I may not be a psychologist, but I've coined a new type of disorder: Legislative Staffer Attention Deficit Disorder. I like to call it L-SADD (pronounced el·sad - preferably with a little stutter on the end to represent both those Ds...). L-SADD is easy to remember because it makes a legislative staffer sad [read:depressed] and crazy [read:crazy], all at the same time. L-SADD's effects are extremely bad when its sufferer has sat through a 6-hour Judiciary Committee without break two days in a row [read:within a 30-hour period], or an 8-hour Judiciary Committee hearing with no break other than for dinner. But the worst are L-SADD's effects when its sufferer has sat through 14 hours of Judiciary Committee hearings in a 26-hour period, with a scant 1.75 hours for dinner/lunch breaks during those 14 hours...and no other breaks...and this is combined with other insane committee meetings to make the legislative staffer's life beyond nonexistently miserable.
L-SADD sufferers such as yours truly don't ask for much. Fifteen minutes off every few hours would be acceptable. Not hearing so many bills would be even better. We don't need drugs to keep us calm - oh, no. By hour 5 we're pretty much catatonic as we sit atrophied to our chairs in a hearing room known to many as The Crypt. At that point, the medical script should be some caffeine, real food, a smidge of sugar, and five minutes of being able to walk around and not hear members blather on and on about such things as data practices and sex crimes and guardian/conservator law and whether-the-tractor-driver-should-be-liable-for-the-trailer,-too,-and-how-did-this-whole-mess-begin?-with-a-data-practices-bill-five-years-ago. [Read:I think half of life's problems are somehow related to data practices or the discussion thereof.] All of these things will help us pay better attention to members' insanely long, intricate discussions, and we may even be helpful wading through the minutia at that point.
My name is Minny LinnEy, and I'm a sufferer of L-SADD.
L-SADD sufferers such as yours truly don't ask for much. Fifteen minutes off every few hours would be acceptable. Not hearing so many bills would be even better. We don't need drugs to keep us calm - oh, no. By hour 5 we're pretty much catatonic as we sit atrophied to our chairs in a hearing room known to many as The Crypt. At that point, the medical script should be some caffeine, real food, a smidge of sugar, and five minutes of being able to walk around and not hear members blather on and on about such things as data practices and sex crimes and guardian/conservator law and whether-the-tractor-driver-should-be-liable-for-the-trailer,-too,-and-how-did-this-whole-mess-begin?-with-a-data-practices-bill-five-years-ago. [Read:I think half of life's problems are somehow related to data practices or the discussion thereof.] All of these things will help us pay better attention to members' insanely long, intricate discussions, and we may even be helpful wading through the minutia at that point.
My name is Minny LinnEy, and I'm a sufferer of L-SADD.
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