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Have you ever had the experience of knowing exactly what you want to say, but the moment you pick up a pen or sit at a keyboard, pick up a paint brush, or even open your mouth to speak, your thoughts scatter like startled birds and disappear? You're not alone, and it's not incompetence or lack of intelligence. For many of us with dysgraphia and or AuDHD, this "download problem" is a daily reality that goes far beyond messy handwriting and failure at school.
What Is the Download Problem?
I call it the download problem because it feels to me, like trying to transfer files with a broken connection. The information is all there in the mind—complete, detailed, vivid—but when I attempt to write it down, the transfer fails. It's as if the act of writing, speaking, or otherwise expressing creatively, causes interference that scrambles the signal between my thoughts and my ability to 'download' them.
This isn't like writer's or artists block in the traditional sense. That type of block suggests you don't know what to write or paint or say. With the download problem, I know exactly what I want to say, or paint, or dance, but the pathway from brain to hand, mouth or body, seems to short-circuit the moment I try to access it.
What Is the Download Problem?
I call it the download problem because it feels to me, like trying to transfer files with a broken connection. The information is all there in the mind—complete, detailed, vivid—but when I attempt to write it down, the transfer fails. It's as if the act of writing, speaking, or otherwise expressing creatively, causes interference that scrambles the signal between my thoughts and my ability to 'download' them.
This isn't like writer's or artists block in the traditional sense. That type of block suggests you don't know what to write or paint or say. With the download problem, I know exactly what I want to say, or paint, or dance, but the pathway from brain to hand, mouth or body, seems to short-circuit the moment I try to access it.