The founder and editor of Zany Progressive, Serena Zehlius, will sometimes veer off topic in her writing and talk about something related (usually). Donald Trump chose to call his off-topic tangents “The Weave,” because like the Editor, he always weaves everything back into the original point.
Serena decided to call her “weaves” something different. They are “ADD Moments” because this is a more accurate description of what is happening.
Serena suffers from Attention Deficit Disorder, or A.D.D., but it’s not so debilitating that she needs to take medication for it. Her son was diagnosed with ADHD when he was young, which is the same attention disorder, but with hyperactivity included. It made things extremely difficult for him in school.
Not only was he unable to focus and pay attention to the teacher, he couldn’t sit still. Most of his teachers were understanding and allowed him to stand at his desk do he could “dance around” as he worked. It was brought to his pediatrician’s attention after the English teacher said he was a gifted reader and could read a few paragraphs quickly, fluently, and without any difficulty.
However, he couldn’t summarize what he’d just read or answer questions about it. He literally couldn’t focus enough to comprehend the subject as he was reading.
What the Zany Editor experiences isn’t something she would have ever characterized as an attention disorder. After casually telling her doctor about her “annoying habit” (she’ll start to do something, and as she works on it, she adds additional tasks, and ends up doing them all at the same time.
But because of extra work, she never finishes any of them, including the actual thing she set out to do), the doctor said it sounded exactly like the adult-onset form of Attention Deficit Disorder.
Serena had always thought of her “work style” as a skill—the ability to multitask. She also thought it was just her personality to never feel satisfied doing only one thing at a time.
She wasn’t too smart to focus on just one thing at a time. She lacked the ability to focus! 😂 If she’s watching TV, Serena is writing on her tablet or playing a game on her phone. Otherwise she feels like she needs to be doing more than just sit there looking at a screen.
Her teenage sons brought her real-life ADD Moments to her attention—calling what she was doing “side quests.” While doing one thing, shell start doing other things she notices along the way, sometimes never doing what she set out to do in the first place!
It’s a stressful situation of her own making. By adding on more and more things to do, she makes herself feel guilty for not getting anything done.
If she’s going out to the kitchen to get a drink and notices clothing on the bathroom floor, she’ll pick up the clothes. As she’s doing that she’ll notice toothpaste splatter on the mirror and clean it off. That will lead to something else and an hour later she realizes she’s cleaned the bathroom and organized the shelves when all she set out to do was get a drink in the kitchen!
Her son’s began noticing her doing things that were unrelated to what she’d told them she needed to do. They started saying, “Mom, you wouldn’t get so tired and stressed out if you didn’t stop to do “side quests” all the time.
The term “side quests” is from World of Warcraft, a MMORPG, or massively multiplayer online roleplaying game, that Serena was obsessed with for a few years when the kids were young (It might be used in other video games as well or maybe just roleplaying games).
While she started out branching out to “side topics” in her writing without drawing attention to it, Serena started to worry that her ADD Moments might be annoying to some people, especially if they are only interested in getting to the end of a discussion of the main point.
Origin of ADD Moments
She started to label her off-topic rants as ADD Moments to give readers the option to skip over that section if they aren’t interested in the related topic or thought she veers into to talking about for a paragraph or 2.
In articles written after February 2025, you’ll notice a warning notice that an “ADD Moment” is incoming with blue separation lines marking the beginning and end of the “side thought.” This makes it even easier for readers to know where to go to continue reading about the main topic.
Beginning in March of 2025, there’s also a “skip link” included with the warning of an “incoming ADD Moment” so the reader can click and quickly skip over added commentary and the article will automatically scroll to the point that the main topic continues.
ADD Moments are not in every article written by the Editor. Don’t avoid content she’s written because of this page! Users who have been reading her work from the beginning have seen the evolution of the “ADD Moments” and know what it means when they see the notation in a post.
This page was created to help first-time visitors or someone reading an article she recently wrote to understand what it means and why the hell there’s a warning about an incoming ADD Moment in the middle of a news article. 🫣
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