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elliesmainhoe · 1 year

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TLOU MASTERLIST

ELLIE WILLIAMS

TLOU2 / Older Ellie

HEADCANONS:

Feminine!Reader

Feminine!Reader Part2

Boxer!Ellie

Sugar Mommy!Ellie

Knight!Ellie X Princess!Reader

Knight!Ellie X Princess!Reader Part2

Period comfort

Streamer!Ellie

Bodyguard!Ellie X Singer!Reader

Housewife!Ellie

Housewife!Reader

Dealer!Ellie X GoodGirl!Reader

Tattooist!Ellie

Tattooist!Ellie Part2

Hockey!Ellie X Cheerleader!reader

Stubborn!Reader

Delinquent!Ellie

SingleMom!Reader

Vampire!Ellie

Vampire!Ellie Part2

Ballerina!Reader

Pregnant!reader

Singer!Reader

Hip-Hop Dancer!reader

Rockstar!Ellie

Masc!reader

Introvert!reader X Introvert!Ellie

Affectionate!reader

Actress!reader

She calls you mommy

Goth / grunge reader

Reader with ADHD

Bossy!reader

Ellie on her period

Streamer!Reader

Reader is Maria and Tommy's daughter

Taller!Reader

Reader with OCD

make-up artist!reader X streamer!Ellie

Older sister!Reader

Insecure!reader

Apologetic!reader

Deaf/ hard of hearing!reader

RichOlderWoman!Ellie

southern!reader

loser!ellie

having a baby with her (biologically)

ONESHOTS:

You deserve more

Summary: after you caught your boyfriend making out with another girl at a bar, you call Ellie for a ride home. (MODERN AU)

Reckless

Summary: While working, Joel comes in and tells you that your girlfriend, Ellie, was injured on patrol.

Protecter

Summary: After sneaking out, Ellie protects you from some unwanted attention. (KNIGHT!ELLIE X PRINCESS!READER)

New Year's Day

Summary: You and Ellie host your first ever New years Eve party, and as you both clean up the mess your friends had left in their wake.

Can I take a picture? (Out soon)

Summary: You, an architecture student, decide to spend yor three months off for summer break exploring and visiting classic Victorian houses, seeing beautiful structures and meeting eccentric people. (VAMPIRE!ELLIE)

MULTI-PART:

PROFESSOR - Pt 2 - Pt 3 ✓

Summary: After Dina forced you to go to her new physics teachers public lecture, you start developing feelings for the professor. (PROFESSOR!ELLIE X STUDENT!READER)

PLAYER TWO - Pt 2 - Pt 3

Summary: A series of imagine entailing the chaos you and streamer!Ellie cause together. (STREAMER!ELLIE)

MOTIVATION - Pt 2

Summary: You become your girlfriends physical therapist. (BOXER!ELLIE)

Why?! (PART 2 OUT SOON)

Summary: it was bound to happen sooner or later. I mean Joel slaughtering all the fireflies seven years ago was a pretty hard secret to be kept quiet- but you still wish it never reached Ellie's ears.

IMAGINES:

Phone S*x NSFW

Summary: You send Ellie a nude when she's abroad on a business trip. (SugarMommy!Ellie)

Play for me

Summary: After Ellie lost her fingers she longed to play the guitar again, so you played for her.

Jackson's Love Hotel NSFW

Summary:Your favourite customer needs to relax after a very stressful patrol and comes to you for some relief. (Brothel Worker!Reader)

Ask your daughter

Summary: Eventful late night escapades makes Ellie a no-show for patrol. (Maria+Tommy's daughter!Reader)

Miss me sugar?

Summary: After three months of deployment, Ellie finally returns home. (Military!Ellie)

Tattooed on my heart

Summary: Ellie's always loved when you doodle on her arm, leaving behind traces of you. She loves them so much she wants them to stay forever.

Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl

Summary: wasting a Friday night on a first date with a boy you've never met in person was a dumb idea- and surprise! it all goes to shit- but Ellie's there to make sure you have a good time! DAY 2 OF SAPPHIC SUMMER

SAPPHO

Summary: Ellie pulls up outside of your house, ready to take you on a first date. DAY 3 OF SAPPHIC SUMMER

Rescue Remedy

summary: you call Ellie to come and rescue you from a bar after having a few too many drinks DAY 4 OF SAPPHIC SUMMER

SOCIAL MEDIA AU:

(strictly texts and insta posts)

Texts with Ellie

Part 1

Part 2

ABBY ANDERSON

TLOU2

HEADCANONS:

Doctor!reader

Anxious!Reader

Farmer!Abby

Werewolf!Abby

Masc!reader

ONESHOTS:

(Nothing here yet)

MULTI-PART:

HUNTED (PART 2 OUT SOON)

Summary: Although you stopped Abby from killing Joel, Ellie still wants to seek her revenge.

IMAGINES:

Sundress Season NSFW

Summary: A picnic date can really only end one way~ DAY 1 OF SAPPHIC SUMMER

Hayfever

Summary: you've fallen sick, and you don't want Abby to get sick too- she says it's just hay-fever. DAY 5 OF SAPPHIC SUMMER

HBO ELLIE WILLIAMS

HBO TLOU ADAPTATION

!!THIS CHARACTER IS UNDER 18! SO IT WILL BE PLATONIC!!

HEADCANONS:

(Nothing here yet)

ONESHOTS:

GOODNIGHT, MOM

Summary: After helping Ellie down from a panic attack, she calls you Mom for the first time. (MotherFigure!Reader)

MULTI-PART:

(Nothing here yet)

IMAGINES:

Happy Mothers Day

Summary: The first mothers day Ellie has ever celebrated and she's going to make sure that it's amazing. (MotherFigure!Reader)

I LOVE YOU NO MATTER WHAT

coming soon

REQUESTS ARE OPEN!!!!

I write for:

Ellie Williams (Romantic + Platonic)

Abby Anderson (Romantic + Platonic)

HBO Ellie Williams (PLATONIC)

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louisshomesharry · 3 years

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hi!! what exactly do you mean by „stan culture“ from the post with new fans?

up until 2017 (beginning of) most fandom were just full of fans who (most of them) would do their research and “know” the person they were stanning. Then from late 2016 and start of 2017 there was a shift in fandom culture where fans became obsessed with numbers/streams and their fave being the best!!!!! while also denying truth/facts and not using context to create argument.

I blame:

- trump’s presidency which led to plenty of people not caring about the truth and stating things as fact just because evidence of it not being fact didn’t exist; ie the same way I could say hogwarts exists bc there’s no evidence it doesn’t exist!!!! - kpop: I believe it’s the first fandoms that were really everywhere and were truly aggressive and screaming about their fave being better than everyone else. This being said the fans aren’t faulty for that. the problem is coming from labels who decided to get into fandom space and manipulate it enough to get as much profit as they could. ie: producing fan wars so fans would stream more to prove their faves are the best thus bringing more revenue to labels/music industry businessmen. I believe Western companies saw the whole thing working well for kpop people so they decided to bring that energy in western fandom spaces.

Which lead us to now with all these stans running around being toxic, thinking that they are good people bc they send death threats to other fans and defend their fave’s heterosexuality. Just bc they are stans of x celeb so they have the right to act superior bc only x celeb deserves respect bc x celeb has /that/ number of streams.

Stans believe they have to say “yes amen” to everything the person they stan say and do and bully everyone that gives constructive criticism about their fave.

What annoys me the most about stan culture is them bullying people over topics they know nothing about. I don’t know if you went on twitter this past year but people are vile towards larries and they aren’t even fans of louis and/or harry. they know nothing. it’s just trendy to harass us, so they do it.

Stan culture makes “real” fans quit fandom spaces. I believe a reason so many tumbl larries left and why so many of us have a hard time in fandom is bc we’re used to the 1d fandom and how it worked. we liked it, we do not want to change, we do not want to become toxic or mean or make our whole fandom experience about being hateful so it’s getting hard to be surrounded by people who 1) don’t care about facts 2) who’ve bullying us for years without having any real counter argument 3) who we cannot have a conversation with, bc as soon as we start giving our arguments and giving them facts they ignore it and start insulting us 4) who just don’t know how to have fun and be in a fandom.

when I came into this fandom it was a great community to talk about the boys but also so many topics I had never heard about or knew nothing about. I arrived here as a baby gay and had so many people ready to answer my questions and just be welcoming. I think about all these minors who come on here to shit on us and think how much better their experience would be if they had learn to do research, listen to other people and to themselves to. A lot of adults turned really toxic too. I don’t understand why people can’t act decently online? it’s not hard not to be an asshole....

tldr: stan culture is killing fandom spaces and celebrities will only have themselves and their bosses to blame when they’ll have lost all their fans and the hype around them will die down bc stans will have find more interesting people to stan.

#this is a mess but I have adhd so hard for me to structure posts #sdkhfg #fan culture #fandom #anons #fandompost #*#300 #stan culture

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sk-lumen · 3 years

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Hi Lumen, first off I apologize if this type of question has already been answered or if I am long-winded. How exactly does one go about changing and improving their life when starting from zero? I have had depression and ADHD since I was a kid and it (and, of course, myself) has kept me behind in life. Now that my symptoms are being treated…I’m unsure of how to go forward. I don’t really have any hobbies, skills, or goals. My apartment is a mess, I spend a lot of time on social media, and I have no structure in my day. I do want to change my life and level up if you will, but a lot of tips I see online are for people who already have a general structure or foundation in their life. I was hoping for some tips for those of us with none. How do you go about developing a routine, skills, hobbies, etc from zero? Thank you. 🤍

Hi darling,

First off, let me say how brave you are for being honest with yourself and making the conscious choice to turn things around!

I was in your shoes 2-3 years ago, before I started my glow up journey, so I can completely relate to the feeling of being lost, finding my life a chaos... and the only certainty I had was that I was absolutely determined to create a better life for myself.

For this reason, I curated a masterlist below for all the posts, articles and guides I've written either on tumblr or on my blog. My advice is right now start with tidying up your home, because a clean, organized home will inspire a clean, organized mental & emotional landscape. It starts there.

Then it's time for reading and research! You should focus on leveling up your mindset, for it will always be your foundation for everything else.

I've ordered each list in chronological order for one's glow up process, building in complexity and experience; and also highlighted the ones that will be most useful for someone starting from zero.

Mindset:

My 30-day mindset glow up challenge (tag)

How to develop a growth mindset

11 Keys to a successful mindset

Traits of successful entrepreneurs and CEOs

Prioritize your mental health in your 9-to-5 job with these strategies

Why you keep failing your yearly goals (and how to fix it)

Why you should stop associating productivity with self worth

Truths that have changed my life

Glowing up:

How to get (and keep) Your Life Together 101

Tips to get started on your journey of self development

Things I wish I knew at 21 (a letter to my past self)

What I wish I knew before starting my glow up journey

The healing power of morning rituals

How to be happy (you deserve the gift of happiness)

How to cultivate inner peace: daily practices

How to be a high value woman

Cheatcodes that will elevate your life

Selflove / Selfcare:

Things that encourage self-love in your journey of healing

The stages of living authentically

The art of being your authentic self

What happens when you embody your authentic self...

A manifesto of selflove

What happens when you practice self love daily...

Ways we self-sabotage & how to stop It

My journey of healing: how selflove & selfcare changed my life

It’s time for you to heal: a guided meditation

Essential selfcare habits for entrepreneurs

Finances:

5 secrets to stay on top of your finances

Tips for smart shopping

Fashion:

How to be classy

My guide for classy nails

Tips to always look polished

Relationships:

Toxic vs. healing relationships

Things every woman should know about love

How to get over a break up: a guide for healing

Why the “ride or die” mentality Is self-sabotage

8 dating commandments of the high value woman

Red flags of low value men (LVM)

Green flags of the high value man (HVM)

High value: misconceptions, what it is and what it's not

High value dating: do’s and don’ts

5 things stopping you from high-value dating & how to overcome them

How to know you’ve found the one

As someone who had to learn these things the hard way, I hope sharing my experiences and advice proves as useful to others as it was for me. 💞✨

You can bookmark this list and go over it at your own pace, by your own rules. The point is to just start. Much luck darling! 🥂

-Lumen

#glow up #level up #selfcare #selflove #self development #masterlist #tips #advice #glow up threads #guides #ask #(thank you anon for being patient)#(this took forever to compile)

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that-was-anticlimactic · 3 years

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sk8 headcanons because i am Bored

autistic langa likes frozen fruit a lot—strawberries are his favorite—because he likes the cool texture

reki has lip freckles that really stand out after he’s been in the sun a lot ! there’s like four or five of them :)

just thinking about “all those friday nights / under the lights / under the bleachers together / you and i were meant to be something more than a faded memory / till you and i / something divided us” but matchablossom,,,

“but i’ve already lost it once / what i already won / i’ve lost too much now to care / but i know that something’s still there” ,,, matchablossom,,, ahhhhh

miya and shadow being besties,,, shadow being miya’s parental figure and miya being his adopted nb child,,,

shadow being the first person miya comes out as nonbinary to,,,

adam going to jail,,,

reki having a stuffed animal collection and letting miya name some and then realizing that miya never had a stuffed animal growing up so reki gives miya one of his older ones that he loved as a child and then buys them a new one too… and miya asks reki to name it for them because sentiments,,,

after seeing the girl he had a crush on kiss someone else, shadow takes out his feelings on the only thing he knows how to—skating at s but he’s not in a good mind and he feels sick because he thought he thought he thought he had a chance and he doesn’t pay close enough attention and gets hurt and miya calls him an idiot and patches him up and shadow feels like a kid again but it’s kind of nice to have someone else actually help with his wounds instead of just attempting to wash them and then cover them with makeup by himself,,,

joe and shadow bonding over hating the feeling of loneliness so they make up for it the only way they know how which is being loud and being extra because they don’t feel as lonely if they’re loud

reki, miya, and cherry = adhd club

cherry and reki drawing together… and reki teaching cherry how to be more loose and carefree when he draws and cherry teaching reki how to add more structure to his art,,,

langa stealing and wearing reki’s headbands,,,

langa with glasses

reki’s sisters doing cherry and joe’s hair,,, or even reki, langa, and miya doing their hair and shadow just watches and takes pictures and reki puts cherry’s hair in fishtails because he had practice with his sisters and cherry secretly likes it (and so does joe) and miya and langa just. completely messing up joe’s hair and putting hair clips in it and langa attempts a ponytail kind of like how cherry does his hair at s (and no cherry did Not find it very attractive shut up)

shadow being a scrapbooker and having like ten scrapbooks from his life,,,

shadow not being as good of an artist as cherry or reki but he does it because he enjoys it and when cherry and reki find out they invite him to draw with them

the crew / sk8 fam all going to shadow’s house and doing a couple scrapbook pages together and it’s a mess but it’s them and it’s one of shadow’s favorite pages because he’s never scrapbooked with anyone before

langa is just naturally beautiful and photogenic so the art squad always asks him to model for them if they want to draw people

joe has depression because i want him to

and shadow has anxiety

because i do Not want any of them to be neurotypical

yeah so joe has depression, shadow has anxiety, cherry has add and anxiety, miya had adhd and separation anxiety, langa is autistic, reki has tourette’s and adhd and depression ✌🏻

when miya gets old enough, shadow gets them a part time job at the flower shop

miya likes a lot of pillows

langa sleeps with no pillows (unless reki is partially his pillow)

thinking about after reki’s second beef with adam,,, joe after he tells adam off and they’re away from the crowd, he passes out because let’s be real—there is absolutely no way he didn’t get injured and the worse one is probably a broken nose and a huge gash at the back of his head with like skin peeling and stuff like need stitches so the gang all goes to cherry’s and they help patch reki up

somewhere in that time the love hotel gets brought up and by extension getting hit by the car and getting beat up and joe and shadow are on the verge of slamming their heads against the wall at reki’s nonchalantness

and reki’s p injured so he’s laying in the couch with his head resting in langa’s lap,,,

joe tells everyone embarrassing cherry stories from school like all the time (but joe was a foolish child so cherry gets revenge)

miya likes crime documentaries

joe unironically watched supernatural and that’s part of the reason why he and cherry broke up

(maybe joe just thought dean was attractive—sue him!)

lol wait what if cherry sued adam to pay for reki’s medical bills since they inevitably had to take him to the hospital

cherry constantly tells joe that he will sue him

joe may unironically watched spn, but cherry unironically watched glee

langa wrote destiel fanfiction once upon a time

langa wrote cas bakes dean a pie--

miya is carla’s favorite (after cherry)

cherry and langa with weighted blankets also

sometimes reki steals langa’s but only if he stays the night or langa brings it over and usually if he “steals” it, it’s them sharing it or reki needs the comfort of the weight if he’s not having a good time mentally lol

joe with depression,,, i just think about that a lot sometimes,,, sometimes cooking feels meaningless and, like langa, he only feels something when he skates but it’s only this temporary feeling of joy and life,,,

and shadow with anxiety,,, over-compensating his anxiety by being shadow at night and being over the top and sometimes mean because internalized ableism,,, and if he pretends he doesn’t have anxiety then maybe he won’t feel it late at night or when everything seems to go wrong during a shift at work and he keeps dropping flowers because his hands are shaking and girls don’t like guys with anxiety, right ??? so shadow thinks that he CAN’T have anxiety :/// poor dude

miya with separation anxiety pushing people away before they get attached because if they push them away before they become friends, then they wouldn’t be able to leave them,,,

langa always bouncing his foot in class and all the time because it’s his main form of stimming (look at that boy and try to tell me he doesn’t bounce his legs like there’s no tomorrow i dare you) and sometimes it makes his legs sore and cherry and joe once recommended using a heating pad if it got really sore and langa does sometimes and it makes him happy

reki with ts having anxiety when he has to speak in front of the class / do presentations because he’s hyper-aware of his tics,,, so he always meets langa’s eyes and watches langa the whole time and langa sometimes mimes taking deep breaths which really helps but honestly just seeing langa makes reki feel like he can do anything (because he would do anything for langa)

cherry doodling to stim as a child and always getting in trouble for it because teachers used to like get pissed when students doodled (or maybe they still do and it’s just always been pissy teachers and not specifically teachers when our parents were kids) and eventually cherry got fed up with getting points docked for doodling so he started writing lists and stuff and been realized he had impeccable handwriting (also joe let cherry doodle on his hand during classes they had together so cherry wouldn’t get in trouble)

cherry once had a dream that he was rachel berry and joe was finn uhh *insert last name here* from glee and joe had a beautiful voice when they sang duets in his dream so he managed to convince joe to sing in reality and turns out joe cannot sing and cherry’s glee dreams were never the same (look i am tired lol)

joe likes being the strong one in the group and he enjoys being able to mess around / show off by just casually picking people up (he also does it as an expression of love because they’re basically hugs depending on how he holds you) and one day cherry is like… done with it ??? and just strolls up to joe and just throws him over his shoulder or something and joe combusts because he did Not know cherry can do that and no his face isn’t red shut up he doesn’t find this attractive what’re you talking about

miya wants a sword and keeps trying to convince everyone to get them one for their birthday but no one will agree because ‘they’ll hurt themselves and everyone else it does not matter that all your favorite characters have swords that does not mean You should have one’

langa is the kind of person that puts peanut butter on a cheeseburger

reki’s love language is a mix of gift giving and acts of service, but he tends to lean more towards giving gifts. his receiving love language is words of affirmation but he does Not know that yet (langa does—hence his constant “you’re amazing, reki”—and eventually so does the rest of their gang lol)

shadow likes theatre

miya has internet friends,,, so does cherry,,,

joe posts those affirmations on his story all the time

reki’s texts are sometime hard to read because a) his hands get injured a lot and b) tourette’s but langa (and soon the others) learn how to read reki texts

langa sleeps with a fan on for white noise

shadow was worried (and feeling a little left out but if he doesn’t acknowledge it, then that emotion is not real… that’s how that works, right???) since he was in the hospital when reki skated against adam the second time, so when they all went back to cherry’s to tend to reki’s numerous wounds and also celebrate friendship, miya kept shadow on a face time call the entire evening

langa has an android phone

reki is super comfortable with periods because he lives with five girls—he also usually has a couple of pads and tampons on him at all times because he’s the older sibling lol

langa wears socks with sandals,,, so does shadow,,,

shadow’s feet get cold easily so he wears fluffy socks a lot

cherry keeps his fingernails at the perfect length to dramatically tap them against the table (also to freak people out by doing that)

miya is Not a morning person

miya also likes having the windows to shadow’s car rolled up because their hair gets in their face otherwise but shadow likes them down so it’s this constant struggle

i still stand by cherry suing ad*m and using the money he won to pay for reki’s medical bills (… and shadow’s… and langa’s if he needs any)

i just feel like many people have reason to sue ad*m

ponytail langa rights

joe had really bad acne as a child and teen and cherry helped him feel less self-conscious about it and helped him embrace having acne and that’s one reason why he exposes so much skin as joe because it’s a reminder of personal growth <3

also joe has acne scars on his chin and cheeks

joe has cherry’s calligraphy all over his walls

ik i already said so in reki with ts headcanons but he doodles pictures for everyone in the sk8 fam and they all keep each and every one and shadow even puts them in his scrapbook

let langa punch adam 2k21

let reki punch adam 2k21

actually they All deserve to punch adam 2k21

miya’s favorite movie is coraline

langa can’t snap his fingers

joe and cherry always argue over whether even numbers or odd numbers are best

miya does esports

joe was in marching band and was in drumline

cherry stays up late to look at the stars and he had those plastic stars taped to his ceiling as a child

reki eats tomatoes like apples and it makes joe want to cry

okay if the atla & and the sk8 characters became internet friends… these are who i think they’d be internet friends with…

cherry: katara

joe: suki

langa: sokka

miya: aang

reki: zuko

shadow: toph

note: suki, joe, miya, and aang are all actually besties. aang is the kind of person that would usually annoy miya but they just can’t dislike aang no matter how much he may want to and they somehow find themselves attached

but suki and miya would also get along really well because I know they would and aang and joe would just have fun and like it’s what they deserve so they are interchangeable / all besties

also sk8 characters if they were benders...

cherry: fire or waterbender,,, cannot decide

joe: earthbender

langa: waterbender

miya: firebender

reki: resident nonbender

shadow: earthbender

#corey rambles:)#i have a lot of feelings #also i am really bored #no i totally didn't spend like a half hour going through texts with grace just to find all the sk8 headcanons i sent her wHAT #i should be doing homework but uhhh instead i am thinking about Them #it's fine everything is fine the day isn't over yet but it will be over soon keep it together twilight keep it together--#anyways this was brought to you by corey = bored #sk8 headcanons #kyan reki with tourette’s #kyan reki #hasegawa langa #higa hiromi #chinen miya #sakurayashiki kaoru #nanjo kojiro #sk8 langa #sk8 reki #sk8shadow #sk8 miya #sk8 cherry #sk8 joe #y'all idk what to do i might just write fanfiction #at least i'm bored in my apt and not in the er hahhahhahhhahahahha wednesday #maybe i'll make some tater tots #oh and i stand by the glee and spn one #i am not wrong #joe had a crush on dean winchester #anyways i'll stop talking to myself in the tags #lol #wait i will also die on scrapbooking shadow hill

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somecunttookmyurl · 3 years

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If It is okay to ask, how to tell when a kid is adhd or just being a kid? Looking back I can see a few signs like constant daydreaming, restlesness fidgeting etc but that wasnt much different from the other kids. As a teenager it became more clear I think because most of girls my age were not behaving like tomboys anymore and the symptoms mentioned above did not go away plus i think I had/have rsd. But only now as an adult i feel like these things are actually getting on the way. I daydream a lot, the restfulness didn't go anywhere, rsd still anoying as fuck (i think this is related with being a people pleaser? I got that too) and i notice more and more this horrible thing you usually call executive dysfunction. I cant really get a diagnosis and while I relate to a lot of symptoms and posts adhd people share, I'm really scared Im just procrastinating and trying to use adhd as an excuse for not getting things done. And I feel really bad about that. So back to my original question, if the signs were there since childhood but did not trouble me until like 4 years ago, how can i tell If It was adhd or Just kid stuff?

i mean the fact it didn't go away is a pretty good tell, honestly.

redmore to save the dash

as an adhd kid you may, with other children

-had difficulty making/keeping friends or socialising and felt "weird" or "different"

-were not invited to parties, made excuses to not go, or acted inapproptiately when there (and were never invited back)

-easily gave in to peer pressure from a desire to "fit in"

-were probably called "gullible"

-found it difficult to "wait your turn" in any activity

-frequently picked last for games and team sports

-found it difficult to "share" things with others

-caused fights/arguments with siblings/other children over trivial things

-may have been called "spiteful" or "vindictive"

-not realised when you were "taking things too far" with joke or play

-tried to annoy people on purpose

_________________________________

as an ADHD child in school you may

-consistently not done school/homework until the last minute. not by choice, but because you could never seem to "just get started on it" until it was immediately pressing

-not known where to start with longer-term projects / never really "got" how to study or revise for exams. could not organise notes.

-made careless mistakes in schoolwork

-had report cards littered with "intelligent but could try harder" "needs to apply themselves" "has potential but lazy" etc

-parents/teachers said you had an "attitude" / you had a tendency to "talk back"

-often seemed to forget things you had already learned until you were reminded of them, or had difficultly linking knowledge together

-doodled a lot in class, and found doing so made it easier to listen

-easily distracted by external stimuli ie things happening outside the classroom window, or a conversation in the next room

________________________________

as an ADHD child at home you may

-had trouble getting up in the mornings (your parents had trouble dragging you up, and you felt groggy/sleepy "just 5 more minutes")

-had issues going to bed. did not seem "tired" at bedtime. stayed up late reading frequently. refused to get ready for bed.

-always been rushed to get ready for things

-being forgetful or "a ditz"

-being called "lazy"

-forgetful with daily activities such as brushing your teeth and would need to be reminded

-found it hard if not impossible to keep your room clean and organised. not "knowing where to start" with it

-walking past things without seeing them. eg my parents would leave my laundry on the stairs to take up and then berate me because "you've walked past it six times today". not really seeing mess in general bc it became "background noise"

-not following through on instructions/not finishing what you were asked to do. like doing half of the dishes

-you were over-sensitive to criticism

-would often lie to get out of obligations, maybe even compulsively (ie you couldn't help it)

-you answer to "why did you do/say x" or "why didnt you do x" was frequently "i don't know" and you genuinely didn't know

-liked to do things the same way every time and got upset if the structure or plan changed

-would become frustrated if your demands were not immediately met. could not "wait until later"

-somebody would ask you to do something and you wouldn't do it for several hours, without realising it had been that long

_________________________________________

as an ADHD child in your leisure time / emotionans you may

-people saying "are you even listening to me?" a lot

-talking excessively, being "a chatterbox"

-despite being a "chatterbox" around familiar people, you were very shy/withdrawn around others. your two modes are "verbal diarrhea" and "mute"

-answering questions before the person even finished asking, interrupting others a lot

-you had a lot of interests but didn't keep up with any of them for very long

-were "emotional" or "overdramatic" ie crying or getting angry easily

-identified as a "perfectionist" and would either hyperfocus on unimportant details, or gave up on new pursuits you were not "immediately good" at

-people said you have a "selective memory" because you can eg name all 151 pokemon in order but not remember to pick up milk on the way home

-your moods seemed to change quickly and drastically

-had difficulty "behaving yourself" in public ie when out shopping

-broke/smashed things when angry

-got injured by doing reckless/stupid things

-complained of "being bored" often

-watched TV or played video games excessively and could lose hours at a time without noticing

#all of this obv in addition to the general #daydreaming/fidgeting/inabiliy to sit still/excess physical energy #you can look up child ADHD rating scales #that would have been completed by a parent or teacher #and look back and score yourself

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fremedon · 3 years

Text

Brickclub 3.4.1, Almost Historic, 3/?

Where do you even start with Combeferre?

(ETA halfway through this post: Anywhere, because trying to reduce this to a linear structure is futile; this wants to be a huge stringboard. No one in the Amis except possibly Courfeyrac is neurotypical, but Combeferre is the biggest “nine footnotes and four parentheticals in every paragraph” ADHD mood.)

I’m going to start by grumbling at Donougher for calling him “quixotic” instead of “chimeric.” “Chimeric”--I’m indebted to @everyonewasabird for the insight--is key to Combeferre’s personality. It doesn’t just mean unusual or fanciful--Hugo is also using it very literally: Combeferre is, philosophically, a chimera; he’s composed of parts that don’t fit together. (In a way that is endemic to the time, as the paragraph earlier this chapter on democratic bonapartism reminded us.)

Combeferre abhors violence; Combeferre believes, with all his heart, that revolutionary change is necessary. He’s never going to reconcile those beliefs; once he comes to believe that revolution cannot be left to happen on its own--or that the violence of tyranny that doing so would permit outweighs the violence of revolution--progress in any direction is always going to contradict one of his deeply held convictions. But stagnation is worse--he can’t pull a Grantaire and just retreat into magical thinking and pretend things will work out.

(I’ve been talking on Discord about Combeferre and Grantaire as shadows or mirrors of each other. Grantaire is set up by his intro as Enjolras’s obverse and opposite, but it’s Combeferre who actually “completes and corrects” him. They are the two characters who voice the strongest objections to revolutionary violence in and of itself; and as much of a mess as Combeferre is at the barricade, I think a Grantaire who actually persuaded himself to pick up a gun would be even more of one.)

Which is not to say he’s unwilling to entertain some magical thinking, even outside the framework of “affirmed nothing, not even miracles; denied nothing, not even ghosts.” While his dreams of railways, anaesthesia, etc., are all things he would have seen, and fairly soon, if he’d lived, I think our distance from the fever-dreams mentioned a little earlier, the ones that didn’t come true, makes his hopes seem more sensible than they should--that section doesn’t come around to the accurate predictions until it’s mentioned the mesmerism of Puységur and Deleuze and the utopian socialism of Fourier and Saint-Simon--utopian both in the senses of “what if we actually fed and housed everyone?” and of “after the revolution the seas will turn to lemonade (really) and Nature will spontaneously evolve an Anti-giraffe and it will be my friend.” Of Enjolras and Combeferre, Enjolras is the hard-headed realist. He’s working for well-defined political goals via extremely prosaic means. (Guns, and a heap of rocks.) Combeferre is the wild-eyed idealist, and he completes and corrects Enjolras by pushing him to wilder idealism.

(As an aside, that inclusion of “the suppression of pain in surgical operations” is so important for understanding Combeferre. He’s a surgeon, or a surgeon-in-training, in a time when surgery is violent to the point of torture. He does understand that some pain and decay cannot be allowed to continue unchecked, even when the alternative is, in the moment, even more painful. He groks the costs of inaction at a fundamental level.)

All of which is to say--while she can fight me over “chimeric,” I do like what Donougher does with “the good must be innocent”:

“Combeferre would have gone down on his knees and joined his hands in prayer that the future might arrive in all its blamelessness and nothing disturb the immense and virtuous development of nations. Good must be innocent, he kept repeating.”

I don’t read that as an statement of fact or belief about the world, but as a fervent wish--and probably one he knows can’t be true in the way he wants it to be. The good should be innocent--but it can’t be, right now, and he’s going to spend the rest of the next two books / his life grappling with that.

#brickclub #lm 3.4.1 #combeferre

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nooowestayandgetcaught · 3 years

Note

ALL 40 BAYBEE!!!!! GIMME SUM ANSWERS

5) Share one of your strengths.

Being,,, prolific?? ?????? ??? ???????????

6) Share one of your weaknesses.

My own mind. No really I'm basically my own worst enemy because I'm too much of a perfectionist and hate myself and mess myself up.

7) Share a snippet from one of your favorite pieces of prose you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

Stars are the many, many eyes left behind of the Old Gods.

Arya heard this before. She's heard that the stars are the last of the Weeping Lady's tears. They are the eternally bleeding wounds of the Great Shepard according to the Dothraki. They are the drops of poison given to Baelor the Beloved as he laid asleep. They are the immortal sparks of R'hallor's breath. Arya believes the stars are nothing. They exist in a chasm of darkness and death, and no-one is meant to understand why.

Evermore (T, Arya Stark & Sansa Stark, Game of Thrones, 1179 words)

I HAD A LOT OF FUN GOING THROUGH WESTOROS MYTHOLOGY AND TALES IN HISTORY TO MAKE THAT PART. AND THEN WRITING OUT ARYA'S THOUGHTS ABOUT THAT.

8) Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

"I liked this shirt, you know," Will complains faintly.

Behind him, one of the car-windows rattle. A badly burned hand emerges from the smoke, clawing helplessly.

"We will find you another," Hannibal tells him, disregarding the murderer's intense, gagging screams.

"That's not the point."

"You're holding on needlessly to the limited value of your material possessions, Will. That's not like you." Hannibal lightly clucks his tongue as if disapproving, approaching him and thumbing down Will's jaw. He's warm and wet, and glorious. He's evolving.

"Says the man who buys Patek Philippe wristwatches," Will retorts softly. "For his own pleasure."

The corner of Hannibal's mouth smirks.

"And what kind of pleasure exists within your mind's eye right now, Will?"

"Ripping out your jugular vein with my teeth," Will murmurs, stroking his lambskin-gloved thumb against Hannibal's neck.

"I would be honored."

The Crescendo Of Dying Screams (M, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter, Hannibal (TV), 908 words)

THIS IS JUST FUN!!! THEY WERE FUN TO WRITE FOR AGAIN AND I HAVE NOT WRITTEN FOR HANNIGRAM IN A WHILE!!

13) What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever come across?

Even if you think it sucks,,,, write it down anyway and then fix it later. The important part is to write and start writing.

14) What’s the worst writing advice you’ve ever come across?

Thankfully,,, I don't think I've come across any yet.

15) If you could choose one of your fics to be filmed, which would you choose?

I would love to see Perambulate (G, Princess Bubblegum/Marceline & Prince Gumball/Marshall Lee, Adventure Time, 1358 words) done in a comic at least because I NEED THESE TWO CANON COUPLES TO MEET AND BE SILLY. CANON WLW AND MLM.

16) If you only could write one pairing for the rest of your life, which pairing would it be?

NOT REALISTIC. I DO NOT FUNCTION LIKE THAT

17) Do you write your story from start to finish, or do you write the scenes out of order?

I start out from beginning to ending but sometimes I gotta skip around to keep it going if I get stuck.

18) Do you use any tools, like worksheets or outlines?

*shrugs*

19) Stephen King once said that his muse is a man who lives in the basement. Do you have a muse?

It's probably a little moth trapped in a jar and beating itself senselessly against the glass, but it kind of enjoys it??

20) Describe your perfect writing conditions.

Wrapped in a blanket, alone in my room with headphones and music blasting, with a large water bottle and a little bit of chocolate.

21) How many times do you usually revise your fic/chapter before posting?

Depends really! Sometimes I'll go through and correct once, and sometimes I will go through like 14 times in one day!

24) Have you ever deleted one of your published fics?

I have! I will upload it again sometime but like,,,,, the person I had made it for in an AO3 fest basically fucked off and me removing it was me going "nah fuck this,,,, it ain't yours anymore!!!"

27) How do you feel about collaborations?

I have done them! I think they're nice! I do not like long term collaboration projects but for a oneshot, yes!

28) Share your favorite fic writers and why you like them so much.

@glove23 - I look up to this fic writer so much! They have been battling depression and anxiety, and the complexities of their ADHD, for such a long time and whenever they post something,,, I get so excited! I'm really proud of them! It's hard enough for me to write on a bad mental health day, and I know the struggle they go through, and it's INCREDIBLE to see what they can do! They have been writing since they were young and it really shows how much they love writing and how hard they work on getting the characterization and dialogue to be spot on! Obsessed with their work! (AO3)

@not-so-mundane-after-all-97 - What a powerhouse! Incredible writing and fantastic handling of how she structures plot! Constantly in awe of the ideas she has and when they are well-executed (and they are all of the time)! If you are a fan of Will/Lyra from HDM, this is the person to go to for quality! I promise! (AO3)

other writers I really like are @spookywitchnerd24, @theschubita, @anxiouss-princess, @asajjvxntress, @kingburu, @rapha-writes

29) If you could write the sequel (or prequel) to any fic out there not written by yourself, which would you choose?

ngl I really wanna do the "they get back from horse riding and Aleksander refuses to leave Alina's side while she's getting healed" sequel to you are too well tangled in my soul by @glove23

31) Do you take liberties with canon or are you very strict about your fic being canon compliant?

Meh. It depends on the thing I'm writing.

32) How do you feel about smut?

I write it all of the time and read it all of the time. I don't think it's a big deal at all. I respect that it's uncomfy for a lot of people

33) How do you feel about crack?

It's fun! And it can be done well! I saw more crack fic being done back in,,,, like the early 00s and now I don't see it as much,,,,, sad

34) What are your thoughts on non-con and dub-con?

You know what,,, I was just discussing the psychology of why noncon fic is so popular on AO3 (and I have written it before and to my surprise IT GETS THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF VIEWS) and,,, I think the key components to answering this question is understanding that 1) AO3 allows noncon fic to exist therefore it's a dumping ground and 2) rape culture is so embedded into US-centric society especially and 3) there's a lot of traumatized people on AO3 and likely creating noncon to process what happened to them and 4) it's a taboo subject and humanity has been drawn to and obsessed with what is taboo since forever,,,, and tbh the taboo is fascinating to me! It does draw me in! I have written for it and I've read it, and I think it's important to ask questions and examine why we do this!

35) Would you ever kill off a canon character?

HELL YEAH. ABSOLUTELY. I HAVE DONE IT BEFORE AND I'LL DO IT AGAIN!! I prefer more "oh my god they're dead--OH! now they're alive! yayyyyy!" over permanent character death

36) Which is your favorite site to post fic?

AO3. AO3 is queen. I'm not gonna badmouth FFN and Wattpad in terms of people who go there because that's your business however FFN and Wattpad are largely restrictive and mainstream corporate owned areas of interest that don't give a single shit about their users.

38) Talk about a review that made your day.

Whenever my writer friends comment on my fic,,, I literally get emotional. Like those are my favorite comments to see :)

39) Do you ever get rude reviews and how do you deal with them?

BE SAD FOR HALF A SECOND AND THEN FIGHT.

#ask #WELL THIS GOT LONG KLFKFFDDF

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fondnesses · 3 years

Text

roscoe’s notebook post

A while back I said I was going to write a post about the way I use notebooks for writing projects. This is the first of several posts about Writing Process I’ve been tossing around in my drafts for a little while as a result of conversations with friends, so bear with me.

I. Love. Notebooks. I genuinely would have to deeply overhaul my whole Process of writing anything on the longer side if I were to go paperless; I find physical paper pretty invaluable when I’m outlining, brainstorming, and researching, and I still probably write ¼-⅓ of all my actual content on paper first. (That proportion used to be a lot higher, but I’ve gotten better at being productive on a computer in recent years, which is great.) I’m a very visual person, so notebooks really help me visualize my ideas, story structure, etc. It’s very helpful to be able to use arrows and diagrams and physically strike things through, and the tactility is really soothing to me. If I show people my notebooks or talk about them, I often get a response like “this is so organized”, which is sort of true, but I have to stress that it’s “organization for a disorganized mind”; I can’t misplace ideas or notes if it all goes into the same physical object, vs. electronic notes, which are much more, like “Did I say that in a voice memo? PM it to myself on Discord? Leave it in a desktop sticky note? Write it directly into the Google Doc? Who knows! It’s lost to time!”. It’s very much an ADHD management strategy.

It helps that I’m a very neophyte stationery hobbyist and appreciate any excuse I have to use my pens, but I also will go off at any opportunity about how helpful I find them for writing projects, which is why I decided to just make a post about it. Right now I mostly use them for (fan and original) fiction projects, but I used a notebook for a very similar purpose when I was working on my undergrad thesis, and I have a slightly different but equally necessary-to-me approach to notebooks I use at work.

My typical structure for a notebook that’s devoted to one project only looks like this:

I always leave the first couple pages blank so I can go back and retroactively index bujo-style. I don’t always actually do the index, because sometimes I get too lazy, but I like having those blank pages there to give me the option. I also usually put epigraphs/inspo quotes on the first page.

After that, there’s often (but not always, I’ll talk about it) a couple pages at the start where I’m frantically jotting down loose brainstorming ideas before they've coagulated into a story structure. Just, like, vomiting into the void.

Stemming out of that, I usually write out about like 5-10 pages of outline-style notes in chronological order, laying out all the main story beats and charting out the story trajectory. This will inevitably get revised and rewritten many times, but I find the process of writing these wide-angle synopses really useful for dislodging ideas, making connections re: thematic threads, etc. from my brain.

I’ll devote a couple pages after that to specific things like "sex scene brainstorming", "random scene ideas/minor details that don't have a clear place in the outline right now but I'll turn to for inspo later" [this is what I refer to as “bits” in one of the later photos], "page where I just outline the Motifs And Themes", "research notes", "to-do list", "stuff to check on a second pass", "things to put in the a/n and AO3 tags", etc.--the specifics vary with the story.

Then, I skip ahead to approx. halfway through the notebook and cordon off the rest of the pages to be “free writing” space, AKA writing of actual content rather than planning, with the expectation there will be no internal organization and I’ll transcribe to laptop as I go. Writing on paper feels less binding than typing something on a computer; it’s like a little secret kept with myself, and it doesn’t need to go anywhere or be seen by anyone if I decide I don’t like it. Setting aside pages in the back half of the notebook means that, as more things come up re: planning, I can go back and add those in the rest of the pages that were intentionally left blank. This is how I avoid (for the most part) having the whole thing be a jumbled mess where there’s no separation between the notes and the actual story writing; I learned this the hard way via the first notebook I’ll show you in a second. I’ve recently gotten really into using Muji sticky note tabs to label any pages/sections of particular import that don't want to have to refer back to in the index and would rather just flip to instantly.

I do use notebooks that aren’t specific to any one project, but those are much less organized and less worth sharing.

Before I look at more recent stuff, here are some selections from my notebook for the project that got me into writing longfic, my Golden Kamuy canon divergence AU (with apologies for the bad photos, my phone’s camera is trash). I worked on this from Sept 2018-July 2019. It was a learning experience in a lot of ways, and notebook utilization was one of those. I’ve always used notebooks for keeping track of writing projects, as I said earlier, but before this it was largely without much organization or structure; just total chaos. Having a physical notebook became really important for this project because it was a sprawling multichapter story with rotating POVs and a lot of historical research. I also learned a lot about what not to do with a notebook, personally, or at least things that don’t work so well (for me). This was a college ruled spiral-bound Decomposition Book, for the record.

By the time I bought a notebook for it I already had a (very basic) plot outline in mind, so I wasn’t doing that very initial ground-zero brainstorming in here; I was copying out of my phone’s notes app, basically, and then going from there.

This is one of the first pages in this notebook; I wanted to visualize the relationship web between the four central characters in the story in terms of how they feel about one another. The two colours correspond to the POV characters (Sugimoto in orange, Ogata in pink), and I used this colour-coding throughout the notebook with highlighters, etc. to keep track of information that was more relevant to one character than the other. Tsurumi and Yuusaku aren’t POV characters, but they’re prominent in the story and their presence impacts the central relationship between Sugimoto and Ogata, and it was helpful to me to map out the emotional ecosystem, as it were.

(There are coffee stains all over this, because I wrote the vast majority of the story in coffee shops because I didn’t want to be around my roommates, lol. This is part of why I never do fiction writing in notebooks that are too nice, I get neurotic about needing to keep them tidy. I can’t use ones that are too shit though, either, so it’s a bit of a narrow window. I’ll talk more about brands and paper quality etc. later.)

As you can see, this is the first page of many I set aside specifically for jotting down different pieces of historical information relevant to my story. It’s about fictional characters who are members of an army division that existed in real life, and both the canon and my fic involve a high level of attention to detail with regards to which divisions were present for which battles, etc., as well as general historical details specific to the Russo-Japanese War setting--what did people eat in the trenches? What did they do to fill time? How did they get through the winter? What did third party observers have to say about the conditions? What were the specs of their weaponry (particularly important because one of the POV characters is a sniper and gun nut)? I did a lot of reading (and watching of antique gun collector Youtube videos... the things I do for love, eh), and it came in handy so many times, because it turns out it’s much easier to write trench warfare slice of life if you have factual details to pull from when you don’t know what to do with a scene! Imagine that!

This is the first of three “grid outlines” I made; this is a way I sometimes like to visualize a story outline all on one page, with the columns representing chapters and the squares within the columns representing sections/scenes within the chapters. As you can see, early on I was hoping to get this done in five or even FOUR chapters (whatmakesyouhaha.mp3), with POV switches happening internally within the chapters. This proved to be unwieldy for many reasons, so I revised the outline:

Here I’d come to terms with the fact this story was going to have a lot more chapters than I’d planned, and I rearranged things so that it would happen in ten, with each chapter belonging to only one POV character. This also needed revising later, and in the end the story looked a bit more like this (though it did in fact end up being twelve chapters, but only because Chapter Ten was like, 12k, and needed to be split in two chunks):

I must have remembered to bring my fineliners to the coffee shop this time, lol, because as you can see it’s properly colour-coded this time. This outline was made when I was already four posted chapters into the fic, which hopefully gives you a sense of the way in which I am sort of a planner and a pantser; I can’t get into a longer project without an outline, but the outline inevitably changes many times throughout writing and I often end up with a finished product that looks pretty different from what I was intending. My creative M.O. as always is Do The Maximum! Amount! Of! Work! Possible!

This is what a “free writing” page looks like, for me. In this notebook I didn’t set aside any specific spaces for free writing so it’s strewn throughout the notebook in a really disorganized way and I was constantly flipping through looking for bits I’d written and forgotten to transcribe, and I decided to be more organized in future as a result of that. If something’s crossed through, that means I transcribed it. As you can see, they’re often small sections, sometimes just a coupled decontextualized sentences. About 3/4 of what I write in a notebook makes it into the story, I’d say; some of it never goes anywhere, and that’s OK. I have less of an issue killing my darlings if they never make it off the paper page.

A very brief, top-down chapter outline, where the goal was not to get too bogged down in details and just to visualize the beats and pin down what they’re trying to accomplish. Chapters for this fic typically ran about 6k, and five or six scenes per chapter was pretty common, so the average scene length was about 1-1.25k words/scene. IDK why I called it storyboarding when I didn’t make drawings. (Margin numbers are to keep track of word count, since I was using a daily word count tracker while writing this.)

This page was, as titled, for keeping track of the various balls in the air when I was about 2/3-3/4 of the way through the story and really feeling the pressure with regards to tying up the various loose ends. This was... a struggle. I hadn’t ever written anything longish (this fic ended up just under 70k) that had an action plot before, let alone a canon divergence scenario where I had to engage with and explain away various canon plot elements so I could maintain the audience’s suspension of disbelief.

Now, I mentioned earlier that I learned various “things not to do” with my notebooks while working on that project. One of those lessons I learned is to be more realistic when assessing how big a project is likely to get, not least because I RAN OUT OF PAGES around the chapter 9-10 mark. In my defense though, that’s because I’d never written anything even half this long! But I know better now, and try not to be in denial. Finishing the notebook early was a way bigger problem than I’d anticipated, and was part of the reason the last few chapters took several grueling months to finish. The issue was that I needed to be able to use a notebook to maintain my workflow--attempting to do it only on a computer was dismal--but it seemed silly to start a notebook of a similar size to the one I’d finished (80pg, approximately B5 dimensions) when there was no way it would need that much space, especially since the reference pages, like the historical notes, didn’t need to be transcribed over. I was also pretty broke at the time and didn’t want to spend money unnecessarily, lol. I tried to get by using a Moleskine Cahier for a month or so because I had one lying around, but it was horrid; it was too small to be used comfortably, it wasn’t spiral-bound so it wouldn’t lay flat, the ghosting is terrible and I hate the way Moleskine paper feels, etc. Eventually I caved and went to Muji and bought a 30ish page A5 with closer to lay-flat binding, and I finished the story in there. I would take a comparative pic for you of the relative notebook sizes and include some of the scene staging diagrams, etc. I put in there, but I can’t find it :(

So I learned that specs really do matter, and it’s okay to be picky if the pickiness is going to make the difference between actually using a notebook or not. Things that are important to me in my notebooks:

Ruling (gotta have ruling, I can suffer through grid but blank or dot is a no-go)

Size (I can’t use anything smaller than at least a medium-large notebook, I find it claustrophobic and get miserly about page space)

Binding (twin ring is my preference because it looks and feels better than a classic spiral but has the same comfort of use with regards to bending the pages back to suit workspace size and laying flat with ease)

Paper quality and colour (I don’t like anything too slippery/smooth or with too much visible ghosting, and I strongly prefer an off-white paper to bleached paper--part of why I don’t use Decomposition Books anymore, the paper is scratchy and it’s too damn bleached!)

Pagecount relative to size of project

Portability (in non-COVID times; anything bigger than a B5 wouldn’t fit in the satchel I used to bring to work at my old job), etc.

But everyone’s taste is different in this respect, and the only way to figure out what works for you is through trial and error, I’m afraid. I also suspect I’m more neurotic and particular about the sensory experience of using a notebook than most people are, but I yam what I yam.

Now to talk about the notebooks for my current projects, where I’ve refined my approach somewhat. I’ve included less photos for these because they’re ongoing WIPs I don’t want to spoil completely, but I’ve tried to include some outline-type stuff to give you an idea.

My big bang fic is in the very ugly twin ring notebook on the right; I got it at a dollar store by my house because I needed something to work in and didn’t want to wait for an online order, but it’s been very serviceable for my needs. The paper isn’t even bad. The bigger notebook (B5) is my Sangcheng fic.

I wanted something with a lot of pages for this, because I knew it was going to be a long story, and for some reason the fact it’s smaller than my usual preference doesn’t bug me (I think it’s an A5?); it just fits this story, somehow. I’m not sure exactly how many sheets are in here but I’d guess about 150.

Because this notebook has upwards of 100 sheets, I made a lot of use of sticky-note tabs to label high-priority pages. The colour coding of these doesn’t mean anything, it was just whichever ones I had at hand at any given moment. These are those tabs from Muji I mentioned, I’m really obsessed with them--the shape makes them so much less obtrusive and more practical than conventional squares/rectangles OR flag shapes, IME.

My big bang story is nonlinear, so, similarly to what I did with colour coding for the two POVs for my GK fic, this story has two main colours corresponding to whether a given section takes place in the “before” or the “after” portions of the timeline, with blue as “after”, yellow as “before”. This is what the most current version of the outline looks like in there:

If you squint, you can see the alphanumeric notes in the top right of each section entry; I gave them each a code like “A3″ or “B5″ corresponding to their position in the story sequence (so, it goes A1, B1, A2, B2, etc., through to B9 and then the epilogue). [Unintentional that this schema overlaps with notebook size labeling and so is kind of confusing in the context of this post.] At first I was just keeping track of the sections via the highlighted titles, but it got confusing because I’d write down “Wedding” or “Yiling” in my notes and then refer to the notes later like “but there are multiple marriages?? and multiple scenes in Yiling??”. Stuff gets struck through with a straight line if it’s been written in a more-or-less complete form and crossed out with a squiggly line if it’s been cut from the outline or made redundant.

As I said earlier, I started out all the initial brainstorming for my Sangcheng fic in its notebook, instead of brainstorming it in someone’s DMs/my notes app/a voice memo/etc. and then transcribing it into the notebook in a somewhat more organized fashion, which is how my stories usually start out. Because of this, the first five-ish pages are basically just stream of consciousness rambling where I was trying to jot down every disconnected thought I had about the story concept. I don’t have photos for that because it’s too spoilerific for later developments in the fic, but I can show you some of the stages the outlines went through, once I was able to corral those initial notes into a story structure:

All the chapters in this fic have their own highlighter colour, so when I started trying to make sense of my initial brainstorm notes I just went through and highlighted stuff in the colour of the chapter it would make the most sense for, and then transcribed things more-or-less in chronological order into the relevant chapter outline. I later ended up rewriting all the chapter outlines AGAIN to refine them and divide them internally by the individual scenes, which makes them a lot more legible and less wall-of-text-y. They look like this now, with about four sheets per chapter:

Because this fic is on the longer side, I have some pages that are just for keeping track of other story elements, like this, where I refer back to whatever the fuck the “themes” are supposed to be whenever I forget what this fic is about:

It’s all about the visionboarding... Anyway, that’s most of what I have to offer, since most of these two notebooks is Forbidden Content.

With regards to brands/supplies, I really like this Kokuyo Campus Wide notebook that I’m writing Sangcheng in, it’s pretty perfect for me. I also like the B5 Muji twin rings, but those only come in 30 sheets, so I wouldn’t use it for anything above a ~20k project. The B5 Maruman Spiral Note 6.5mm ruled/80 sheet is another good one, though I wish it was twin ring instead of spiral. As you can tell, I like Japanese stationery brands because it’s easier to find decent paper quality and minimalist design without shelling out $$ than it is with American/European brands, at least IME. I like Rollbahns too. But honestly, I can usually find pretty serviceable random notebooks that aren’t brand-name from Asian dollar stores; it’s really not something where you need to shell out tons of money.

#notebooks #writing #idk how to tag this!

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this-is-my-main-i-follow-from · 3 years

Text

I already wrote this post, but I’m coming backk up to the top to put a cut bc it’s p long.

my brother is singing falsettos out loud & I’ve already had a stressful day bc I’ve done nothing (lack of structure & lack of productivity gives me really bad anxiety) & he’s either singing out of key & out of time, or it just sounds really bad without the music. He’s the only one who can hear the music bc HeadPhones. & also the falsettos is probably really bad for my mom bc she’s mad that dad left her, esp bc the house is a mess & stressing her out & she needs to go grocery shopping & he used to do that “but now he doesn’t because he stopped loving [her]”, so my bro singing fucking falsettos is really bad. I can’t cook supper bc I don’t have a recipe & the stuff is still frozen & idk what kind of dough I should make & besides the kitchen is a mess & he won’t fucking clean it. I mean it’s also partially my fault bc I’m a lazy adhd mofo, but it’s his job today & my job to cook. I need to get into the kitchen & cook before mom & my OTHER brother get home from shopping but I can’t bc he’s just drawing & singing & the singing is so annoying- I was trying to listen to a thing but I couldn’t fricking hear it bc adhd auditory processing disorders, it didn’t have fucking subtitles or anything & it was not great audio quality & I couldn’t differentiate between the words he was singing, & I couldn’t hear the quiet parts when they overlapped with his singing. I wasn’t going to write all of this I was just going to say that his singing makes me want to cut myself, but apparently there’s a lot more to it. also I don’t want to end up cooking while mom is home bc I don’t have any drawings on my arm & mom is fucking nosy & wants to see my scars so I have to work extra hard at hiding them but even with ppl who arent nosy, like my little bro I don’t like them out, but the longer my older bro sits there fucking yelling out of key, the longer I’m delayed & I won’t be able to cook. By this point, I won’t even be able to cook the meal I was planning on, I have so much shit to do I’ve missed so much & I’m so behind, but I’m so incapable of doing anything like i can’t do chores bc I use the excuse I have homework but I never fucking do my homework so I’m also behind in school & even with the stuff I like like dnd & writing & violin I can’t do, & I skipped online kung fu & I’ve been slacking off under so many excuses but I’m just being lazy & anxious & I also gained so much weight & it makes my body feel so bad & i know this isn’t my body’s happy weight & being fat makes my boobs bigger & I’m fucking trans & I hate them I even tried cutting them off myself & ended up waiting 15 hours to go to the hospital so that I wouldn’t make mom suspicious (& they put me through triage really fast bc apparently I did a lot of dammage- I was planning on giving myself stitches, but my icepack melted & I couldn’t numb my body anymore so they’re lucky I even went to the hospital, it was bad bc I had to walk 20 minutes either way weighted down with a fucking toolbox & I waited outside in the cold bc my phone died & thus:) mom found out anyways so I lied to her about going to buy drugs bc obv /that’s/ a better idea than telling her I went to the hospital & SHUT UP UNNAMED OLDER BROTHER ok he’s between songs now. If I told mom I went to the hospital she would ask why & be like “y didn’t u tell me” & “r u cutting urself again” & like yeah bitch I have been for a while ik the social worker said I should tell you a codeword, but I don’t do that bc u blame yourself or cry or want to talk about & I yes I fucking cut myself what of it? Yeah I tried fucking removing my own left breast, bc u arent’ supportive of medical transitioning, at least not when they’re ur kids. Ur mad at dad bc he got a tattoo bc it’s body modification & thus uncatholic, but u’ll support ur catholic university friends gettin gtheir eldest daughter a reduction bc her boobs are big & painful- bitch what’s so different about me? I went so far as to try giving myself a reduction, you say you’re concerned about me mutilating my body & making bad decisions, but, you know what? because of this I have legitimately mutilated my body, & made a dangerous & bad decision. isn’t autosurgery proof that I need top surgery bc it’s a danger to my life if I don’t get it? The government is able to pay for it I think & bc it’s a danger to my health (& i get pain & I can’t work out & I get back pain & my skin pulls & hurts & if I jump my tissues yank my skin & it hurts & it puts so much strain on my back, & binding gives me pain, so I need a reduction as much as your catholic university friends’ daughter does) I should be abe to qualify. Even if I don’t qualify yet & have to wait two years, at least that would be the start of two years now instead of in a long time, I mean, mum, you say you want me to talk about it & you’re afraid I’m rushing into it? guess what? They are too! the healthcare system will make me do a bunch of shit to qualify, & tbh, I think that they are better qualified to talk to me about surgery & what I really want than you. Fucking finally, I hope my brother is done his play & finally shuts up. TA MA DE FUCK NO HE’S STARTING AGAIN CROWS DAMN IT CROWS CROWS CROWS & MAGGOTS I”m not even gonna be able to make anythiung for supper & i have no ideas besides the long one which I don’t have time for anymore. fine. whatever. I’ll go SH in my room. I won’t even work on fanfic bc I’m too fucking adhd & broken. I fucking hate it when ppl say “we;re all a bit adhd” like no bitch shut the fuck up, we all struggle with the things adhd ppl struggle with sometimes, but adhd is a neurological condition that makes those struggles so commonplace & intense that it affects our everyday lives. & no. adhd does not mean we’re more creative. Even if we do have more likeliihood of coming up with funky ideas, most of us struggle to articulate them or understand them, or we forget them as soon as they come. you’re not adhd bc you’re a little more creative, youre just an ableist asshole & fuck you. adhd isn’t creativity its’ a fucking disability. I’m directing this at those fucking parents who have the lovely nd daughter who gave me a hug, but you two are motherfuckers. Yeah I get thaat adhd, once you learn how to mannage it, can be useful, & I understand that part of the reason this disability is so hard is bc society isn’t designed for it (like a lefty using right hand scissors), but ot’s still fuxking REAL & if you can’t deal with it yet, it 100% is a disanbility. OK? Ok. I had smth I was going to say earlier, but I got distracted by smth else that made me mad, so I never got around to it. Youo know what I love? I fucking love how tumblr has next to no character limit so I can just type as much as I want. You know what I don’t like? I’ll probably get deactivated by some SJW maggot-eaten crow-fucker who thinks that my rant& mentioning my failed ed & my self harm (oh fuck shut up, my brother is chanting “dumb”) so anyways some fucking sjw fuck-hole will report this post & my blog & I’ll be deactivated for simply getting angry on tumblr. It’s fucking tumblr! You used to be able to say whatever you needed to say! But now, esp us ppl w EDs, have no safe place to talk about our issues (at least, not w/o fear of gettin gterminated for “encouraging” EDs, when we’re just trying to help ourselves). Anywasy, sorry for all the swears & go se, I swear when I’m mad. I’m gonna go do smth, idk what. Can’t be anything productive, Can’t even be unproductive stuff I like, like watching youtubem, or smth cathartic like playing fiddle. I might just go & bleed a bit & ignore everything for a while. I nkow that the world will still be stressful when I get back, & I’ll still have to cook, & I’ll still be behind in school, & mom will still be broken-hearted over dad, but I’m feeling calmer just thinking about it so that’s what I’ll do.

#dom personal #vent #various triggers

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the-adhd-society · 3 years

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Hey, I need some advice if you’ve got the time.

My parents are heavily against adhd meds (they want me to do like meditation and stuff) but nothings working. I’m a complete mess at school. I’m riddled with lack of focus and memory problems. My parents are “willing to talk to someone” but I really think that meds might be more helpful or at least worth a shot.

On top of that, I might being getting a job soon. It’s at a video game store I love and I’m really into games, so that’s exciting. Seeing as we know the owners pretty well, it’s highly likely that I’ll get the job. I want this, really badly, but I’m scared that adhd is going to come hit me like a truck.

I turned fourteen two weeks ago.

Many advice on holding retail jobs with adhd and asking for meds?

(I’m also autistic if that changes anything)

Thanks!

Apparently my draft didn't save. That's annoying. Good thing is wrote out my response..

So my answers really depend on why your parents are against the medication. From my experience parents usually are against meds for two ish main reasons..

1) they are uneducated and or are afraid of the stigma: they are afraid of the side effects or the idea that you will be dependent on it for life. Yadda yadda.

In this case i suggest looking up articles on adhd medication and the benefits and common misconceptions that parents have. At 14 you are past the age for major risks ( that i know of...i'm not a doctor) there are TONS of adhd parent groups and resources that you can direct them to so they can see how others have navigated this before.

I would say something along the lines of " hey parental units (mom dad whom ever). I know that we talked about medication before and I heard your concerns so I did some of my own research can I share with you what I found or send you the links ?

The other "camp" or mentality that parents often have is. "It's not really a problem" (denial).

They might say that you are exaggerating, just not trying hard enough, looking for excuses and just aren't trying.

With this one, it's really difficult but it might help to work with them. Or let them think you are working with them. Talk about where you are struggling, talk about the plans that you make to keep organized and where you need help. Talk to them about the best way that they can support you. Showing them that you are "trying" might help them to see that you need more help. Also showing them how much effort and thought you are putting In might help as well.

This could sound like " hey parental, I am trying to meditate like you mentioned. But I can't seems to keep my mind in one place while practicing what do i do ? "

Or " hey I am really struggling with getting all of my assignments done on time. This is what i tried in the past and this is what i am doing now, can you help me find a better way to be successful ? "

You can also just be really upfront and say " i am really struggling with ay and z, i have tried abc but it has not helped. I'm getting really stressed and worried that my grades are going to drop. It is upsetting because i will spend five hours trying to get one assignment done but i seem to get off track. I want to be successful and i know i am capable but i just can't get it all done"

Now i want to say straight up in some cultures and in some households, this type of conversation might be a lot. You might want to look for ppl with adhd from a similar background to see what they did. ( I'm very white and have had many conversations with people about how in their families this is taboo.) .

anyways. I also wanted to let you know that this entire situation is ableism. Just an fyi the fact that you can't get the medical treatment that you need.

I think it is important to talk about medication as a tool to be successful. It's not a cure all and it does have it's draw backs ( price, side effects etc). So don't get your hopes up if you try one drug and it doesn't work well on the first try

The person they are going to talk to do you know how they feel about medication ? Perhaps try and have a conversation with that person beforehand you can say something like. " i know my parents are looking to talk to you about medication, it's something that is really important to me, do you have 5-10 mims where we can talk about it so i can give you my perspective ?"

Obviously you probably might need to ask your parents for permission but just a suggestion. ( if it is someone from school i say go ahead and do it but idk who they are going to talk to).

Moving on to memory things:

I think you need to look at specifically what is the issue that you are having. Are you spending too much time on one assignment so you can't get others done ? Do you forget what is due when ? Do you not leave enough time to do the work so you are stuck cramming ?

Different issues call for different plans. I'd also talk to your case manager or disability person at your school. If you are in the u.s. you should have an IEP or a 504.

With online learning(and in general) you can ask for accommodations such as reducing the work load ( instead of answering 10 questions and writing 4 paragraphs, you do five questions amd two paragraphs)

You can ask for extended time for homework or to not get points off if it is late. There are many different things you can do. The point with homework and assignments is to show comprehension and mastery. If you are able to do that then the other requirements aren't as important. But that is something you amd your parents need to advocate for. And if theu are against bring up that it is just during thr pandemic.

This is what i did organization wise when i was on college.

I went through each of my classes and wrote down in my planner the home work for the entire semester (you might only be able to do it a week at a time) of when they were due ( in pencil).

I wrote down all of then due dates and reminders the week before they were due for larger projects. Then i had a very large desk calendar that i wrote all of my papers and tests on.

Before i would leave class i would write down in pen the homework for next time. (Again second time)

When i would go home i would wrote those assignments on a post it note so i knew what needed to be done for the day(third time). At NO POINT did i ever rely on my memory. I set up clear expectations of what i was going to work one for that day.

find what works for you. Maybe you need a small white board to write down your assignments for the day or week. Maybe you need to write it on a post it note before the end of class. You might need a mix of google calender and post it notes Figure out what works best for and then create a structure around it.

I also used a time app called productivity timer that can help with time blindness and i used another app to lock me out of apps.

In terms of retail. I have no idea friend. Lol.

Let me know if this helps and i would love if any younger people have suggestions.. Or parents. Or literally anyone.

#long post #ask #anon #medication

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arrivalation · 3 years

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2020: An Account

This year has been a nonstop, off-the-rails bullet train ride into what looked at first like chaos, but ultimately was a tearing down and reconstruction of my entire being. Because I know myself and I know I won’t remember much of this later, I’m recording it here. It’s hard to put some of this information out, but the universe regularly urges me to be more open. So here I go.

January

I got married.

It was, without contest, the absolute best day of my life. I’ve known since I was real little that I wanted to be married, that I wanted to be loved the way M loves me and to love someone just as much. I don’t know how to explain the feeling of having achieved that, and being able to share that with my entire circle. @abyssalsun made it down!! (my only regret is that @ladyoriza couldn’t make it, but I’m still so glad we got to make it to theirs). As often as I can, I revisit the memory of going to @chromecutie’s house afterward, thinking it’d just be the four of us there, and opening the door to find a whole impromptu surprise party happening. Everyone cheered for us when we came in. I played CAH with Mordred, my brother and his wife, and several friends from out of town. By all accounts, these people would never have been in the same room together, but they were, and it was transcendent. It’s been almost a year, and I still haven’t recovered from all the planning and stress; but now that I’m past it, I can say with relief that it was 100% worth it.

February

We bought a house.

Up until this point, I’d been planning a wedding, participating in house-buying stuff as best I could, interviewing for a job I ended up not taking, and dealing with life-long mental illness that was festering and reaching critical mass. But then stuff started wrapping up. The wedding happened. The house was ours. We moved in. I could finally fucking breathe. LMAO bitch you thought.

March

The pandemic reached us.

I guess by this point it had probably already been in the US for a couple months, idr. But it wasn’t until March that things really started happening. People started dying in droves. New cases spread like wildfire. I remember thinking that this would be the zombie apocalypse, because at this point, I don’t think the CDC knew much about the virus. In my anxious mind, that was a completely reasonable assumption. My boss had us all start working from home. We all thought it’d be just a couple weeks.

April

I settled into working from home.

It didn’t take me long to get used to it, maybe a week. I hadn’t yet gotten used to my new hour-long commute from the new house to work, and so working from home quickly became my new normal. But I didn’t know yet why working from home was so good for me. All I knew was that I now had the brain-space to process things. I had the energy to do yoga and cook and do hobbies, and the time to appreciate and care for the home I lived in. I could think more clearly because there was no one else around to distract me. There was sunlight I could bask in. I felt human for once, and that became vitally important and infinitely valuable to me. Despite that, I still struggled with extreme anxiety, panic attacks, and some of the worst depression I’ve suffered through since I was a teenager. Outside my house, everything was a fucking mess and no one had their shit together.

May

I went back to the office for a few weeks.

There was a lull in pandemic activity. My boss had us all start coming back to the office again. At this point, I couldn’t make heads or tails of reality anymore. Everything was changing, nothing was stable. I desperately needed to stay working from home, because that was the one thing that felt Good and Right, but I had no real argument other than, 'I just need to.' So imagine me, at this point a soggy, run-over sloppy joe, attempting to return to normal. As you might think, it was... bad. I cried and hurt all the time. I think I really freaked out my boss with the way I reacted to coming back to the office. But then the second wave hit, and we all went back to working from home again.

June

Uncle Mike died on the first day of the month.

My uncle had been sick for a while, but no one was expecting him to die so suddenly. None of us were ready for it.

I also died that day.

It might sound dramatic, but I mean it quite literally and honestly. Over the years, I had gained suspicion that I was on the autism spectrum. M graciously found me a psychiatrist that took my insurance (and happened to be right next door). I wasn’t even going in for that - I was seeking treatment for my anxiety and depression. But I had amassed a (very long) list of my symptoms, and I brought it with me and read it to my doctor. I wasn’t even a quarter of the way through the list when he stopped me. I’m paraphrasing here, but in effect, he said, “No, yeah, you’re definitely autistic.”

I remember the way my body felt. Like someone had detonated a bundle of TNT in my chest, and I was burning from the inside out. At the time, I didn’t realize this emotional immolation was purposeful and executed by the universe to get rid of this old structure and build a newer, better, stronger one. For about fifteen seconds after he said that, I was relieved that it had been that easy, that there was an explanation for everything that my ADHD didn’t explain. It made a ton of sense why my environment was so important to me. And then I felt something unnameable. It was obvious to my doctor that I was autistic. Had it been obvious to everyone else? Why hadn’t it been obvious to me? I read the rest of my symptoms to him in a daze. I don’t remember how the rest of the appointment went.

And then I burned quietly and ungracefully until I was a pile of ashes. I didn’t know this at the time, but apparently it’s common for newly-diagnosed autistic people to have such dramatic and painful reactions, especially if they weren’t well-informed on the condition. Which I wasn’t.

I started therapy.

I also started learning about my “flavor” of autism. It was arduous, embarrassing, isolating, and ugly. I became aware that I had been masking my whole life, and I was astounded by just how often I did so. What really crushed me was knowing that I’d always have to mask to protect myself. I also became hyper-aware of the things that made me Feel Bad. Inexplicably, I stopped being able to react to those things the way I used to. Previously, if something made a loud and unexpected sound, I would suppress my reaction, because it’s not cool to get mad about it. But I found I couldn’t do that anymore. I had no choice but to react the way I needed to react. I realize now that this was to make me aware of what things make me feel a certain way so I can either avoid them or learn better tools to deal with them.

The therapist I saw wasn’t specialized in autism, and she wasn’t any help in that area, but she did teach me some important things. Like, “Is it reasonable for me to feel ____?”

July

Black hole.

I don’t remember a whole lot from this month, except sifting my own ashes through my fingers and crying. Every day brought a new revelation, a new thing that clicked. All of it was helpful and very painful. My psychiatrist recommended medication, but I’d had a bad and long-lasting experience with medication as a teenager, so I suffered through the pain on my own.

I shouldn’t have. I got so low I didn’t want to be alive anymore. But I think it took reaching the bottom and feeling that much pain for me to get over my fear of pharmaceuticals.

I got into astrology.

I had been interested in it for most of my life, but it wasn’t until this point that I started studying it in depth. I discovered it was a language that I could use to translate so many things about my own life that I didn’t understand. It was a rulebook in a time when I desperately needed rules - but one just flexible enough that it taught me how to stop thinking in binary.

August

I got medicated.

There was a big adjustment period, of course. It didn’t cure me. But it did start to make things easier. And it helped to know that, even if I didn’t believe it at the time, I deserved to rest. I deserved not to feel so much emotional pain all the time.

I turned 30.

It was easily the second best day of my life. I learned a lot of important things, like that it’s important to be present, that I’m seen and loved (just the way I am!!), and that I deserve good things. M planned a whole day of surprises:

I woke up at my leisure and we had coffee on the couch. He got me a cute card with one of our inside jokes inside - I still have it.

We went to our favorite combination lunch place and bakery, which I believe was our first real outing since the pandemic started.

We stopped by a tattoo place. I almost got a tattoo.

He set me loose in Texas Art Supply.

We got dim sum for dinner.

We had a lovely virtual cocktail hour with @chromecutie.

He bought me an ipad!!

I became Spiritual™.

I had been agnostic for the past decade or so, slowly and subtly slipping into nihilism, without realizing how detrimental those ideas were to me. I’m not sure what I thought spirituality was before, but I wasn’t into it. I had always rolled my eyes at people who talked about “a higher power”, auras, and spirit guides, until I became that person.

My psychiatrist introduced some powerful ideas to me, ones that meshed well with my previously-existing idea of how the universe worked. I won’t get into details here. That’s a whole other post. Ask me though - I’d love to talk about it.

Anyway, I started (intermittently) meditating. I learned some exceptionally powerful stuff. I felt my scaffolding being erected.

September

I started learning who I am and why I am this way.

I started seeing a new therapist. She thinks like me. She follows my erratic, forking trains of thought. She sees me and offers real, actionable feedback and solutions. Working with her, I’ve gained the ability to see my life from a 30,000-foot view. I can see now why I’ve felt so lonely my whole life. I understand how my family’s dysfunction has shaped me. I know now that I have the opposite of a victim complex - by default, I believe I am so awful that I feel sorry for everyone who has to deal with me. Because that’s what I was taught to believe. Learning that I deserve to take up space, set boundaries, say no, and be wrong sometimes is still a hard lesson for me. But most days, I believe it now. It takes other people believing it and convincing me. I still need that reassurance often.

My parents sold my childhood home.

Mentally, emotionally, I still lived there. I was still the inverted victim, still beholden to my stepdad’s whims and my mom’s complete cognitive dissonance. This was a blinking neon sign from the universe that it was time to move out. My mom told me when the closing date was so I’d have time to drive down and look at the house one last time. I didn’t go, and I still don’t regret it.

I started learning my boundaries.

After my spiritual move-out, I learned I don’t have to jump when my stepdad holds out the little circus hoop. When he otherwise shows zero interest in my life but still baits me with passive-aggressive texts, I don’t have to answer!! What a concept! I don’t have to feel guilty for not talking to my mom more than I do. We have very little in common, and I still have a lot of things to work through regarding her.

I learned how not to be so reactive.

Or rather, I’m still learning. Something else I learned in therapy is that over the course of my life, I’ve developed a desperate need to defend myself and to justify every action or thought I have, even to myself. It’d been especially troubling at work. My RSD led me to felt stupid, incompetent, and unseen daily; if my boss complimented someone, I believed it also meant he thought I was stupid and bad and wrong, otherwise he would have complimented me too. If my boss said something that even remotely sounded like I’d done something wrong, I’d race to build an impenetrable defense: “This is the reason I did that. Here’s my line of thinking. Do you understand? Can you please understand?”

Now I know that so little of what everything everyone says or does at work is about me. I can appreciate a coworker’s accomplishment and also realize it doesn’t take away anything from me. I’m not stupid or incompetent, and I’m a valuable part of the team. A lot of times, my boss and I are on two different wavelengths - that’s because I think a lot faster, which can be frustrating for him sometimes. He doesn’t fully understand me, but that doesn’t mean I’m doing anything wrong.

October

I let go of an old friend.

This was especially hard, because I had known this person for years. We’d gone through a lot together, and we’d shared some really important and emotional story plots and characters. I had agonized over whether I was truly important to her or not. It didn’t matter how much I loved her as a friend, or how badly I wanted us to be close again and remain close. I had learned to read the universe’s signs, and it was clear it was time to move on.

November

The election happened.

I was expecting things to turn out badly, but I still hoped for something good. And then something good did happen. I cried watching Harris’ speech. I felt a tenuous hope that things might finally start looking up, societally. I still haven’t really let myself fully embrace that hope, but every time I see a court shoot down another lawsuit, or hear about trump’s own conservative republican supporters tell him, “Okay, buddy, it’s time to step down,” I feel a little better.

M and I went non-monogamous.

There’s so much I want to say about this, but it’s for another post. Suffice it to say that like every other experience this year, it has been unexpectedly challenging and ultimately a catalyst for priceless growth. I’m unfathomably grateful that we’re doing this together, for the things we’ve learned so far, and for how much closer this experience has made us, even when I didn’t think we could get any closer.

Turns out I’m not gray-ace.

I had identified as such for a couple years, which was why we wanted to try non-monogamy in the first place. On the surface, it perfectly explained my sexual personality. But every time I told someone my identity, I felt inexplicably sad. When I read about others having “normal” sex drives and “normal” relations with their spouses, I felt jealous.

Turns out I’m just traumatized, lol. Walking along this non-mono path has unearthed a lot of things, including this gem.

December

This was our first married christmas in our new house.

One of the handful of good things the pandemic has done for me was allowing me to back up my boundaries with hard evidence. It’s been difficult dealing with my stepdad bullying me about not coming over for thanksgiving, and having my mom subtly guilt me into making plans for next year already. But what I needed this year was a quiet holiday, instead of the usual weeks-long chaos, and I got it. And it was fucking delightful. I’ve dreamed of days exactly like that one - spending a tranquil morning with my spouse, sipping coffee and listening to music and eating treats. Deciding exactly how we want our holidays to be, because we deserve to.

I’m scared of what’s to come in the new year. I’m still an anxious mess, and some days I’m not strong enough to pull myself out of the spirals I throw myself into. I’ve gotten used to the pandemic holding my hand, allowing me to shelter in my home, helping me enforce my boundaries, teaching me who I am. When it’s over, I don’t know what will happen or how I’ll react or what I’ll learn next. I’m not finished rebuilding, but I don’t think that’s the point. I’ll never be fully rebuilt. But at least I’m figuring out the new layout.

#personal #void-Avatar

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academiadaisies · 3 years

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my struggles with studying

I don’t expect a lot of people to read this, and I’ll probably end up embarrassed to have typed this all up and posted it by tomorrow, but I think it’s important for me to get this out and away from myself.

I appreciate anyone who reads this, and welcome completely anyone who is/has been in a similar situation to me and wants to talk about it or has some tips. I don’t have a lot of people to talk to about it, I definitely feel like anyone I’m close to will not be a lot of help, and I don’t want to be a mental burden, with them knowing my problem, wanting to help, but not knowing what to do, and blah blah blah... Just know, anyone is completely welcome to reach out to me. I know a lot of people say that online, but I’m just a little cancer moon, cancer rising ;). I’ve got ears and struggles too. Sometimes things are difficult. :)) <3

School has always been my demise. I was basically a corpse just going class to class, making little contribution and writing down what the powerpoint said. I would zone out - not realising at all, come back to myself and suddenly the whole class was doing work, and I would have to swallow my pride, interrupt the person next to me and ask what we were supposed to do.

But my nights were wasted too. I guess I was never really taught to study, and everything I had tried for myself never seemed to work. But I didn’t try often. I remember coming home and turning on my computer to watch the next episodes of my show of the week, my mind in a dull and empty buzz, and next thing I knew it was midnight.

Growing up there was no schedule or routine. No one was really checking I had done my homework, no one checking I was showered or that I had brushed hair. There were no rules either. No specific screen time, no food rules, no bedtime. I know why, my mum was a very hard worker, having a daughter, a job, and university, and I am so grateful for her. She was busy. But it just meant I never knew much discipline. There was no structure, but I wasn’t forgotten. There was no food in the house, but there was money, and I - having no sense of diet - would spend more than was good for me on junk; a six pack of crisps a day, frozen pizza... and today that has never ended, it’s something of an addiction now. The lack of restraint and discipline is apparent everywhere in my life.

In school is where it is at it’s absolute worst. It’s not even an issue of my intelligence. The absolute last thing I want to come across as is conceited, but I did better than I deserved my first two years of high school exams having never studied for them, except maybe a bit of rereading and desperate attempts to memorise the night before. I passed everything, bar one, and sometimes with A’s.

But last year was inarguably my worst year ever, and it has bled into this year too. My attendance was below 50%, I came in maybe two or three days a week, sometimes only finally getting the motivation to show up in the afternoon, and even then I would hide away in pupil support classes, still not doing any work. My mum phoning me and screaming down the line as soon as she got the absent text. Me not knowing how to explain that I just couldn’t physically force myself to get up and ready. I started with 5 subjects and finished with 2, both of which I initially failed, but those grades were redacted because people argued the SQA were not grading fairly, basing grades on location instead of merit, and so I scraped by with two C’s. I absolutely would not have passed if not for the pandemic.

This year is hard to tell where I would be in a normal situation. I like to believe it was going to be so much better. The idea of leaving high school and entering college*. It was a fresh start. I was supposed to get my work done the day it was handed out, I was supposed to be more extroverted, and become a leader like I always wanted. But, of course, it’s all online. I think a major benefit of it is I don’t have much excuse not to be in class anymore. I can (and usually do) wake up minutes before the class starts, and do it all from bed, so if I was left to my own devices to get myself there and back, I’d bet my attendance has skyrocketed from what I it would have been. Though, my college is quite far, and I think my mum seeing to that I was on a bus, or even not in the house when she has to leave, would have been enough to ensure I was there too. If it was in person I would have no where to hide too. I wouldn’t get to have my camera off and play games during classes and not take notes, the lecturers would see. I’d have to take notes and I don’t usually do that. I wish I had. But then that just begs the question of would it be a repeat of high school? Would I be a corpse that goes through college classes blankly instead of high school ones? I really don’t know what to think. But today my college work is suffering. I have seven vital pieces of work long overdue, and I think the weight of all of them on my brain stops me from doing even one.

*If you’re not familiar with the system here, college is basically a stage after high school but below university in Scotland, that not everybody goes to. I’m not sure the school systems everywhere in the world but it’s not the equivalent of sixth form college in England, or what’s called college in the US, which would be university here. I’m sorry if this sounds dumb because there’s probably this everywhere in the world but I just want to clarify what stage I’m at exactly. I’m taking a HNC which is kind of the equivalent of first year university.

And so it leads me to believe I have ADD/ADHD. I really am not about to self diagnose. Although it might be enough for some, I often worry I’m a bit of a paranoid person, and that I like to jump to the most “extreme” conclusions, but I don’t think my livelihood makes it totally unlikely.

I find myself devoting my time and what motivation I have to things that just don’t matter. I’ve memorised maps of the US, Europe, Scotland and Ireland. I took up interests in religion and astrology, buying crystals as if they were coming to save me like all the TikToks say. I’ve taught myself bits of piano, British Sign Language, chess, Teeline shorthand and Morse code, just to give up. I even made it to 100 days on Duolingo learning Scottish Gaelic before I stopped that too. Engrossed in wide varieties of things that I’d love to be great at, abandoning it because I’ve decided I’m bored.

But the worst waste of my time is always spent on my phone. I am a huge advocate for downtime, not every single second has to be productive. But it’s never good to have a 12 hour daily screen time average.

I can never concentrate either. I can’t force myself to. As I write this I have an essay due I’ve had for a month, and I’m going to have to do it all tomorrow. I don’t understand why I can’t physically force myself to get it done. I always think, “why am I on TikTok when I have an essay due?” And I never really have a reason. Even my driving instructor told me to get tested because, especially nearing the end of the lessons, my attention starts to waver, and I find her having to change gears for me sometimes, and warning me to stop looking at whatever might pass by.

I have a little list of priorities in my mind too. I keep reminding myself that I have this essay and this assignment to do, but I also have ideas of starting a blog or reading a book. The school work is first in the list of priorities, I know it needs to be done first and so I take it to the extreme and can’t seem to do anything meaningful at all until it’s gone. Of course, it never is gone, I never do it, and I find myself scrolling social medias all day, a perfectly anodyne time waster. No substance and no thoughts.

But I’m a perfectionist too, with very little confidence. I can tell part of me puts it off because it needs to be as good as it possibly can be, and another part tells me I’ll start it later, I’ll feel better about it later. I have big ideas, that if only I could force myself to do, would be great, but the idea of it not being good enough only puts me off. I’d not do the work until it’s at the point where the excuse is “it’s only bad because I didn’t give myself enough time to do it,” because of the fear of the possibility “it’s bad because I’m bad at it.”

Part of my inability to really do anything I think also had to do with depression. ADD/ADHD makes my life chaos. My room is a mess, there is no organisation or structure in my day, there is no motivation to fix it, no understanding of how to fix it. I’m a very intuitive person, because I have to be. Any decision I make is unknown to me until it’s happening really. I can’t plan when I’m starting work, sometimes I just have to hope I get the motivation to open my laptop. I think depression feeds off the ADD/ADHD symptoms. My room is messy because I can’t be organised, then my mindset worsens because I have such a terrible, unlivable space with no motivation to do anything about it, and it just stays that way. I can’t concentrate long enough to do work, then my mindset worsens because it means I have work overdue, that will have bad consequences, people disappointed in me, and etc, etc. I’m sorry, I don’t think I’m articulating myself well here. I’m intuitive in decisions but I’m also an overthinker. Or maybe just more of a worrier. I don’t do the work and so, every time my phone pings I jump and check cautiously because I fear it’s my lecturer messaging me that I’m off the course. The depression really took a terrible toll on my life. I won’t get too into it but I can hardly talk to friends, find the motivation to shower, or even go outside. All I find myself doing is lying in bed staring at a screen. I don’t know what else I can really do about it.

And the worst part is, in my mind, I have myself convinced that it’s not even that bad. That it’ll be okay tomorrow, I’ll change tomorrow, as if I’m not long past the point of this just being a little off day.

But one thing I do I know is a symptom of ADD/ADHD, which consumes my whole mind, is my hyperfixation. I won’t go too deep but basically for just over a year it’s been an honestly unsubstantial book I read. Loved by many, but nothing special, in comparison. I’ve only read it maybe twice all the way through but it never leaves my mind. I relish in any and all fan works, stalking the ao3 works, refreshing the tumblr tag. I can just stand and jump and pace, while listening to one song on repeat, thinking about the characters in all kinds of scenarios for hours on end. I can imagine the main character as me in everything I do; as I pick up a book from my bookshelf, as I walk my dog, as I lay down at night. I constantly compare myself to him too, feeling bad that I’m not as similar or good. I hate it. I don’t know if I even like the book anymore, I don’t think it’s possible to tell, I’m just obsessed with it.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about it really. The NHS don’t diagnose ADHD in adults, and I’m only 18. I’ve been this way my whole life but no one ever paid much attention to it. When I told my mum I think I have depression, she laughed at me, then got really angry, saying I’m not depressed just lazy, before buying me flowers and telling me she was worried I was going to hurt myself. Now I feel like I can’t speak about anything serious like this rationally because she looks for every reason that there is no problem, and if there is it’s the worst possible case, and “oh I’ve been a terrible mum.”

I don’t understand my problem. I have big dreams and goals for my life, I know what I am doing now will never get me anywhere but still that knowledge is not enough to get me to do what I need to. I’ve even written this post over eight days, for all the distractions and lack of motivation I’ve had to finish it. It’s a never ending cycle, but I really hope having this out there now will spark something in me. I’m sure this will make someone feel better about their situation now too, and that’s totally okay! If it can help someone, right? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I’m sorry I probably brought up a lot of completely irrelevant stuff, and went into tangents at times, but I just wanted to stress how it all plays into each other. They’re all connected, which brings a lack of motivation and discipline to my life and my work. I just want to let it all go.

Again, I really don’t think many people will read this but anyone is completely welcome to message. If anyone has some tips for people who can just never concentrate, or also anyone who is in social sciencey type courses (psychology, sociology, politics esp) and has some tips for doing that too I’d be so grateful. :) <3 (also this is a repost because I tried posting last night but it wouldn’t go to the tag, hope it works this time)

#studyblr #study #studying #student

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adhdstudybitch · 5 years

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Practical Tips for ADHD College Students

I know a few posts like this already exist, but I wanted to add my own experiences to the mix in case it would be helpful to someone else. Some of these will look familiar, some not so much.

Disclaimers: 1) What works for me may not work for you, take everything with a grain of salt and experiment, 2) These are what I’m using for a 4-year school but I imagine it would be applicable for any college? I wish I’d known to do some of these things when I was at CC, 3) I won’t pretend that I am an ADHD success story, not yet. I’m still finding my way, learning to cope, learning to thrive. It’s a process.

NOTE: This post is kinda long; if it’s too long I recommend just reading the bolded/italicized headings and only reading the ones that pique your interest :)

Sensory Issues:

Wear comfortable clothing: Screw the mentality that you always have to look your best in college. At the end of the day, feeling hot but ridiculously uncomfortable will trigger sensory issues (especially if you’re someone who is sensitive to certain materials/styles of clothing) and it will impact concentration and can cause a lot of distress. Are you comfortable in those sweatpants, pajama bottoms, baggy shirts? Cool, wear them.

Stim toys: Love yourself, buy (or make!) stim toys and bring them to school. Can’t speak for CC because I didn’t use stim toys when I went, but at my 4-year school everyone is too busy drowning in deadlines to notice you squishing thinking putty or using a fidget cube under the table.

Try different stim toys: I used to get caught up on trying to make the more popular stim toys work for me when they didn’t, so I had to experiment a bit to see what worked. It’s not always as simple as cubes, spinners, squishy toys, etc. If you have issues with texture you’ll want to really experiment, especially with things like putty, squishibles, etc. to see what is comfortable and what isn’t. But there’s a big ol’ market out there!

Headphones/Earplugs: The single most helpful sensory detail for me was always bringing my headphones to campus. I get easily overstimulated in uncontrolled situations with lots of different sounds. I make sure my volume is enough to block the noise out, but the songs I choose in these instances are usually familiar, so they don’t provide too much new stimulation when I can’t handle it. I also keep earplugs in my backpack for exams.

Studying/School Related:

If possible, leave your house: This has been one of the hardest changes I’ve had to make because I’m an introvert and genuinely prefer being home. But I’m starting to learn that my ass will not do work 9/10 times when I’m home. Too much to do, too many other things to get done, lots of fun distractions, and cats! So many cats! Unfortunately cats won’t take my exams. I’ve found that the library is okay, but for me small cafes worked much better. Armed with my headphones, some coffee, and an atmosphere that caters to silently getting work done, I’m able to focus longer, and to focus on what I really need to.

Note-taker: Admittedly I’m talking out of my ass on this one, because I haven’t yet done this. But that’s exactly why I want to stress getting a note-taker. My college life would be infinitely better if I’d done this when the semester started; instead, my notes have gaps where I couldn’t concentrate, or couldn’t process what was being discussed, etc.

Other accommodations: Accommodations for ADHD differ depending on the college, but some of the common ones are: note-takers, silent exam spaces, assignment extensions, and use of tech such as recorders, speech-to-text software... If you’re like I was and are worried that you’re asking too much asking for accommodations, remember two important things: 1) Accommodations exist to level the playing field, not to give us an edge, and 2) YOU PAY FOR THIS SERVICES. That huge, overwhelming tuition bill with all those “extra fees”? You’re paying for these services already, might as well take advantage of them!

Talk to your professors: This part is truly terrifying for me, but I’ve started opening up this semester to my professors and it has made a difference. The professor for my hardest class actually has a son with adhd so she understood and was even able to provide me with some resources that would help. At the very least, it made my professors aware of my struggles and aware that I wasn’t just being lazy, which calmed my RSD a bit.

Organization: Staying organized is important for any college student, but especially for those with adhd. We lose things a lot, and if things aren’t in obvious, constant places it becomes so much easier to lose or forget where we put things. That being said, your ‘organized’ will probably not be other peoples ‘organized’. For example, I use my Ipsy bags for organization. One holds any writing utensils, flashcards, and post-its, another holds anything medical-related, etc. It seems a bit cluttered and disorganized to other people but it works for me. So try keeping things in the same spot if possible, but remember that finding what organizational structures work for you might take time and effort. If your school has success coaching, I highly recommend it for this purpose! Which brings me to the next point.

Success Coaching: Most colleges offer some kind of program like this, though names may differ. Success Coaching is designed for students of any academic level in order to help them get and stay on track. My college offers study skills, schedule planning, test prep, time management, help navigating campus resources, and a whole host of others. And the people doing the coaching are usually grad students who’ve been through the process. They’re typically trained in working with students with adhd, because that tends to be a significant portion of their students. They’re also just really nice to talk to. Almost like a therapist, but not quite.

Really forgetful? The best thing you can do is change your environment, not try to change yourself. You probably won’t be able to stop your brain from forgetting your notebook at home, but you can get a five subject and keep it in your backpack at all times. Same with folders. Keep losing pens/pencils? Just get a fuckton and shove them in a pouch in your backpack in the beginning of the semester. I’m not kidding when I say I have at least 20 pens and pencils in mine, not including the glitter pens and highlighters.

Planners: Many people have said that it will take time to find just the right planner for you, and they’re correct. The planner I use right now is 8x11 with wide boxes. Some prefer smaller planners, others will use planner apps or just the calendar in their phone. You’ll have to mess around a bit to see what works for you, but you do have options!

Printables: Oh man I love printables so much, but a lot of the time I find that they’re more trouble maintaining than my adhd can handle. You can find a ton on tumblr, free to download and print, and some very beautiful packs for sale on etsy. Right now I use a monthly budget printable and one for studying terms/definitions. Sometimes the adhd mind needs something pretty and different to cling to, so I try to switch things up every so often.

Color-coding: This absolutely will not work for everyone (I’ve seen people say color-coding notes gets the hung up on the coding and not the notes, and I can definitely see that happening). For me, I use color-coding in my planner. Each class gets its own color. This keeps me from seeing a page covered in the same color of ink or pencil and mentally blocking it out. Gelly roll has the most amazing glitter pens!

Test prep: Will vary depending on the person and how they learn best, but for me I’ve found that no one method will work on its own. I have class notes, typed notes, hand-written flashcards, flashcards on quizlet. I won’t pretend that it’s easy; it’s fuck-all time consuming and sometimes I don’t have energy for it, but depending on the class I usually need a combination of at least two different methods to work. This is definitely something success coaching can work with you to figure out!

General Life Advice (that will impact college):

Get on a sleep schedule: I don’t even care what your particular schedule is (because it’ll vary person to person) but just get on one. Much easier said than done, because our brains never want to shut up at night, but lack of a consistent sleep schedule will mess with your concentration, focus, hypersensitivity, etc.

I’ll just do this later...: is the adhd monster talking. What even is later? Does it exist? Sometimes I have to tell myself “nope, we’re doing this right now!” Doesn’t always work, but I try my hardest to do things in the moment if executive dysfunction isn’t at my door.

Develop a support system: This can be difficult because sometimes making and maintaining friendships with adhd can be hard, and sometimes family members aren’t very receptive or supportive. But a strong support system can make all the difference in the world! If your current friends don’t understand the extent of what you’re dealing with, send some resources their way and you might be surprised how fast they get in your corner. But sometimes people without adhd just don’t get it. If your college has a meet-up for students with adhd like mine does, this is a great place to meet like-minded students who understand what you’re going through and can provide support and advice!

I’m going to stop this here because it’s already too long, but I hope this is helpful to someone and I’d love it if you could add your own tips as well!

#adhd #actually adhd #studying with adhd #adhd tips

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