#//the pokedex app is inaturalist to me

[lovenpeace-pkmn]

Huh, the Pokédex app is kind of cool. It really is very clever to crowdsource all that data on Pokémon distribution, especially now that you can submit photos of sightings instead of just data from caught Pokémon.

You guys...probably already knew that, though...

[kafus]

if you want to look at what birds are in your area for birdwatching, try using Merlin BirdID and eBird. Both apps are from Cornell's bird center and are like irl pokedex for birbs. inaturalist and its companion app Seek are also useful for animal/plant/fungi ID. enjoy your irl pokedexes.

📝 📝 i think this was sent to me when i was asking for pain distractions and i forgot to answer but i remember now and i’m taking notes. posting in case anyone else wants these resources too

[the2amrevolution]

If you have gotten stuck in a bubble that only consists of your home and work or school or even just your home because of your anxiety, you can forget that there are positive things outside of that bubble. Every aspect of being in public takes practice - driving, taking public transit, generally knowing your away around town, going places on your own, appointments, everything. It doesn't matter how old you are, if you haven't done something much or at all before it can be intimating, and it can feel embarrassing or shameful to admit that you are new to something. The more you avoid those things, the easier it is for your brain to come up with more reasons to avoid it, and the anxiety and avoidance will get worse and worse. You may have a hard time convincing your brain that going out can provide more serotonin or dopamine than it uses up, and you may not have enough small positive experiences of doing things on your own to convince yourself that it's worth it.

If that's the case, then you need to find a way to supplement those endorphins while you gain practice at living until it's no longer quite so intimidating.

You could try geocaching. You could get an iNaturalist account and try to find things to log and ID. You could paint rocks and leave them places for others to find and trade out ones you find in public spaces with your own. There's often local facebook groups or instagram hashtags for those sorts of things. You can redownload Pokemon Go and look for new places to suggest for stops or gyms, discover local art you didn't know about by exploring stops, or just spend some time sitting in you car at a local park and enjoying the scenery and watching some birds in a pond. Just going out or going on a walk (especially if you are disabled) may not provide enough dopamine to reinforce the behavior, but maybe catching a new shiny or adding to your pokedex will. Stop for boba or an italian ice or an iced coffee or whatever little treat interests your taste buds first (go somewhere that has an app and use mobile order pick up if ordering at a menu board is an anxiety trigger) and then have it at the park or in your car while you listen to some music and enjoy the breeze and the sunset.

You basically provide yourself with positive reinforcement and train yourself to be more confident through practice. When the app goes down for your tasty treat stop, you now know the menu or at least what you like well enough that you can go in or through the drive through and place your order. You know that doctor's office is near that park that had the community garden you logged pollinators in iNaturalist at, so you aren't adding the mental load of navigating to a brand new place on top of the load of going to a new doctor. You have more practice driving or taking public transit so you don't feel intimidated just by the process of going out, so now you can go shop for some new clothes to make sure they fit you rather than ordering and hoping and having to return things. You can go to the grocery store where you may discover a new product or flavor of something that you would have never known about if you just stuck to your recurring delivery of staple items. You actually see the kids with a lemonade stand or peruse the local craft fair that you never would have gotten to experience if you weren't in the rec center parking lot for a pokemon raid. Maybe you spot a flyer for a class that interests you and now you have the confidence to at least write your name on the information request sheet or ask at the desk how you sign up for classes there.

If you have ADHD (like me and my brother, who is stuck in his bubble) it can be very easy to unconsciously engage in unhealthy anxious-avoidant behaviors, which just build on themselves until you realize that you haven't left your house in a year or that you almost or do have a panic attack because you feel like everyone is judging you for everything you do from how you park to how long you take to look at cereals (just fyi, if you are in the lines and not in the road, no one cares about if you are crooked, and there's like 100 different cereals, it's okay to look, just don't block the aisle and apologize if you accidentally do, it's all fine).

ADHD brains are so desperate for dopamine that they will basically try to erase any task or activity or experience that causes a dopamine deficit from your active memory. You can recall them when prompted, but without outside stimulus they do not enter our stream of consciousness. If there isn't an immediate reward either in the form of an addition of a positive stimulus (endless scrolling of tumblr hahas) or removal of a negative stimulus (ugh I stink it's time to shower) then thinking about a thing we need to or even want to do and then actually doing it often just doesn't happen or it happens last minute under fear of consequences or late.

The tumblr chuckles and pretty kpop men and video games and whatever various media tickles your fancy can be enough to keep you alive when you feel like there's not much point. None of those things are guaranteed to stay things that you enjoy or that you have access to or that you can ethically continue to support though. Websites get bought by egotistical man-children, musicians retire or disband, game series end or go through studio turmoil and nearly a decade passes while waiting on real news of the next installment, authors turn out to be horrible bigots, or, maybe, your interest just wanes. Having diverse interests definitely helps stave off an identity crisis when one thing ends or disappoints, but if you mentally limit yourself to only the things you can do or experience from home because of fear, you are cutting yourself off from so much of the truly wonderful things in the world. It's hard and it take conscious effort, but things being hard or taking effort don't make them not worth doing even if the ADHD hamsters think thats exactly what it means.

Gamers this has been on my mind for a while, and I've been Going Through It so I can't thoughtfully articulate it yet but: the little things can, and absolutely will, save you.

[casual-wizardry]

There's a great app that my biology teacher showed me called Seek, that identifies pretty much any living organism just by pointing your camera at it, and it gives you the first paragraph or so from its Wikipedia page. It's a little slow at identification sometimes, but I really like it. There are challenges every month (this month's was finding 10 different species of flowering plant), and you can also go back and do previous challenges if you're so inclined. It also keeps track of things that you've found and when you first found them like a pokedex, which I really like. There's also a partner app called iNaturalist (neither of these are limited to Apple devices), that has something to do with citizen science, and helping to get research level pictures of things, I think? I haven't actually used it, so I couldn't say for certain. I'm only recommending this because I actually really like it, and it's helped incentivise me to get outside more recently.

Go look at birds and bugs outside btw. It can save your life