Hello! I've got two questions which are kinda related to each other, so I'm putting them in the same ask. Please don't feel pressured to respond if you're not comfortable though!!
Do you have any advice for managing ADHD/symptoms of ADHD as a Proper Adult (tm)? I'm a Newly Minted Adult (19), and I haven't been diagnosed one way or another, but I have a lot of the symptoms of ADHD (executive dysfunction, difficulty estimating time, constantly fidgeting, getting focused on something and feeling unable to put it up for hours, probably some others I'm forgetting). I have systems in place that help mitigate some of this (longform journaling, physical to-do lists and chore charts, playing music while cleaning, backing up when I'm trying to get out the door so that when I do eventually leave I'm (close to) on time, pomodoro timers, and so on), but I still feel like I'm treading water, especially as the things I'm responsible for keep growing in number. A lot of things will also work great... for two weeks, and then I'm back where I started. I'm worried that my life is going to end up being controlled by these symptoms (particularly executive dysfunction) and I'll never be able to feel like it's *mine*--ironically enough, the actions I struggle with the most are the ones that I *want* to do, like crafting or replying to a letter. You seem like you spend a lot of time doing things you enjoy and have made a life that feels like your own, so I'm hoping you might have some perspective/advice about this.
2. Do you have any advice for accepting/coming to terms with having to actively manage mental health for the rest of your life? I recently realized that what I thought was Me Doing Fine was actually Me With Mild Depression, which like. What the hell, man. I'm kinda thinking of myself as being whatever the mental health version of immunocompromised is, where I *can* have good weeks or even months, but a) it takes me more effort than most people to maintain and b) it's much easier to slip back into depression. I know it's better to realize this now than realize it ten years down the line, but I'm still feeling this weird combination of denial/anger/sadness/resentment/fatigue about the whole thing (like, you're telling me I have to do extra work?? Just to not feel shitty all the time?? For 60+ years?!?!?!). Similarly to pt 1, you've mentioned having depression but still seem to enjoy much of your life, so I'm wondering what your take on it is.
Okay that's it!! This turned out way longer than I expected, oops 😅 Thank you for the various wisdom you share, and please pet your kitties for me :)
Heya, Anon! Sorry it took me a while, but, you know.. I also suffer from executive dysfunction. XD
On managing ADHD as an Adult
My advice here is what works for me, someone who is AuDHD (and also a hoarder, to up the difficulty challenge).
At 19, you are in a place where you can learn new skills, but your systems are still going to carry you throughout most of your life. And that is fine. The most important thing to learn is when and how to meet yourself as you are, and how to graciously accept your limitations while still pushing yourself to do better.
What has helped me:
Be ok that not all of your systems are going to be aesthetic. If I regularly dump my clothes in a pile in a specific place on the floor, I either need to put a basket there, or completely block the space. If I forget what is in a container or in a drawer, it needs a label. I am going to take better notes at work in the notepad app vs by hand in a leather-bound journal or some hyper-optimized note taking program. And so on.
Understand when routine can lead to a type of time/clutter blindness. If the chore board is collecting dust and you're skipping days, it's time to reboot and remix the routine. Don't force yourself into a system that isn't paying off. It's better to jump from system to system if they work, even for a few weeks, than doing nothing at all.
Convenience is worth the expense/investment. Automate bills if possible. Have 2 bathrooms? Buy duplicate cleaning supplies and put them in each room, so everything is *right there*. Got to where you have some extra income? Grocery delivery, meal boxes, housekeeping, lawn services -- all of those remove cognitive load off your shoulders and are not "giving up", even if you are capable of doing these tasks.
Get some use out of your fidgeting. I pace when I have bees in my brain. When I'm in that mode, I try to look for any trash I can pick up, a counter to wipe, anything to quickly tidy. Something that takes no more than 30 seconds. It really helps with keeping the clutter down in my working areas. I also have some exercise equipment that is fidget-friendly -- an under-desk pedal machine and an indoor rebounder.
Body double when possible. This is like parallel play, but for work. Have someone else in the room, or in a voice/video chat while you work on a task. A lot of folks find they focus well this way.
Rewards cannot be something you regularly do. My reward for doing big projects and deep cleaning is to listen to an audio book during the chore. I cannot listen to an audio book at any other time, because I'll just skip the chore and go straight to the book. This is because I am lazy and my internal boss is a big pushover. So, the reward MUST be special, not something routine like "30 more minutes of video game time for the day."
Don't tell people about big plans if it gives you a serotonin hit. I have learned that telling people about my planned projects gives me almost the same amount of satisfaction as showing off finished work. Then, I just never actually begin. So, I hold off until I've put enough work in to commit.
Don't wait for Big Stuff to practice locking in. Practice with something low stakes. I have been doing my nightly GOOD NIGHT cat photos for like a decade now with about 99% reliability because it is low stakes. And it's proven to me that I can indeed commit to a regular task.
The first 10 minutes will suck. Get used to it. I love to hike, I love to make things. But the first 10 minutes are absolute ass. But enough repetition and I can convince myself to start because I am now confident there will be a payoff.
Don't try to do everything all the time. Half-assed is also better than no-assed. Some days, it's cereal for dinner so you have the spoons to clean the toilet. It's better to negotiate with yourself than do nothing at all.
Be honest with the people in your life that you trust + take responsibility for when your mental health makes you do dumb shit. I have an awful memory. My partner knows this and I have to delegate some things to them to remember for me. I get agitated when my routine and plans get stalled and I go non-verbal or get snappish. My partner knows I am not angry at them, but I still apologize for my behavior as soon as I am able to.
Know when less is more. Regularly declutter your living space. Lack of space and too much stuff can make you over-stimulated. Don't worry about sunk cost . Things that never worked out, like old organization systems, old hobbies -- these can find a new life with someone else. If you find yourself routinely having decision paralysis, remove the number of options. This could mean shrinking your wardrobe, doing a craft room purge, etc.
Remind yourself that you are not an optimization problem to be solved. You will fuck up, you will need more time to recover, etc, etc. It's fine, just adjust your commitments whenever you can to give yourself room to breathe. Burnout is far more difficult to recover from than taking pre-emptive mental health breaks.
On the grief of living with a disability
I've written about this kind of grief before. You are doing yourself a kindness to admit that some things are not going to get better. It's ok to be angry at a future you felt got taken from you.
This grief will never go away. It can sometimes motivate you -- living well out of spite, for example. It can lead you to form lifelong community bonds. And sometimes, it just sucks ass.
Don't let the grief turn into toxic stoicism. Many big problems can be broken down into more manageable little problems. Seek professional help where you can -- get medicated if necessary, hire a professional organizer, go to therapy, join a support group, etc. Like my advice about housekeeping, this is not a form of "giving up". Trying to think your way solo out of a mental disability is akin to trying to run a marathon with a freshly broken leg.
What also helps me is documenting the good times in my life. That way, I have something to look at when I feel like the past year was just a haze.
So what I take the same dozen hiking and museum photos. So what if my crafting documentation skips steps or fizzled out. I still have all these artifacts that help me remember a live well-lived.
Notice I said well-lived, and not necessarily *productive*.
Because remember that you are not an optimization problem to be solved. Even if I didn't have ADHD, I wouldn't be able to do all the things I want to do. So, I try not to beat myself up about *only* reading so many books, making so many arts, etc.
I hope all this helps. It's easy to turn self-awareness about your mental health into self-loathing, so above all, give yourself grace. <3
During her introductory scene we her eating up objects that she stole and sort of recycling them to make gloinks. I think its interesting to think of her role as a sort of garbage collector for the circus
Thing is....
That's very similar to the episode 8 intro
Wrong image
In which we see "something" gathering data and using it to create... colorful shapes... kinda like the gloinks
Now, the full sequence involves a red blob doing this first only to be trapped, escape and eat the blue orb. Between the parallels to the Cain and Abel biblical story and Caine saying "Im the original one" the implication is obvious, the red blob is caine, the og ai, and the blue one came after.
Narratively, episode 8's cliffhanger needs to be resolved somehow in a span of an entire episode give or take some minutes. Maybe they'd need an ai or a circus member to replace Caine so it stands to reason that this mysterious second ai would come into play.
What if the gloink queen is a corrupted version of this ai that caine repurposed for garbage collection.
As a final piece of evidence. Not long before episode 8 released, gooseworx posted this:
Likely she could just be baiting us all into thinking this but either outcome is hilarious so I needed to share this to the world.
WOW a lot of you really liked my Iron Lung comic! I don’t know how feasible it would be to make a comic spanning the full movie, but I think the first 5 minutes should be doable, so that’s the goal right now. More to come soon hopefully o7
Simon "the butcher", who is horrified when he finds out he sentenced a man to death by pressing the camera button.
Simon "the butcher" who keeps apologizing for not knowing better, for causing harm to the people in the room, for being rightfully angry and lashing out, turning every knob and lever and pressing that damn button because why would it work when he doesn't have any power and why didn't they just Tell Him??
Simon "the butcher" who gets teary and has the look of a hurt child on his face when ava mentions filament station and his voice trembles when he is quick to say "that wasn't supposed to happen"...
Simon "the butcher" who apologizes to the sm-13, an inanimate object, after hitting the console.
Just... Simon being so unbeliebably human throughout the whole movie, it makes my heart ache for him
Amazing post, I kinda wanna piggy back with something.
Choosing the epithet "The Butcher" is a very deliberate choice. It's meant to depict him as a murder in the minds of the people that look negatively upon him, but that's not the only definition of butcher.
A butcher is also a necessary job to the food supply. They hack up parts of animals, they bleed them out, become covered head to toe with blood and gore. But for their dirty work, the best cuts of meat are produced.
my thoughts about Caine's model lacking many essential facial features (as if he was never intended to show any emotions) and yet him being literally the most expressive character in the circus despite everything.
me being low-key obsessed with the implications episode 7 left us with. Players questioning everything they've been told and Caine being in the center of it all.
Just to be clear, I do believe Caine is written as a sentient AI who is just struggling to understand humanity and everything that comes with it. And I think these thoughts about him faking his emotions are inherently wrong within a story. He's oblivious and desperate but not malicious. But couple it with the fact that he's been lying about many other things (so far I'm inclined to think it was for players' sake in his own eyes) and that humans have been suffering for a while dealing with a literal god that doesn't understand them... Well, I have a feeling that they will doubt his motives and literally everything they know, rightfully so.
The amount of attention this little comic received is a bit terrifying and overwhelming and seeing all the different interesting interpretations people come up with I just wanted to explain mine own a little better <3
I want them all to be healed and happy, little guy absolutely included, but man the situation is rough, and the odds are against us
(Also please ignore typos, I'm hyperaware of them and even messed up writing my on name, i was really, really tired :') )
What are your favorite tips you would give to someone building their illustration portfolio website? 🔥 My website is www.kristinagehrmann.com and here are some of my tips:
1. SHOW YOUR WORK IMMEDIATELY
Online marketing experts already knew this 20+ years ago: the more clicks someone has to do to get to the sauce, the lower your conversion rate (or the sooner they give up, or whatever you want to call it).
Assume that we all have the attention span of a goldfish, and you might have minimal time to capture your audience's attention. You want to wow people with your artwork right away. I currently do this with my main category of (mostly) fantasy art, which is the one I'm most interested in finding new work in - it is the homepage of my website. No clicks needed to get there!
2. SORT BY MARKET, NOT MEDIUM
I often see young illustrators arranging their website in categories like "traditional" and "digital". But for the most part, our clients don't care what we draw with. Instead they're asking: "Does the art suit my product/projects?"
Therefore it's best to think from the perspective of the industry (industries) or market(s) you want to target. Categorise your art what it's used for, or what niche of the market it looks like.
For example, you might do childrens' book illustration but also have artwork (that looks like it's) for the middle grade or YA publication market. Then it makes sense to arrange your portfolio in these 2 categories. Of course you can just focus on one single thing - some of the best illustrators do only one thing. Either way is fine!
(If you have no idea yet what you really want to do, research and explore what is out there and think about where your art could fit in, but that's a whole journey and a topic for another day)
I currently use 3 categories: History (for my history-themed work for publishing, boardgames and museums), Kids/YA for everything for a younger audience (not much in there yet, more to come), and Main (for everything else, mostly fantasy themed stuff). All these are categories I love to work in, and where I want to be hired to do more similar things.
3. BE EASY TO CONTACT
Notice something in all these screenshots? My email address is on every page! And no, I don't have serious spam issues - on average I get about 1-5 spam emails per day, but I think that's a small price to pay for my dream job.
Don't be stingy with your email -- make it un-missable for your clients. 99% of all art directors prefer email.
Contact forms can exist alongside, but clients don't like them very much because there is no record of the message they sent, and in some cases they just plain don't work.
4. RIGHT CLICK & SAVE
This one might be controversial, but since thieves will steal our images anyway if they want to (anyone can do a screenshot, and right-click and save is easy enough on social media), and we need to post everywhere anyways, we might as well make images on our websites saveable.
On Muddycolors an art director talks about preferring to do just that in order to keep track of artists for future projects.
From the preview images on my website you can right click and save (not the larger ones - that's where Portfoliobox, my website builder has its limits). Have your name somewhere in the images too, so your dream client can easily identify them as yours. Having your name in the filename might be a good idea too (I should probably get started on that).
I hope this was helpful. Feel free to share your own website tips. ❤️ Or fight me! 😂
It's weird to think that big hollywood movies are edited on normal editing software and they have to click a little export button just like anyone else when it's done. It feels like they should be edited on a big machine with a bunch of lights and when it's time to export you have to flip a huge mechanical lever.
logging back into this account after years is like uncovering a time capsule filled with memories of your past self. anyways... I need to relearn how to use this app
also 5e.tools is an actively maintained open source dnd 5e repository, that even lets you download your very own offline fully functional copy of the website, just in case it ever goes down
Oh, this is really neat, this is the same thing they did in Sh! The Octopus in 1937 to do this transformation scene. In black & white, the color of your light can hide makeup, then all you have to do is flip the color, and the audience just sees the difference in the light levels, but cannot see the color shift. The quick explanation for why this works is the blue makeup absorbs red light, looking very dark when only red light is present, but also looks about the same as relatively fair skin when only blue light is present. Same goes for the colors the other way.
While I’m not downplaying the practiced skill that goes into making digital effects, because I can only imagine it’s very difficult, practical effects kicks more ass than anything digital ever will
