Someone in an autism facebook group I’m in just asked “How am I supposed to earn enough to make a living without burning out?”
Someone replied: “You’re not. Even neurotypicals can’t right now in the system designed for them. We’re the canaries in the coalmine. When we start failing, they know something is wrong.”
People keep saying, “Oh, everyone thinks they’re neurodivergent now!” or they’ll say it’s the foods or chemicals or whatever other nonsense they’ve fallen for, but to me the answer is so obvious?
We’ve gotten to a point that more and more people are being left behind by the system, making it so that neurodivergent parents who could get by fine *enough* in decades/centuries past are bringing children into a world that cannot and will not attempt to accommodate them. There’s nothing in the water and people aren’t faking, it’s just that this is no longer sustainable or livable and of course people with disabilities will be hit first and hit the hardest. There aren’t more people with it, it’s just harder to go through life without being aware that you’re not functioning the way your peers seem to be able to.
One trap that All the Time Daydreamers, Sometimes Writers, fall into is this idea that writing is transcribing the daydream.
It’s not. The daydream is a fuzzy thing. There are gaps that you don’t need to fill in a daydream, because you already get the emotional point. A lot of it is emotion. And because it makes you feel like a complete story would, your brain is tricked into thinking that’s what you have.
Then you sit down to actually write the thing and you realize you’re trying to write a Space Opera without actually inventing any planets or space ships. You don’t even know if the characters start out on the same planet. If they’re on a planet at all. You didn’t bother to check.
Now you will vaguely reference this in first-second person in any writing guide you make up for the rest of time.
When you write, you’re building something. It’s not a pale imitation of what you have in your head- what you have in your head can’t exist on the outside. This is a whole new beast. It’s going to ultimately look different and this is a good thing.
Also the internal critic is dumb.
I’m not even trying to be nice to your writing specifically here. The internal critic is looking for a completed story and you don’t have one yet. So anything it has to say flat out does not apply.
This is so relatable that I’ve considered making this post many times.
The idea in your head is wonderful because it gives you all the emotions and ideas without pesky things like concrete details and logic getting in the way. Trying to write it down forces you to decide those things, which makes it a different story from the one that exists as a pure cloud of imagination. Story ideas can have multiple conflicting ideas happen at once–you just know the general gist and it doesn’t matter what order things happen in or which exact words are said. When you write it down, that cloud of possibilities collapses into a single reality–if Character says this line first, that means they can’t say it later; if they say Funny Line A, they can’t also say Funny Line B at that same spot in the conversation; if they go left that means they can’t also go right at that moment. Infinite possibility becomes reality, and those choice can be hard. And that’s not even getting into the fact that the moment you try to nail down a concrete timeline, issues like, “No one would react this way” or “That actually makes no sense” or “What is the mystery they’re trying to solve?” pop up and wreck the beautiful little thing in your imagination.
Any act of writing is an act of translation. You’re adapting it into a new medium. Which makes it not the thing in your head, but which does make it something you can share with your sadly non-telepathic audience. If you can figure out how to write it.
I’ve lived with depression so long–basically my entire life, as I can remember it–that it’s almost kind of funny, a background character. I can tell I’m getting worse when being handed a bowl of ice cream doesn’t make me happier; I can tell I’m getting better when I can let my mind wander and not end up back at my personal list of people I would kill given the chance. (I mean, it’s not a SHORT list.) I often don’t notice when I’m getting better or worse unless I consciously think about the symptoms of depression:
SIGECAPS
Sleep (too much or not enough)
Interest (loss of, in things you usually enjoy)
Guilt
Energy (loss of)
Concentration (loss of)
Appetite (change in)
Psychomotor symptoms (moving really slowly or being really jittery)
Suicidality
And some weeks it’s obvious, I’m thinking about killing myself all the time; and some weeks it’s not obvious, I just feel guilty at the time and can’t tell why; sometimes whole months are bad, and sometimes I get a reprieve even though the weather sucks, and sometimes I can’t concentrate because of the depression and sometime it’s because I had too much coffee, and sometimes I have too much coffee because of the depression. Sometimes I lose energy because I drank last night and sometimes I’m not hungry because I want to die. It all weaves together, and I’m never 100% normal, 100% not depressed, but being on meds means my average is a lot better. I’m somebody who just needs to be on meds, probably permanently. Life is better now than it used to be, both on the outside (better job, better hours, stable relationship) and on the inside (fewer thoughts of harming myself).
There’s always change in life–depression likes to lie and say it’s always been like this and it always will be, featureless and gray, a bleak pit you can’t climb out of. But depression is a liar. Next week won’t be the same as today.
I have a scar on the back of my hand from a dog bite. I looked at it a couple of weeks after it happened, when it was still pink and new, and thought, well, there’s concrete proof that change happens whether I intend for it to or not. And now it’s a thin, silvery white line, and it’s still proof. I hope that dog is okay; I hope he got adopted. We didn’t adopt him, because of the bite, but he wasn’t a bad dog, just nervous and worried about strangers. I’m nervous and worried about strangers. But life is better now. I think it’s going to keep getting better. I know it’s going to keep changing.
i always find it weird when people describe children as worry free because most of my childhood memories are of me worrying
ALT
Also: school. However bad are things right now, at least I don’t have to go there anymore. No more fear because the classes, yay! No more fear because other students, yay! Things are bad, I have depression and I feel terrible … but at least this hell is over.
This is an experiment to see if there really are as few of us as people think.You can also use this to freak out your followers who think you’re 25 or something. Yay!
When most people “roll their eyes”, they flick their eyes directly upward, usually as far as they comfortably go, then resume looking normally.
When someone who learned the phrase before the behavior does it, they usually go in a circular (ish) motion. Since most eye movements are lines, it’s usually pretty triangular: the key points are usually a diagonal up one way, then to the far other side, then to a diagonal low the first way. Thus, the eyes basically make a loop, so they “rolled”.
I’ve found that when people who learned the up-down way first try the circular motion, they might risk motion sickness, so experiment carefully.
I sat with a crying second grader today. (The age range is outside my wheelhouse but I was the most convenient adult.) He was crying, the other adults said, because his brother took a phone he was playing on. “Phone addicted,” everybody said. “If he would get up and play games with the other kids he wouldn’t be crying.”
He told me everyone lets his brother take things from him because his brother is younger, and doesn’t know better. He told me he doesn’t want to play because he’s tired, he has too many extracurriculars this summer and can’t get good sleep because “everyone in my camper is so loud when I’m trying to sleep.” He’s exhausted and only eight. His mom’s an acquaintance and told me she and the kid’s father are going through a separation — mom and four kids left the house to stay in a camper.
But people will seriously not listen to kids crying over seemingly minor things because on the surface it looks like a tantrum. If kids are given the space to articulate themselves they often will.
I’ve found that if a child is capable of having a conversation (that is, old enough to speak and express themselves, not injured or upset so badly that they literally cannot stop crying, and not behaving violently), then 90% of the time their reason for being upset is legitimate, or at least understandable.
Please remember that this also applies to teenagers and preteens, they might be acting like a knowitall who doesn’t give a shit, or a first class jerk, but chances are fair they feel like shit for one reason or another and adults just chalk it up to teenage angst instead
i know we’ve been saying this about every new shitty update but i feel like removing reblog chains could really be the thing to kill this site. like that is literally the main thing that makes tumblr unique
truly the only reason you still see tumblr posts reposted constantly on other sites which claim tumblr to be “dead” is because of our unique form of collaborative posting. also you would not only be taking away what makes the site unique but also the main form of socialization between the users which yknow. some could say is the basis for your whole fucking social media website
why’d this get 100 notes in an hour on a wednesday morning damn 😭 we’re real fucking annoyed about this huh
I love to use my disability “as an excuse.” Fuck yeah my disability is an excuse. It’s the most valid excuse I have. I’m not helping you lift that box/etc because my disability would make it fucking painful. Not wanting to be in pain is a good enough reason. I’m not going to put myself in pain to comfort your sensibilities.
Yes I’m using my disability as an excuse because I refuse to hurt myself for you. If you’re mad about it you can cry! ❤️
Happy disability pride month.
In honor of my chronic pain flareup that I could’ve avoided by asking my wife for help here’s your reminder to say no to stuff when it is safe to do so!!Ask for help!!
This month practice saying “I can’t do that. It would hurt me.” or “can I have help with (x)?” Start with a friend or family member who you feel comfortable asserting your boundaries with and keep saying no.
ALT
