no-dopamine baddies approaching every single list of tasks like "which of these things will cause the most amount of personal suffering to me if left undone"
hey this is really insightful. do you have any advice about identifying the linchpin task? i mean obviously "think about it really hard" might be all there is to it. basically i think this concept is good and would welcome more commentary from you, if you have more to add
the trouble is that Thinking (or at least applying the Talking Brain to the task) is counterproductive here, because that's the voice going "we need to clean the kitchen, why aren't we cleaning the kitchen??" and in these circumstances, giving that sector of the mind more oversight won't help.
it is necessary instead to sit down and kinda try and quiet that voice, and then start with considering my physical needs, kinda mentally run through the maslow's pyramid from bottom to top as if I'm dealing with a little kid throwing a tantrum. like, did we sleep last night? have we had lunch? am I lonely? should I call my aunt? do I want to finish the book I've been reading? do I want to boil chicken bones today? what's bothering me? I'll then try out a couple of things that seem likely and while they may not be The Thing it's useful to build momentum anyways.
but like, if I give it space, the answer will float upwards into view and it's usually something I've been putting off for a long-ass time.
and it'll sound So Stupid to the Talking Mind, who has important tasks that it's trying to get done, but we're going to tell that voice that the kitchen will wait while we take down the Christmas tree, fold the laundry that's been in the basket for a week, sketch the idea, call my aunt, whatever it is, and inevitably the Linchpin Task will take about half an hour, and once it's done I can feel the weight lifted off my shoulders.
Linchpin Tasks are sometimes that it's time to deal with The Emotions At The Bottom Of The Pile, which is when a pile of stuff builds up to cover whatever is at the bottom being emotionally fraught. (letters, the shirt I wore the day my grandpa died, y'know, The Emotions)
I've gotten better at identifying when those piles are starting to accrete and dealing with them before they get bad, but like, you gotta be able to identify the pile of stuff your eyeballs keep slipping off because it feels too emotionally difficult to deal with right now, and like, learning to ignore the part of the mind that wants to assign task priority levels is a counter-intuitive way to get things done.
I hope this makes sense. basically, when it comes to doing stuff, do the thing that's most emotionally fraught first, especially if you can come up with a bunch of excuses to not do it.
image description: tags reading #I tend to go for "which of these tasks is the secret task my subconscious has decided is the linchpin of my productivity" #sometimes that task is not something that's actually urgent in a normal sense but if I don't do it first I will put myself in waiting mode #and like I don't want to be waiting on myself to do a thing that I'm specifically not doing because it's not important
cool interaction with the american healthcare system:
i have tachycardia. is it because of POTS or some other condition? no one knows. to get diagnosed for POTS OR to exclude it from diagnosis based on other information, the single most common dysautonomic condition in the world besides like, hayfever, i have gone through something like 10 general practitioners in as many years at my insurance-assigned clinic, who wont diagnose me because they dont have a tilt table on premises. a tilt table is a gigantic, extremely expensive piece of specialized equipment used to tilt patients. i know what youre thinking: "cant they just tilt the patient on a piece of plywood in the parking lot and take their pulse at the same time" and the answer is yes.
i know what else youre thinking: "arent there any other clinically-acceptable ways to diagnose POTS besides a tilt table?" the answer, surprisingly! is yes. NASA, in fact, to check and see if an astronaut got fucked up in space, they just have him lean against a wall for a bit and fiddle around with a heart monitor. this advanced space technology from the 1950s is unknown to American medical science based on the zero acknowledgement of any of the half-dozen times i have suggested it to general physicians
so naturally, instead, i was put on a year+ waiting list to see the only dysautonomia specialist in the city who has a tilt table. this one doctor also doesnt charge $600 cash per appointment (i already saw the $600 guy, he doesn't have a tilt table, but he gave me prescriptions without any diagnosis which means my insurance has been rejecting the prescriptions randomly for years). i still have tachycardia. sometimes i faint when i stand up, or when ive already been standing up. i drop cups and pencils and priceless faberge eggs in humorous ways with cartoon sounds effects because my grip strength randomly gives out. this is a problem because my last remaining option for employment is being an "artist", a type of petit bourgeoisie that owns a printer he can make zines with to sell on Etsy, which requiires a lot of typing and holding pencils and folding etc. they give me a propranolol prescription which helps with the tachycardia but makes my low blood pressure worse and eventually makes half my hair fall out, which is a problem because my other employment option is being visible on cmaera in various ways and also i like having hair. so i quit the propranolol. the tachycardia gets worse. Trump makes it gradually harder and then impossible to order the grey market antioxidant-antiischemic that has been helping with moving blood to the parts of my body that need it (apparently all of them) but isnt available in the usa by prescription or at all, but also isnt illegal to import. this is relevant because the NFL has destroyed anti-ischemic/hypoxic drug research in the country for decades because if people find out taking a 300lbs linebacker directly to the face dozens of times a week is bad for your brain, democracy will collapse. so i was sent to a cardiologist. the cardiologist also doesnt have a tilt table. im still on the dysautonomia clinic waiting list.
POTS is the single most common symptom of long covid. approximately 30% of people who get covid will get long covid for some period of time, or forever. so just on raw math we can expect slightly <30% of the american civilian population to currently, or at some point, have POTS. i find this interesting from a public health quantics perspective.
anyway the cardiologist tests my heart with a stick-on monitor for two weeks and also gives me prescriptions for ivabradine and midodrine, which are rejected by insurance. in the office he does a quick 12-lead ECG and finds right atrial enlargement, a type of heart defect that is common in people with shitty collagen because, duh, your heart gets all stretched out from overuse and being made of wet tissue paper.
the cardiologist doesnt tell me about the atrial enlargement because i guess its around the holidays so you know, understandable. probably busy with his family. the heart defect is usually caused by lifestyle factors i dont have (alcohol, cholesterol, etc), so there's nothing i can do about it. i find out about this heart defect from reading my own test result documents after wondering "hm i havent heard back about my test results i wonder if they found anything". as i do this and find the technician's notes about my shitty heart i think about someone's grandma who doesnt know how to use MyChart not being able to download and read and interpret a PDF and never finding out about her heart defect and then having a heart attack, which i assume happens daily.
i message the cardiologist and say, hello, i see you found a heart defect! great shot kid, dont get cocky. anyway do you think you can try prescribing the ivabradine again with the new diagnoses included so maybe insurance wont reject it. the nurse writes back and says i mean i guess we can try. whats their fax number (this is because insurance doesnt reject a medication to the doctor, they reject it by 1. not filling at the pharmacy and 2. not telling you about it except via paper mail you may or may not receive within several weeks). so the doctor does not have the fax number of insurance. ok. i find the rejection letter by some miracle and send the nurse the fax numbers for both "Grievances" and "Appeals" (two separate departments apparently), but note to her that the medication was rejected weeks ago and they wont honor appeals that occur more than 10 (ten) days after the claim is rejected. i, the patient with no medical billing or medical diagnostic qualifications, advise ****her **** (the cardiac nurse who is handling billing, with a college degree presumably) to skip the appeals fax and just 1. put the diagnoses of "palpitations" and "right atrial enlargement" on my medical file because i assume no one has bothered yet (i didnt say this part) and 2. submit a NEW prescription with the new diagnostics attached. the diagnostics that say "patient has heart condition and need drug to not faw down pls :[".
so she writes me back and says "Dr. Heartguy has decided to send a new prescription with the new diagnoses attached" thats great man im glad you thought of that. thats why youre the nurse and im the cringing pewling little ghoul that crawled into your office after spending 30 minutes (i counted) on hold in your phone tree on the way there because my $50 Uber ride (3 miles) was stuck in traffic. when i got to the front desk i said "Does your phone work?" and the receptionist, who was not busy, nor cradling 5 comically oversized 1960s analog phone receivers with tangled spiral wires while chainsmoking, gave me the ol' shit eyes and said "yes it does". "Oh good," i said politely, taking my phone away from my head and hitting End Call. "I was just on hold with you for half an hour on the way here so I'm glad your phone works." the Google Maps reviews for this clinic are 60%, and for the last ten years, complaints about the shitty receptionist and how the clinic simply does not pick up the phone. multiple reviewers state they had to reschedule heart surgery with another clinic specifically because they couldn't spend another day on hold. interesting! anyway i told the cardiologist about the phone thing and he said "yeah that's why i always see the patients even if the appointment is delayed". in the tones of helplessness usually reserved for someone being held captive by bandits
my tilt table test was negative. so i think we can just write this off as another hysterical white woman pretending to swoon for attention. hit the showers
I've entered the final phase of my graduate degree program in Folklore and Ethnology. My coursework and fieldwork/data collection complete, I am now in the process of writing my thesis during this summer trimester.
As planned, the support so many of you so generously provided, in addition to an education stipend I earned through environmental work, enabled me to enroll in and attend courses in my program, afford housing, and generally live everyday as a student for the duration of my course modules.
The funds lasted exactly as long as planned (literally to the day, I couldn't believe it lol!), and I could not be more grateful for every cent and word of support I received over this last year and a half.
In the final leg of my program, I must ask for support of one final need: There are quite a few books I need which I cannot access through my university, from friends and classmates, my professors, online archives & epublications, or any other means. Some are difficult to find in the first place to be able to purchase at all.
Put simply: I need some help buying books!
Many of them have Ebook editions for as little as €15,00! Others I have to actually email the authors and ask for personal PDFs, but they still aren't too expensive.
I began a new job recently and am on my way, but I won't have the couple hundred euro it will ultimately cost to purchase all of these books this month in order to have them while I work on my thesis.
If anyone has a few bucks to throw at me, I'd be very grateful for the support! Thank you, so much, for all you've already done!
MY KOFI: https://ko-fi.com/slorglvr1000
I would actually go as far as to say that MOST abuse is unintentional. I think most people will go through their lives without ever experiencing intentional abuse. People are abusive because they're selfish, because they're stressed, because they care more about what society thinks they should do than the impacts of their actions on their children and partners, because they think what they're doing is correct, because they've made it make sense in their own heads, because they think they can fix their victims, they think they can fix their relationships, they think they can stop you from leaving, they think they can make you a better partner to them, they think that means you need to do what they want. We've sort of constructed mental illness in a way that doing this shit to other people counts as a form of mental illness because it is anti social behavior in the literal sense— it is behavior that causes social harm.
I don't say any of this to excuse it. I think everyone needs to be more aware of this because if you think abuse has to be intentional you will never realize you are capable of abusive behavior. You will never realize you are being shitty to the people you love, because YOU know what you mean, YOU know you don't mean any harm. But you're doing harm. You need to pay attention to the impact you have on other people, and you need to do it all the time, Especially when you feel least capable of doing so. Sorry! You live in a society. Get your head out of your ass.
being anti-amatonormativity in a romance centered world is like watching half the people you know put all their eggs in one basket and then drop the basket and all their eggs break and they’re crying and swearing they’re never gonna do that again and then a month later they have all new eggs in a new basket and they tell you the problem was they didn’t have a strong enough basket or fresh enough eggs and then they drop the fucking basket again.
(this post is about putting all your time, energy, and care into one relationship, about staking all your happiness on a romantic relationship, effectively making the entirety of your joy and stability dependent on one person who could exit your life for any number of reasons no matter how great the relationship seems. it’s about the societal expectation to build your entire social life around one long term relationship, putting all your eggs in that basket, so to speak, instead of tending to larger social network and maintaining a variety of strong connections so that even if one very important relationship comes to an end, you won’t be losing your whole social life in one fell swoop.)
Something that I get chills about is the fact that the oldest story told made by the oldest civilization opens with "In those days, in those distant days, in those ancient nights."
This confirms that there is a civilization older than the Sumerians that we have yet to find
Some people get existential dread from this
Me? I think it's fucking awesome it shows just how much of this world we have yet to discover and that is just fascinating
@makaeru peer review cos this made me check when the Sumerians happened and I forget how recent history is for every other continent. 7000 - 8000 years ago just isn't that long when you're in Australia, and the amount of detailed history we have access to here is wonderful and should be recognised more internationally
Source (non Aboriginal)
And a quote I picked out from a longer interview with an Aboriginal local elder about the area where he touched on the history
Source (the rest of the interview is really interesting and all transcribed, have a look if you're curious)
This is part of my Ancient Civilizations class that I teach, which does a whole week about Australia and the Torres Strait Islands because I was sick of never seeing them represented in USAmerican history contexts. With the help of @micewithknives and @acearchaeologist I've learned so many incredible things about Australia's past and it's been incredibly rewarding to share them with students.
My favorite fact about Aboriginal oral history is the fact that we pretty recently discovered that the Aboriginal myth of the 7 Sisters, an origin story for the Pleiades star cluster, accurately reflects a point TEN THOUSAND YEARS AGO when two stars in the constellation got close enough together to no longer be distinguishable by the naked eye.
The story? 6 sisters running from something that took their 7th sister.
this one kinda hurts when i see it every pride month. im glad to see an art piece of mine still circulating, and with nearly 100,000 notes too! it just hurts that im separated from it. everyone in the notes thinks im gone. im still here, but my potential community and connection is lost because im forgotten in place of the art. yeah, my deactivated profile does add to the profoundness of what i was saying, but i am still removed.
jacobvanloon
romaincrisis
discoholicmusic
jbbartram-illu
2087
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kianamaiart
origamiaround
stormborns
