in too deep, already

Hi everyone! I’m a smol bean who mostly posts random stuff and random thoughts.

[akaanmo]

forget about tim

[tlirsgender]

Throwback thursday to when I was like 12 and I was putting out new writing DAILY...... Like entire Chapters of my then-current wips just, over an afternoon. What the fuck was I on

[tlirsgender]

Nobody:

Me, age 12, just started drinking coffee:

[tlirsgender]

[bagh0st-deactivated20240223]

I drew 14 pictures during the day, and wrote 32 pages a night. Now I can’t do shit.

[audliminal]

A huge part of this is because you've gotten better! And now, when you're drawing/writing/doing whatever creative task, you're not just mindlessly throwing thoughts at your paper, you're thinking as you do it. Children can churn out a lot more work because it's not yet refined, but when you're older and have more practice, you work with all these thoughts running through your head about form and shape, color palettes or word choice. Now, you're making a dozen decisions with every moment of work, and you're also questioning the decisions you've just made, wondering if you can do it better. Don't beat yourself up about producing less work now than you did back then, because every sentence or shape involves a lot more effort for you now, than it did when you were ten and brand new to this hobby.

[deathcomes4u]

Also you have a job now and the never-ending bullshit that is laundry and dishes and feeding yourself.

[bokettochild]

okay, I actually really needed to hear this

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[undeadentropy]

This is diabolical. Loud enough to notice, but virtually unidentifiable from a truck in motion. You pop the hood to see what's up and find nothing. You start it up and it doesn't make the noise. You go for a drive and it's fucking back. Psychological torture

[belladonnaprice-deactivated2025]

[dancinbutterfly]

Good motherfucking god

[foldingfittedsheets]

OH MY GOD THATS EXACTLY WHAT ITS LIKE

[floatinglonewanderer]

EXACTLY

[pyrrhiccomedy]

When I finally got medicated for ADHD, I asked why insomnia was such a problem for me.

The doctor paused, and then said, thoughtfully: "Well, you see, you also have ADHD at night."

[winterinthetardis]

SO APPARENTLY MY ENTIRE LIFE IS A LIE HOW HAS YOUR GUYS’ NIGHT BEEN

[winterinthetardis]

UPDATE: SO LATER THAT NIGHT WHEN MY BROTHER GOT HOME FROM WORK (HE IS 6+ YEARS OLDER, MORE PROFICIENT IN FARSI THAN I AM, AND ALSO OFTEN VISITS IRAN), I ASKED HIM WHAT HE THOUGHT THE PERSIAN WORD FOR “REMOTE CONTROL WAS” AND HE ALSO SAID THE WORD!!!!!! AND WHEN I TOLD HIM THAT IT WAS A FAKE FILLER WORD, HIS FIRST RESPONSE WAS “WOW, WHAT????? SO THEY LIED TO US?????? WHAT ELSE IS FAKE??????? ARE THEY EVEN OUR REAL PARENTS?????”

SO GOOD TO KNOW THAT I AM NOT ALONE IN THIS BETRAYAL.

[carriesthewind]

On the subject about parents needing to control their child's reading and invade their privacy in order to "protect" them from "inappropriate material:

Until I was in....college? At least? The vast, vast majority of the books I read were either a) assigned by my school or b) (the vast majority of my reading) provided to me by my mother.

My mom is a librarian. She filled our rooms with books, picked especially for us. She pointed out books on the shelves in our home library (separate from our bedroom shelves) that she thought we would like. She bought us books for birthdays, Christmas, and just stacks of recommendations. She once paid me $10 to read one of the Cirque Du Freak books because she said I needed "to be exposed to bad literature."

She respected my privacy in room, didn't go through my belongings. She explicitly pointed out to us that she wouldn't know if we took a particular book of the shelf, as long as we returned it, if we didn't want her to know we were reading it. She purposely brought us books that she didn't care for herself, because she thought we might find them valuable or enjoyable.

And if we wanted to read something she thought might upset or disturb us, she would explain why. She wouldn't stop us from reading it - just ask us to check in with her, to talk through it.

And so when I read something that upset or disturbed me, I would go to her. She would listen and talk through it with me.

If she said she didn't think I would like something, or that a book might disturb me, or that she thought I should wait until I was older, I listened to her.

She didn't need restrictions or control to protect me. Because she proved I could trust her.

Controlling kids is never about "protecting" them. It's just about control.

[druddigon]

this was for an aquarium

[kyronsalvo]

[fire-plug]

Personality hire

Working Cats

[jeanjauthor]

Sometimes you really need a good personality on your staff.

[narwhalsarefalling]

[dailyventidoodles]

Siblings

[adhdpie]

‘am i Having A Brain Problem or Being a Shithead’: a short procrastination checklist

aka why tf am i procrastinating on The Thing (more like a flowchart, actually)

lots of people who have executive function difficulties worry about whether they’re procrastinating on a task out of laziness/simply wanting to be a jerk or mental struggles. this checklist might help you figure out which it is at any given time! (hint: it’s almost never laziness or being a jerk.) (obligatory disclaimer: this is just what works for me! something different might work better for you.)

1) do I honestly intend to start the task despite my lack of success?

yes: it’s a Brain Problem. next question

no: it’s shitty to say one thing & do another. better be honest with myself & anyone expecting me to do the task.

2) am I fed, watered, well-rested, medicated properly, etc?

yes: next question

no: guess what? this is the real next task

3) does the idea of starting the task make me feel scared or anxious?

yes: Anxiety Brain. identify what’s scaring me first.

no: next question

4) do I know how to start the task?

yes: next question

no: ADHD Brain. time to make an order of operations list.

5) do I have everything I need to start the task?

yes: next question

no: ADHD Brain lying to me about the steps again, dangit. first task is ‘gather the materials’.

6) why am i having a hard time switching from my current task to this new task?

i’m having fun doing what i’m doing: it’s okay to have fun doing a thing! if task is time-sensitive, go to next question.

i have to finish doing what i’m doing: might be ADHD brain. can I actually finish the current task or will I get trapped in a cycle? does this task really need to be finished?

the next task will be boring/boring-er than the current task: ADHD brain. re-think the next task. what would make it exciting? what am I looking forward to?

I might not have enough time to complete the task: ADHD brain wants to finish everything it starts. (if task is time-sensitive, go to next question)

i just want to make the person who asked me to do it angry: sounds like anxiety brain trying to punish itself, because I know I’ll be miserable if someone is angry at me. why do i think I deserve punishment?

no, I seriously want to piss them off: okay, i’m being a shithead

7) have I already procrastinated so badly that I now cannot finish the task in time?

yes: ADHD brain is probably caught in a guilt-perfection cycle. since I can’t have the task done on time, i don’t even want to start.

reality check: having part of a thing done is almost always better than none of a thing done. if I can get an extension, having part of it done will help me keep from stalling out until the extension deadline. i’ll feel better if I at least try to finish it.

no, there’s still a chance to finish on time: ADHD brain thinks that I have all the time in the world, but the truth is I don’t. 

reality check: if i’m having fun doing what I’m doing, I can keep doing it, but I should probably set a timer & ask someone to check on me to make sure I start doing the task later today.

8) I’ve completed the checklist and still don’t know what’s wrong!

probably wasn’t honest enough with myself. take one more look.

if I’m still mystified, ask a friend to help me talk it out.

hope this helps some of you! YOU’RE DOING GREAT SWEETIE DON’T GIVE UP ON YOU

[tealdearest]

This is…entirely too real lol

[adhdpie]

#i do. have trouble figuring out the first step.#like idk if i’m really intending to get it done or lying to myself (via @lightspren )

you’re not the only person who’s expressed trouble with the first step, so I’m gonna elaborate just a little on the concept of intent.

‘Intending to act’ can be rephrased as ‘expecting yourself to do the thing’. 

It’s the difference between your teacher giving you homework (your teacher expects you to do the homework) and you deciding to do the homework (you expect yourself to do the homework).

I don’t think you can lie to yourself about whether or not you intend to do something. even as a person who often doesn’t have a real concept of how much I can actually get done*, I can always tell when I don’t really expect myself to do a thing vs when I do expect myself to do it but I’m struggling to start.

below is a list of things that might help you tell if you really intend to do a thing. if even ONE of these is true, I believe you honestly intend to do the task you’re struggling to start.

do you want to do it? or alternatively: do you want the benefits from doing it enough to do it?

even if you don’t want to do it, do you expect yourself to do it?

can you imagine yourself starting the thing? (even if you don’t have a plan for how to get there.)

do you have even a nebulous plan for doing the thing? (my ‘plans’ often start out: ‘1. go to wherever I have to be to do the thing 2. do the thing 3. ???? 4. profit’, which isn’t much of a plan but at least there’s a sense of starting and ending.)

are you trying to force yourself to do the thing by not allowing yourself to start any other things first (and thus continuously scrolling through twitter/tumblr, or staring at your ceiling, or whatever)?

are you trying to make yourself do the thing by offering yourself rewards for doing the thing?

again: 

if even ONE of these is true, I believe you honestly intend to do the task you’re struggling to start.

and this isn’t an exhaustive list of ways to tell you’re planning to do it! you know yourself best, and you can develop ways to tell the difference between your good intent and your wishful thinking.

procrastination is a hell of a monster, especially if you don’t have normal executive function. be nice to yourself! you are a decent person and want to do good things.

*the real problem ADHD people seem to have (or at least, the problem I, an adhd person, often have) is intending to do too much. my to-do list for any given day usually overestimates both how much time I have & how much energy I have. as a result, I can honestly intend to clean my room, do the dishes, and do my budget in one day, but I’ll probably only end up doing 2 out 3 things b/c I’ll run out of time or energy before I get to the last one. 

this isn’t a problem of lying to oneself about your intentions: this is a problem of lacking time-awareness & self-awareness, and it demands better scheduling. this list can’t really help with that, unfortunately. :(

[postmodernau]

“characters in fic are too good at identifying scents” is officially an “his eyes did not literally darken” level of complaint to me now like it’s about the drama it’s about the romance it’s about atmosphere it’s about taking you to a heightened version of reality!!! please suspend your disbelief at least enough for vibes-based sensory descriptions it will be So Worth It i promise

[cerayanay]

Tags stolen from prev (sydmarch) but like taking literally TWO seconds of thought and a kindergarteners knowledge of how scent works would have made that line make sense!!! Our olifactory memory is so good that yes, someone who has been in a midnight forest might actually recognize the scent of a midnight forest. When we smell things, the memory of when it was last smelt comes before the recollection of the scent! You might smell a room and think “this smells like a middle school slumber party” before you think “this smells like the exact lotion my best friend used growing up and someone made popcorn recently.”

So like, yes, someone can smell wet pine needles and moss because dew forms at the coldest point in the night, plus all the nearby flowers are closed so there’s less of a floral scent, and the smells of plants baking in the sun are absent. But no one fucking thinks that, they think “I experience this smell in a midnight forest.”

But tbh that shouldn’t even matter, the purpose of the sentence is to a) build the mood b) let you know the mindset the narrator is entering the situation in and c) establish the narrator is someone so familiar with forests at midnight they can recognize it by scent

[your-average-mess-on-all-fronts]

"even if something you do is directly because of your mental illness or trauma, it's still your responsibility to make sure it doesn't harm others and to not let people around you suffer the consequences for your damage" and "mental health advocacy needs to stop framing mental health issues like they're only valid or deserving of help or support when the person suffering from them is a perfect victim who has never done anything wrong or harmful as a consequence of them" are two positions that can and should coexist and be reconciled and I think the reason it's so hard for people to do that is that we societally made up a dichotomy that frames "people who harm others" and "people who are fundamentally deserving of sympathy" as two categorically different kinds of humans.

[headspace-hotel]

it seems like the key theme of fungus is that they eat everything including things otherwise impossible to eat, they get everywhere with their tiny spores, and they grow and be happy wherever it is wet by eating the surroundings. So if get inside your body (wet) they eat you. so your two main options for being a multicellular organism are developing an immune system (most animals) or hiring other fungus to beat the shit out of the fungus that gets inside your body (most plants)

[headspace-hotel]

there were times in my life when fungus tried to eat me. they try to eat most of us sometimes

[headspace-hotel]

yea plants do have an immune system but they also regularly merge with fungi into superorganisms so it's very different. they have complicated signalling to determine who is friend and who is enemy. meanwhile mammals are over here like "KILL EVERYTHING THAT ISN'T US!!! Fungus? Kill. Bacteria? Kill. Myself? Huh, come to think of it, my intestinal lining is looking at me funny. I never liked him." *develops autoimmune disorder*

[headspace-hotel]

being an animal is so cringe. cant merge with fungus into superorganism, can't reproduce vegetatively, can't photosynthesize...what are we even doing

[gallusrostromegalus]

We (animals collectively but mammals in particular) are out here tolerating outrageous climatological conditions to experience the world in time frames and spectra that plants and fungi can only dream of.

[parkchanwoohoo]

[appendingfic]

when a cultural activity easily allows you to let small children participate

alternatively, a child dragon being greeted by the clan

[cactuskat]

The gather to meet the youngling

[lassieposting]

Have y'all ever seen that video of elephants in a sanctuary absolutely booking it across the enclosure to meet the New Baby, because

[aspiringwarriorlibrarian]

I love how they're clearly walking in formation until one of them sees the baby dragon and then they immediately all run over.

[storm-and-starlight]

"baby dragon" excuse me those are LION DANCERS and that is a LION CUB

[bodhrancomedy]

May I introduce you to my favourite Calvin and Hobbes strip which only got funnier when I got hearing aids.

[mayhemchicken]

wait actually i gotta reblog this again i just remembered an additional fun fact. sunday funnies pages were not created equal; some allotted less space than others. to make space? they would literally chop off parts of the comics. this is why many sunday strips have a Big Title Bar at the top, bc that was usually the part that got cut off. comic artists essentially had to account for that a big chunk of their strip was Optional Bonus Material that couldn't be relevant to the plot or punchline of the strip.

bill watterson? HATED this. he was in a constant battle with the presses to keep his strips intact. he eventually won this battle, forcing any paper that wanted to run calvin & hobbes to print the full strip. but in the meantime, you would get protest strips, where the top bar is essential for the comic to make any sense at all.

this? is almost definitely one of those. please picture with me living in a town with one of the newspapers that cuts off the top bar. imagine seeing this comic WITHOUT the top panel.

[day-to-day-venti]

hc that venti knows how to use a sword except vennessa is the only one who taught him