pro-crastinate17

[pro-crastinate17]

I don't know how many parents are on here, but

Please, I am begging you, if you think your child might be neurodivergent, tell them.

Sit them down, ask them a few questions about symptoms of whatever condition you think they might have, and listen to what they have to say.

Mull it over. See how their answers measure up to professional diagnostic criteria and the childhood experiences of other neurodivergent people.

If you see things aligning, tell your kid what's going on and take them to see a reputable professional (if they're younger) or ask them if they want to talk to a pro about getting a diagnosis (if they're older).

Please, don't try to hide their neurodivergence from them. I went through school not understanding why I had such a hard time connecting with people. I grew up with a "not like other girls" complex because I genuinely was not like them. I grew up thinking that everyone hated certain textures, that everyone found buffet lines stressful, that my social struggles were just introversion. When I had to secure my own accommodations, I told people that I occasionally had sensory overloads. 

When my mother told me that she'd known for years that I probably had ADHD and autism, I was an adult, and I resented her for that decision. After the lightbulb moment faded, I demanded to know why she hadn't told me before, and she said that I hadn't been struggling.

But I had been struggling. I had assumed that my struggles were normal and I'd been bent on "fixing" myself in a way that couldn't and shouldn't be done.

Had I been given that vocabulary, I could've explained why I became so obsessed with my interests.

I could've given a better explanation than "I have sensory overloads sometimes" when I had to wear noise-canceling headphones in high school (and I probably wouldn't have gotten those accommodations if I hadn't had a reputation as a good student). I could've told my teachers that it was because I was autistic, instead of relying on a term that I learned from Spider-Man fanfiction.

I could've researched ways to work around my ADHD so I didn't drown under a mountain of late work.

If you hide your child's neurodivergence from them, you are refusing to give them the right tools to understand themselves.

[pro-crastinate17]

There was an old man who lived by a forest.

As he grew older and older, he started losing his hair, until one day, on his deathbed, he was completely bald. That day, he called his children to a meeting.

He said, “Look at my hair. It used to be so magnificent, but it’s completely gone now. My hair can’t be saved. But look outside at the forest. It’s such a lovely forest with so many trees, but sooner or later they’ll all be cut down and this forest will look as bald as my hair.”

“What I want you to do,” the man continued, “is, every time a tree is cut down or dies, plant a new one in my memory. Tell your descendants to do the same. It shall be our family’s duty to keep this forest strong.”

So they did. Each time the forest lost a tree, the children replanted one, and so did their children, and their children after them. And for centuries, the forest remained as lush and pretty as it once was, all because of one man and his re-seeding heirline.

#GIGGLE

[pro-crastinate17]

rb this and tell me what ur accent is. this has no purpose except the fact i just realized i could have like... mutuals with cockney accents or newfoundland accents or something and thats just wild

#california often with a hint of southern or new england #not sure why! ive never lived in either of those places #but my accent just kinda goes wOoOoOo sometimes #i pick up accents constantly and some are harder to put down than others ig! jsdlkfhs

[pro-crastinate17]

[pro-crastinate17]

autism awareness & autism acceptance not either or. not mutually exclusive. can coexist. need coexist.

“there enough awareness for autism already 🙄 we need acceptance”

ok. you aware of high support needs autism? aware what that even means? not “need reminder take meds need remind take shower” “high” support needs autism, but “need full physical help do bADLs lack danger awareness may accidentally hurt self or even kill self without support” high support needs autism? not just higher support needs people who can be independently online do advocacy, but those who need help from others even be online, or those who cannot be online at. all.?

aware of nonverbal nonspeaking people? not just nonverbal nonspeaking people who can write grammatically correct cannot tell apart base on writing. not just nonverbal nonspeaking people who can be online who can advocate online.

aware of nonverbal nonspeaking people who cannot communicate in way that easily understood, either for now, or ever? aware of nonverbal nonspeaking people without functional communication, aware of how without functional communication, how that drastically limit communication, even though behaviors are valid communication? aware of nonverbal nonspeaking people who may never use AAC fluently even with best support?

aware of technically verbal but very limited verbal autistics who may only able say wants & needs but not other things and certainly not online advocacy, “despite being verbal”?

aware of just how much our life depends on caregiver/carer/PCA/etc? aware how vulnerable that make us? aware of abuse from caregivers? aware of caregiver burnout from lack of support for caregivers, & how that impact our care we receive? have you even heard of term respite care? aware of those of us who cannot separate ourselves from caregiver? aware of those of us who cannot participate in autism community without caregiver?

aware of visibly autistic people? aware how we not automatically believed? aware how we often bear blunt of violence because we most easily identified target because we visible? aware visible =/= get support, aware that many those diagnosed severe who now adult so no longer qualify for services under 21 year old, languish in hospitals because nowhere to go? aware how long life saving necessary waitlists are? aware that even to this day parents have to fight school fight day service fight government fight insurance for them give their nonverbal nonspeaking child AAC & be properly taught how use it? actually, are you aware of how properly teach AAC to nonverbal nonspeaking, developmentally delayed child who may or may not have intellectual disability?

actually, aware of autistics with (correctly diagnosed) intellectual disability & how they make up big amount of autistic? aware of institutional systemic & legal impact of mental [r word] right & the human rights abuse justified using r word right? wait, you aware that r word come from old term for intellectual disability, that, actually, still in many laws because no one bothered updating, right? aware of what severe profound ID look like? and aware they real and they still human deserve education deserve life deserve care, yes?

aware of early diagnosis 20 30 or even 10 years ago, not same as now, even less resources & knowledge about autism now? aware that while gender race class 1000% impacted diagnoses, a lot of early diagnosed people early diagnosed because… they die without support unlocked by diagnosis, right? but also, aware that in old times, early diagnosis often did mean doom, not because autism bad or anything, but because severe lack of support & diagnosis can literally bar you from so many things including basic education?

aware that for many people in special education, which impact specific group of autistic people, they not get degree when graduate high school, they just get certificate, which limit their educational & employment opportunities & others?

aware of life saving importance and necessity of masking for autistic of color especially Black autistic people, despite stress inducing traumatic? aware that live in broken system be victim of hate crime & police brutality just as traumatic often even more traumatic than masking? aware that many Black & other parents of color forced to teach their child masking because of this?

are you aware of most marginalized autistic people? aware of leadership of most impacted?

aware you can and need to care about autistic experiences & form of autism you not experience? aware that you can and need to do that without try twist your experience into our experience into our words our community?

aware that advocacy goes beyond about you?

aware that you can’t speak for all autistic? aware that you shouldn’t speak for all autistic?

are you aware of when you need to stop talking & listen & amplify others? aware of when and how to decenter self?

aware that even this long post, barely scratch surface? still so much to say?

[better worded version of original post]

[pro-crastinate17]

I'll never get tired of the thing where the same word/expression/etc can be translated in both an extremely poetic way and also directly an unceremoniously into what it literally means, and neither one is really incorrect. And the funniest one is when there really is no neutral middle ground translation.

Like someone can point at a specific type of underwater plant that grows in local lakes and start explaining "our folklore features this ancient witch/sea goddess who lives in bodies of water, and there's a legend that she comes out on full moon's nights to gather this plant to make her salad :)" and you're like holy shit that's cool.

And then you ask someone else what the local name of this plant translates to, and they say "wet hag lettuce".

[pro-crastinate17]

Lil Nas X did a cover of Jolene and Dolly Parton responded to it on twitter

Image descriptions under the cut

[ID: Screenshots of two tweets. The first one is by Dolly Parton and it says "I was so excited when someone told me that Lil Nas X had done my song #Jolene. I had to find it and listen to it immediately…and it's really good. Of course, I love him anyway. I was surprised and I'm honored and flattered. I hope he does good for both of us. Thank you @LilNasX". The second tweet is Lil Nas X responding to the Dolly Parton tweet by simply saying "HOLY SHIT" in all caps. End of ID.]

#!!!!!!!

[pro-crastinate17]

anyway i will always remember my freshman year world history teacher who spent a whole day teaching us about the development of hinduism and its cultural impact and the next day came into class and (basically) said “alright so who guessed that everything i said yesterday was bullshit?”

the thing i took away from this was

when learning about a culture You Are Not A Part Of in a class full of liberals, they will accept everything as fact

if something historical sounds simple and widely agreed upon, especially religion, its probably bullshit

you are not smarter than experts. and experts can fucking lie to you anyway.

american non academics have been and will continue to butcher greek mythology and sell it to you like the bible. please. PLEASE. remember those things can be fun but your bullshit detectors should be on.

[pro-crastinate17]

Random worldbuilding idea: a culture where everyone is a goth, but for perfectly sensible environmental ressons.

Wearing mainly/almost exclusively black clothing because either the dye protects them/the fabric from something in the environment, black clothes are the most convenient ones to maintain, or then a century ago black dye was extremely difficult and/or expensive to produce and only the wealthiest of society could afford it, but now a cheaper dye method has been invented and after a huge trend of Now Everybody Can Wear Black, it just stuck and nobody even remembers why all clothes are dyed black. It's just tradition.

Everyone wears demonia-style platform shoes because the climate is wet and cold, and for most of the year the ground is either muddy or covered in icy slush, so knee-high tall boots are simply the most pragmatic way to keep the rest of your clothes reasonably dry and clean.

Silver and leather jewellery is widespread because the land is rich in metal ore - while the rich can afford to buy/commission delicate silver threads, even the peasants can afford some sort of rough iron chains and studs on their wristbands. Studded leather is more sensible than having metal rings touching skin directly, due to the cold weather. Studs and chains also double as armour and weapons which technically speaking don't count as such, allowing people to circumvent any "can't openly carry weapons during peace time"-laws. Law enforcement could not confiscate someone's bling without causing public riots.

Everyone is about as pale as their natural complexion allows since the climate is cold and dark and the sun does not rise much during the winter. Cold dark winters are also the reason why the culture is so morbid in general - in the heart of the darkest months there's fuck all else to do than write poetry about the moon's silver light and the howls of wolves and the beauty of death, while polishing your iron chains until they shine like silver.

Domesticated ravens are more covenient for messenger birds than doves are, as they're hardier and can manage the climate better. Even if more modern messaging technology has been invented, people prefer sending letters by bird because it's more romantic and poetic. Sending someone a raven message poem about how you'd like to be buried in the same grave together one day is a very standard way of flirting.

#writing stuff #writing inspiration #save

[pro-crastinate17]

post oversharing clarity is on the top 3 for most humiliating experiences ever, and it's not in third place

[pro-crastinate17]

[pro-crastinate17]

If you don’t propose with this don’t fuckin bother

#ezekiel jones #jacob stone #LISTEN. EZEKIEL WOULD DO THIS AND JAKE WOULD HAAAAATE IT BUT HE WOULD STILL SAY YES. #the librarians

[pro-crastinate17]

something i don't see talked about enough is the fact that parents having constant surveillance over "their" children is normalized by our society

like seriously, parents will go install the Super Panopticon Kid Safe Parental Controls 2000 that sends their kid's internet history, recordings of their calls and texts, every file on their phone, and exact geolocation to the parents.

and if you ever point out that this is more likely to endanger kids than protect them, people suddenly bombard you with a thousand comments about how children are too stupid or immature to have the most basic privacy in their life.

[pro-crastinate17]

Go spend some time on male pattern baldness or male(AMAB) balding forums/subreddits and such. I did after realizing it is happening to me and the ammount of people who truly don't realize how BRUTALLY it tanks people's confidence and mental health is insane.

There's no cure to baldness by the way, and it can start at any time and there's no way to predict how fast or slow it will go. The only real working option is a daily pill that usually just halts it, but it can stop working or just slow it down or cause major side effects. To regrow you have to use a daily topical solution, or use a roller to wound your scalp. None of these are surefire by the way, and if you stop them you'll just lose your hair and whatever you regained. It's a daily involved thing that might not work and often at best just retains. The best drug, the one that occasionaly gives regrowth, also causes shedding at the start, and can have side effects from growing breasts to brain fog to EDsyfunction(sorry, censoring cause tumblr). Now, those are INCREDIBLY rare and almost never happen but it weighs heavily on the mind of those already spiraling.

But that's just background. What I'm here to talk about is the pure woe you'll see on those forums. People speak as though their lives are over, as though they've lost every chance of finding a woman(predominantly, there's a running idea in such places that women don't like bald men or like them less) or doing anything. You can read countless stories of people who describe that they no longer go outside, are now filled with anxiety and self-hate, have gone from extroverted to never showing their face. And some of these people are kids who lost their hair in high school or even before, or are holding as best they can to a very receded hairline and feel like there is nothing they can do.

And then there's something touched upon far less in those communities, but is important to bring up here; baldness and masculinity. There's the horror of knowing so much of society sees a bald guy as a very masculine guy, at seeing that the best advice for being hot and bald is "grow and beard and big muscles bro". Imagine now you're AMAB balding and nonbinary, or a trans woman who doesn't want to be on hormones.

Just genuinely take the time to look at those forums no matter who you are. Understand what these people go through, what I am currently going through. It is soul-crushing, spiraling, brutal. I have the dream of one day being like Brennan Lee Mulligan or Matt Mercer and starting to lose my hair made me feel like I could never. I felt like and still feel like I would have to be masculine, have to be a bro-y dude, have to look older than I was(I'm fuckin 22). It was the feeling that I could never dress feminine again, never present as a woman when I wanted to again, that I'd always be viewed as a bald guy before anything else.

This is an incredibly vulnerable post for me, and I hope it reaches you all as well in a kind and understanding mood. There's a tendency online for people to joke about baldness, to make fun of it, to treat it as a playfull silly thing but it fucking ruins lives, and it shouldn't. It happens to half the population's sort of bodies and very often. It should just be a neutral thing. You don't need long hair to be feminine, you don't need hair to be feminine. You don't need hair for anything. I guess I'm just saying in general that everyone should be kinder about balding, more understanding, and view it with as much import as they'd view the pixels between this sentence and the next. None at all, I mean.

And for those like me, very feminine guys who wanna keep that and don't want a beard and are terrified of balding, here's some names and I do hope others that see this will add more; Mr. Bruce (also in The Correspondents(band) Alex Ward in LA By Night Jason Carl in LA By Night Cecil Baldwin of Welcome To Night Vale Bob The Drag Queen RuPaul(in looks alone, I know about the whole fracking stuff but this post is about looks) tananasho on instagram Also your mannerisms and style of dress will convey femininity far more than your hair. Yea sure a front-on neutral shot of you may not and maybe you need makeup and stuff, and hell maybe a lot of people might reject you more but it'll just filter down to the people for you.

And to all you artists and writers and creatives; make more bald characters. Try it out. Feminine ones, masculine ones, all sorts. None of the copout nonhuman sort, just dudes and girls and mates and individuals who are all sorts of things and also bald. It might make a few of the people going through the various vortexes of pain that balding causes feel a bit better.

And to those noticing I did not adress female hair loss much here, that was intentional. I am AMAB and currently a nonbinary guy who goes by any pronouns but often likes to present as fem. I learned I was possibly losing my hair and lost two months of my life, no work or going or anything, to male hair loss forums and research and spiraling. Checking my hair twenty times a day, unable to sleep, unable to eat, unable to think. And my situation was NOT unique, but it also did not give me any experience or understanding of female hair loss and what AFAB people may go through with that, so I don't feel knowledgeable enough to speak on it. Also living with baldness WILL get easier and you will find something that works for it, by virtue of simply living with it. Things get easier with time.

[pro-crastinate17]

T‘noy Karaxis, what a guy!

#OH MY GOD I LOVE THIS #not my art #hatchetfield

[pro-crastinate17]

reblog for larger sample size

#all of the above #although 3rd person is kinda rare for me

[pro-crastinate17]

sometimes my friends send me good reels

(op)