very simple. You set a timer for 25 minutes during which you focus on one task and one task only. When the 25 minutes is up,  you can take a break, check your email, stretch, or do whatever. 

The Pomodoro Method is named after those cute little old-fashioned kitchen timers that are shaped like tomatoes. I don’t have a pomodoro timer, but I have an app on my phone. The reason why you might want to use an app rather than your phone clock’s timer is that the app will track your 25-minute intervals (called “pomodoros”) so you can set goals and track your progress. 

It’s a remarkably effective tool, and I haven’t used it in some time, because something distracted me and I forgot about it. And every word that follows that second comma is the reason for almost everything I do or fail to do. 

*****

I’m reading Kristin Kobes DuMez’s Live, Laugh, Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made. It’s not as quick and easy a read as her first book, Jesus and John Wayne, but it’s very well researched. I didn’t think that I needed to know anything more about the worst of white American Christianity, but Kobes DuMez makes connections and traces trends and influencers and events back to their origin in a way that makes me question so much of what I thought I knew. Complementarianism and inerrancy are pretty much made-up concepts, and just as certain white Christian men used those made-up concepts to exert coercive control over women and everyone else in their charge, white Christian women used those same made-up concepts to curry favor with men, gain power via proximity, and keep other women in their place. “The world they made” is not an exaggeration. So much of American life from the 1950s to the present day is built on a foundation of white supremacy, misogyny, free market absolutism. It makes sense that the people who benefit from that foundation would reimagine Christianity to strengthen it. 

*****

I finished the book last night, and I was glad to have it behind me. The thesis is sound and the facts to support it are solid, but it’s not especially well written - not in the sense of writing quality, because Kobes DuMez is a very good writer, but in the sense of storytelling. There are places here and there where she tries to help the reader understand a subject and her story, but most of it reads as a recitation of facts - this happened, and then this happened, and here is how these two events are connected. It reminds me of a high school textbook. I give it a B. 

What does this have to do with adult ADHD? Well nothing - that’s the point. Seriously, though, back in the day, I’d have finished a book of this length in a day or so, but this one took me over a week. Clearly I need to get back on the pomodoro.