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As someone recently diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, one thing that’s been helping me grapple with the intense shame I have over all my “wasted potential” is accepting that potential doesn’t exist and never did.

This sounds so harsh, but please bare with me.

I procrastinated a lot growing up. I still procrastinate today, but less so. And yet, I got good grades. I could write an A+ paper that “knocked [my professor]’s socks off” in the hour before class and print it with sweat running down my face.

I was so used to hearing from teachers and family that if I just didn’t procrastinate and worked all the time, I could do anything! I had all this potential I wasn’t living up to!

And that’s true, as far as it goes, but that’s like saying if Usain Bolt just kept going he could be the fastest marathon runner in the world. Why does he stop at the end of the race??

If ANYONE could make their top speed/most productive setting the one they used all the time, anyone could do anything. But you can’t. Your top speed is not a speed you’re able to sustain.

Now, I’ve found that I do need to work on not procrastinating. Not because the product is better, even, but because it’s better for my mental health and physical health to not have a full, sweating, panicked breakdown over every task even if the task itself turns out excellently. It’s a shitty way to live! You feel bad ALL the time! And I don’t deserve to live like that anymore.

So all of this to say, I’m not wasting a ton of potential. I don’t have an ocean of productivity and accomplishments inside of me that I could easily, effortlessly access if I just sat down 8 hours a day and worked. There’s no fucking way. That’s not real. It’s an illusion. It’s fine not to live up to an illusion.

And if you have ADHD, I mean this from the bottom of my heart: you do not have limitless potential confounded by your laziness. You have the good potential of a good person, and you can access it with practice and work, but do not accept the story that you are choosing not to be all that you are or can be. You are just a human person.

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Go My Rottweiler Go

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i don't think bodily autonomy for minors should be a luck of the draw type thing where you have to cross your fingers that your parents are chill about it.

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Chicago

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This is an interesting thing. Looks like testimonies of people who left the MAGA movement- how they got into it and why.

Leaving a cult is really hard, so I really respect the people who are speaking from this place.

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The bird app has a lot of garbage but this thread really tickled me this morning:

Bonus:

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AI industry groups are urging an appeals court to block what they say is the largest copyright class action ever certified. They’ve warned that a single lawsuit raised by three authors over Anthropic’s AI training now threatens to “financially ruin” the entire AI industry if up to 7 million claimants end up joining the litigation and forcing a settlement.

well…darn

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Hi Diane,

As a teenager, the Young Wizards series influenced a lot of the way that I see the world, and I think Dair and the Speech in general are a large part of why I'm a software engineer (I might have named my first MacBook after Spot...).

I do like the idea that wizards start out being able to brute force their way through problems, but over time end up developing finesse to do more with waning power. I do also love that consent is a key part of magic (like "Magic does not dwell in the unwilling heart"). However, having fibromyalgia, I do wonder how that would affect being a Wizard. I'd imagine that there would be points where a wizard would be Out of Action for a flare, possibly having to ask to go on hiatus. I would hope that would not be seen as having an unwilling heart. I also know that there are days that I'm too fatigued to code or that brain fog catches up to me, or that I have to make sure up pace myself and not over exert.

I'm curious for your thoughts.

It wouldn't be seen as having "an unwilling heart" at all.

If the body gets unwilling, though—temporarily or chronically—it's understood that the wizard will need time to deal with it. Here and there this comes up in one or the other of the Errantryverse series, and has been dealt with explicitly. (As one example: in one or another of the Feline Wizards books, it comes up that feline wizards in heat are routinely expected to go off duty until they're sorted.)

So, briefly: relax, it's not a problem.

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now THIS is jewish culture

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are you ever about to put on a movie but you realize you don't really want to watch The Movie, you want to be eight years old on a rainy saturday, and under your favorite butterfly blanket, and mom made hot chocolate and popcorn with extra butter, and you're watching The Movie for the first time ever? what are you supposed to do then

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True freedom will not be a possibility until everyone understands that all oppression is interconnected, and none of us can be free until we are all free.

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my dad's wildlife photography would do numbers on here

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Kitty getting a massage

(via)

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My daughter has decided that our cat has to pick her cereal for her in the morning now. Why?? "He knows what I like"