A Tax on Neurodivergence

[digitalraven]

Certain items are pretty much an ADHD tax, more expensive but they obviate the time that would be taken up without them because of neurodivergence (I use ADHD as the example because, well, I live with it).

One example: Amazon finally have a fireTV remote that will play a noise when told to by the house-ghost.¹

I have never actually permanently lost my existing remote. If I do, I have an app I can use on my phone. But the app takes time to connect every time I want to use it, as I multitask a lot and it gets swapped out pretty swiftly. But the cats² will knock my existing remote places that are very non-obvious.

So I’m fighting with my phone to watch stuff while also searching frantically for the actual remote because I won’t have peace of mind without it, but the lack of object constancy that comes with ADHD means I can’t see the damned thing for the life of me even when it’s where I put it down ten goddamn seconds ago.

£35 is a steep price for doing away with the searching, but given I’ve spent at least three quarters of an hour over the past three days searching for the damn thing — and that’s just the most recent examples — it is looking more and more tempting.

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1. See https://digitalraven.dreamwidth.org/647906.html for my thoughts on assembly-line necromancy ↩

2. Yes, cats. Definitely not the person whose medication side-effects includes ‘cack-handedness’ ↩

Comments

[andrewducker]

One of the major uses for my watch is that I can run the "Find my phone" app from it. Because my watch is strapped to my arm and therefore doesn't go missing often, while my phone is...somewhere.

We have three remotes for the TV, because I kept losing them, and they were only £5 each. Once every week or two the cleaner finds all of them and they start out on the living room table, before children (and me) lose them again.

I must check if I can give Alexa access to make my phone ring.

Oh - and I looked into getting physical switches that can make the smart lights go on and off, but it turns out that I *really* want to buy into the new open standard that everyone is moving to (Matter/Thread), and that it's going to be a good few months before there's actually much on the market that supports it. It's a shame I'm so impatient.