probablefutures

[probablefutures]

[probablefutures]

Not to go "if you have ADHD just go for a run" or anything, but I am so serious if you have ADHD you should regularly go outside, no headphones no phone no nothing and just stand and observe for a while until you've had enough. Not until you get bored, until you've had enough. Drink your coffee without watching tiktok. Have a bath without music. Turn down the volume in your headphones. I cannot overstate how much learning to be bored is cruicial with ADHD. Life is not just about pleasure, no matter what your dysregulated dopamine system thinks, and when you teach your brain to be okay with being bored, then boring tasks stop feeling like torture. By letting yourself be bored you are yoinking your system out of the high/low binary and allow for the highs to feel like actual highs and not just anything that isn't low. I am so serious go literally touch grass. Listen to the sounds in your flat. Stimulate your body the way it was designed. It lowers anxiety and makes you feel like you're real and best of all it's completely free

[probablefutures]

This is WILD new Brennan lore.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by perfect person (@perfectpersonpod)

[probablefutures]

Something about the pacing and editing of this bit when he just kept saying 3 really scratched my brain

[probablefutures]

So Your Temperate Home is Suddenly an Arctic Hellscape

As -10F hits area’s of the US who’ve never seen such temperatures in living memory, I wanted to give some tips from a Minnesotan who’s lived with these temps as a part of my life for 37 years.

1) Don’t Get Cocky. People used to these temps may laugh at our southern neighbors freaking out about the cold because yes, some parts of the US get such temps regularly every year. These people are being ignorant assholes. Our houses are mandated to have insulation that few of your homes will have. We pretty much all have huge puffy coats, and have well established winter weather gear drives for homeless and poor folks every year. We have expensive, well equipped infrastructure for cope with these temps and with large amounts of snow. You don’t. When it comes down to it, Minnesotans know to respect the cold temps- it’s just that a lot of the ways that do it are so commonplace as to be invisible to those who already have these habits.

2) Don’t go out wet. Dry your hair or stay inside. You will loose a lot of heat if you’re wet. Same for sweat, and wet diapers. And clothes with snow on them are now WET CLOTHES. Change into dry clothes as soon as possible.

3) If you have a shitty car battery or a car that sometimes struggles to start, then try not to use it. You’re unlikely to get the kind of temps where it’s impossible to start an engine (I’ve only experienced those temps a few times. Once my eyelashes froze shut and I almost froze to death in my own back yard. Don’t be like young me. Respect the cold.) If your car doesn’t start, you could be stranded somewhere, and realistically your area’s emergency services may be pretty overrun. 

4) Very cold air doesn’t hold moisture well. Plan for extra hydration for people, pets, and plants. Even if your staying in- most home heaters pull cold air from outside, then dry it out even MORE in the process of heating it. Dehydration is a thing. Even if your home’s heater has a humidifier attached to it (if you’re not sure, then it probably doesn’t.) it’s a good idea to drink extra water. Right now I have a few pots of water just left out by heaters to evaporate as much as possible. My mom used to just heat huge camping pots on the stove all day in cold temps. Remember, dry nasal passages really muck up your bodies ability to fight airborne illness. This is not a great time for that.

5) Help out homeless folks in your area in any way you can. These temps can and do kill. And since we have more evictions than any society can conscionably defend this year, we have high numbers of homeless people. Which means area supports for unhoused folks are often underfunded and over-taxed. 

6) Let your faucets drip. I know nobody likes to waste water but if your pipes freeze they will literally explode. Your home will flood. My mother’s kitchen got completely destroyed and it traumatized my childhood dog. Justa  bit of moving warm water will safeguard you from that.

7) Do. Not. Burn. Propane. Indoors. 

8) Plan for potential power outages. Ice on the lines can cause this and again, your infrastructure isn’t prepped for this. Unplug anything in your home you’re not using to do your part to help prevent rolling blackouts.

9) Driving on ice is a SKILL. Your roads may be filled with people who do not have that skill. Please please, stay off the roads if you can- even if you have this skill these roads will not be prepped and will, again, be full of people who don’t know how to do this because it just hasn’t come up that much in their life.

Stay safe and stay kind, folks! 

[probablefutures]

chilchuck short kings anthem fancam bc i had to

[probablefutures]

~This is what it feels like to draw~

Probably my last major piece for 2024! The wonderful encouragement from everyone made my heart feel like this too.

[probablefutures]

Dec 4: Remember that time we learned Clark Kent totally peeked at all his Christmas presents with his X-Ray vision? (Justice League, “Comfort and Joy”)

[probablefutures]

Karaoke Night's "To-Do List" is back - and it's animated by Melina Caron and Rebecca Snowden! Please enjoy Zac Reino, Ross Bryant, and Rashawn Scott's improvised Supremes original (but animated), now on Dropout!

[probablefutures]

my biology professor has such a chaotic energy about him, last week i went to his office hours and somehow we ended up on the topic of gay marriage:

he said that when he lived in texas they changed the law to define marriage as “between a man and a woman in a house of religious worship with the intention to have children” so he filed his taxes as single and when they called him up like “you filed married last year” he was like “you changed the law, i was married by a judge in a courthouse and i have no intention of having kids” and they told him “you know who that law was for” and i guess he hung up on them and did not, in fact, pay taxes as a married man that year

[probablefutures]

"Passing curiosity", a Good Omens very silly comic.

I regret nothing.

[probablefutures]

[probablefutures]

Hello! I was wondering if you have any advice for healing your relationship to art after severe burnout?

I used to do animation for school and it killed art making for me for a while. In the few years since I've been able to rest and get into other low stakes hobbies that I really enjoy (embroidery, doodling TTRPG characters, etc), but have been getting the itch for animatics again. I've started a few and worked on them on and off, but cant seem to get very far before I feel myself getting stressed about them in the way I would for old projects. Which is really frustrating! I want to draw my silly music videos without Looming Dread.

I want to do better than forcing myself to work through it, but so far that's led to me eventually abandoning projects, which doesn't make me feel great either :/ I know you've talked about recovering from burnout, so I was wondering if you had any advice!

I hope you're doing well :)

this is a little hard to answer since my burnout recovery has been sort of tied into my therapy journey with Other Issues bUT, generally,

do your best to release the idea of returning to your previous output level. I used to sit and draw for hours at a time without resting (see: while dissociating/on an adrenaline high). that's not tenable. this also ties into the dead horse I beat all the time about not relying on your creations for self-esteem, but that's a Me Thing lol

("deep breaths" is standby advice for a reason--the body and the brain affect each other. when you're stressed, oxygen flow to your brain decreases, so you can manually signal relaxation by increasing oxygen flow. also, if you work at a tablet, it can help to really work on finding a more ergonomic way to sit. I had my screen almost vertical and sat up ramrod straight, which involved SO MUCH muscle tension. on which note:)

practice mindfulness. work to calmly, compassionately accept the bad feelings. I have this pet theory that my mind and body knew they couldn't trust me to take care of them when I sat down at my tablet, and so they just started screaming at me point blank as a defensive tactic. so, imagine the part of you that feels and has needs as a little kid--you need to show it you're worth trusting, that you can make a promise to take care of them and keep it. this means starting small, so that it doesn't feel like it's taking a big risk. such as:

every other week, take a little time in the morning on "work days" to do a little on a project. and I mean a LITTLE, like 5-15 minutes (pomofocus.io has helped me on this front). then you take a break and see how you feel. if you feel Done, then you're done for the day. you don't push even one millimeter over your limit--no "I should be able to do more". "should" means nothing in this scenario. then on alternate weeks, no art. do your other hobbies, get outside, touch grass, be around people. show your body things are different now.

the looming dread may be a burgeoning panic attack. that's what I eventually figured out--I was like, why do I feel like I'm going to die after drawing for fifteen minutes? oh, wait. so, look into panic attack coping methods and ways to self-soothe, figure out what works for you, and have a routine prepared.

again, there's no point going "this shouldn't affect me this way, I shouldn't need to coddle myself like this"--this is where we're at, and you need to be ready to be so incredibly gentle with yourself. you need to be ready to have a lie-down with a plush animal and a tv show for a couple hours after Drawing Time, and to keep doing that for the foreseeable future.

and finally, lean into your privacy. I suggest avoiding your tablet outside your Official Drawing Time, but keep a sketchbook around if you don't already, and make art in there ONLY when YOU want to. be picky about what you put on the internet. keep things for yourself. intentionally make art that's Ugly and Weird and Unpopular. experiment. journal. make it a sketchbook you'd feel uncomfortable showing to a stranger lmao

basically, there are two practices here: showing yourself you can work on projects without ignoring your needs, and re-establishing a practice of personal art on the side. those things might look slightly different depending on how you make work art/personal art and what your other issues are, but hopefully this helps.

WAIT, P.S. ABANDONING PROJECTS IS GOOD SOMETIMES. learn to recognize when you actually want to make something and when you just think it would be cool if it existed, they are not the same thing unfortunately. take those instincts seriously. if it sucks hit da bricks

[probablefutures]

I do want to say I am proud of what the T did in 2024. Also in march when I said I was cautiously optimistic on the news, I was definitely right.

[probablefutures]

so basically changing the way you think is like a constant flow of quick-time events in a video game, and you're teaching yourself to press a different button than usual on the world's most complex controller: your brain. sometimes you're gonna miss it, you're gonna struggle to find the right button, you're gonna rage quit. but if you keep with it, eventually you'll learn the new reflex. and what can we use to slow down the quicktime event? mindfulness. journaling. tipp skills. just like video games.

[probablefutures]