not all those who wander are lost

Iris, 30 | she/her | aroace This used to be a fandom blog, and now it's an everything but fandom blog and all my fandom stuff is here instead. Sometimes that's how it goes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Mobile Header by xfreischutz Icon by lord-gaybe

[rsingwriting]

I saw a post talking about how Terry Pratchett only wrote 400 words a day, how that goal helped him write literally dozens of books before he died. So I reduced my own daily word goal. I went down from 1,000 to 200. With that 800-word wall taken down, I’ve been writing more. “I won’t get on tumblr/watch TV/draw/read until I hit my word goal” used to be something I said as self-restraint. And when I inevitably couldn’t cough up four pages in one sitting, I felt like garbage, and the pleasurable hobbies I had planned on felt like I was cheating myself when I just gave up. Now it’s something I say because I just have to finish this scene, just have to round out this conversation, can’t stop now, because I’m enjoying myself, I’m having an amazing time writing. Something that hasn’t been true of my original works since middle school. 

And sometimes I think, “Well, two hundred is technically less than four hundred.” And I have to stop myself, because - I am writing half as much as Terry Pratchett. Terry fucking Pratchett, who not only published regularly up until his death, but published books that were consistently good. 

And this has also been an immense help as a writer with ADHD, because I don’t feel bad when I take a break from writing - two hundred words works up quick, after all. If I take a break at 150, I have a whole day to write 50 more words, and I’ve rarely written less than 200 words and not felt the need to keep writing because I need to tie up a loose end anyways. 

Yes, sometimes, I do not produce a single thing worth keeping in those two hundred words. But it’s much easier to edit two hundred words of bad writing than it is to edit no writing at all.

[byrneing]

today my therapist told me that sometimes negative feelings like guilt, anxiety, self loathing, etc are like the hiccups. they’re uncomfortable, we don’t like them, there’s no way to turn them off; they can even be incapacitating for a while. we don’t always know where they came from or when they’ll go away, so sometimes instead of focusing on why we feel a certain way we need to get better at recognizing its temporary nature, keeping perspective, and enduring discomfort. i feel like a lot of self-improvement rhetoric is about pinpointing specific causes for negative thoughts/behaviors so you can eradicate them, but people with chronic mental illness really need to work on allowing themselves to experience these feelings without going into a downward spiral.

[cheaphalloweencostume]

not to get too deep on main but did anyone else have such deeply rooted issues with their self worth for so long that they thought as a kid/teen that their only redeeming feature was being “low maintenance” and now as an adult you give yourself guilt pangs asking for any more than the barest minimum in virtually any relationship because asking for things might negate your only good quality which is just “doesn’t ask for things”

[splickedylit]

#you don’t believe you can be liked so you settle for being useful 

[adhd-alien]

Why I didn’t get diagnosed until 28 and was told I’m “too quiet” to have ADHD

(Alternative title: How instead of getting ADHD treatment I developed Anxiety to cope)

[adhd-alien]

My ADHD ass forgot to include this in the English version - the last image has a Google able name and is part of the emotional dysregulation in ADHD (not a seperate thing): Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria

[applecherry108]

So....is it entirely possible that getting medicated for anxiety could make adhd “worse”? Since it’s not getting covered up anymore? I thought that my adhd was getting worse as I got older, but maybe it’s just because I got medicated for my anxiety...

[adhd-alien]

[abcsofadhd]

A meta-analysis has shown that ADHD meds (stimulants) reduce anxiety in people with ADHD. 

As stimulants usually makes anxiety worse in others, this could suggest that the anxiety is ‘caused’ as a result of our ADHD.

[coynsundry]

[tenitchyfingers]

“We chose the term “asexual” to describe ourselves because both “celibate” and “anti-sexual” have connotations we wished to avoid: the first implies that one has sacrificed sexuality for some higher good, the second that sexuality is degrading or somehow inherently bad. “Asexual”, as we use it, does not mean “without sex” but “relating sexually to no one”. This does not, of course, exclude masturbation but implies that if one has sexual feelings they do not require another person for their expression. Asexuality is, simply, self-contained sexuality.”

— The Asexual Manifesto, Lisa Orlando and Barbara Getz, 1972

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

Note the date, people:

That’s 1972

29 years before AVEN was started online,

and 47 years before the present.

And that’s only the date that Manifesto was written, so asexuals as members of a community must have existed at least some time before that.

So, no: we are not just Tumblr trenders. Get out of here with that.

[m-in-a-moonrock]

Also note how this clearly states that the words asexual was chosen specifically because others words implied that sexuality was bad or that the person might have made a “superior” choice in giving it up, and that IS NOT part of being asexual. 

Associating sexuality and sexual attraction to something bad has never been inherently part of asexuality unlike what aphobic people on here keep saying. It has always been their own internal shame and issues about sex that they keep projecting on to us.

[adhdpie]

‘i don’t have adhd but this adhd post is #relateable’

(the majority of this post is pulled from an older reblog I did on my main, @vantasticmess.)

it’s ADHD Awareness Month so here’s a post about it. :D

I’ve gotten sooo many ‘#not adhd but man i feel this’ tags on adhd posts i’ve made, and tbh tags of this type drive me nuts (b/c they make me doubt the validity of my diagnosis.)

but if you, a not-adhd person, see a post about adhd experiences and relate to it, please consider the following: 

maybe you do have adhd?

maybe it’s because most things that adhd people experience are things that most everyone experiences sometimes, only they experience it all the time.

at its heart, adhd is the inability to pick what your attention is locked onto, sometimes combined with a need to move constantly (hyperactivity).  This manifests as:

lively internal life + rapid thought & intuitive leaps of cognition - good when being creative, bad when trying to make a logical decision

overthinking things

impulsive behavior

short attention span + being easily distracted

unnaturally long attention span + inability to notice outside stimuli

short term memory dysfunction

executive dysfunction

no sense of priority (everything is equally important)

no sense of time in relation to self (cannot effectively tell how long an activity will take or develop a sense of urgency based on a deadline until the deadline is perilously close or already passed)

failure to follow through (leaving work incomplete)

forgetting to remember/remembering tasks at inappropriate times

intrusive thoughts

And pretty much everyone experiences one or all of these things at times, and these symptoms can spring from other causes than ADHD (for instance, executive dysfunction accompanies depression and anxiety as well).

But adhd people have this happen so constantly and so intrusively that we cannot complete basic tasks, even if we want to:

The only thing consistent about us is inconsistent results: sometimes we’re on time, sometimes we’re not. sometimes we’re reliable, sometimes we’re not. sometimes we’re studious, sometimes we’re not … (and trust me we’re not enjoying it any more than you are)

We fail classes, we drop out of college, we lose jobs, and no matter how much we try, we cannot fix it.

We can’t just remove distractions - our brains are a distraction.

We can’t just ‘try harder’ - our wayward mind might be focusing on our studying today, but tomorrow it might not. The same effort level will have wildly different results on different days because our attention cooperated … or didn’t.

it is literally impossible for us to choose our focus. pretty much ever.

it pisses off our friends, it pisses off our bosses, it pisses off our family, and it even pisses off ourselves. it affects every part of our life.

So adhd shitposts can be pretty relateable, even if you don’t have adhd.  But if this list sounds familiar - if the contents of it happen to you to the point that you’re getting in trouble at school or your job and you’re pissing off your friends? might be worth looking into what’s going on with you.

[adhdpie]

bringing this back b/c at least 1 of every 15 rbs of the 7 ADHD Moods post is tagged ‘#i don’t have adhd but’.

[fagderolo]

when yr adhd does the intense Anger thing n u gotta remind yr brain that u dont wanna throw yr phone full force at a wall

[val-ritz]

gentle reminder to myself and those it may concern that “obsess over it silently, completely frozen while you just fume for six hours” is also not a healthy solution

[andthentheywilleatthestars]

what do I do then?

[val-ritz]

in the words of one JJ Bittenbinder, throw yourself off your rhythm!

anxiety and anger are extremely persistent in ADHD because we fixate on that input and devote all our runtime to trying to “fix” it when in reality the only way to fix it is to leave it alone. considering we are diagnosed with Chronic Cannot Leave It Alone Disease, that is Difficult.

when you’re outside one of these loops, take inventory of all the things you do that suck you into devoting all your attention to them. when i was a kid, the way i avoided asthma attacks was i played video games while taking my meds, so i wouldn’t be fixating on the anxiety and making the asthma worse. nowadays, i avoid anger spirals by also playing video games (in my experience turn-based strategy is a hyperfocus superhighway so i use those) so i’m forced to divert resources to do this other thing.

joke’s on you, impotent fury, you can’t kidnap my brain if my brain is somewhere else entirely

STREET SMARTS

[surlydruid]

Me, at my brain trying to suck me into a spiral of self destructive rage:

[dnd-one-shots]

[thebyrchentwigges]

I don’t know where this came from but I NEEDED it

[yashas-strong-arms]

[this-is-psychosis]

Therapists aren’t people who you “pay to pretend to care about you”, therapists are people you pay to teach you how to care for yourself

[stutterhug]

Ill Gotten Gains~

Twitter. Insta. Tapas.

[findingfeather]

So I talked about one of the reasons (one of the big reasons) that exclusionist radfem bullshit is so prevalent on tumblr being that they bring it here on purpose, because it’s how they can get young wlw in particular to believe them without question and be their enforcers, because the young wlw who end up here are often those who are isolated in their physical face-to-face spaces. 

But there’s a flipside to that coin, which is that this is also where they can get young mspec (bisexual, pansexual, etc), asexual and trans kids (usually women and trans men) to swallow it. 

You walk up onto Grindr and start telling mostly-cis gay men they can’t use “butch” and “femme” in their descriptions anymore, you’re not gonna get very far. To put it mildly. The one who don’t give a shit about anything but their own comfort and perspective are just going to laugh at you, and for the most part the ones who do care (often a lot) are also well aware that these talking points are bullshit. 

You walk up to BUTCH Voices saying OMG ONLY LESBIANS CAN USE BUTCH and you’re probably gonna get a less friendly Talking-To than gets handed out sometimes on THIS site. 

Because when you tell a 30, 40, 50, 60 year old person with a community and a history with their sexual and gender identity “you can’t use this word you’ve been using for literal decades to describe yourself” the friendliest reaction you’re going to get is a good-faith attempt to explain, the least aggressive you’re going to get is laughter, and probably (given that just about all of us here in “hey we’re not straight and don’t conform to majority-expected gender expression and relationship composition”-land have also been spending those decades under anywhere from low-to-high-level-siege-and-attack for same) you’re going get someone telling you to Shut The Everloving Fuck Up, I Don’t Have To Take That Shit From You. 

But. 

Say those same things to the nervous, newly-self-aware person (at any age, but especially in their teens or twenties?) Who just found this general place (tumblr) where The Not-Straight People Are? who are probably in the process of figuring out what the hell they even feel and are Learning What Things Mean? 

When you tell THEM “you’re not allowed to use that word hdu!” they probably say “omg I’m sorry” and take the alternates you fling at them. Especially if you back it up with harassment (as a great many of these people do). Especially if you manage to generally cloak your bullshit in the language and patterns that social justice work uses ( “you’re appropriating! you’re talking over us! you should listen when we tell you about our words!”) to frame this as a privilege-disprivilege axis, rather than acts of active lateral violence from one group (monosexually attracted wlw) against another (mspec people). 

Their bullshit works better here. A lot better. And that’s another dynamic that’s important to keep in mind. 

[spiders-hth-is-an-outlier]

They are radicalizing isolated and needy young people. The ideologies change, but the tactics remain the same, because those tactics work.

And I can’t help but notice many of these same people are actively pushing this gross lie that “every adult you speak to online is a pedophile you have to be afraid of.” How convenient that this rhetoric creates *more* isolated and lonely young people who live in terror of engaging with elders in the community who could give them access to real support and advice that isn’t about an ideological agenda.

I’m so beyond angry with these people. They’re preying on vulnerable children and stuffing their heads full of entitlement and division. They’re harming the community and they’re *harming our children,* and it’s fucking unconscionable.

[ceescedasticity]

Magic-users whose magic is like another part of their body

Today using any water-related spell hurts for no reason

Must have slept funny -- only casting at three-quarters power

Cast too many fireballs not carefully enough when they were younger, now they have to be extremely careful with the whole element or it will stop working and they'll be in terrible pain

All illusions are tinted purple today. Illusion magic just... does that sometimes.

Sometimes personal shield spells can malfunction and try to shield you from yourself and it might kill you oh well

Any kind of magic may or may not malfunction strangely due to dehydration, hormone fluctuation, vitamin deficiency, or any other form of physical stress.

You cast a stronger spell than you should have and now your back hurts for some reason

[shesgotwhatittakes]

While cleaning out my room I found a paper that my therapist gave me some time ago to deal with obsessive and intrusive thoughts. Sorry the paper is a little crinkled and stained, but I figured I’d post it in hopes that it will help someone like it helped me.

[shesgotwhatittakes]

Here it is again with text for anyone who can’t see the picture

That thought isn’t helpful right now.

Now is not the time to think about it. I can think about it later.

This is irrational. I’m going to let it go.

I won’t argue with an irrational thought.

This is not an emergency. I can slow down and think clearly about what I need.

This feels threatening and urgent, but it really isn’t.

I don’t have to be perfect to be OK.

I don’t have to figure out this question. The best thing to do is just drop it.

It’s OK to make mistakes.

I already know from my past experiences that these fears are irrational.

I have to take risks in order to be free. I’m willing to take this risk.

It’s OK that I just had that thought/image, and it doesn’t mean anything. I don’t have to pay attention to it.

I’m ready to move on now.

I can handle being wrong.

I don’t have to suffer like this. I deserve to feel comfortable.

That’s not my responsibility.

That’s not my problem.

I’ve done the best I can.

It’s good practice to let go of this worry. I want to practice.

[rumongray]

Actually super helpful

[awed-frog]

heatwave!

For anyone living in Europe: the first heatwave of the season is forecast for tomorrow, and will likely stretch until Friday. Please stay safe.

Open your windows at night BUT close everything, including blinds and curtains, during the day

If you need it, buy a fan, a cold blanket or a cooler

Drink a lot

Also drink mostly water, without ice

If you can, avoid getting out in the sun between 11am and 6pm

If you need to go outside, wear sunscreen and a hat

Also loose clothes and natural, breathable fabrics

Think of your pets! 

Make sure they have access to water and shade, bring them inside the house if possible, don’t leave them in a car alone

Check on your grandma and other elderly relatives! 

Old people are at risk during hot weather, so remind them to drink and stay inside with their blinds closed

If you or people you know are experiencing the following symptoms

breathlessness

chest pain

confusion

intense thirst

weakness

dizziness

cramps that get worse or don’t go away

call an ambulance.