‘In my punk days, I was somewhere in my twenties, I could be jealous of men washing their cars on Saturdays. Men who went shopping with their girlfriend later in the day, and in the evening sat with their feet on the couch in front of the TV. Men who just floated with the flow. I wish I was able to live a life like that too. But I can’t. I always go against the grain. And then you get yourself into a lot of trouble.
“I can not stand injustice. Not as a child. I was a vegetarian for years because I couldn’t sell it to myself that we have full supermarkets, celebrate Christmas and birthdays with a lot of meat on the table, while a child dies of hunger every two seconds. When I went to the supermarket with my mother, I confronted other people with their full shopping carts and the hunger in the world. It drove me to despair.
“I am the middle of three children. I was born next to the Feyenoord stadium. My father, like all his family, worked in the ports. He owned a plastering business. I was a smart little boy. When I went to a different, better, primary school, I started to stutter. I was very impulsive, and not afraid of anyone. So I got kicked out of class a lot, and I got into a lot of fights at home. Even though I come from a loving family. I was a difficult little boy. At least, that’s what everyone said.
“I wanted to go to the Hogere Zeevaartschool, but it turned out that I had the wrong subjects for that. I had never thought about which subjects I should have chosen in order to go to that course. Not a second. I was already involved in photography at the time, so the alternative became the Art Academy. But there I was rejected. Logical: I hadn’t even printed a photo. I only showed up with negatives. No chance. The School of Journalism turned out to be a solution. But I didn’t finish it. A few months before my final exams, I fled to London to unload trucks. I wanted to leave the Netherlands. Away from all responsibilities.
“After four months I came back and tackled everything that came my way. I worked as a photographer, but also as a publisher, miller, nature manager and recently I became a sailor on a sailing ship. Is the circle still round? When I look at my resume, it’s unbelievable what I’ve done. I don’t work to make a career and improve myself; I care about the content. And I am very principled about that. So principled that, for example, I resigned at the age of 55 because I felt that the management of the company where I worked at the time was making the wrong decisions. I will only see the consequences of such a step much later.
“It’s been that way all my life. I have a highly developed sense of loyalty and can’t say no. Here in the village the bakery would close. The last shop in the village. The one place where everyone meets. I can’t let something like this go my way. Then I have to do something to keep that bakery open. Even if it keeps me awake at night. But I do. Most recently, in the cockpit. In the last minutes Feyenoord – Cambuur I see a brawl in my box. I jump right in to break those people apart. Only later do I think: that could have gone very wrong.
“I am on the board of all millers here on the dike, and in the interest group of the village, and this year I am bringing an American bluegrass band to the Netherlands for the third time in ten years. I just can’t say no when called upon, even though sometimes it would be better for me.
“My youngest son, I have four children, does exactly the same. He is a copy of me at that age. That is not always easy. We decided to have it tested. I said: if you get yourself tested for ADHD, I will too.
“I had to take the same test twice. One without medication and one with. That difference was absurd. Thanks to the dexamphetamine, for the first time in my life my head wasn’t a 12-ball pinball machine. There was peace. Really fantastic. The doctors smiled afterwards and said, “We use a scale of 0 to 10 and you’re obviously a 9 ½.” For me that was a revelation. At the age of 57 I found out that I am not a difficult person, as everyone always said, and that I had come to believe in myself, but that I just function differently because I have ADHD. Really, that was a bizarre discovery.
“I was on medication for a while. But I stopped doing that anyway. At first the dose was too high and I was wide awake every night. After that it was so low that I hardly noticed it and forgot to take the pills. I am now trying to create order out of the chaos myself. That’s not easy. I have to be careful not to freak out. Fortunately, my psychologist taught me how to change my mind. I’ll go chop wood. Or cut planks to size. That is my yoga moment.”
A version of this article also appeared in the December 3, 2022 newspaper