After some extensive research, Tina Marquez is now convinced she suffers from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, after struggling to stare at Excel spreadsheets for eight hours a day, five days a week.
“I analyze digital marketing budgets to eliminate inefficiencies and maximize campaign ROI. While I realize that sounds like a dream job, after five or six hours of staring at endless pivot tables, my mind starts to wander,” says Marquez. “Why can’t I just focus on a computer screen for a third of my day? That’s when I realized there must be something wrong with me.”
Marquez later explained that she would consider taking medication for ADHD – but while many women are diagnosed with ADHD later in life, she does not have it.
“I’ve got no qualms about downing some pills if it means I’ll actually enjoy work. Not too long ago, I was prescribed Sertraline after feeling unfulfilled in my relationship and realizing it must be me and not my husband. Now I’m convinced that mixing some Adderall into this pharmaceutical cocktail will fix this problem that is so clearly my fault and my fault only.”
Marquez’s father, Hector Marquez, hopes his daughter can “figure it out soon.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with that young lady. Why can’t she work 40 years at a job she hates and then spend retirement mostly drunk like a normal person?” says Hector. “I’m worried that if Tina can’t get her head on straight she might blow this amazing opportunity as a junior marketing assistant.”
Marquez has tried several coping strategies in an attempt to improve her ability to stare at numbers for a third of her life, in spite of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution that made humans designed for seeking novelty in their day-to-day experience.
“I’ve been making a game out of it. For instance, after each completed quarterly report, I’ll treat myself to five minutes of screaming into a throw pillow. And then I do this goofy little thing where I cut my forearm each time I conduct a VLOOKUP. As you can see, it’s been a very busy and bloody month.”
At press time, Marquez is deciding between taking online classes for coding, or selling all her earthly possessions and living as far away from our late-stage capitalist society as possible.
