#i just had less executive function and it sucked

[walkawaytall]

I really wish there was more interest in how to handle ADHD other than just addressing the symptoms that affect the people around us.

Like, the best pharmaceutical treatment we have right now is stimulants, and I agree that being on stimulants 24 hours a day, 365 days a year is probably not good for your body. Hell, I’m on a less-than-ideal dose of my medication from a concentration perspective because the ideal dose had my resting heart rate sitting at a cool 115BPM. I know taking med holidays is important. I know all of this.

But because ADHD isn’t just an attention problem (or may not actually be an attention problem at all at its core), it sucks that the only time period medical professionals seem to be concerned about treating are the “important” times: the length of a school or workday. Forget the fact that ADHD affects executive function, forget the fact that people with ADHD often experience chronic and unending anxiety and/or depression as a result of the ADHD, forget that there are important times that have nothing to do with an 8-hour school or work day, forget the rejection sensitivity dysphoria, the sensory issues that make things like clothing, food, and group situations a nightmare to try to navigate, the household stuff that has to be taken care of outside of the 8-hour school or work day. It feels like none of that matters because it doesn’t affect a group of fifteen or more people.

On top of ADHD, I have been plagued with anxiety-related issues for the majority of my life. I likely have a form of OCD and I have a history with a restrictive eating disorder; both of those conditions are very closely associated with high levels of anxiety. I’ve been on anxiety medications before. I was first given an as-needed medication that took the edge off but also made everything feel a little fuzzy, like there was a pane of glass between me and the rest of the world; I was put on an SSRI that somehow made my OCD-related intrusive thoughts about 50x worse than usual and had me wondering at one point if I should be hospitalized; and I’m currently on buspirone, which is doing what it’s supposed to do without the side effects of the others thankfully. But nothing, and I mean nothing, has reduced my anxiety as much as my ADHD medication.

Two hours after my first stimulant dosage, I just suddenly didn’t feel on-edge any more. I estimate that being on ADHD medication has reduced my anxiety by about 70% (buspirone’s for the other 30%). I started taking it in the summer of 2020 and I remember, in 2021, when I saw my boss in person for the first time since lockdown, he remarked on how much more confident I seemed, how I was more likely to speak up in meetings, etc. And I was like…yeah, man, it’s a wonder what not feeling anxious every second of every day will do for someone.

ADHD affects so much more of my life than just attention and anxiety, too. I have sensory issues with mine, which is pretty common, and they make eating — an already sometimes-complicated task due to the ED history — difficult at times because, while I can eat foods that I don’t particularly like, if something is what I call “the bad texture”, I will gag no matter how hard I work to overcome it (believe me, I’ve tried). And my brain sometimes decides that foods that were previously fine are now “the bad texture” and they may or may not shift back to being okay eventually; I don’t know.

The sensory issues affect me socially. My therapist and I have recently come to the conclusion that I’m probably not actually an introvert, but if I’m around larger groups, that means noise and movement and probably being touched, and too much of that causes my brain to either freak out or shut down. I used to always say, “I love people, but when I’m done, I’m done.” And that was likely because the overstimulation was building and building in the background, and at a certain point, my brain would just be like, “We gotta get outta here.” I was Queen of Irish Goodbyes for a very long time because of this.

And the executive dysfunction affects…well..everything? Not just work, not just school (but also those because if my environment is chaotic, my brain feels chaotic, and it is difficult to maintain a non-chaotic environment if you keep getting stuck on order of operations when picking up a room).

I’m not saying that I want to be on longer-lasting stimulants or that I want to be on the higher dose that I know helps my concentration more, cardiovascular system by damned. What I’m saying is, I wish treatment research had been more holistic rather than just figuring out what would give teachers and managers an easier time despite what the person with ADHD might be dealing with as soon as their meds wear off.

Maybe current research is working on it; I don’t know. I just know that, the older I get, the more frustrated I am with my brain and the more apparent the deficiencies I used to be able to counteract with pre-chronic-illness energy and crushing perfectionism become, and I wish there was an answer to this that actually helped me most of the time rather than forcing me to pick which parts of my day/week is “important” and making sure I’m medicated for those parts.

#adhd #adult adhd #adhd combined #adhd problems #actually adhd #adhd treatment

[emotionallychargedtowel]

about that Minato's Laundromat season 2 storyline...

As your resident psychology PhD I'm commenting on this even though I would rather forget about the whole thing and just hope it's over soon. But I haven't been able to restrain myself from ranting about it privately, so I may as well rant here.

Setting aside what I think of this as a plot device (what I think is that it sucks), this is even more unrealistic than most TV and film portrayals of traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs, which as a whole are abysmal. (Please note that "traumatic" in this context refers to a sudden tissue injury due to an accident or violence, not to the person having a traumatic experience, though of course the two things can totally co-occur.)

If I can take a step back for a second, once you learn anything at all about traumatic brain injury so many plotlines in TV series and movies become incredibly frustrating. How many times have you seen a character bonk another on the head as a convenient way to render them unconscious only to find that soon afterward, the person who's been hit in the head wakes up practically unscathed after a convenient span of time has passed? I have no doubt that there are people who have taken these portrayals seriously and hit others hard enough to cause a TBI because they thought it wasn't a big deal. I'm equally sure that the prevalence of this trope has had an effect on TBI survivors's difficulties being taken seriously. It's pernicious and it makes me so angry. TBIs aren't the type of thing that you typically just walk away from in the same condition you were in before they happened, and they shouldn't be portrayed that way in media.

Back to the Minato's Laundromat plotline. Shin sustains a pretty serious fall-related TBI. He appears to have been unconscious for a good while since it looks like a bright afternoon (maybe early evening at the latest) when he falls and it's dark when Minato sees him and is told he regained consciousness not long before. It seems like he was unconscious for more than half an hour but it hasn't been 24 hours yet, which puts him in the range for his injury to be considered a moderate TBI. Don't let the label fool you--a moderate TBI is a very big deal. People with moderate TBIs can experience personality changes, cognitive deficits, and all sorts of other major issues.

Loss of memory is common with TBIs, but the most common type of amnesia with a TBI pertains to events just before or just after the injury occurred. Retrograde amnesia, where you can't remember what happened just before the injury, is rather common. Anterograde amnesia, where you don't remember events after the injury, can happen too. But forgetting details about your life? That is not a common symptom.

Guess what's even less common? You guessed it: the kind of highly specific amnesia Shin has in Minato's Laundromat. Forgetting one specific relationship or person isn't unheard-of in psychology, but it's almost always selective amnesia related to a traumatic experience. It's like an extreme defense mechanism in which the person unconsciously blocks out a whole swath of their experiences. The information that gets lost is linked not by its location in the brain, but by a semantic link--a link based on the meaning assigned to those memories. Loss of semantically-linked memories is associated with psychological causes, not physical ones. This kind of symptom is based on thoughts and emotions, not brain structures.

The effects of TBIs, on the other hand, are related to the location of an injury and the functions of whatever portions of the brain are impacted by that injury. Brain localization is the phenomenon whereby different parts of our brains are responsible for different functions. For example, our frontal lobes house a lot of our executive functioning abilities, so a TBI mostly affecting someone's frontal lobe could make them more impulsive, less able to plan effectively, and so forth. Or if a person sustained an injury to their Broca's Area (a spot near the front of the left hemisphere that is important for speech), they would likely have difficulties communicating. If Shin had an "all about Minato" section of his brain and it got hit when he fell, then sure, it would make some sense if he lost his Minato-related memories. But that's not how our brains work--except in that one genre of cartoon humor where we see inside someone's brain and each of the things they care about has its own little region. But Shin isn't a cartoon character. His memories of Minato aren't housed in one specific place separate from his memories of other important people in his life.

I dug around and found that there have been some cases of selective amnesia due to TBI. However, these are vanishingly rare, with only a handful of case studies and nowhere near the amount of data that would be needed to draw any generalizable conclusions (in other words, any facts we could apply to other cases). If Shin was a real person and he forgot about his relationship with one important person in his life due to a TBI, this would be so unusual that psychologists and psychiatrists would have come from miles around to observe him and he would likely have had his case written up in a neuropsych journal, after which it may have ended up in more widely-read publications. He also would likely have been kept for observation much longer than the period we saw in the show.

But the weirdest thing about his case, if he were a real person, would be that he is suffering such an intense amnesia symptom and yet has no other symptoms of note. Moderate TBIs can have very severe effects. They can change your personality, cause serious difficulties with communication, trigger seizures, sharply increase someone's risk of substance abuse--I could go on but you get the idea. The effects are often profound. Many people who experience a moderate TBI develop a serious disability as a result. Occasionally, people who experience a moderate TBI can get lucky and avoid the worst kinds of symptoms. But to have one highly unusual and severe symptom and no others would be extremely weird.

Once again, we find that a media portrayal of TBI is highly unrealistic. Worse, it's trivializing. Honestly, treating a TBI in this way, as a cheap ploy to further a romance plot, is pretty ableist.

Sometimes we suspend disbelief about this kind of thing when we watch visual media. There are so many other psychological diagnoses and symptoms that are inaccurately portrayed and generally overused. For example, how many TV and movie characters have had a "split personality" that bore no resemblance to actual experiences of Dissociative Identity Disorder? But if a show or movie is going to use something like this to advance a plot, they need to make it count. It needs to serve a real purpose that couldn't be accomplished just as easily by other means. And that's simply not true in this case.

The only solution to the issues created by this plotline would be to resolve it as quickly as possible and allow the characters to move on, preferably memory-holing it completely, like that time on Friday Night Lights that (spoiler alert) Landry murdered a guy and then no one ever spoke of it again.

#minato's laundromat 2 #minato shouji coin laundry 2 #minato's laundromat #minato shouji coin laundry #the shin amnesia plotline #psychology of BL

[anti-katsuki-lounge]

YAOYOROZU IS THE QUEEN OF DESERVES BETTER!

She was so competent, intelligent, and levelheaded in the beginning of the series. Not only was she screwed over during the Sports Festival (multiple times), her personality was retconned. She way more "uwu" than she was originally and it makes her less distinct from the other 1A girls. Her hero costume isn't just revealing, it just sucks. It says nothing about her personality. The intended goal is "functionality" but it fails in that department too (she could break her spine on that stupid bookcase and she has no chest protection). Every time Hori seems like he's going to treat her seriously, he turns around and screws her over again whether it's to make a perverted joke or to just ignore her.

Also, Creation is the most OP quirk outside of AFO and OFA and Horikoshi doesn't freaking use it

Momo’s definitely up there in terms of “most screwed over”.

For starters, according to Hori, Momo has an intelligence stat of 6/5 S. To put that into perspective, that’s higher than Mei’s 5/5 A+ intelligence and on pair with both Nezu and All Might, a being with an intelligence boosting quirk and the Number 1 hero. Only AFO (the oldest person on the planet and someone who’s probably got an intelligence enhancing quirk) and Garaki (a literal mad scientist whose able to create creatures from corpses and copy quirks straight from someone’s DNA) beat her out in brains.

Secondly, her quirk is absurdly powerful. I’d put it as part of the Top 3 best quirks (Overhaul and New World Order are my other three picks). Sure, it has its limits of needing lipids for fuel and Momo having to remember complex atomic formulas, but the second weakness hardly ever comes up. If she really wanted to, she could create nukes. If given time to prepare, she instantly becomes a top threat. Sadly, Hori never does much in terms of creativity. Poor girl’s relegated to mainly creating basic traps and weapons. Hori keeps trying to make her be a frontline combatant when she really should be support/nuke option.

In terms of her arc, I do believe that the idea of her arc’s solid. Her arc’s one we constantly see in fiction. Genius comes in confident in their abilities, gets humbled, has their worldview shattered, is lost, and then reignites their flame. The problem is how it’s executed. Her losing to Fumikage makes sense. Momo didn’t bother to prepare ahead of time and was up against someone who had no known weakness (the light weakness is only known by 1-A after the Sports Arc. Until then, only Izuku and Ochako knew while Katsuki figured it out due to luck). Sadly, after this, we really don’t get much outta her. Her internship taught her shit. Her spark is reignited when she and Shoto face off against Eraserhead, but that was temporary. Her fight with Saiko Intelli (unrelated but I actually quite like her) only happens in the anime and is more of a team win than a personal win. During the Joint Training Arc, she doesn’t get a win either, instead tying with Itsuka. Her final main contribution comes during the War Arc where she creates the sleeping gas to put Giantomecha to sleep. Don’t get me wrong, it was a cool moment, but that was more of Ejiro’s moment. Simply put, Momo takes a lot of L’s for someone who is usually crucial to various victories. Also, like you said, throughout the story, she goes from being one of 1-A’s leaders to being a follower despite her intellect and growth.

Her costume I 100% agree on. Seriously, what is this girl wearing? So many people have said this before but you can have her costume have flaps that open up when she’s using her quirk rather than have her running around almost naked. It’s really not that hard to make a practical costume. If Mirio can have a costume that can phase through things with him, then Momo and Tooru could have costumes that both work with their quirks and not have them running around naked.

Lol, this turned into another rant, but Momo really got screwed over.

#mha critical #bnha critical

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

re: last reblog i do think people complaining about “predictable” twists/reveals that were well foreshadowed (or straight up clearly communicated but not verbally stated) is silly and annoying but idk if i think it’s like all causally attributable to “bad faith criticism.” a few thoughts, no grand thesis:

(1) i really do believe that sometimes people sense that something didn’t work but can’t really identify or articulate things problems with structure or form or execution, and then just sort of glom on to something that feels like it has explanatory power. an example here in the house of fuck jj abrams is how many people complained (often even as they said they mostly liked it) that the problem with the force awakens was that it was too much a retread of a new hope. the problem with the force awakens as i have articulated many times is that it’s a piece of shit idiot movie made by a guy who literally fundamentally fails to understand how narrative or movies work more than i genuinely think anyone else in hollywood. it does ape a new hope shamelessly, but it also does it stupidly and blindly, with a misapprehension that the important things about that movie are things like “desert planet” and “seedy bar” and not, like, connecting the dots on a functional story populated by characters with recognizable and easily legible motivations and relationships. it felt stale and boring because it’s not a story, it’s an expensively assembled gifset with a soundtrack. you could change every one of the things people complain about being too similar to a new hope and i feel fairly confident most people would not like it any better because the issue is not that it’s familiar, it’s that it sucks. (further evidence for this hypothesis is to be found IMO in the fact that even last jedi’s many haters never seem to accuse it to be too similar to empire strikes back, even though it is in fact deliberately extremely structurally similar to empire - i think you can argue it has more in common with empire than force awakens has with a new hope! starting ofc with how they are both good.)

anyway. so i think probably sometimes a movie/book/show/etc is actually just kinda mid or bad and people feel that but haven’t thought too much about why but, sure, “predictable” works. but i bet there are people who complain movies are predictable but also have liked movies they did in fact successfully predict the twists/reveals of, and they’ve never really thought about why it is that sometimes something being predictable is fine and sometimes it’s annoying. as a personal example i know that one of my complaints about avatar back when i saw it in theaters was that it was predictable. in retrospect i would not say that being predictable is root problem that avatar has, and there are absolutely movies as predictable as avatar i have enjoyed. but predictability stood out then because i’m not trying to be a hipster that was really one of the most excruciating experiences i’ve ever had in theaters and the fact that i could tell what was coming did exacerbate how dull and annoying the movie already was.

what i’m saying in this point is that i don’t think everyone who complains about predictability is someone actually in practice liking things less for being predictable.

(2) someone a while ago told me they mostly don’t like movies because they’re too good at figuring out what’s going to happen, which is about as alien a way of engaging with art as i can imagine, but just take me on my word that i do not think this is a person whose issue is they have read too much bad faith criticism. i think they just don’t get the same kind of emotional and aesthetic experiences i get out of movies and i can’t judge them for that because i am a person incapable of being moved by things like painting or sculpture, incapable of responding emotionally or aesthetically to cartoons by adults, and allergic to almost all poetry. like for some people i think “what surprising thing is gonna happen?” just authentically is the site of their pleasure from movies and i think that’s fine because it literally doesn’t matter. one time a guy told me he liked video games better than novels because with video games you get the story and the craft of the gameplay mechanics and like i cannot imagine that but i also can’t imagine playing a video game for fun period so like whatever. it takes all kinds.

(3) sometimes you have the issue where the movie/show foreshadows heavily (or leaves you without alternate options) and then tries dramatically to play the reveal/twist like a big shock. in this case i think the complaint is more or less fair game although this is also kind of a subset of (1) where the issue is a structural misalignment around the goals here (ie pick a lane).

(4) tbh some shows or franchises have trained their viewers to respond this way and i think in this case the complaint is also fair bc they deserve what they get. play stupid games win stupid prizes.

[canmom]

brain operating notes

the thing with ADHD is that it's super paradoxical. I've spent the last 72 hours or so doing almost nothing but making minute tweaks to this fansub, stuff like hand tracking signs in perspective at 800% zoom. it's the 'hyperfocus', and it can feel like a superpower. only the thing is I have no control over when it kicks in and what it chooses to focus on.

I had work to be done on Friday, work I enjoy and is novel and interesting, but this fansub project just jumped into my brain and took over the wheel and said 'you will not do anything else until this is finished'.

this is why the notion of 'executive function' is useful. I think of it like a unifying thing required to both get myself to do a thing that is not particularly novel or engaging in this moment, and to stop myself doing a thing that engages the hyperfocus because I have to eat or whatever. this feels like a finite resource, that gradually replenishes over time.

of course we're all in metaphor here. I don't actually think there's a finite reserve of some substance that I can use to get me to do things that aren't immediately stimulating. but being equipped with this metaphor lets me think of it like... ok, I will let my brain just do its thing and ride the rollercoaster now, so that I can have the wherewithal to do (difficult but important thing) down the line. or, I've been really pushing myself to do stuff recently, I need to take some time to recover the reserves. how good is this model? i'm not sure. probably not great, but it is a model.

anyway things that trigger hyperfocus are a bit arbitrary but common features tend to be...

novel: a thing that I haven't done before is intrinsically exciting - as long as I have some idea of how to get going. in my previous job I'd find excuses to do stuff like 'animate in Blender' or 'hack the graph drawing tool' just to add a bit of spice to rote tasks. thankfully my current job is full of new exciting things.

a steady drip feed of small successes: a big, daunting task is hard to get started on. something that has a clear avenue for recognisable, steady progress is a lot more manageable. 'write the animation controller' is unclear. 'make another animation' feels like progress, and I know where I'm at with it, so I will tend to choose that one given the option.

urgent: if the deadline is imminent and there really is no other option but to crack on with it, the anxiety gives a force multiplier on executive function. which results in a lot of procrastination leading up to mad last minute crunch. it's a pattern that I hate, not least because it's hard to say how long anything will actually take, but is hard to shake.

social: if it is for the benefit of a friend, or I get to show off a bit, it is way easier to get going with it. is it because I am kinda lonely and any time someone wants to spend time with me it feels like I dare not refuse because who knows when they will again? is it because I love to be praised for doing an impressive thing? idk maybe. however this is double-edged because if I feel I'm making something unimpressive I will be motivated to try and make it bigger and more complex, dragging things out, which might lead to not finishing the thing at all.

you can probably kind of see how computer games are a bit of a cognitohazard. especially open-ended games that don't have a finite built-in endpoint. I've gotten better at managing that now.

there are degrees of hyperfocus. there is the maxed out 'I will not eat or sleep until I finish this' mode. there is also the 'I have a new obsession' mode, which is a bit less intense.

the other thing with hyperfocus is that it is time-limited. at some point you just burn out on it and after that it's really hard to jump back into a thing. the unfinished projects on my hard drive are in most cases things I went nuts over for a few weeks and then dropped like a hot stone. this sucks because making anything worthwhile requires sustained effort over a long period.

I've been trying meds but so far no luck. they've currently got me off the meds taking baseline measurements while they figure out what to try next. though apparently the dose of dexamfetamine they had me on is like... so low that it's not surprising I didn't feel it.

gonna have to ask them about it next time I see them. because right now this whole thing feels like a bit of a mean joke. I'm staying in London for the sake of meds that could help, because it would take upwards of a year to get into another clinic, but what's the point if they're not even giving the meds a real shot?

but if there is any chance I can get working meds, I've got to try for it, because I don't think I'll ever achieve much of anything within the limitations of adhd, at least not without finding some new mechanisms to keep me on track. (though 'if I don't do this I might lose my job/the game won't be as good as it could be' works a bit as an extrinsic motivator)

#adhd

[starlightsaphron]

THOSE AUS LOOK SO DELICIOUS UHMM.....

this one!! How have their personalities/gear changed from the difference in raising?

I’m so glad that your interested in my ideas! I got two asks about this idea, but I actually have two different ideas for it. I’ll share the one that has more extreme differences in personalities and weapons/outfits here.

Basically Raven is a lone survivor from an attack by salem that took out the rest of team STRQ. Summers last wish was for raven to keep the kids safe, which raven knows will never happen if either salem finds them or the kids grow up close enough to oz to get sucked up into the war that killed her family. So Raven takes the girls and goes off grid in the wilds of anima.

Ruby and yang have grow up in a nomadic life style away from society. They are both highly insular people, yang in especially doesn’t doesn’t trust anyone outside of her sister and mother, while ruby has developed a curiosity for society as a whole. They don’t live as complete luddites but what little tech they do have is stolen from rare night executions into villages and used well past the point where others would have discarded it. Ruby has a small collection of curios that she is highly protective of and tinkers with constantly.

Yang is actually quite quiet in this au. She can get pretty animated when talking to ruby but even to raven she’s pretty reserved. Yang had to grow up even faster here, in part from how young she was when she learned to hunt animals and kill grim and in part because she was basically constantly in danger and never learned how to self express. I feel like she’s a little paranoid cause Raven’s told yang more about the threat of salem then ruby. She’s still do or die for any of her family though. Badmouth or attack them then you in for a world of hurt.

Ruby I think has a long bow, dagger and a scythe she trains with in secret. A chose made of rubys own volitions because of ravens struggle when reminded of her lost family. Another neat idea could be that instead of a long bow she’s got a beat up old long rifle that she maintains obsessively. I like the idea of full forest ranger Ruby and doing something a little different from cannon. I think that there would be a be moment in the fic when she eventually constructs a mechashift weapon.

For Yangs weapons I’m still a little in the air. As much as it pains me personally I have a hard time seeing a yang raised by raven becoming a brawler. I feel like Raven just got Yang a mechashift weapon for her birthday (give that’s normally when she’d become a huntress). Im kinda thinking a glaive/short sword/crossbow combo. Maybe with Japanese influences to tie it to omen? I feel like it would be built with the ability to modify more dust integration later

Gear is harder. I struggle with visualization with outfits as a general rule. I feel like she’s got a mask like her Ravens, smaller and less ostentatious but still a grim mask. She dresses in darker colors to help her stay hidden, with small yellow highlights or marks though. I feel like as the store progresses yangs outfit would change and include more color as she explores herself.

Ruby’s palette is some combination of green, black and red. I can’t completely work it out in my head but I know I want those colors. Her outfit would be some combination of her v4 outfit and woodland ranger. Maybe with a few different cloaks for different environments. She carries many different knifes on her but each one has a unique function and place.

#yang xiao long #ruby rose #raven branwen #rwby au #asks #strawberry-seal77 #rwby fic #honestly this is a lot more than I expected to put down for this #I actually had to cut some details #still feels like I skimped a like on the what rubies personally is like here #but hey if you have more questions or any follow ups I’m happy to answer

[skullchicken]

The Step-Zero-Problem

Sometimes when trying to climb out of a mental health hole and seeking advice or giving other people advice on how to climb out of a mental health hole, the advice just plain won't work.

Which is frustrating! Especially if it seems like good advice (and it even might be!)! And personally, I think sometimes the problem isn't even necessarily that it's the wrong advice, sometimes the problem is that it's secretly Step Five and not Step Zero.

To give an example:

"Write down your emotions three times a day" is, generally, good advice when you want to figure out what's up with you over a longer period of time (e.g. to figure out if your emotions change with your menstruation cycle if you have one. If certain people or situations tend to provoke the same reactions in you, stuff like that).

But what goes unexamined is that to do that, you need to understand your emotions to begin with. You need to have the courage to feel your emotions. You need the scheduling ability and executive function to put down words reliably. So you would have to learn what lack of skill keeps you from that first. Putting your emotions into a diary is like, Step 3, not Step 0.

At some point I recognized I had anxiety and workaholism (shout-out to past me sitting in the waiting room for my psychologist's office whom I visited for guidance on how to relax and spending every moment doing flash cards on calculus, a subject I did not study and seeing nothing wrong with that). And my solution wasn't "recognize your self-worth as a person isn't tied to your productivity", it was more like...

recognize your bf stops working at some point of the day, unlike you -> start having a pause at the end of the day because you want to spend time with bf -> oh wow I'm slightly less anxious -> now that I am less anxious I'm realizing how anxious I am, this sucks -> hm, is what I'm doing actually an effective use of my time? I haven't been that successful for how much work I put in -> wait, if I want to be successful to be happy but sacrifice my happiness right now but success won't guarantee happiness... -> okay maybe it's okay if I don't work as hard as I do...?

... spread out over multiple years. I am now able to better disconnect my self-worth form my productivity, but it's like, step 20 (and still ongoing, btw).

Mental health is a skill made up of many smaller skills. To some these skills come easily, to others it doesn't, some people have a deeper hole than others to climb out of and some people are actively getting pelted by rocks while they do it.

I'm not sure how to solve it because it's a problem that only becomes apparent retrospectively. Still, I think going "okay, but is this even Step Zero for me?" could be a worthwhile thing to ask.

#mental health #anxiety #workaholism #long post

[pariahfox]

Finally going to try to embark on a new study plan, of slightly more structured DIY SFI.

The actual classes are free--but logistics, neurospiciness, and rolling burnout have been getting in the way of enrolling in any. Even what distance options I was finding for our area. But yeah, that is at least intended to help get immigrants up and at least semi-functional in daily Swedish ASAP.

As befits my nerdy, "unusual relationship to language in general" ass, I am currently all over the map in terms of skills here. Deciphering some written Icelandic and spotting German cognates, sure! Scanning "normal" written material, and at least getting the gist of maybe 50%-90% depending on subject matter? Usually yes, by this point. Formulate a halfway comprehensible e-mail with some vocabulary help from a dictionary? It'll take at least 3x longer than in English, but I can mostly manage. Just don't ask me to carry on a basic conversation, or do much more than (badly) order some coffee.

The osmosis approach really hasn't been helping so much with this. Neither has the fact that I haven't been able to get out and interact with people even anywhere near as much as my awkwardness could handle otherwise. Honestly haven't had the best luck trying to figure out how exactly to remedy any of this either.

So, my idea to get my ass in gear now is to pick up the appropriate textbooks (likely through less-than-official means) and follow along with at least one of the frequently recommended folks like Peter SFI covering this shit less officially online.

Also, suck it up and practice on the household captive native speaker more than I have been up to this point. If anybody is used to ridiculousness coming out of my mouth, it would be him. It just feels harder when it is someone that you do care what they think of you, who was also at near-native level in your primary language when you met them over 20 years ago. 😬

There are obviously the executive function pitfalls to keep in mind, but yeah. Trying to get more organized on my own is probably a better approach than doing much on a more formal basis. So, we'll have to see how putting an hour or two a day into this semi-structured approach might go.

My brain is pretty fried tonight, so I intend to start into that tomorrow. (Cue "Jane Says"... 🙄)

#personal #language learning #too autistic for this shit #these exiled years

[literary-potato]

hello please post the cryptography rant??? (if you want to and so on)

Hahaha ok then

So here is the post this is in reference to.

It’s a jokey thing about how OP could totally be responsible for generating the two-factor codes you get on your phone.

It is a funny harmless post so I decided not to be a pedantic weirdo in the comments. Instead I’m gonna be a pedantic weirdo here.

Here’s the problem with OP’s suggestion: humans suck at randomness.

(To be fair, computers also suck at randomness. It turns out it’s really hard in general to get a lot of data that is truly random. Which is such a problem for  cryptography that most intro to cryptography textbooks have sections plural about things like what randomness is, what pseudorandomness is, how we define something as being sufficiently pseudorandom for cryptographic purposes... it’s a Whole Thing.)

At least on a conscious level, people are not great at coming up with things that are actually random. There seems to be some debate on the matter, but from what I can tell beyond paywalls, the meta-analyses and replication studies have pretty consistently found that humans are not good at making up random sequences of numbers. (I did find a lot of research about central nervous system disorders and executive function disorders indicating that people with those conditions are worse than healthy controls at generating “random numbers” -- suggesting that people without those conditions can do it -- but from what I can tell this body of research is using “random” in a very different sense than what is meant cryptographically.) Also, it’s common sense if you look at humans and how we make stuff up in the real world. We look for patterns in stuff. And if we see patterns, we assume it’s not really random, so we adjust for that... which then results in stuff that is counterintuitively LESS random than the real thing because in a truly random situation you would occasionally expect to see repetitions and patterns occur by chance. You can use human activity and behavior as a source for randomness, but you have to tweak it a bit before it’s actually random. Even if it’s minute differences in things like gait that you’re probably not consciously controlling.

Why does this matter though? Surely, you think, it doesn’t matter that much if a number sequence is actually random or just kinda arbitrary, right?

Well, no.  Modern cryptography is built on assumptions about having random keys. If those assumptions don’t hold up in practice, then you have massive cracks in the foundation of the cryptosystem that attackers can exploit. Like with these voting machines. (caveat: this DOES NOT mean any elections were stolen. this was a privacy bug, where the secrecy of someone’s ballot could be compromised.)  Or with this paper that found that about 1 in 200 of the embedded devices scanned was using an RSA key that could be broken because the random primes comprising it were not sufficiently random, and they had a shared prime factor with at least one other key. The lack of randomness was also instrumental at multiple stages of the cryptanalysis of Enigma (note the part about lazy cipher clerks, and the part about cillies).  So long story short: - humans are bad at making up things that are actually random - if you design a cryptosystem with the assumption that something is actually random, it is VERY important that that is the case, otherwise it becomes possible (if not absurdly easy) to break the cryptosystem

#long post #math #cryptography

[doctordragon]

I'm so fucking sick of the job application process that was designed specifically to torment autistic people. I'm sick of receiving no support and everyone close to me dismissing my pain as "yeah applying for jobs fucking sucks lol". I'm sick of being told that I do have these executive function skills because I've done similar things before. But I haven't. There is no progress here, there is no reward, no light at the end of the tunnel. All I see is a bitter sea of pain and rejection. None of it matters; most of the cover letters I carefully edited have even been seen by human eyes. I've been able to drag myself through most things by a) making marked progress and b) ignoring them until the day before the deadline but there is only ghosting after ghosting.

I've been doing this for 2 months now. I've probably gotten less than 20 apps out. Only contacted back once for a 15 minute interview which I proceeded to majorly bomb. The pressure of needing to find a job or go to grad school (looks like that's what I'll be doing at this point) is stressing me out too much to actually apply for jobs. Not to mention how severely limited my job opportunities are because I'm stuck in this expensive ass state because I'm a second class citizen in the rest of my country.

Oh also I'm never going to be able to get a fucking driver's licence because there are literally 0 openings at any rmv in my entire state.

This fucking sucks so bad because if I just had a car and a licence I already know how to drive and if i could actually get one of these stupid fucking job offers I know I would be damn good at it. But no, there is literally my own version of hell instead. I would rather work in the devils firey mines and have my feet burned daily on hot coal for a livable wage than do this stupid fucking job application process.

[skamiikaze]

200 Hour Polish Update

*Caveat: I had been studying Polish since around 2020 using mostly traditional methods. If you look, I’ve been in this server for a while so I, in my infinite stupidity, was lazy and didn’t start doing a lot of immersion until this year (despite being pretty obsessed with learning Polish… ik weird ass logic). Which so far, has been 200 hours. Realistically, I don’t know how many hours my total progress indicates but ehh. Before this year my study has mostly just been reading about grammar and reading from textbooks.

What has my immersion consisted of?

watching videos on YouTube (without subs)

listening to podcasts

How much a day / how do I track?

      200 minutes a day (3.3 hrs). At the start I did 60 minutes (1 hr), and then I moved up to 100 minutes (1.6 hrs)

      I track everything with a pen and small notebook. I think it’s more satisfying (and easier for me) to track this way. It boosted my motivation to see pages fill up. I much prefer physical tracking to digital. Personal preference, this is neither good nor efficient so don’t do this lol.

What I’m glad I did / progress I made.

      I started off this year already with a decent level. I could understand basic conversations but sometimes I would have a hard time catching words I knew just because I hardly did any listening. 200 hrs later, I have no trouble at all with that. I can follow more complex lines of thought and discussions. I will say though, I still struggle with stories. I think if I focus on that type of media that will sort itself out. My main focus was just to get good at the subjects I enjoy. I don’t like TV / Movies / fiction at all, so I mostly avoided it. I started off the year with watching My Life as a Teenage Robot, Hilda, and a little Kid Cosmic (never finished it) but I didn’t really want to continue that since I was getting bored. Once I switched to videos and podcasts about subjects I enjoy (history, religion, politics) I found it much easier to go on for long periods of time.

      I now find it much easier to write / think in Polish. My writing is not that great still, but I feel like I’ve made progress. I plan to focus on output more in the future, but I think that I will focus on improving my writing after I start reading more. I need to see good examples of the written word before making serious attempts to replicate it.

      I did no look ups (with some exceptions but for the most part it was exceedingly rare, and when I did it was monolingual). I’m glad I made that choice. Before one of my main barriers to immersion was all of the Anki fiddling and sentence mining / look ups. I am someone who has a hard time getting in the habit of doing things, and a lot of that was a huge barrier to entry for me. I said screw it, and just sat down and watched stuff. Nothing more, nothing less. I think this is one of the best choices I’ve ever made. Besides the executive function matter, I think overall this was more beneficial than If I had managed to do Anki and look ups. I know myself, I would’ve poured over the nuances of a certain word out of context in a dictionary entry. Which in the grand scheme of things, is a massive waste of time. That time is much better spent engaging with content. The word’s I’m „ready to learn” will come to me so to speak. I strongly recommend this strategy. It’s a little uncomfortable at first, but in the long run it’s worth it.

What do I regret?

      Not starting sooner (duh). Seriously though, the main lesson I Learned was to not be so slow to change. I am a very change resistant person, I really struggle to change my routine / try something different. This really has shown me that just getting started is very very worth it. Even if the first few days suck.

      Trying to read books too early. I don’t know why I tried to do this. I don’t particularly enjoy reading in English, so I’m not sure why I tried to force myself to read in Polish, which is obviously harder. My reading era in Polish shall come someday, but I’m not going to try it until I can get into it in English first. If It’s a chore to do I won’t bother with it right now. One of my goals is to read Sienkiewicz but that’s a far off goal. I will let you all know when I get there.

Previous and current level (self assessed, take with a grain of salt)

2C/3 in refold terms (current)

Level of Understanding (before) A2-B1

Level of Output (before) terrible, I shudder at the thought

Level of Understanding (current) B2

Level of Output (current) B1, needs work of course…

Statistics

Start: Sat. Jan 7th

End: Tue. Apr 11th

Jan: 2061 min / 34.4 hrs Feb: 2149 min / 35.9 hrs Mar: 5220 min / 87 hrs Apr: 2459 min / 41 hrs

What now?

      I am going to take a temporary break from Polish to focus on Czech. I will be moving to Prague in the fall so I want to get a bit of a head start (even though I will be learning Czech there anyway as part of my degree program but I plan to use English as little as possible when I get there.) I want to do about 100 hours in Czech and then return to Polish (rather, incorporate both into my routine). Partly because I want to get through the beginner stages of Czech as quickly as possible (with minimal Polish interference) and partly because I want to see how my Polish will fair after a break. Will it improve? Get worse? Stay the same? Remains to be seen. I will provide an update after I do said 100 hours in Czech. The nature of that update again, remains to be seen.

A few words of likely generic advice...

      Don’t be hard on yourself. I know this is almost a cliché at this point, but being overly critical of myself stunted my progress. I was afraid to challenge myself out of fear that I was not ready / I wasn’t good enough.

      Don’t try to optimize everything. It’s impossible. You wont be able to keep perfect records of everything, you wont be able to track every second, you won’t be able to exactly know where you’re at level wise. It doesn’t matter where you are right now, just keep moving forward. Even if you aren’t that far now, if you keep moving you’ll be a lot further along than if you hadn’t moved at all.

Dziękuję serdecznie za uwagę! Czołem ;-)

#langblr #skamiikaze 2023 update #polish language

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

I know the feeling of "my feelings aren't 'feeling-y,' I just feel some specific kind of way right now" has been the source of endless frustration in my life, and I know that for some people it is worse for them than just feeling a way.

But I've found that these experiences have been kind of rare for me. Maybe I just have not had the same set of life experiences that produce the kind of things that can be said to be "feelings."

I guess for one thing I've been lucky in that I am naturally really good at compartmentalizing and controlling how much time I devote to thinking about or talking about things. I'm not sure how to describe what I'm doing here, but the main source of my life satisfaction is being able to spend some time "doing things" for reasons that don't really need to be justified, and also because I happen to love the kinds of things I do.

That has been pretty much the only life skill I've been really good at teaching myself. It's been hard to describe "compartmentalizing" as a life skill, because it just comes with the territory. You have to compartmentalize. You have to get your thinking organized. You have to develop good executive function so you don't just stay in one "thought-mode" and keep getting your life controlled by it.

I guess you can say this kind of thing is a skill, but in a very different way from other, non-skill-y, traits that people may find annoying or endearing about me. I have to think about my life when I'm not being busy thinking about work, so it seems less like I've just gotten distracted. I don't seem like the kind of person who gets sucked into daydreaming, and yet I do, and I think this is something that is just part of my personal narrative, not something I've just learned to do.

I guess there's also the thing about my particular personality which I think is related to this: I'm a very "systematizing" person in an unusual way. I've seen various people say that it is not normal or healthy to be "obsessed" with the details of some field -- to want to really understand a thing -- to want to do lots of careful research for reasons like "to know as much as I can about it." I suppose it's kind of hard to know how to square that idea with the fact that lots of people seem to want to know things about specific areas of science or literature, but for any scientific or literary topic I think it's totally normal for me to say that I "just want to know as much as I can about it." To some extent I've always had this inclination, and I'm still "obsessed" by various things, although these days it seems less relevant to what I do in my life, or at least it's less relevant to my life on tumblr -- I've moved on to other things that are a little less obsessive.

There's some obvious overlap between this attitude and the kind of interest in abstract theorizing that I was talking about last night -- it involves the same kind of fascination with the details of a thing, a kind of intense desire to make yourself the master of this thing. (The analogy there is: if you want to make the best sandwich in the world, you are going to study the way sandwiches are made as intensely as you can; you may not know much about how sandwiches taste, and you probably won't make the best sandwich in the world.) I suppose part of the reason I've always had such an intense drive to study (in a nerdy way) is that I can tell myself "I wish to be master of [thing]," and that makes it seem more appealing than it might be otherwise, even though I do know that "the way a sandwich is made" is not as interesting to me as "what kinds of things you can do with some ingredients and a sandwich maker," etc.

#blah blah blah

[blarrghe]

6, 13, 16!

6. what's the hardest part of the writing process for you?

adgajsha sex scenes. also sometimes I just get stuck or can't focus but that's more because my life pretty frequently burns me out and even hobbies get hard </3 (I just got a newjob though so like. thoughts and prayers)

I think I have a process that works for me, atually. And it's: shitpost notes -> point form outline of actual notes -> fill in -> edit and fill in some more (repeat until done). I don't find any part of that process hard really and if I'm not in the mood for the part I'm at I usually have something else that's somewhere else in the process I can work on. So it's just the executive functionality of being able to do anything at all other than endlessly spiral into the void of internet nonsense and pacing around my kitchen. But when that kicks in I go for a walk and sometimes sit and write by the river ;)

13. Do you take pride in your writing, or does it embarrass you? Why? Bit of both, I guess! I very adamantly only wrote original fiction and thought fanfic was lame (without actually having looked at any) for a long time. Then I kinda grew up but still didn't participate. Then I wrote some fanfic Just For Me and didn't publish it for like four years. Then I found it again, looked at it, thought "hey this is kinda good actually", wrote more of it, posted it, got no notes but began to get something of an eye for what I actually enjoy in the fic-writing scene, scrapped all of that and began to write things with a full "fuck it" attitude and just had fun!

That older fic does embarass me a bit, but more because I've improved as a writer and not because it's Cringe Fanfic. Fanfic is my cringe haven 😌 And as self-indulgent as all of it still is, I now feel like some of what I do is Good Art and I'm pretty dang proud of all the heart and hard work that goes into it!

As for the whys, I think initially "fanfic" just had a bad rap of being terrible and/or full of Weird Sex and I was just not really interested in weird amateurish writing. At best I was like "yeah yeah good practice for the teens who suck at tenses". And it still is both those things, and I still am picky as hell (though less of a square), but it's also a whole world of creative writing free-for-all that is really cool specifically BECAUSE it contains everything from terribly written weirdness to truly profound literature and, probably my favourite, majorly indulgent Fuck It comfort food. I'm a bit of an arrogant hipster but I've learned that letting people just make shit and not being a judgy dick about it is what's truly punk rock, and that extends to all forms of art and expression.

16. Do you re-read old fics? Is there a time in your writing you won’t go back to? Kinda answered above. I don't really go back to things from too long ago because they're not as well written and they just aren't my daydreams anymore. I reread Matchsies and Twelve Nights like, all the time, and sometimes I go back and appreciate some of the shorter ones too, especially if someone happens to remind me of it hah. But anything I have going in progress are also my current brainworms daydreams bedtime stories and I just turn them over and over.

#thank you! #fic writer asks #long answers but hey they are DEEP WRITER ASKS #ask a writer a deep question get a long winded answer

[vidawhump]

hahaha alright how do you sweet talk teachers i need to know

YES THANK YOU

The most influential factor of sweet-talking teachers comes from your overall reputation in a school and with specific teachers. If you have a reputation for not turning in work on time and not caring about it, and for not putting in effort for anything, it’s gonna be really hard to sweet-talk your teachers outside of specific super dramatic situations. If you have a generally positive reputation, getting what you need with them is going to be a lot easier.

Personally, I have a long-standing reputation for overachieving and getting relatively consistent straight As. This reputation is secured between several teachers through several panicked discussions of anything less than an A. And before every test or exam, I consistently end up asking if there are extra credit questions. Not out of an effort to not fail, but for the chance to get higher than 100% (or to barely scrape my sorry ass out of an A-.) In other words, I have a reputation for sucking up to the teachers (because I can’t socialize with my classmates for the life of me) and for being, and I quote, “a creative kid who gets her stuff done. Gifted, but has some attention span issues.” Can you smell the gifted kid burnout + unmedicated ADHD + undiagnosed autism wafting off of me? /lh

Lying on the spot, and lying in general, is a surefire way to wreck whatever plan you’re cracking. Try to keep the sweet talking restrained to the teachers you have a tight and positive relationship with. They’re the most likely to give you extensions, extra help, etc. Back to lying on the spot specifically, solidify any plans for the time before you have to talk to that teacher specifically. Make sure whatever plans you make fit your circumstances and that they’re believable for the most part. Run through any possible scenarios and outcomes and how you’ll respond to them. If you have to lie at all, keep them to small white lies. If you planning on telling one teacher that you forgot, for example, your laptop at home, so you can’t show them the work you did online, you need to make sure to either actually leave your laptop at home, or keep it hidden in your locker/book bag and make sure nobody sees it. This means other students and teachers. Enough students are snitches to cause problems, and the teachers talk all the time. (AN: Don’t snitch on other students to get in goodwill with teachers. A positive reputation also includes other students. Sweet talking and sucking up to teachers doesn’t involve being a teacher’s pet and a snitch.)

For one specific example, my class was assigned a biology essay and had a week, including class time and a four-day weekend, to do it. This sounds like a lot of time to get the essay done, and I probably would have been able to if I had the executive function to get started on research. But obviously, I didn’t, and here we are, on the due date, and I’ve barely looked at the requirements for the essay. Specific circumstances were the main factor in this situation. The schedules had been weird for the past month or so, and it was starting to take its toll. But track had also started the Monday before it was due, and my everything is still sore. And the iPad keyboards are evil and hate everyone. I made sure to have a conversation with my Biology teacher about this the day before it was due, to plant the idea in their head that I was having technical issues with my iPad. He also agrees that schoolwide iPads were a stupid move. During my Biology period, when they asked if everyone had turned their essay in, I told them that a bunch of unfortunate situations had stacked up onto this one week. They told me that I was good and to just get it in as soon as I could. But that still means I have to write the essay :/

Most of it boils down to your reputation, your relationship with the teachers, and your circumstances. Try not to do this too often, the teachers pick it up really fast. :) 👍

#long post #school posting #shitpost (?) #school has done things to me and im note sure if i like them #it is still doing things to me it is actively trying to vicerally murdwer my creative spirit by means of homework essays tests exams etc #all the bad shit #i dont wanna go to college help #i dont think this applies to college #this is best for highschool idk what happens in college #college sounds scary #last time i put butter in a pan i set it on fire and i had to have my mom toss the whole pan outside into the snow #and one time i put a block of freezer cookie dough on a saucer and put it in the microwave and thought it would work for some reaseon #I’m not ready to live on my own mom pls I’m scared to move out #but wait my mom said i can only have a cat if i move out #fuck #shitpost #whumpy-wyrms

[keyhearts]

tw vent

I'm deeply, deeply unhappy with my life right now. I'm unhappy with my system. I can't live on the edge of trauma like this. Just outside of our reach.

I want it gone. I want to be healed. That's why I keep charging ahead. That's why I keep pushing and pushing for us to do more than we're capable. I can't tolerate being in limbo like this. I can't keep holding on and keeping my mouth shut. I need you to see my pain.

I can't do this for another year. Something needs to change. We need to reach some sort of turning point. But it feels like I'm just charging ahead in the dark. I don't know where I'm going. I don't know where this leads. I have no means of dealing with this. But doing nothing just isn't on the table.

I desperately need someone to help me. It's not like me to cry and get emotional like this. I feel so fucking pathetic. I'm going to blame Jake, he's still lingering there in the background, I can feel him.

Okay, but I know. I know it wasn't him. It's passed, but I don't feel any better for it. It just really sucks right now. It sucks that I get no relief. It sucks that being able to say shit in therapy is a constant battle. It sucks that it has to be so hard, all the time.

It really is ironic, because my friend keeps telling me that I've improved, come out of my shell, less anxious and all that crap. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Do I really look like I have my shit together to other people? Do I really look like I'm getting better? Because I feel fucking shit. I feel so fucking shit. The absolute worst.

I wish it was visible to other people how badly I'm really doing. I have no ambitions, I have no hobbies, very little joy. All I work towards and move towards is that hope of recovery. And I don't even know if I'm ever fucking getting there. I don't know if my therapy is helping. I don't know if I'm doing the right work.

I'm so fucking stupid. We struggle to function. Executive function is at a low. What did I think piling more trauma on top of that was going to do? I was desperate. Desperate to be heard. And desperate to get the care I really need. So I'm going to ask. Please, help me. I know I haven't been good to the rest of you lately, but that's because I really have been struggling.

Anyway, the pity party's over. That's all I had to say. It's good to get it out for a change. I guess Jake and I should go and do something that doesn't involve feeling sorry for ourselves. Later.

#Zach #vent #diary posts

[sociallyawkward--fics]

hi xy time for what is becoming my annual checkin! how are u! i feel like since its been abt a year i have to infodump abt all my character development hold on i'll speedrun it. my pronouns r it/its zhey/zhem or (less preferred) they/them. and i have settled on those. it/its is the only one thats ever given me gender euphoria, took 4 years but i got there. ummm realized i have autism (undiagnosed). love the stimming and the being insane abt fictional characters the rest isnt that great. got anxiety meds!!!!! oh my god xy!!!! life is so good now antidepressants r a girls best friend. also. hold on ur never gonna believe this. i have adhd meds now. the crowd goes wild. was like yea doc idk i just think the anxiety meds r not improving my ability to focus what was that u said abt adhd^__^ n she was like hmmmm ok i cant diagnose u but i can give u this adderall u dont need a diagnosis for n if its like glory hallelujah we'll just assume u have it and GLORY HALLELUJAH. ive cleaned my room like more times in the past few months than i have my entire life im WINNING. i cant rly feel if its working but i'll sit down to write or smth n i wont get distracted every 5 seconds n the mental block that keeps me from doing things is gone!!!!! life changing stuff just wish i had it before my grades fuckin woooo splat. um my gpa is 2.2 weighted im like. ok well now that i have adhd meds im working on it -H (i feel like. ok i think tumblr made it so ur asks can be longer but fuck all those liberals n their woke agenda (joke) i am all abt tradition babey i'll be back for a pt 2 rq)

ummm rly into books love books. "thats old news h everyone knows that" but like im being wonderfully unnormal abt them<3 there was this one series the ascendance trilogy n i was fucking OBSESSED w it when i was younger n i learned there was a 4th n 5th book recently so like. the trilogy thing was a fuckin lie. but i obviously had to reread the series so i could read the new books n im still so obsessed w the series its so banger for a middlegrade series. got so unnormal abt it i made a 7hr playlist for the main character bc everyone elses sucked so much ass i just had to. still in the process of rereading but yeah. also theres this OTHER series the raven cycle i read recently n im also obsessed w that these series r all like my ideal books they hit all my favorite tropes. yeah just being rly unnormal abt books thats my current obsession. also. drawing. im so good at it u wouldnt believe. next fuckin van gogh right here. n honestly i dont even care abt going off anon it just bothers me bc my ROUTINE. the TRADITION. its just not the same. but i'll go off it just for u to show u some of my banger art. at a stage where im pretty frustrated at my limitations but that doesnt mean i cant recognize that im fucking awesome ok hold on again -H but yea ok to finish up what have u been up to! tempted to just ask what shows/game/etc uve been into but also i am exerting a little of my brain power to realize some ppls lives dont revolve around those. so just liek what have u been spending a lot of time doing. how is writing going! wait what r ur drawing skills just out of curiosity draw smth for me (if ur comfy ofc n dw i completely understand if it fuckin sucks taht was me just over a year ago) -H (when i was younger i used to think that ppl couldnt be good at writing n drawing they had to choose one. exerted my baby brain power to be like. it takes too long to get good at them u can only do one. then saw a book w the cover art credited to the author n i was like woahhh this is fuckin crazy living my younger selfs pipe dream)

----------

The way I have had a reminder on my phone to answer these asks for MONTHS but my executive function has been GARBAGE i am so sorry my friend it was not intentional to leave this sitting for so long i am so sorry!!! (also between the two of us this got Long so i am putting a read more so i don't take up a big block of people's dash in my return from the dead lol)

thank you for pronouns update! congrats on meds!! i gotta get me some of those so i can Detroit: Become Functional lol. I am rooting for you with your GPA!!! Also lol, love that we are following tradition of multiple asks still even with the tumblr updates letting asks be way longer now lol, it is just Familiar To Us

I will have to look into the ascendance trilogy!! My sibling is also obsessed with the raven cycle, but i have not read it yet (still debating if i want to or not, have been for YEARS lol, because i keep hearing "author problematic" and then never remember Why because i have Goldfish Memory). I will not post your off-anon ask with the artwork unless you want me to (want you to feel comfy on the blog and sending asks and I know you prefer anon!), but i will say that your art is AWESOME, my friend!! you are SO good and you're only going to keep getting better! I am glad you enjoy it!

Also bestie. This is a neurodivergent space lol, my life also revolves around shows/games/books/etc. they are the only thing that make the monotony of life and job-having under a neurotypical capitalistic society bearable lol. I actually have been getting back into reading ACTUAL BOOKS lately which feels GREAT (because reading Actual Books when i am so tired and Non-Functioning all the time is Hard lol), i am finally going through my seemingly-endless TBR and also have reread some old faves this year. Games-wise, the only thing i ever think about is still the Dragon Age games, Alistair is the love and light of my life lol. Show-wise.... i am in Limbo because of the Exhaustion, tragically, and also just waiting on new seasons (OFMD). Witcher has a new season out, but i have not watched it yet because Energy and also i have no motivation to because the last season they put out was so bad (even if i hear this one is good, i have lost trust lol)

Writing is. Not quite going lol. I have not finished a fanfic in ages, and also have made little to no progress on any of my original work attempts either, tragically. Hopefully things look up for me soon cuz I wanna get stuff DONE again lol, this blog has become so quiet and near obsolete because i cannot FINISH anything and it is TRAGIC.

Also, I have little-to-no drawing skills, but I also unfortunately do not have much energy to apply to drawing you a picture atm :(( maybe someday. Sometimes I can draw something that makes me go "omg i am not Awful, maybe I could actually put thoughts and energy into learning this as a skill" and other times it is like "i will never put pencil to paper (or stylus to screen) ever again" lol. Maybe someday when i am doing Better again i will hopefully have the energy to draw you something!!

#ask #anon #H anon #oh also fun fact i am teaching myself like. how do you say it in a way that makes sense lol. like how to make resin crafts n such