#as an autistic person when my focus is broken by an ad i want to Scream | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

shades4dogs · 4 years ago

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i had a SUPER tiring day i mite talk abut later but RIGHT NOW i wanna talk about the make it sweet! album for Um Jammer Lammy because i listtened to than a couple days ago, and just today i showed it 2 my little brother, and i wanted to write down what i thought about the tracks!!

youtube

i wrote down my personal thoughts on each track and gave it a rating out of 5 Dashies (-= It’s because i’m autistic plain and simple

if you read all of this you’re officially a legend

[1/2) Let’s Jam Together!/KEEP YOUR HEAD UP!!] - waow!!!

I LOVE THIS SONG <3 i really liked this song when i heard it in the credits and was wondering what its name was, it was nice to hear it in the album as the very first track!!

i love the additional dialogue at the start, the “Hey, do you play the guitar? Let’s jam together!” really represents the ragtaginess of the band just kind of throwing themselves together to make music so naturally... like little jigsaw pieces... it makes me want to know exactly how they interacted before the formation of MilkCan, how long they’d known each other/how they had known each other, or if they met right as they made the band.

the playful and funny lyrics of this song are really great, and i like the way it trails off in the middle. like the song was just Katy Kat truly venting off her frustrations and heartbreak about someone she used to like.

i wonder who exactly Katy Kat is talking about here in this song... well anyways she’s got lammy now so all’s well (-=

the second portion’s lyrics sound a little dopey and off-key, but i think it reflects katy’s mood regarding the lyrics of how easy her life used to be, and it all comes together beautifully for the chorus reprise with some pretty strings (i love strings in rock music!)

i bet this kind of music really resonated with some young girls listening. Can’t relate however as I hate men.

overall this is a 5/5 dashies! “Amazing!”

[3) FRIGHT FLIGHT!!] - LOOK UP IN THE SKY.

THIS IS ONE OF MY FAVOURITE SONGS IN THE GAME! when it started obviously i was expecting fussenpepper, and it was shocking to hear katy kat singing it

i think this is one of the covers that katy kat’s voice matches the most! her voice really fits shouting like that, it’s really hyped up

my favourite line from her cover is the “Now it’s time to move on, it only gets much harder, so carry on!”

and obviously i love hearing her say “Now do you like munchies? I wonder where lunch is!”

i do think that captain fussenpepper’s voice suits the song better than her, because it was made with him, but her voice definitely shines on this track!

overall this is a 4/5 dashies! “Really Good!”

[4) BABY BABY!!] - Imagine kids singing this on a car trip with their parents looking dead inside in the front seats.

I USED TO NOT LIKE THIS SONG. but playing it myself really warmed me up on it, and this version on the album made me like it even more!! i love katy kat’s additional lines between the baby’s, she suits giving those secondary vocals and they add a whole additional layer to the song.

i also like that the baby’s lyrics kind of echo over lammy’s guitar parroting, like you can hear the “... ma ma ma ma” coming in at the end of her first part, it sounds really nice!

this is the song i can really imagine kids shouting the lyrics to at a birthday party or something and i think they knew that when they added it O_O

overall this is a 4.5/5 dashies! “Almost Perfect!” i think it would’ve been cooler if the lammy and katy kat parts were more integrated with eachother. don’t ask me how exactly, because i don’t know, and maybe they didn’t either... it still came out REALLY nice!

[5) FIRE FIRE!!] - Aweome where is chief puddle? )-=

i think that this is my favourite song in the entire game, altho that will change depending on what day you ask me it, and a big part of it is fire chief puddle’s vocals and the brass and sound effects of the song

it kind of sucks that a lot of that seems lacking in katy’s version, although i like that it kind of seems like theres more emphasis on the percussions of it!

i don’t like the distant whispery vocals on the “Put it on the fire, feel good, Put it out cold and feel good”, it sounds really weird. because those lyrics are one of my favourites in the original song with chief puddle. i’d definitely rather listen to his version

overall this is a 3/5 dashies! “It’s Good!” i like katy’s vocals, but they definitely come out better on other tracks, and i miss chief puddle.

[6) PJ Berri Jam] - Much Love To The Funny Bear That Make’s Me Smile.

title made me a lot more excited for this song than i ended up feeling about it... OBVIOUSLY NO INSULT TO PJ’S JAM BUT IT WOULD HAVE BEEN COOL TO HAVE A BEAT WITH ORIGINAL LYRICS instead of just lines from the one cutscene...

it’d have been cooler if it was longer too, but i understand why it wasn’t, because the instrumentals work best in this little snippet instead of long-term where they’d definitely require more lyrics

i like that it sounds like the Fire Fire! parappa version considering that’s his first stage! i don’t know if there’s any verification to this, but it makes me think that the beats for all of parappa’s songs in Um Jammer Lammy are made by PJ, which is just really nice to think about... he’s so skilled ;_; PJ and parappa’s iconic collabs...

i don’t know how to rate this at all, but for the headcanon it gave me, i’m giving it a 4/5 dashies! “Really Good!”

[7) BIRTH SONG] - i wouldn’t play for someone else

EXTREMELY FUNNY NAME

i think i like the choir vocals of the song in the cutscenes, but i definitely love katy’s voice in this one, it sounds really sweet

i can’t remove it from the weirdness of the scenario (the first time i saw that shit i was so goddamn baffled) but this does actually Make It Sweet!

i love how her voice sounds in the chorus, and the last line (“Our newest little baby!”) sounds really nice in her voice!!

IDK EXACTLY HOW TO DESCRIBE IT... her vocals just seem... sweetly genuine? like not that she’s really invested in what she’s saying, but just that she’s really enjoying singing it in a small and cute way? IDK... EITHER WAY i like it!

i like the additional lyrics as well! extensions to parappa/ujl songs should always be welcomed i think.

overall i rate this a 3.5/5 dashies! “Pretty Good!” weird song made fun and sweet by katy kat, thank you so much!

[8) THEME OF RAMMY] - music that makes you cause problems

yesssss YESSSSSSS YESSSSSSSSSS

WHEN I GOT TO THIS TRACK IT BECAME ONE OF MY NEW FAVOURITES OF THE WHOLE GAME!

i love the ditzy yet cool lull of the electric guitar, it sounds playful and silly, but with the aesthetic of the instruments used in the song it sounds awesome at the same time.

the strings throughout the song following the rhythm of that guitar add a slight classical feel to it as well that i really like, a level of elegance in contrast to the next part i describe

the muffled and staticy electric guitar parts sound so discordant, yet perfectly in control at the same time, and very In-Your-Face as they just come and go at random over the base sillysong. i really really like that, and it shows off Rammy’s fiery attitude!

i really love how the violent clash of the instruments seems to come together so well in this. it is a really well-made song that made me like Rammy more than i did previously. i think people who know me well will understand that i really like strings in otherwise intense songs, like violins and stuff, so i was really happy to hear some!

FULLY HONESTLY, MY ONLY WISH? is that it was longer. LOL

as an aside, the lull i described reminds me way too much of the theme for sam and max’s office in the TTG series. which obviously is a very personal reason to like the song more, but it is a reason for me NoneTheLess.

overall this gets a 5/5 dashies! “Amazing!”

[9) CASINO IN MY HAIR] - texan ear worm signs.

PAUL CHUCK COME GET YOUR SONG

ALSO THIS SONG BELONGS TO SANDY CHEEKS.

katy kat’s voice fits this song EXTREMELY SURPRISINGLY WELL! i like that she puts on the accent and everything, the rhythm of the lyrics and her enthusiasm go together so NICE!

i like the expansion of the lyrics and the repetition of it is one of its strengths, like any song of that kind (hopefully)

it’s a really big earworm for me, and every so often ill just sing out “Where’s that place that comes in pairs whenever I’m aware? Casino here, casino there, casino in my hair!” VERY SIMPLE YET VERY CATCHY

Yee Haw!

overall i rate this a 4.5/5 dashies! “Super Cool!” it couldn’t be better, but i wouldn’t say it’s one of the best, just for the sheer quality of the other songs i’ve given 5/5 to so far

SIDENOTE - [10) Radio Signal Jam] - F*ck you

OK. i like the presentation of this as if it’s playing live on a radio. it’s a nice little additional flavour to the whole thing that i enjoy immensely. HOWEVER.

nothing can match my disappointment at the next song not being Master Onion’s song. My heart will forever be broken by this traitorous deception. I was promised Tamanegi Sensei. Where is he! WHERE IS HE!!! WAS HE TO BUSY GAMBLING?? COME BACK I LOVE YOU

O-K let’s move on

[11) TASTE OF TERIYAKI] - songs that have mood swings

this song baffles me. i definitely get what they were trying to do with the intro portions with the dramatic quiet, the focus on the vocals and guitar with the creeping and echoing drums and reverberating electronic sounds

it could’ve been really cool, but for the most part it frankly sounds sh*t.

if they could’ve gotten some line re-dos from Teriyaki’s singer to match the lower tempo, it definitely would have sounded most excellent. But the use of the lyrics from the high-tempo song here is just jarring. when i showed this to my brother he genuinely just started laughing from how bad it sounded.

BUT HERE’S WHERE I CAN’T JUST RULE IT AS A BAD SONG.

THE SUDDEN SHIFT INTO THE HIGH TEMPO. IT IS BEAUTIFUL. IT ADDS SO MUCH EXTRA POWER TO THE CHORUS OF THE SONG. i like the song more with the brass and the backup singers, but this genuinely sounds so goddamn cool.

i LOVE the additional lines from teriyaki, it makes them sound even more like an idol! they sound amazing!

And then it stops. Back to the slow nonsense. I am left to dream of what could’ve been. i will say this one sounds better than the other one. Possibly because it’s shorter.

AND THEN THE AWESOME SONG COMES BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AND I’M LIKE YEAH WOO!!!!! i love the additional discordant sounds in this version, and i like that they did sometimes include the cool SHHH-PSHHH slap-ish sound in the chorus for this portion. the da da da DA DA! being with guitars instead of brass used to disappoint me, but the more i hear it here, the more i like it.

and then my favourite part of the song: the backup vocals combined with a fast rattling-off of teriyaki’s vocal lines from parappa’s version. this sounds godlike. This is the best. I roll around in circles listening to and thinking about this part. the fact that it fades out right as it gets to that breaks my heart into little pieces.

and then it’s over...

i think it’s very fitting that the song that takes over the album out of nowhere and is literally from hell is the most baffling and loved/hated by me. i don’t think i’ve ever been able to truly say that i both love and hate a song.

if someone was good enough at editing to combine this with the actual version of the song, as well as the vocal lines from parappa’s version, into an essentially extended cut of the album version without the weird slow parts, i would be forever indebted to them.

overall i rate this a ???/5 dashies. ”Help!” it flipflops way too much for me to give a number. Thank you Teriyaki Yoko.

[12) POWER OFF! POWER ON!] - HYYYYYYPE

i need to say it. this song has the coolest sounds in the entire game. this is one of the songs that i might abruptly decide is my favourite for a day or so and then go back to Fire Fire! or Taste of Teriyaki (game version). the guitar is most exquisite in this song.

my little brother adores this song, and a big part of that is credited to the silly vocals of Paul Chuck. he’s like Goofy but extra lethal. i love him

ANYWAYS. after Fire Fire! i was concerned that this song’s vocals would be replaced entirely by Katy, but it seems like they understood Paul Chuck’s integral nature to the charm of the song, and so we get a back-and-forth of them both singing lines, with lammy playing in between. it sounds REALLY good!

i like the additional lines by Chuck at the beginning during the intro. they’re a nice little bonus for the three Paul Chuck fans that exist (two being me and my brother)

as always, gotta love katy kat’s vocals!! they definitely benefit from being combined with the vocals of the original song. the chorus parts where they both sing in unison sound AWESOME!!! i wonder if the Fire Fire! cover would have benefited from this alternation....

the filter over the “NEVER USE JOE CHIN’S CHAIN’S FOR THEM!” really adds to it as well! i like that addition.

by the way my favourite line from this song is the “All I wanna hear is you’ve come over here, there’s no fooling around with gears!” it just has such a good flow. not really explicitly related to this version specifically, maybe less so since i prefer it with Chuck’s voice over Katy’s, but yeah.

this song is really hard for me in-game. like, more than any other song i think, apart from Taste of Teriyaki. which i would like to thank this song for allowing me to escape from (-=

this gets a 5/5 Dashies and a “DA-HYUCK!” from me!

[13) WE ARE MILKCAN!!] - Woaah My Head Is Spinning!

another original that only plays during the cutscenes, understandably without the vocals. i liked it then, and i like it even more now!

katy’s lyrics add SO SO MUCH to the high-tempo intensity of the introduction to this song, and the chaos of the entire thing makes it really fun to listen to

i do still enjoy the slower parts of this song! i can imagine katy singing this as the events she describe happen in real time. i really like listening to her try to encourage lammy and ma-san to get it together and play with her.

the bouncing between the full music of her lines contrasting with the quiet and dinky replies of ma-san and lammy makes this track really fun to listen to!

after that part, it goes back to sounding like the intro portion again, but increases in tempo drastically overtime, before suddenly slowing down again and then launching into high speed at random. it’s a really fun and theatrical and dramatic piece to listen to!!!

personally though, it’s not so much my thing based on the sound alone. it’s definitely a great song but i like things a little more relaxed and orderly than this. the quality of it comes from the lyrics and the emotions they manage to carry through with the instrumentals. its a really good glimpse into the nature and personality of MilkCan!

i give this song a 4/5! “Really Good!” there’s nothing i’d suggest to improve this song. it’s just a little to hectic for me, and feels more like music for a theatrical play than any other track. i generally don’t like that kind of stuff (altho there’s definitely exceptions)

SIDENOTE - [14) Jam Chin] - F*ck you eggplant head saunaman.

You disrespected Parappa. You disrespected Sunny Funny and her sweet smile. You have disrespected MilkCan.

Thank you Ma-San for killing this man. I love U.

[15) GOT TO MOVE! (Millennium Girl)

the final song... i knew it would be Got To Move... it makes COSMIC sense

i like the additional little part before the song begins giving some time to breathe in before my head starts screaming in excitement at this song.

this is an AMAZING song and another one of my little brother’s favourites! he likes to sing it! it’s not one of my favourites but it’s definitely revered with me. it’s a sheer quality song and the one that best captures the soul of MilkCan!!

and i have to say. this album version made me like it EVEN MORE. at first i was enjoying the regular song, but then in the second part PARAPPA comes in with the alternate lines from his version in-between Katy Kat’s lines. it is SO SO SO cool. i often think about how songs in the game would sound with parappa’s versions incorporated in some fashion like this and it comes out so EPIC!!

it seriously made me pog SO hard when i heard him coming in. SOOOO exciting!

some thought notes about this song:

i really like the guitar during the portion leading up to the chorus, it sounds really cool.

katy’s singing in the chorus itself is the best of ALL her singing! her voice blends perfectly with the tone, the pitch shifts, the vibes... angellic truly

parappa‘s lyrics in-between add such an awesome additional energy, especially the lyrics that go on a little longer, like “But let me give you a word of advice, it seems like a waste of time, but it’s nice!” those lines shine the most to me.

my other favourite part is the rapid backforth in the later part of the chorus, especially the “GO! ON! MOVE! ON!” between katy’s lines. it goes together IMPECCABLY

it should be obvious, but this song gets a 5/5 Dashies from me! “Amazing!” it truly blew me away, just like the 5/5 Dashie portions of Taste of Teriyaki did. i love the fact that Parappa’s lines are slightly more muted and behind a bit of a filter to make sure the focus is on Katy’s iconic lines, but are clear enough to be enjoyed.

Truly Thank U so much if you read this far... i love u so mach.... thank you for listening to me ramble about my current hyperfix <3 (-=

#txt #ptr #um jammer lammy #autism moment

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libra-araelty · 5 years ago

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Hello!

My name is Neo. I am a neurodivergent young adult from the United States.

Neurodivergent, you say?

Yes! Neurodivergent means my brain does not function the same way that a typical human does. However that does not stop me from living a normal, everyday life just like everyone else!

I have Asperger’s Syndrome, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), Maladaptive Daydreaming Disorder (MaDD), and Dyscalculia, all diagnosed. It is also highly suspected that i have Bipolar Disorder and Trichotillomania (TTM), suggested to me by people who have either condition.

Being subject to these conditions, I have quite a few struggles in my daily life. I have sensory issues, so things like uncomfortable clothes and strong scents can make it so I’m unable to function at full capacity. If these sensory issues are pushed further and further, I am at risk of going into a sensory overload or a meltdown. That only happens very rarely for me, though.

My attention span is very flaky, and I have a difficult time staying on one topic for long periods of time. I need constant changing stimuli for me to not burn out while on a task. This ironically contributes to hyperfixation, an intense focus on one particular thing for a period of time. I know, that seems like the opposite of what I said before, but they are linked. See, hyperfixation isn’t exactly something that can be forced. When hyperfocusing, I may not be able to take myself out of that particular focus, and it consumes all my thoughts for however long my brain decides to hyperfixate on it. This contributes to my flaky attention span because instead of being able to force myself to focus on something im supposed to be doing, instead the brain goes “no, you’re going to think about this one thing and we’re going to make it very hard for you to focus on anything BUT this one thing. Special Interests (SI’s) follow a similar, yet more intense pattern. SI’s last much longer, if not lifelong for me. Theyre more prominent and effective on my life than my hyperfixations.

This is where MaDD comes into play. MaDD is a condition that can be adopted and unlearned. The DSM doesn’t recognize it as an official disorder, but it is a condition that exists in many people, especially people with attention or anxiety related contitions. MaDD shares a lot of traits with cases of addiction too, however this one is much easier to take control of and is not exactly harmful. The first word, maladaptive, can be broken in half: Mal and Adaptive. Mal means bad or poor, and adaptive means the ability to adapt. Maladaptive Daydreaming basically means daydreaming that causes poor adaptation skills. MaDDers are typically those who have conditions like Autism, AD(H)D, OCD, General Anxiety, and Dyslexia. Most people adopt the technique of Maladaptive Daydreaming in their childhood or early teens and if not caught early on, can last their entire lives. However, MaDD isn’t essentially a harmful thing. Like I said, it’s easily controlled. You may be asking, “what exactly is it about MaDD that causes poor adaptation? its just daydreaming.” MaDDers daydream at an average of 6 hours minimum a day. These daydreams are intense and easily triggered by everyday things like music, art, friends, even normal emotional events. MaDDers tend to use these dreams as an escape from reality but also a reality of their own, like a lucid dream but for your waking self. The daydreams tend to have intricately woven worlds, stories, chracters, and plots, all feeling just as real to the dreamer as the rest of life itself. MaDDers tend to daydream to escape real situations they may not want to be a part of and sometimes even cancel plans just to continue to daydream.

Why are you telling me all of this? This all seems so personal and insignificant to me.

This is FAR from insignificant to anyone. You may not be Autistic or a MaDDer or even neurodivergent, but I know that as a human being you still have lots of struggles, just like me. Ive told you all about my struggles and you’re probably thinking “wow how pathetic, they cant control their own brain.” Yeah actually, I can. Even if you weren’t thinking that, (which I actually highly doubt anyone was thinking that I just wanted to put an example of worst case scenario) what if I told you that no matter what, no matter who you were or what you were going through, you can still grab hold of yourself and make your life yours? You better believe it, because despite all the conditions I just told you I have, I have taught myself to make my own path in life and not let my struggles decide what my fate is. I believe anything is possible with a little patience and elbow grease, so thats why I have made this blog. It is sorta a combination of a journal, an advice blog, and an inspirational quote blog. I want to be able to share my knowledge of my identity and experiences in order to hopefully inspire someone to get up out of the hole theyre stuck in and make their life their own again! I love the conditions I have, and I use their benefits as my superpowers and dont let the negative aspects of them hold me back. They are a part of me and who I am and I will treat them with just as much love and care as I should treat myself, and hopefully you can treat yourself with the same amount of love too <3

With love,

Neo

P.S.

Heres a couple more fun facts about me!

My biggest special interests are Homestuck, Dragons, and literally just identity in general and have been special to me for almost 5 years now

I love music and my favorite artists are Imagine Dragons, Fall Out Boy, OneRepublic, Vance Joy, hi i’m Case, Of Monsters and Men, and Watsky!

I love to draw and play D&D! I love the character creation and I’m currently working on my own campaign

My personality labels are Sun Libra, Moon Sagittarius, Rising Taurus, INTP-T, 5w4, 541, Ravenclaw, Thunderbird, Seer of Heart, Dersian, True Neutral, Blue-Green Paladin, Firebender, and Skywing Elf

If I were a D&D character I’d be a true neutral forest gnome sorcerer sage who wields a katana and raises dragons

My favorite movies are How To Train Your Dragon (1&2), It, Star Wars, and Pete’s Dragon (2016). My favorite shows are The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, The Dragon Prince, Camp Camp, Gravity Falls, Twelve Forever and The Mandalorian

I love making aesthetics and stimboards, my favorite colors are blue violet, cornflower, sapphire, teal, spring green, and bubblegum pink. I love pastel kawaii fashion because of these colors

I either want to become a cartoonist or a counselor as a career, or both and be able to use one to help the other

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mac-n-cheese-flavored-arson · 5 years ago

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Tag List

This is long

4d- things that remind me of other dimensions, dissociation, and interdimensional travel

?- something that I don’t know how to tag in the moment or that doesn’t fit any category

@ asher- this is something that reminds me of my fiance or our relationship

@ lori- things about my close friend and/or things that remind me of her

aesthetic- a variety of stuff but anything that’s aesthetic

aliens- things with aliens or UFOs

anarchy- anything with the anarchy symbol or relating to anarchist beliefs

animals- cute animals

are things flammable- this is my on-going science experiment where I test if random things are flammable and occasionally accidentally light myself on fire

arson- anything with a primary focus on fire or containing a real life fire

art- something I enjoy and want to reblog that is art and either reblogged soley because it is art or I couldn’t find another way to tag it

atla- things about avatar the last Airbender

barbed wire- anything with barbed wire as the main focus of the image

blinkee- the flashing banners or blinkess made by other people

bobs burgers- anything about bobs burgers including memes and gifs and anything else that's cool

broken glass- pictures of broken glass, videos of glass breaking, digital recreations of broken screens, etc. Basically just stuff that looks like broken glass or is broken glass

cars- this is about the movie cars, not actual cars

cayden art- stuff that is either my art or my photo edit

cayden photography- my photography, before edits usually

cayden poetry- my poetry

cayden vent- my personal posts that are me venting, they're fine to reblog unless tagged or said otherwise, this will also include reblogs from my vent blog

covid 19- this is my current coronavirus tag so that it can be content filtered

criminal minds- anything about the show criminal minds

dino- anything with dinosaurs in any form

disability- posts about chronic pain, chronic illness, disability, mobility aids, or pictures of people using mobility aids/pictures of their mobility aids

dropout- things relating to the failings of the public school system, my personal expirence with dropping out of highschool, and others' expirence with dropping out of highschool

drugs- most things drug related, pictures of drugs, edits containing drugs, memes about sobriety, memes about drugs, etc. This won’t contain pictures of hard drugs like meth or syringes

drunk tag- personal posts made when I was shitfaced or high

embroidery- cool embroidery projects, tutorials, patterns, reference pictures, and embroidered patches

eyes- anything with eyes as the main focus but not pictures of people or animals, this is primarily creepy things

face tag- pictures of my face or my tattoos/piercings

fashion- anything that I want to use as inspiration for my own personal style

fave- my personal favorite things

g&f- anything related to grace and frankie, including things about those actors/actresses

galaxy- anything with galaxy colors or themed around planets, space, and stars but only aesthetically

glitch- anything thats glitchy

graffiti- anything with spray painting or street art in it

gravity falls- anything about gravity falls

h0rny- stuff reblogged because sex lol

hands- pictures of hands, esp ones that I want around my throat lmao, this is also a generally horny tag

home- anything that I’m using as an inspiration for my future house

if you dont send me an ask youre straight and cis and I hope you can live w/ that- this is my tag for ask games lmao 😂

info- long textposts of information about something, usually containing other links

lava lamp- pictures of lava lamps, usually weird or trippy

lgbt- anything that relates to the lgbt community, flags, textposts, pride edits, new stories, etc.

lifehack- things that make your life easier

mcr- anything related to my chemical romance or those band members, including things about the songs, lyrics, and things from their solo careers

megamind- things about megamind the movie

memes- any memes or things that I find funny including tik-toks

mental health- things related to mental health and mental illness, including trauma but not including nuerodivergent stuff

minecraft- anything related to minecraft including builds, memes, stories, plushies, etc.

moodboard- any moodboard

nature- aesthetic pictures of trees, clouds, skylines, forests, etc.

nd stuff- things about being nuerodivergent, including things about autism or relatable adhd posts

not adhd but also an autism mood- this is my tag for reblogging adhd posts that also apply to me as an autistic person (that doesn't have adhd)

original content- anything that I have posted myself or added my own comment onto

otters- videos or pictures of otters

p&f- anything related to phineas and ferb

piercings- anything with piercings as the primary focus of the picture or cool piercings that I want to use as a reference

piss- .

poetry- poetry lmao

political- anything that is discourse or political

positivity- things that are positive and positivity related

punk- anything that embodies punk like fashion or music or cool/edgy stuff

rainbow- anything that is rainbow

rats- pictures of rats, animations of rats, stickers of rats, all things rats

shrek- anything about shrek including memes and art

slam poetry- good slam poems, stuff about artists, stuff about performances, everything about slam poetry

slime- that ones kinda obvoius

soap cutting- I don’t use this one much but yeah its literally just soap cutting

steven universe- anything about steven universe or steven universe future, often including spoilers

stimmy- anything that I personally find stimmy, like gifs, paint mixing, soap cutting, or slime

story- a textpodt where there's a funny or interesting story to read

tattoos- pictures or other people's tattoos

teeth- anything with teeth as the main focus, sometimes human teeth or bloody ones

textpost- anything that is a textpost in a wide variety of different categories, I try to only use this tag when I don’t know what else to tag it as

the office- memes, screengrabs, textposts, all about the office and Dwight being an ignorant slut

things about me- this is a new tag for things that describe who I am as a person, my expierences, and things that I like and identity with, it'll be mostly reblogs but it might have some of my own posts too

things that made me cry- this is pretty self explanatory

trash- a particular aesthetic that’s weird and unnerving, I’m not entirely sure how to explain it but essentially a mix of oddcore, scenecore, and creepycore, cryptidcore, and a few others

trauma- this is trauma related stuff but this tag is really inconsistent

tweet- a screenshot of a tweet

urban- things that remind me of urban living, like abandoned buildings, trash heaps, trashed bedrooms, etc

video- its a video, but I try to primarily keep this tag for funny videos

weapons- anything with guns, knives, swords, or other weapons

#bio #original content #march 2020

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mattamyers · 5 years ago

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My long journey of healing has continued

It’s been years since my last blog post. I’ve decided I will start to post a log of my days, when my mental energy allows, when I feel well or positive or organized enough to do so. I’m not sure how this practice will evolve, however I’m wanting to actively start sharing my story, where I’m at, so people can start to get to know me - and what my days are like, how my life is hopefully evolving, moving forward - as well as the difficulties I face daily. What’s changed most recently is that the last stem cell treatment I did in the Cayman Islands has improved my executive function and recovery time from activity more, where posting regularly of longer form text seems like a possibility now - at least in this fairly stream of consciousness, limited organizational executive function way. Unfortunately the post-LASIK eye pain (corneal neuralgia) has proved itself to be the mainstay of pain, causing the majority of the executive function disruption, dysfunction. Yes, I struggle dealing with a varying degree of severity of being suicidal. No, once I decide I can’t do this anymore then I will not be letting anyone know - I have already tried multiple times to get help in our healthcare system, to which I was exposed to what in the future will be considered barbaric care provided due to a number of factors, however heavily due to indoctrination and a lack of multidisciplinary understanding and care; as which as I hopefully am able to share, you will see highlighted in my multiyear effort to help save Taylor, a friend, save her from from the broken system and from herself and her coping mechanism, who is trapped in it due to the funnel toward hospitalization and under care of the non-multidisciplinary care of psychiatric doctors - where that profession somehow has been allowed to capture and have a monopoly on a person’s care even if physical symptoms play a primary role in their dis-ease; the system having allowed her dis-ease progression to continue over years - most recently seeing how inadequate and arguably negligent care provided by not only doctors who are in control of her during hospitalization but also by legal aid that was provided her.

I’m not inherently broken, I’m not clinically depressed. As I’ve healed myself further and follow holistic health practices I’ve strengthened my nervous system, and unfortunately that has only had the affect of allowing me to feel pain more clearly, sharply - in higher definition, resolution. I can still smile, have a conversation - story tell and reason. What’s difficult for people to understand is how the constant, strong pain that refers from my eyes (primarily right eye) affects and sensitizes my nervous system - how that is a constant battle that exhausts me mentally and causes my executive function to be greatly impaired as well - increasingly so with added stress, physical or emotional - and tied to that the more potential emotion or stress tied into a decision, with more complex decisions being worse or having a stronger aversion, the more difficult it is to move forward - to get past the pain. Most of my days, weeks, are full of frustrations, exhaustion, of reminders of where I am at and what my life is like - how stagnant it is. I do my best to be on a positive line of thought, to having and being able to hold onto hope - for my projects and toward finding a solution that may help me tolerate the eye pain by reducing it further.

If I can successfully rally my designer friends to be able to help focus me and to help move the presentation forward for my greater plans, my vision for a health-wellness differentiated ecosystem - and ultimately towards building a city to compete with the status quo - their help to develop and refine the plan, then they may give me enough hope to keep fighting through the eye pain until hopefully research finds a solution to heal it with stem cells, regenerative medicine.

January 29, 2020

8:35am

I’ve parked myself now at Balzac’s Ryerson. I took the bus and had three nice interactions on the way. The first was letting someone who was running for the bus and about to get an an almost crammed bus, that another bus was right behind. He thanked me and made sure I got on first. At the next stop a man was at the back doors which I was sitting behind, however no one was getting out - I tried to push the bars to open the door but the green lights weren’t on since the stop wasn’t requested. He thanked me, smiling as he walked towards me from the front. The final interaction was the man sitting next to me, who turned out to one a first year student at Ryerson in Urban and Regional Planning. He was reading a book by Jane Jacobs, which I asked if it was worth reading. I told him first that after high school I first went to Ryerson, in his current program, though filtered myself out after first year due to not seeing myself having that career for the next 40+ years; irony perhaps that all along I was developing necessary skills, knowledge, and experience toward creating my New City and New City model. Everyone else on the bus was relatively asleep, unengaged, unsocial.

8:50am

I hadn’t used my laptop much yesterday, except a little before bed and the screen at a distance - less than 5 minutes really. Today I’m already feeling the eye pain increasing significantly compared to what I felt anytime yesterday, and how much it’s distracting my thinking, mental organization.

9:05am

Since my last stem cell treatment in the Cayman Islands significantly healing in particular my cervical and lumbar spine, I can be more mobile and the pain is reduced enough where if I don’t completely overdo it, I can have some level of executive function to manage myself. However now I am able to experience this contrast of more mobility - which keeps me away from my laptop screen - with how strongly my laptop screen triggers the burning sensation, pain of my eyes (most noticeably my right eye) and its cascading symptoms of headache and fascial tension increasing in my body. My focusing ability is decreasing from where I started before being in front of my screen, however how far it will degrade compared to before, I am still getting used to - however I can feel a building mental exhaustion as I’m having to counter, push against the aversion caused by the increase of pain triggered by the laptop screen light.

9:21am

My right eye more easily wants to shut too, an autonomous guard mechanism to protect itself, compared to yesterday throughout most of the day.

9:50am

I have been wanting to focus on, direct my attention, to finishing - so I can conclude my attention - the past week, especially the last few days, of a very heavily emotional and stressful event where I’ve been trying my best to help save a close friend I’ve known for a few years - to save her from herself, and from our healthcare system that has been adequate and negligent in her care - and is currently hospitalized, again, where he disease progression has been able to worsen because of specific, narrow scope of psychiatric care ignoring the importance of body health — in Taylor’s case needing proper treatment - a safe container, environment - to treat gut, sensory disorder (hypersensitivity; autistic characteristic), and for

“The lesser of two evils” - sharing Taylor’s story from my observations vs. being afraid and not exposing the system with an actual real person, case study to reference in high detail from a narrow and holistic view - while respecting privacy and not exposing any identifiable details that only doctors or other people Taylor shared with could would be the “lesser of two evils” as Taylor likes to say; and hopefully everyone has the integrity and rigor to not share what they shouldn’t, particularly if bound by privacy laws.

10:28am

As the body pain, from walking the amount I have today - from house to closest TTC bus stop, from destination stop to cafe, and around cafe a bit to purchase tea, water refills, and bathroom break(s) - has been calming, desensitizing, localizing - I’m more clearly able to feel the tension and soreness referring from my right eye, down through my right ear, down back of my neck on right side, and so on. When I close my eyes, right eye in particular, the desensitizing, localization can start to unwind relatively quickly before compared to the Cayman Islands treatment - however the discomfort is still quite distracting. I am curious — and afraid to go to acupuncture again, which I went too a short bit before going to the Caymans - not having done acupuncture for at least 2 years — to see how strongly acupuncture now will clear as it does, and how strongly it leaves me specifically and clearly feeling the right eye pain as an intense burning, searing sensation - which last time lasted for 8 hours or so, that sensation only diminishing as my body re-sensitized and therefore masked out the perception of the eye pain; it makes me wonder if others who have done LASIK, if they had clearly flowing, non-stagnant energy to begin or even if doing acupuncture for long enough to open their energy flows up - would experience post-LASIK symptoms differently, more clearly than before opening their body up; similarly regarding Ayahuasca ceremonies, marijuana use, or other psychedelics.

I believe more now too that since the neck and jaw pain has been healed more - reducing the masking, allowing me to more clearly feel what’s going on in these sensitization vs. localization flows/cycles due to pain - that the right eye pain’s referring pain sensitizes (makes hypersensitive) the tissue on the right side of my jaw increases, the soreness, and pain increases - even with limited to no use from chewing food (I haven’t eaten yet today). The sensitization of my teeth seems more clear now too, which at the moment I can feel much more than when I first woke up this morning - in line with the jaw pain increasing too.

11am

I just stepped away to the bathroom to go pee. As I was sitting — something I’ve been doing for a long while because for a long time was too difficult to relax enough to pee standing, my body didn’t trust standing if more relaxed — I closed my eyes and let myself relax as much as I could. During this time I could start feeling muscles in my jaw and face on the right side fluttering, spasming some. I hadn’t felt the jaw muscles spasms, fluttering before, only muscles around and closer to my right eye that I could feel where that’d happen — something I haven’t actually written much about or maybe not even at all; it’s the muscles being able to start relaxing but still not quite able to, with the reduced constant pain of my eye being closed for that short period after sensitization.

I’m able to more easily notice, along side with the pattern cascading from the right eye pain when I open my eyes each morning, when sitting and trying to be in a more relaxed state, in slouching posture and using back of chair to rest again — that my neck still wants to go into a more back and to a right position — something that before I couldn’t as easily allow, because perhaps the guard mechanism pattern was pulling my neck back too strongly, from there being too much pain being referred; it’s possible that that guard mechanism is triggered, such as that if say a “present moment” injury to the eye was occurring — a good, natural quick, rapid action reflex, would be to pull your head back and away; it was only in the last few months that I started theorizing that, and now that I’ve continued to have substantial neck pain from injuries healed - I wonder 1 )how much is still due to remaining injury, 2) how much is due to old patterns that need time to trust the neck and surrounding tissues are safe (as they dance and slowly heal with physiotherapy etc), and 3) how much of that reflex is caused by the referring pain from my right eye?

12:22pm

I can feel that I’m still reconnecting to and slowly processing stress from the last week, the last few days. It’s good, very good that my body can start to processing things emotionally more easily again since last treatment even with a relatively higher amount of physical activity compared to before — but unfortunately still what that means — as to the reason why there was such resistance, difficult, aversion to emotion processing before — that I’m grounding, grinding into my body - with the friction of the aversion to remaining pain — and where the post-LASIK eye pain is still the primary contributor; I do wonder and theorize that there is an abnormal inflammatory response (perhaps EDS related or that causes similar symptoms of EDS) - whether in brain and/or body - that leads to a central sensitization affect [effect?] to cascade so strongly, and therefore that many people who has done LASIK don’t have the same level of severe symptoms.

1:06pm

Taylor just texted me again. I responded saying I didn’t need the fork and plastic container her mother took home to finish the food I brought Taylor to dine with her in the hospital on some quality food that would be safe for her - steak and kale, to get high calorie and nutrient dense food in her, in with what little she eats due to an aversion from years long untreated gut pain and nausea; I said I don’t care to spend the time, energy, or money to go to her mother’s to pick it up, and to take care.

Taylor continued to reply in her usual way which I won’t outline here. She communicates often by referencing songs for how she feels that she believes relates to the current situation. I took that opportunity to then respond in equal by saying the song that came to me was In the Arms of the Angel Sarah McLachlan - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pvf_OBuJVE - as well as to notify her I was blocking her phone number again, and that she can email me if she wants - however that I don’t know how often I will check it; long ago I started having to block her phone number at different points, and redirect her emails to automatically archive - so I don’t see them unless I search for her email, in order to protect myself from being triggered or pulled into what can emails or texts as bombardments to well-thought out pleads that she needs help - intelligent, and eloquent, and an expert seductress as one of her coping mechanisms to bring in various qualities of support, company, as a means to distract herself; always as her most desperate, in her darkest hours, has she consciously and even once subconsciously (where her ego mind boundaries and controls for respecting someone else’ wishes to not contact me through phone directly getting superseded by a short-circuiting of sorts due to how degraded, ungrounded, destabilized her thinking has become — reached out to me again with a different phone number; this has happened 6+ times over the last 2+ years — where I learn more, understand her patterns, and how deeply the inadequate care goes with her recurring hospitalizations into psychiatric care over these years as well.

To be fair, it only feels right to share: my voluntarily hospitalization December 2017 is when I first met her in hospital. I had been struggling for over a year at that point with debilitating pain that severely fucked up my executive function. My decision making, mental organization, emotional processing — and in general anything related to thinking about moving forward — the planning triggering a slight stress as a preparation into the body readying to actually move, causing an aversion due to even thought about moving forward/organization of future — was extremely difficult. The only coping that worked was greatly limiting my activity every day, reducing any possible irritants from diet as much as possible, and usually I’d keep my right eye closed for up to hours every morning after waking up to slow how quickly the post-LASIK eye pain would ramp up and sensitize the rest of my body and its pain, making it hypersensitive to pain. That day in 2017 I knew if I had gone home I would have taken my life, having desperately struggled for around a year by that point to find support to help me with tasks - with organizing, planning — for basic things as well as for finding somewhere to do more stem cell treatments (longer story I won’t share now), with more complex tasks with more steps being more difficult, a stronger aversion, towards acting including on how much emotion would be surrounding or behind the decision or action that needed to be taken.

1:33pm

I’m sitting by the door at Balzac’s - was only window seat available when I arrived. I just got a chill that reminded me that a few nights ago while laying in bed ready to fall asleep, my whole body - both right and left side together, shook in a wave as my body reacted to warm up a bit; I had never experienced or perceived that feeling before, at least not that clearly or in such high definition.

1:40pm

I finally checked a voicemail someone left. It was an automated call to confirm — a 2nd time — for an endocrinology appointment I have coming up to test my hormone levels; another long story to outline the stupidity of understanding this may be a cause to the fatigue I experience or then towards actual diagnosis.

2:04pm

I just went pee again. Relaxed sitting position, closed my eyes, the face muscle fluttering started again. I tried this time instead to do some alternate nostril-breathing (with thumb/pinky to physically block each nostril) to see if it would help - and it did seem to help whatever energy was struggling to flow, to pass, to flow; https://www.healthline.com/health/alternate-nostril-breathing

The amplified symptoms I’ve experienced has lead me to re-realize that the body relaxing more easily while having the eyes closed is natural, a mechanism whereby once your eyes are open — tense your body and fascia for movement, and presumably when your eyes are closed, start to relax your fascia — which at length is during sleep, when you want your body and tissues to be as open as possible for best blood and other fluid flow to be as unrestricted as possible; inflammation is linked to Alzheimers-Dementia as channels in brain that want to open during sleep to clear toxins, waste, efficiently — can’t, it’s easy to conclude that similar dis-ease can progress in the body for rest of the tissues in brain, and where dis-ease state could progress quickly if an overall unhealthy system is already at its tolerance of regenerating, regulating immune system for clearing the body of cancer, etc.

January 30, 2020

Summary of yesterday:

I am roughly transcribing this from an audio recording I made before getting out of bed. I’ve done that a lot over this last year, it’s allowed me to share without getting out of bed agitating the pain, without opening my right eye or having my left eye open much except for initially recording. A friend awhile ago suggested setting up voice activated recording - I just haven’t been able to focus enough, direct myself to that task, with everything else going on; it would help but obviously I do need to open both my eyes at some point during the day anyway, and even if I don’t open them, if I become active with thinking just the movement of my eyes with my eyelids closed increasingly agitates and increases the pain from the eyes anyway.

All I want to finish with saying is to say that what Taylor is going through, it exposes many things that are wrong with our system. I won’t begin to go into the detail here, however I have written much and will continue to clarify and evolve my understanding, write the story, in hopes of saving Taylor and anyone else who is hurt more and left suffering longer by the system; the doctor kept her hospitalized, was forcing a tribunal on her where he’d present a case to force medication on her she doesn’t want (meanwhile after multiple hospitalizations over the years they still ignore and don’t treat her gut pain, nausea - nor care to understand its consequences - nor are they or do they provide safe food for her, nor do they manage and control to only provide food that is part of helping stabilize her). The largest failure is that somehow the field of psychiatry has been given a monopoly on care when mental health is involved - allowing non-multidisciplinary care to continue.

I will leave you with a video to show the new hope coming for all in the near future, that Presidential candidate Andrew Yang tweeted - saying it was the greatest video he’s ever seen: https://twitter.com/AndrewYang/status/1222736120930295808

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7crf0mzhws

10:22am

I finally got frustrated enough to return a phone call to book an echocardiogram. It seemed now that the pain is lower, allowing the frustration to build was easier — and then I could turn that into action much easier than prior to the Cayman Islands treatment. Making this call was a relatively low stress, unloaded decision toward action - compared to say the reason behind and how loaded making an appointment requiring a trip to an eye specialist, researcher in Boston, who I was recommended to make an appointment with - that has a lot of weight, resistance behind it - which I won’t go into reasoning for, having stopped me so far from booking an appointment with him.

Why I need an echocardiogram is part of determining a possible diagnosis of EDS — “Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS) is a disease that weakens the connective tissues of your body. These are things like tendons and ligaments that hold parts of your body together. EDS can make your joints loose and your skin thin and easily bruised. It also can weaken blood vessels and organs.” It seems I have enough symptoms that it’s possible I do. There were two people that suggested it — a person online I briefly messaged with, and then one of the doctors at the stem cell clinics — whereby they were trying to help me problem solve why I report a much higher pain for tissue damage, some of which they can see in imaging, however that I report more highly than they’d expect. I will eventually write in detail about this.

I just realized, as part of an experiment, that reading along while I type helps keep my mind focused, on track, for what I’m writing about — noticing that trying to think to allow fluid flow of thought to continue if not looking could work — simply trying to remember what I just said in order to continue typing without looking — is at least impossible for me at this point, maybe a skill that can be developed or not; it wouldn’t be a useful skill unless someone like me was trying to problem solve how to find ways to reduce the issues related to the post-LASIK pain, some of which I theorize in part has to do — gets triggered more with use of the eyes, the surface and tension changes of the eye has focal distance (and other) changes, from near to far, etc.

11:04am

I think paying to have a space for me to work, a cowering space, would be good for me socially - outside of my current primary destination to be around people, busyness, distractions of Balzac’s cafe. I was reminded, had memories arise, a few weeks ago when I was in a Lyft shared ride that ended up going down around the Queen and Spadina area. I was reminded of the time spent in a coworking space I started working out of with my then new girlfriend and business partner I brought into helping me with I Live Yoga - in particular with outreach and support. Along with the memories were the feelings of good experiences that were able to make it up through the new level of reduced pain from my last stem cell treatment. It made me think at the time that I’d like to get back to that place. At the time I was still unsure, doubtful if I’d ever be able to get there, get back to the point where Anastasia and I were excited about life, in a good routine, working and passionate about a project we both loved — and that was ready to start scaling; my physical pain had started to become too much for me to handle however, and though I struggled to keep things going, at one point I had to give up — let go. The relationship with Anastasia ended and psychologically it was very difficult to let my “baby” go — as is often referred to as an entrepreneur’s project — especially since for at least a year I was using the project as a mental distraction, focus for the pain. I kept trying and essentially being reminded that it was too hard, and then making bad decisions. Ultimately it was the last try two big attempts to keep ILY alive and moving forward, to find to find good, capable people to move ILY forward without much guidance from me were: 1) attempted to hire someone to takeover Anastasia’s role of outreach and support, and 2) hire a local designer — who ultimately took $5,000 from me, an initial deposit out of a first section of work worth $10,000, and ended up doing barely any work. I will eventually write in more detail about this: I will name her as well as a consequence of consequences that lasting forever — karma — until they are righted, or ignored, and then light can be shone for those who pay attention to me — highlighting that this is how this person conducts themselves. These consequences, bad, hurtful behaviour lacking integrity or simply exposing unskilled or underdeveloped behaviour — where a point of learning is the opportunity presenting itself, if only for a safe container was present to allow it. This karma, consequences, trickle through time — allowing for multi-generation dis-ease progression in all aspects of life. Karma is still playing out and trickling through society, our energies, frequencies, decisions — from major suffering and events such as Nazi Germany and every new suffering starts a new ripple that will all need to be addressed. It must all be addressed by individuals. This allows for healing to happen in a decentralized manner — and allows for people at different parts of dis-ease or on path towards healing, enlightenment — being enlightened, developing understanding and compassion — and so even those who may be repressed in places like China, the light will make it through the cracks — which all rigid containers will increasingly have as pressure mounts; whether that is your ego mind’s control, guard of “protecting” you from fear/trauma and scarcity mindset, or a nation state who wants to contain what knowledge and information is spreading; these are both a condition, a dis-ease state, a symptom of ego mind’s greed and control going unchecked within oneself.

When I have kept my movement and activity greatly limited as I still must, I am able likewise to get glimpses and enjoyment at the thought for a goal I had roughly a decade ago: to be leading yoga classes, to further develop my own yoga practice and to guide others to teach them what I learned — also developing my own skill of speaking and holding space while actively guiding people in the present moment.

Someday I’d like to find and be able to afford, and be able to handle the added activity of going to (or perhaps they could travel to me?), singing lessons — so I can improve, develop my voice, for a growing list playlist that I’ve entitled New Life that I’ve been building mostly for motivation, a reminder that I at times have played multiple times daily as a distraction from the pain.

I’d also like to learn basketball, so if I ever decide it necessary to run for Prime Minister of Canada to get Canada on course, then I’d challenge current Presidential candidate Andrew Yang to - and kick his ass - in a game of basketball; a more physical activity that I may never be able to do again however — so I’ll just have to enjoy the thought of being able to hangout with Yang.

11:41am

I still have strong emotional resistance (PTS) to diving into and finishing an update reply for Dr. Trotter on behalf of Taylor. I don’t know if I will get to it today - there’s ultimately no real rush as she’s in hospital and he only returns from vacation a week from now. I need to recover further and be in the healthiest, low activity level, routine again for at least a few days before I will be able to approach the task again.

11:47am

I can quite clearly now feel, notice, that while I have been wearing my reading glasses when writing and on my laptop — I just picked up my phone and was looking, writing some texts, and as I did so — with the straining or even just putting things into focus, that the eye pain very clearly increased as I was doing so; this to me confirms to me, a theory I’ve had over these years especially when my pain level was much higher, that the post-LASIK pain has created an aversion to my eyes working properly, normally, a resistance to changing focal points (as part of the symptoms, part of it disrupting autonomous function including tearing, moisturizing, of the eyes — that LASIK has been successful in dumbing down, minimizing, their #1 symptom of “dry eye syndrome” as something you can just use moisturizing drops as the solution to it); te regulatory capture and unquestioned loyalty or review by the industry and professionals in the field, incentivized by profits, is disturbing - and one of many issues that society must actively become better acknowledging — identifying, studying, paying attention to in order to develop industry-wide critical thinking in all practitioners involved.

1:21pm

I’m starting to allow myself again to checkout attractive women. I guess I’m ready to experiment again to see if the reduced pressure on my nervous system allows me better to manage sexual energy building, and unfolding as that does into emotions and managing of relationships of more potential intensity, emotionally and physical activity wise. Maybe I will start playing with the idea of dating again, making plans with potential partners; an “exciting” idea however one I have had to drop previously the last few attempts due to the pain level still being too high.

1:34pm

I decided I may fast today. That would allow me to — after being tired and mentally exhausted from Balzac’s — to go to Bampot Teahouse and hopefully stay there for a few more hours before I’d otherwise be hungry. It’d also help to more quickly clear the inflammation I caused from the sugar/junk I ate yesterday. If I do this I’ll take the probiotic tonight at minimum.

1:50pm

My body energy is quite low at the moment though — primarily I think as I’m likely out of a ketogenic state, so it might be a good idea to eat something tonight to let my body recover faster anyway.

January 31, 2020

Summary of yesterday:

The day that had become positive, later in the day, after my mental energy being exhausted - grounding me into my body and the pain, the eye pain - knocked me back down to reality again. I can’t date. The exciting ideas or plans for ideas are fantasy. I was reminded that even if I have a very productive or positive day then the next few days when my mental energy is lower, it’s more difficult to impossible to concentrate enough to distract myself from the pain. This last stem cell treatment, as predicted as the pattern has continued, allowed me to feel the eye pain more clearly, feel how it cascades and refer down my body more easily.

I don’t know how I am even going to afford my own cost of living soon, let alone the idea of paying additionally to have a coworking space to work out - as an alternate to Balzac’s cafe that I am bored of going to so often, for so long. And I still don’t have a routine that makes life tolerable. Streaming at night can be nice, however it is mentally exhausting itself. The Joe Rogan style podcast I had thought could be a nice thing to do to socialized, meet people, and chat regularly hasn’t gotten setup and I wouldn’t be able to organize and manage it anyway. Likewise the money I’ve had to spend on stem cell treatments and will continue to need to spend indefinitely on unknown future diagnostics or future treatments is money that originally I had wanted to use to move my projects forward. Ideally I could raise $420k to hire contract workers to help me finish designs and specifications to then find developers to get estimates from - but developing a presentation and putting in the ground work to reaching out, meeting with, family offices to get them onboard and convince them of my plan: $420k, $4.2mm, $42mm rounds and sharing a high detailed plan for each along with an executive summary - the presentation itself will be difficult for me to compile, and then the ground work, leg work necessary, will certainly be too difficult for me due to the highly limited activity I must maintain in order to have more than less tolerable days.

Feb 2, 2020

Summary of yesterday:

I was planning originally to make a “summary of yesterday” - yesterday, but it didn’t happen. It was overall a bad day to which I was just waiting for 4pm when two designer friends, Akshay and Salar, were supposed to come over. They eventually made their way to me around 6pm. It was or wasn’t a very productive meeting. The purpose was to try to help onboard their help so I can try to move my projects forward, in part to decide a path, a strategy for what to focus on - for where they could help me and for where I could try to focus and use my limited mental energy to hopefully guide them towards helping move things forward at a pace that allows me hope.

I don’t know how much to share from the meeting. I don’t want to get lost, summarizing points from last night - of which there are two recordings of to hopefully review at some point for reminders, lost in that my mental focus gets spent where I can no longer conclude this to a point where I am “comfortable” publishing it - where I don’t concern myself of sharing “too much” that leads me to wanting to expand on what I mean, without having to continue a thought by injecting a relatable quote like “first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win” for how grandeur my vision has evolved to; Gandhi, and as you may be able to tell, I like and tend towards being thorough - it’s a challenge until it will become a gift.

Feb 4, 2020

The hardest part to sharing my experience is that when it is most difficult it is most difficult to share about the difficulty. And perhaps as a natural fail-safe prevention mechanism, if I am to pass there are certain things I want left a certain way, however completing them, organizing them with how difficult the pain already disables me from doing so easily is even worse when I have lost hope and am struggling and too stuck in the pain, and so the final 3 or 4 things I hope to have organized before I go haven’t really been able to get done. I am at the point now where I will just let go and forgive myself for not articulating what should be to expose certain fights for what is wrong in systems in society.

I just got 1 of 5 things done - sent an email as final attempt to try to find someone trustworthy to help my mom finish her house so she has a peaceful place for retirement. 2 of 5 will be posting this. 3 of 5 will be emailing a naturopath with an update re: Taylor although I am no longer hopeful she will have a container that will actually lead her to problem solving her issues, so unlikely anything will come from it. 4 of 5 will be briefly updating long form version of Taylor story. 5 of 5 is trying to compile what I can about the post-LASIK eye pain, what I have tried to heal my body including the eye pain, and how the eye pain has remained the constant and the majority cause of the executive function troubles I have - as has become more and more obvious as I have healed significant pain in the rest of my body nearing having likely more than 10 stem cell treatments now over the last 3+ years; something I would hope to share with the Boston eye doctor/researcher, with the lawyer who filed the Canadian class action lawsuit against LASIK and the doctor who did my surgeries, and in general for the community in general and perhaps the “Lasik Complications Support Group” on Facebook - so maybe anything that I tried would give them insight into what might help them or perhaps help problem solve a solution.

Aside from trying to get these final 5 things written, I no longer am going to attempt to write anything regarding to who would get my business projects, life’s work - Elon Musk and Dr. Jordan Peterson can share ownership if either of them wants my domains, designs, what I’ve written and so on; likely not because they are compiled well enough to transfer - though they would together both be most competent at understanding the ecosystem of platforms, holistic scale, and multidisciplinary health-wellness approach of my plans. I also no longer am going to attempt to fill out a form that is prerequisite to trying MDMA-assisted psychotherapy - a hope I had that maybe it would reduce stress in my body enough to make the pain more tolerable, however I am quite certain it is the ongoing, constant, trauma from the eye pain - though certainly it has made these past years also full of trauma. I am just trying to get myself to an appointment Feb 19th to try AmbioDisk for my right eye, and then to get to 2 more stem cell treatments in San Francisco - however it is difficult to even bother trying to hold on to get to those because the AmbioDisk, if my eye can tolerate it, will only help while wearing it - and it will be a brutal, impossibly strong reminder once I have to expose my eye to air again, and the stem cell treatments though they will reduce pain in my body again - that, as every other time as resulted in, will result in my just feeling the eye pain more clearly, and how it refers out and sensitizes my body.

Feb 5, 2020

One reason I don’t want to actually post this is due to the large amount of explanation that hasn’t happened, describing everything I have tried, all the failures of our healthcare system - especially our “mental health” system - and still where no one has offered me an opiate prescription, so aside from having taken them post stem cell treatments for a few days - I don’t know if long-term it would make the pain and limited function tolerable enough to not constantly be struggling. Having, trying to explain over and over and over again over the years to different doctors, answering the same line of questions over and over and over again - never really getting much deeper into actually problem solving or trying to provide treatment options that may help. I am just done with this Canadian health “care” system - no one is going to know the true extent of incompetence, how broken it is, I don’t see myself being around to write about it. I will try to post the “Saving Taylor” post and update so there is a public record of it, 100% chance it won’t change anything unless someone actively pushes for investigation and change for oversight and accountability.

This is how much I normally struggle, at least 50% of the time I am trying to dredge at the bottom, where it’s dark - but regardless of how well I stick to a routine, to limiting my activity, to eating cleanly, to optimizing to have mental energy to counter the physical pain - to counter the disruption from the eye pain and the executive dysfunction it causes, the baseline dysfunction caused by the eye pain hasn’t improved in years, there is no routine or baseline that is tolerable; the two times the eye pain did permanently improve some with each treatment - first with autologous serum eye drops and then ProKera I did for each eye - the noticeable permanent reduction still wasn’t significant enough; and temporarily the Scleral lenses to be worn for only periods throughout the day, the dramatic executive function improvement I had with them, was impossible to maintain with that relief and function improvement contrasted each day at the end of the day when I had to re-expose my eyes to the air, triggering the pain again fully, and rapidly experiencing the cascading of symptoms - the mental disruption and the tension, sensitization, referring and building through my body; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scleral_lens

The other up to 50% is when I am delusional enough with hope, optimism, waiting for the next “big” stem cell treatment - in fantasy once tricking myself again that maybe this next healing will be different than the previous ones: where maybe my nervous system will reach a tipping point where the impact of the eye pain will greatly diminish due to enough pressure, pain, being removed from my nervous system. It never has happened though. This is where I am in a routine where I am not yet again bored of rotating through different social media sites - Twitter, Reddit - along with some other technology-related news sites, forums. This is when I am not yet completely bored of distracting myself with watching streamers on Twitch or watching YouTube videos. Days when I am in a routine and in a positive enough mood to enjoy and try to engage socially, in a routine going to Balzac’s cafe - taking a Lyft shared ride there and home again. The problem is nothing can actually move forward from this routine and routine itself is flawed in that boredom exists and that routine can’t really change due to the limitations the pain keeps me within; I can go out for stimulation, people watching, but there’s no gain in “teasing” myself if letting myself notice attractive women - teasing myself by allowing myself to think about dating or sex or anything nice, any of the creature comforts that come from relationships of various depths or intensity.

Cost is another factor. The money I have access to currently won’t last forever - and even if appointments like acupuncture or osteopathy would net positive, which I’m still not sure they are which I won’t explain here - at the moment when mostly going to those appointments via public transit, that amount of activity - the additional physical stress on my body on top of the stress the eye pain constantly applies, certainly counters most of the benefit from those appointments; likewise, acupuncture which I only did 3 or 4 weeks ago, and hadn’t done it for likely 2 years prior, allowed me to just feel my right eye pain as strongly and as clearly as I had ever been able to feel it - a strong, searing, burning sensation over the whole cornea that lastly as strongly for the next 8 hours - that searing sensation only diminishing as it slowly sensitized the rest of my body, just meaning it prevented me from properly perceiving it - but not reducing the executive dysfunction symptom. If I am in the better side of the difficult cycle then I regularly, daily, listen to my “New Life” play list - and often listen through the more somber but pleasant Jardim album by Rainer Scheurenbrandt; https://rainerscheurenbrand.bandcamp.com/album/jardim

I’ve written so many times about this pattern over the years, I hate writing about it now too - and why I am now struggling to even bother trying to get myself to a Boston eye doctor/research I was suggested to go to - however after the effort and cost of traveling to Boston, the being out of routine to not look forward to causing additional turbulence in my life the following 3-4 days, and after the $1300 USD cost, just starting cost, there is near 100% chance that no insights nor new treatment option that will come of it; it seems that I also know of stem cell research being conducted in the US that the main plaintiff in the Canadian class action lawsuit doesn’t know about, therefore nor does the lawyer, and likely also not this Boston eye doctor/researcher the plaintiff recommended I see - I’m guessing they don’t know about the mice/rat research from years ago either, the results of are which the human trials are being fast tracked in India; turns out the plaintiff who recommended me to see the Boston eye doctor/researcher hasn’t even gone to see him himself.

There has just been no point in continuing with trying to keep myself positive, optimistic - for as difficult as it is - once I am “flying” in it well enough, life can’t improve - relationships can’t evolve, I can’t move forward more in life. There’s been no point when letting myself mentally get excited about my projects or ideas to fix all of these broken systems - it just causes there to be more pressure, a stronger aversion to fight against, the pain to fight more strongly against - and trying to use executive function to try to move those ideas forward in any capacity, just the attempt adding pressure/stress - and then the potential consequences of trying to find others or spending money to hire others to do an uncertain but large amount of work necessary, is a lot - and certainly more than I am reasonably capable of handling, and even if I had the financial resources to hire and manage a team to do the work - managing would likely be too stressful as well; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21885586

I’ve tried twice now from different places in the last 8 months to get a referral for someone to speak to to see if the pain having been reduced as much as it has, if there was any value in talk therapy. Still haven’t heard anything back re: an appointment - though I was doubtful anyway that the physical cost of going to the appointment would result in net benefit anyhow.

And there’s nothing more I can do to help Taylor - the system isn’t going to be able to hold the safe container she needs - other than trying to send an update to her naturopath re: trying to problem solve her gut pain and nausea (that psychiatric doctors haven’t cared about nor understood the dis-ease progression consequences of for years), so I don’t have that hope or drive for effort to try to distract myself with any longer either; I don’t understand how psychiatry got a monopoly on hospitalizations, not only a monopoly but an exclusionary monopoly - where there's no requirement to work with other fields/disciplines, how isn't this considered or acknowledged to be neglectful by default, by design?

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cardinalbones · 6 years ago

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Soft

here have a short piece about hanzo and satya being autistic and gay and friends

It probably said something about Hanzo that Satya didn’t bother to text him before coming to his room at three in the morning, after her date.

He was laying on top of his sheets, staring at the ceiling and debating the benefits of going for a walk against the risk of running into another nocturnal inhabitant of the base when his thoughts were interrupted by a quick, smart rapping at his door. He closed his eyes and let a long breath out through his nose before asking the empty room, “Athena? Who is that?”

“Doctor Vaswani,” the AI replied in her usual bright tone.

Hanzo cast his eyes to his prosthetic legs, propped against his side table, and grunted in acknowledgment. He slipped off the bed and walked himself over to the door on his hands. It opened with a soft whoosh when he palmed the controls, revealing Satya, her arms overladen with softs toys and a cheek-splitting grin on her face, standing before him.

“Please tell me you said goodbye to Fareeha before coming here,” he deadpanned.

It takes her a moment to readjust her focus from where she had anticipated Hanzo’s eyes being, but once she does the look she gives him is warm and lovestruck, her cheeks dimpling with her smile, “She walked me to my door and kissed my cheek goodnight.”

Hanzo quirked an eyebrow, “Only your cheek?” Despite his attempts to control his expression, he could feel his lips pulling into a smirk.

Satya tsked in response and motioned – as well as she could, overburdened as she was – behind him, “May I come in?”

Hanzo slid to the side and Satya breezed past him, toeing her shoes off next to the wardrobe and flinging herself onto his bed with a giggle sight. “It was so wonderful,” she began as Hanzo made his way over to the side table where his legs stood, “She took me to Adults Night Out at the Zoo so I wouldn’t have to worry about overstimulation, and she got us an extended, private viewing of the reptile room…”

Hanzo hummed in response as he checked the charge indicator his legs – only four fifths full. Usually he preferred to charge them completely to keep up a routine, but if he wasn’t sleeping tonight… the kinetic chargers could kill the difference. “Yes, Fareeha mentioned something like that.”

Something soft hit the back of his head and dropped to the floor. “Hey!”

He whipped around to see Satya glaring at him over the top of her plushie collection. “Let. Me. Gush.” She took a moment to bask in Hanzo’s taken aback expression before gesturing at the item on the floor. “That’s for you.”

A mottled grey and grey lizard plush lay on the floor, a pink felt tongue sticking out of its mouth, and it rustled with pellets when Hanzo picked it up to inspect it. When he didn’t respond, Satya added. “It’s a komodo dragon.” He could practically here her saying Get it?.

“You got me a present while you were on a date?”

Satya shrugged and turned her attention to sorting her pile of toys, “I have never had friends before, but I read online that a common expression of affection is through gifts.”

The thought that Hanzo didn’t deserve a friendship with Satya washed through him and did his best to stamp it down and shove it away before it could drag him into a downwards spiral. He could deal with that the next time he was lying awake at night in the empty silence of his room. “Thank you.”

The bed creaked as Hanzo hefted himself up onto it.

“Fareeha told you where she was taking me?”

Hanzo briefly looked at Satya, and then had to do a double take as he settled himself on the edge of the bed. She had wrapped herself in what looked to be a ten-foot-long snake plush, its teal fabric decorated with a shimmering scale pattern. “It’s full of beans,” was her only response to his raised brow, and she kicked her legs joyfully where they hung off the bed.

“She wanted Amelie’s and my opinions on whether or not you would enjoy it.”

“Oh,” was all Satya said, and Hanzo began the process of reconnecting his legs, hissing at the uncomfortable sensation of plugging additional nerves into his system.

“You do not have to – I did not mean to disturb you,” Satya protested, sitting up to watch him, but he shook his head.

“I was intending to go for a walk before you arrived.”

Satya pursed her lips, but said nothing else, and a silence fell over the two as Hanzo collected his music player, clothes, and bow and quiver.

The silence was broken after a few minutes by Satya’s soft voice, “Do you think I’m a good person?”

Hanzo started and turned to Satya with confusion written clearly on his face, “Pardon?”

“Fareeha is such a good person,” she explained, staring down at the plush snake head resting against her clavicle, “Fighting for just and – and defending humanity. But I-“.

“Have spent your entire life working towards making the world a better place for its people,” Hanzo interrupted, probably a bit too meanly if Satya’s flinch was anything to go by. He lowered himself onto the edge of his bed and picked up the komodo dragon to fiddle with, knowing that neither of them particularly liked eye contact. Softening his voice, he continued, “The people who raised you lied to you about their intentions but that doesn’t change that what you hoped to achieve was good. And look where you are now. You are a good person Satya. Just because you were lied to does not change that.”

He let her absorb his words for a moment, rolling the stuffing of the plush between his fingers, only to be startled by her voice again seconds later, “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“The people who raised you also li-“.

“I never believed that what I was doing was ‘good’ or ‘right’. I have never been so blinded by my family as to think that we were good people,” he interrupted sharply. Satya’s eyes widened and Hanzo found himself once again swallowing down the bile of his thoughts telling him that Satya was too good to be his friend and look at how he treated her. “Do yourself a favour and don’t compare yourself to me.”

Satya pursed her lips, looked like she wanted to say more, but then thought the better of it. Hanzo turned away closing his eyes and breathing deeply through his nose.

“What if I’m bad at this? Dating someone.”

At least that was something Hanzo could laugh at. “I do not think I am the right person to talk to about that. I don’t suppose Amelie is still awake?”

Satya laughed, too, and something tightened in Hanzo’s chest. “Perhaps you are right.” She sighed, and then sat up, untangling herself from her nest of plushies, “I suppose I should get some sleep – and leave you to your walk. Will you be alright tonight?”

“Yes, Satya, I’ll be fine. Thank you.”

#overwatch #overwatch fanfic #satya vaswani #symmetra #hanzo shimada #my writing #idk what else to tag this as hopefully people actually see it haha

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star-shuttle-scout · 7 years ago

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Okay so now I have only seen a few people talk about this. I’ve seen these sort of headcanons taken as controversial, some people hate them, others are indifferent, and some support them. But I myself, support these headcanons because seeing yourself in characters is important and representation of things like this is scarce. I just don’t understand the hatred towards it when there’s nothing wrong with it. Today I am going to talk about Jonathan Byers and the possibility of him having a form of Autism. Now if you don’t want to see this and you want to yell at me then just scroll away. This is just my opinion, I’m not trying to start a fight, so just chill. For the rest of you that want to hear, let’s get started!

I just want to start by saying I’m no expert on this subject. I’m not expecting this to be canon or whatever, and none of these are solid proof that Jonathan has autism. Not every autistic person has the same traits, they differ from person to person. It’s just something that’s been in my mind for a while and I figured that maybe some people could see this and be like “Hey I noticed that too!” 1.) Jonathan shows a very huge interest in both music and photography. A lot of teens in the ‘80s liked music, it’s a common thing. But Jonathan carries his camera around quite a lot, he uses it as a coping mechanism, a sort of bridge between himself and the world around him. It could be surmised that his special interest is photography, it’s something he really likes and if he so pleased he could probably tell you a lot about it. He takes his camera everywhere, even to look for his missing brother. He takes pictures of the ground, as if the results might show him some sort of answer. 2.) The way he talks about people and pictures. Jonathan talks about the world as if he’s on the outside looking in, as if he’s an entirely different entity compared to everyone else. He discusses how he’d rather ‘observe’ people rather than talk to them. He understands this is strange, he’s been made very aware of that because of the way people act around him. He says that “Sometimes, people don’t say what they’re really thinking.” and according to Jonathan if you ‘capture the right moment’ it will explain a person somehow. This observation in and of itself is interesting, because sometimes autistic people have problems interacting with others because they are very literal and they don’t quite like or understand that the people around them don’t always mean what they say. Of course, Jonathan shows an understanding and he too expresses an affinity for sarcasm... So he does understand some forms of spoken language, but he doesn’t like that people aren’t honest with him. It frustrates him that people don’t speak their minds, which can be especially taxing when you’re someone like Jonathan who seemingly is picked on quite often. He doesn’t trust people to mean what they say because perhaps he’s had experiences in which he thought people were being kind to him when in reality they were making fun of him. (I think we’ve all experienced that at one point or another). 3.) He takes pictures of the teens at Steve’s house, and of course that’s a creepy scene... But did you know that sometimes people with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) cross over lines and boundaries because they have a hard time comprehending what is ‘socially acceptable’? It doesn’t excuse his actions, he even acknowledges this later and apologizes. He took pictures of a girl getting undressed, let’s be real. But it could show why he did it, instead of just ‘he’s a creepy guy’. When Nicole catches him, he seems embarrassed or startled that she’s seen them. By this point, perhaps he’s had time to examine his actions and realizes that he’s done something wrong. He’s living in a society he doesn’t seem to comprehend, but he has to know some of the rules by now. However, stumbling upon kids partying while taking pictures in the woods isn’t really in the society handbook he’s been handed, in the moment, he just did it. Later on, he probably had time to examine his actions and regretted them. Honestly he was punished for it pretty justly in the end. 4.) When his camera is broken. Steve comments that Jonathan knows he did something wrong but it’s just ‘hardwired’ into him and that they have to take away his ‘toy’. Jonathan immediately goes from passive and quiet to frantic and ready to step in, he pleads with Steve. The camera obviously means a lot to him, whether it was a present or something he worked hard for. But remember, it’s also his connection to the world around him. It helps him interpret the way people work, helps him cope with reality. His bridge is broken, and he’s absolutely devastated. He falls completely silent, and when he spots Nancy still looking at him he opens his mouth, as if to speak but he says nothing. Some might say this looks like an episode in which he’s gone nonverbal due to stress. 5.) This one is a little weak, but I don’t care. Jonathan has a soft voice, he talks quietly and often stammers and stutters as he speaks. He mumbles a lot, and has a flat tone most of the time. This is another trait common with ASD, especially people with Asperger’s and such. Volume control is difficult sometimes for people with ASD. I myself struggle to maintain appropriate volume levels when speaking, as when I’m excited I tend to grow louder without noticing. Jonathan himself stays very quiet, and probably has to be prompted to speak up very often. His often flat tone conveys not a lack of emotional but a lack of understanding how to do so or comprehending that he’s supposed to convey his emotions through his voice. 6.) People see him as strange and odd, and just the way people depict him in general points out some form of social shortcoming. He tends to make intense eye contact and stare, and when he speaks he has a habit of looking away as he does so. It’s difficult to maintain appropriate eye contact for him, and he’s probably been berated for it at times, so he has a tendency to stare in an attempt to fix this. 7.) Routine, maybe? Jonathan is seen making breakfast for Will and presumably himself in the pilot, that’s most likely his routine. Even after Will’s disappearance, his solution to helping his mother is cooking breakfast. He’s not sure how to deal with everyone’s emotional distress or his own, so he just does what he knows. 8.) The fight with Steve. Jonathan’s rage was justified in this scene, he was just fine walking away until the older boy called out his family. Now think about this, Jonathan has been dealing with so much lately. First his brother goes missing, then his mom starts losing her mind, his camera is broken, his entire life starts to fall apart. His brother is presumed dead, his father threatens to come back into the picture, and then there’s the whole thing with the monster and stuff. He is dealing with so much, and then Steve shoves him over what he can handle. He’s pushed over the edge, into what many would call a meltdown. Of course, autistic people are rarely violent and aggressive towards others in their meltdowns. That is, unless someone is touching them, trying to prevent them from leaving, or adding into the sensory overload in some way. Steve is pushing him, calling out his family, egging him on. Jonathan snaps and they fight, and once Jonathan is on top of Steve he only sees Steve. His sole focus is beating up Steve, any attempts to get him off are completely ignored. He pushes Tommy away, doesn’t hear the approaching cop car, and then elbows an officer in the face who tries to grab him. He’s not aware of what’s going on, he’s having an emotional outburst of such severity that he’s in a mode where his mind is saying ‘do not touch me’ and nothing else matters to him in that moment. Even after he’s pulled away, he struggles to get back on top of Steve, and he continues to struggle as he’s handcuffed. He screams at a cop to get off of him, as if it is a valid request, he’s freaked out and upset.

Back at the police station, he’s irritated and anxious, obviously still coming down off of his fit. His mother asks what happened and all he can say is ‘I’m fine’, he doesn’t even tell her ‘I got in a fight’ or anything of the sort. In Hopper’s office, he’s got his fingers sort of in his mouth. I suppose it looks like he’s biting his nails but I took it as a stim myself, just a way to calm himself down. He’s nervous, looking between his mom and Hopper. Of course, he thinks they won’t believe him but he’s also extremely fidgety, which isn’t really something Jonathan exhibits very often. He’s geared up, still in fight or flight mode. 9.) His mother’s perspective of him. She doesn’t really talk that much about Jonathan as she does Will, but Joyce says a few choice words that I thought were very strange. Most parents of teenagers would say that their child is too distant, they want to do things themselves and are stubborn and rebellious... Joyce says this “You act like you’re all alone in the world.” Not in this moment, just in general, he acts as if he’s alone. This excludes not only Joyce, but Will as well. It just proves that Jonathan sees himself as a separate entity compared to everyone else, and even his mother acknowledges it. He isn’t just a loner, he’s cut himself off from everyone else whether it be intentional or not. He’s not just some shy friendless kid, he’s done this to himself, he’s distanced himself from the world because he doesn’t understand it and feels like nobody else understands him. 10.) Jonathan has a good rapport with the boys, but nobody his age. Even though he doesn’t seem the best of friends with the little group of boys his little brother is part of, he’s quite friendly with them compared to everyone else. This is most likely because Will is friends with them, they’re a little strange like Will, like Jonathan. Will is like a bridge, he’s a connection, nobody is closer to Jonathan than Will. He knows his brother, and his friends by extension know him too. They know he’s strange and odd, in another world, but in a way they are too... This really only points out that Jonathan is socially inept again, but I thought it was important to see how odd he is in the eyes of his classmates. It’s to the point where someone in Tommy and Steve’s group ( I don’t remember who, maybe Carol?) jokes that “I didn’t know he could talk”... He’s so bizarre in society’s standards he doesn’t even speak, that’s not just an outcast by social standards. He isn’t just the poor kid, the queer, the creepy guy. And it’s not just because of being bullied or anything of the sort, he probably just doesn’t talk that much unless prompted. I know a guy with autism that I’ve gone to school with since I was in fourth grade, he rarely spoke and only spoke when prompted. He was quiet, kept to himself, and when he did speak it was rarely audible. It reminds me a lot of Jonathan Byers. 11.) The way Joyce speaks to Will and Jonathan separately. This is going to sound odd, and maybe reaching... But honestly, it feels like Joyce talks to the boys differently. When talking to Jonathan, Joyce often repeats herself, she speaks clearly and to the point. It’s almost like she’s in a habit of repetition around him, as if she realizes that sometimes he doesn’t understand things. Maybe it’s just because of the situation they’re in, but she repeats herself and makes sure that she gets through to Jonathan when talking to him. When Hopper and Joyce are leaving, she says “I need you to stay here” and when Jonathan protests, she continues over him and explains that he needs to watch the kids. She says please a few times, and when she leans back, she makes very intense eye contact with him and promises multiple times that she’s going to find Will. It’s almost as if she feels like she has to repetitively tell him this or she believes he might follow her despite her instructions (I mean, hell, it doesn’t sound out of the realm of possibility). Also, in the pilot, when she asks where Will is, Jonathan seems to have forgotten to wake him up. She is irritated and says that she’s told him this a thousand times. However, this could be chalked up to a forgetfulness that seems to run in the family. Joyce is a little forgetful it seems, so it would be understandable that Jonathan has a similar trait. A lot of lines spoken to Jonathan by Joyce are repeated needlessly. Of course it’s understandable if she’s mad, but even when she’s worried she pries at Jonathan. “What is it? What is it? Tell me. Tell me!” This could be a habit she picked up from Jonathan’s childhood in which it took a lot of prompting for him to respond to questions. She also says “Do you hear me” or “Understand” a few times, which isn’t something she says often to anyone except Hopper when he doubts her. She also makes intense eye contact with him all the time, like she had to struggle for a long time to get him to look at her which might have been the case. She’ll take hold of his shoulders or his arm and duck her head and wait until he looks at her to get his agreement or for him to respond, like a cue they’ve worked on. - - - There are probably other things I could point out but this is just from memory really. I probably should rewatch the series but I rarely rewatch series unfortunately. None of this is concrete evidence, some of this could be explained away to be honest as social anxiety or just other simple things. But I dunno, headcanons exist for a reason, eh?

#jonathan byers #stranger things #headcanons #autism

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marsmyf-blog · 7 years ago

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Short Term 12

Short Term 12 is a place for troubled young people, — teenagers. A shelter for a community of the problematic, troubled, abused, and even for the autistic. Home for those who have difficulty coping with their problems, mentally and emotionally.

Grace is a supervisor of Short Term 12. A woman who seems to have a problem within herself. She’s seems to have been in a relationship with Mason, another supervisor at Short Term 12, for a long time already. She finds it hard to open up, even to the ones closest to her, even to Mason. It seems that even though she keeps some people close, she never really lets them in. It’s ironic; she helps other people with their problems, but she can’t seem to help herself with her own.

It’s hard to explain this movie, since there are so many characters to focus on. Each have a story of their own.

Another character of the movie is Marcus, who has a problem getting out of what he thinks is a safe zone. He finds it hard to come out of his cage, afraid of what’s outside. A person who has a hard time facing reality to the point that of entering every possible escape he can think of. Violence. Drugs. He thinks that if you can’t face your problem, you can run away from it. Truth is, you can’t run away forever. Your problem may either catch up to you or block your way. As long as you’re not facing it, you will keep being trapped within its claws.

Another character is Jayden. She’s new to the community, and with her is a backpack with scissors, belts, a pouch of problems, and a mind full of philosophical opinions. She refuses to make connections and relationships because she believes that everything is short-lived. What is the point of building something when it ends up breaking down in the end anyway? She expected her time in Short Term 12 to be short, because her dad will get her out soon anyway.

But all people have ways of disappointing others.

Her dad fails to get her, on her birthday, when she was very hopeful that he will come. One of the worst feelings is when a great expectation ends up being a big disappointment. Climbing a hill for so long and when you finally reach the top, you’d expect a hot-air balloon to pick you up and take you to the skies, but instead something falls, making you roll to the foot of the hill. Ending up in a pit of mud. But its your choice to get up or just lay there and wait for the ground to absorb you.

“It’s impossible to worry about anything else when there’s blood coming out of you.” Grace tells Jayden. It seems that her mindset is; to cope up with emotional distress, hurt yourself physically, and that physical pain will temporarily be your worry. A way of escaping for a short while. But in the long run, it’s not really effective is it? You’re only adding damage to yourself and that obviously is not a solution.

Mason eventually proposes to Grace, which makes her happy. But for every day the sun shines, it sets, and darkness takes over. There comes the night. There is a theory that after great happiness, there comes an equally great or an even greater sadness. In Grace’s case, it’s the latter. She soon, — too soon actually, — learns that her father is finally being freed from prison. Spoiler: She was sexually abused by her very own male parent. Now that is beyond absurd and disgusting. I can’t imagine someone’s very own father abusing her, especially sexually. This explains why Grace was very enclosed within herself.

When there are problems, we have different and personal ways of dealing with them. You can face it, run away from it, or it becomes much that you can’t take it and decide to end yourself instead. For Marcus, the pile of despair has finally reached its limit, that it’s too much for him to handle. In cases like this, most people decide to harm themselves. That’s when they have finally given up. Marcus has lost all hope, sees no point in continuing the journey of life, and decides to bring his own demise upon himself.

Grace eventually gets too frustrated. The water is near its boiling point, and when that happens, the hot, scorching liquid will flow its way out of the kettle. Marcus wants her to cool down, but she refuses him. It’s frustrating to the viewer also, because WHY CAN’T SHE JUST GIVE MARCUS A PIECE OF HER MIND?!?! But I can’t judge, since you’ll never know how something feels like, until you’re the one who’s dealing with it. Grace, after all this time, has not accepted the truth, has not faced her problem, and continues to run away with it. Question is, how long can your feet manage to sprint distant miles without stumbling and getting tired? How can you fix a problem if you refuse to help yourself? How can you fix yourself if you refuse to be fixed?

We all come to a point where everything is too much to the point that it breaks us down. Grace, sadly, is at that point. In situations like these, there is a 50% chance that you will build yourself again and a 50% chance that you would give up. It depends on you what chance you choose to take. And sometimes, in situations like these, we need someone to help us rebuild ourselves. Marcus is more than willing to help Grace. He is very determined to pull her up and keep her from falling off the cliff she is hanging onto. But it depends on her if she helps carry herself up, or let go of Marcus’ hand.

Maybe it was too much for her, because she let her hand slip. She broke up with Mason. On falling from a high place, there is an 80% chance of ending up dead at the end and 20% chance of surviving. On some special cases, gravity is in your favor. It gives you a chance to fall a soft fall, or to stop mid-air and climb back up.

Grace tells Jayden how she was abused by her own father. She finally learns how to open up, thus, she finally let herself free. Jayden then confesses about her own abuse, and reports it to the authorities.

Marcus recovers, and he is found soon after living a brand new life. Sipping a cappuccino, with a girlfriend, and a bright future ahead of him.

At every end of a dark and long tunnel, come the light. At every end of the rainbow, there is hope. And fortunately, each of those characters mentioned have seen the light, and found hope.

Life Lessons

Everyone has their own reasons on why they do certain things, — may it be reasonable or unreasonable. Some problems may seem unreasonable to you, but it may mean differently to other people. No matter how big or small their problem may look to you, the fact that it affects them greatly, means that it’s not a small deal. We all have our personal preferences. I have been repeating this too much, but truthfully, you really have no other choice than to face your fears. Only you are capable of killing your own demons. You can’t be helped if you do not want to be helped. You can’t be fixed if you don’t allow yourself to be fixed.

Most Powerful Part

We all have our own secrets, kept within the deepest pits of our memory, and secured with a lock. There is no possible way of it rolling off our tongue and coming out our mouth. No person can open it, unless we open it ourselves, with our personal keys.

The most memorable part was when Grace finally had the courage to say voice her secrets out. It’s hard to say how you really feel, and what you really think, when you think no one will understand, and no one will be able to fix you. But it doesn’t go that way. No matter how much you hope, that certain thought will not dissolve, even in the deepest pit of your mind, for it is rooted, tightly, on every functioning part of you. However, we have a choice on whether we let it affect us negatively, or see beyond how negative it is and look for something bright enough to eliminate it. There is no way we can run away from our problems forever. It will follow us on each turn we take, each road we cross, and each path we pass. You’ll eventually face it anyway, why not face it now?

Favorite Character

My favorite character is Jayden. For me, the story revolved around her. She was the most relatable, — though I have never been abused in any way by my parents. I know how it feels like, to hope for something too much, and end up getting disappointed in the end. She was the truest among all of the characters. I believe in her logic; not making relationships and attachments for all is short-lived and fleeting. What is the point of blowing a bubble if it ends up dispersing in the air soon anyway?

Personal Connection

The movie was meant to be relatable. I related to it so much that I think I should be a part of Short Term 12. Kidding. But honestly, there were so many parts on which I can relate. The movie deals with depression, which is very common with teenagers today. I, myself, have experienced it, and I’m telling you, it was not a very good experience. It feels like I’m falling, and falling, and falling. If I keep on falling and never land, is it still falling? It felt like I was walking through an endless tunnel, no signs of light and hope ahead. I don’t know how I managed to get out of it. Sometimes I think of doing what Marcus did. At a point it seemed like slashing a sharp object across your skin is the best way to escape the reality you don’t want to face.

I also related to Jayden and Grace. I have a hard time telling other people my problems, problems that I can’t handle. So I run away from it, and I’m still currently running. I just hope that I get to the right finish line.

“Look into my eyes so you know what it’s like, to live a life not knowing what a normal life’s like.”

- A line from a very own composition of Marcus. There are times that I do not understand the world. Is it rotating the wrong way or those are just my eyes? Maybe there’s something wrong with my vision. I don’t understand how some human organisms function, are they weird or am I the one who’s not normal? Sometimes the world seems too complex, and I have no idea how to live as a human. Is that weird?

Question

For Grace:

How do you expect to fix someone, when you’re broken yourself?

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shapemydestiny · 5 years ago

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I’m Seeing a Psychiatrist?

comorbidityDo you ever feel like a year went by super quickly but also super slow at the same time? This is one of those years. It’s been 8 months since my last post... That’s a long time, especially considering that I told myself that I wanted to journal more often to get my feelings published somewhere. I remember writing the last blog post, but dont remember what was happening on that day. Usually I write when i’m sad and want to get my thoughts down when i’m sad. This is not one of those times. I said TBD at the end of the last post. I guess it was... until now.

I’ve continued to see my therapist on my insurance’s telehealth app. My therapist has a focus on life transitions. This was helpful at times, but also extremely frustrating. I mean at that point, you’re basically a life coach who doesn’t give opinions on anything, but is able to diagnose you. That’s not to say it’s not helpful, but just a mixed bag. When people talk about “therapy”, or “types of therapy”, I thought that most forms of therapy isn’t talk therapy, where you just rant about things. I have a great connection with her, but I just don’t know if she’s the right fit in the long term. More on this later.

Thankfully my grandmothers health has been OK and she’s back to her normal life in her “not retirement home” (a fancy place that I thought was a 4 star hotel at first glance). Can we get a Suite Life of Zach and Cody remake but with seniors?

She was able to fly over for a visit during the end of the major parts of recovery. During this time period I continued to look at graduate programs. I’m not going to lie. I was very fatigued, lacked motivation to do much, and was incapable of making any rational decisions at this time. I should’ve gotten more serious help during this time. I applied two places and got into both. One of them was prestigious, and extremely affordable as it’s an online program designed to target large amounts of people. Looking into the details, I decided that 1) I couldn’t mentally handle that challenging of a school and 2) It didn’t have a lot of courses I wanted. I picked the other program which was affordable as well, and got ready to start taking courses this past May.

May came around and there were many red flags with my first online course. I’m talking vague assignments, the course didn’t match the course description etc. Turns out this person was the chair of the program, and teaches about a third of the courses in the program. I received emails from 10% of my classmates on the first day that they were considering dropping, and one person stated other professors were “marginally better”. I dropped out the next day. If this many people had the same thought process that I did, I know I made the right choice. It was a major setback because I had no backup schools and fall deadlines had passed for most schools.

June my mother went out of town to visit my grandmother. I took this time to start seeing a psychiatrist. Right off the bat, he diagnosed me with an anxiety disorder, depression, an eating disorder and ADHD. The last one threw me for a loop. How do I have ADHD? ME?? But “i’m one of the good kids” and “I didn’t do poorly in school”.

For two months I said no to ADHD meds. Around this time my nephew (in elementary/primary school) was diagnosed with ADHD. One night I told my sister what my psychiatrist told me. She told me that she and other family members have ADHD as well??? How did nobody tell me this before? My nephew has ADHD, but I assumed that has to do with his father’s own ADHD.

*The rest of this post was written about a month or two later. Some details might be foggy*

I went back to the doctors the following month. I told him about my family history and gave them a try. Within days I noticed that more often than not I was able to focus on a tasks longer, was happier, and was eating less. The downside? The ADD med was helpful, but made me aggressive at times and I often felt tired and irritable at the end of the day.

My psychiatrist told be that he still thinks that I have ADD, but that a bipolar disorder is more than likely the main problem. Fast forward a bit to today. I am now on a mood stabilizer, and an anti-depressant. For the first month ore so, I saw mild changes. After being on the right dosage, everything was perfect! For the first time in years, I felt like I had a baseline mood and mental state. It wasn’t sad, or overly happy. I wasn’t avoiding food, I wasn’t getting the munchies. I was productive, but not hyper focused on one task at a time. Fast forward a couple weeks to modern day, and that cycle has broken. I’m still better off than before I was on a mood stabilizer, but have still been cycling between moods and have been impulsive.

I’m using a mood tracking app, which is helpful because it’s specifically designed for those with bipolar in mind. Both my therapist and my psychiatrist have said I am a unique case, with little established pattern. To add to the mix, my psychiatrist thinks I’m potentially autistic (that’s a story for another time & I was never diagnosed). We talked last time about a full psyc eval being conducted towards the end of my appointment, but never got into details. Hopefully he will be able to refer me to someone tomorrow.

I’m seeing my psychiatrist tomorrow. Sadly, he might have to adjust my mood stabilizer or anti-depressant dosage. That’s great, but my impulsive behavior has been problematic. I lost 15 pounds since I started psychiatric medications. Overtime, I’ve slowly been gaining it back. When someone has ADD/ADHD, and bipolar (multiple conditions are referred to has happening comorbidity) , you need to have a stabilized mood, before adding a stimulant into the equation. I’m not mentally “stable” at the moment and will likely end up with a dose adjustment and not return to ADHD meds. If the weight gain and impulsive behavior continues, who knows what my future holds.

#Cyclothymia #bipolar #livingwithbipolar #adhd #mental health

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mmollymercury · 2 years ago

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I feel weird for adding to an already long post but this discourse honestly makes me so angry. I'll start by saying: I have OCD, I have autism, I also might have other stuff going on. And it offends me when people call me childish. Even tho I know my interests and hyperfixations are generally that. i.e childrens media. This is just a common neuro divergent thing. I feel like when people say that to me, especially to my FACE, they assume I'm dumb, won't be hurt/don't have the emotional capacity to hurt, or have no interest/understanding about something with 'complexity' or whatever. And I feel awful, I feel like they see me as a stupid person and I get the need to earn the approval from this person, the want to explain all the historical and astrological things I know, to prove I'm not dumb, I shouldn't have to do that! This happens to me a lot. I've come out of my shell more since meeting a real friend and at college, I get called weird and the things I say are often disregarded. It's just another thing that's apart of the ND experience. But I'm not dumb, nobody really is (except bigots) no matter what interests I have, childish or otherwise, it does not make me a child. I'm 20 years old, I have complex thoughts and imo, us autistics actually have a higher intellectual capability than neuro typicals😶😶😶 People saying that fictional characters that clearly are ND and mentally ill are babies, show how they see irl ND & mentally ill people, whether they realise it or not. The comment abt Bruno "not washing his hands" actually sends me up the wall. Do you know how many times I've had to put my phone down when I see a horrifically butchered ocd experience? Too many. OCD IS A SPECTRUM. okay? I'll keep saying it till I die. There are so many faces to ocd, the reason why they are all called ocd, is because they are all obsessive and compulsive. The reasons/triggers for those compulsions vary but they still have the same effect. My OCD does effect hand washing and cleanliness but only a tiny bit, the main focus of my OCD are intrusive thoughts, which I don't feel comfortable going into but they are debilitating and when people acquaint OCD to just one thing, it offends and invalidates me and others who have OCD and also makes it hard for people like us to realise they have it. I've had intrusive thoughts since I was 14. I only realised I had OCD when I was 17. I legit thought I was crazy til then, I was scared to tell anyone and felt like a genuine freak. If more people stopped spreading misinformation, maybe I would've known sooner. I also agree with the other person who was genuinely surprised at the good representation (even tho it's brief) I also second guessed myself: I'm probably overreacting, if they wanted everyone to know he was ocd they wouldve made a huge joke out of it. Which is a sad thing to think but it's true. Almost every show has done this, we've grown just to expect invalidation.

I honestly think that people who are debating this, should only do so if they too are ND. Don't say someone's experience is wrong or offensive(I understand the superstitions are culturally based, but a colombian person with ocd would also obsess over stuff from their culture, it's not surprising or hard to understand. I understand the need to tell people the cultural ties to the salt throwing, however there's no denying that Bruno does it to an unhealthy degree and ignoring that and shaming ND people, is offensive)

Let people express themselves through their comfort characters. I probably sound like a broken down record, repeating everything everybody just said. But I just had to get this off my chest.

If you don't like a character being headcannoned as ND because it leads to infantization, maybe think of how you view ND people.

#long ass post #Pls read tho #very important

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mikeyd1986 · 6 years ago

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MIKEY’S PERSONAL BLOG 114, July 2018

On Sunday afternoon, we had my step-dad’s 60th birthday party. I often find parties and social gatherings to be very challenging on me mentally and emotionally. This weekend, I had the added complication of poor quality of sleep, low energy levels and chronic fatigue in the mix. So even putting up a few decorations required a lot of physical effort from me. And then there’s dealing with other people’s energies which leaves me feeling very drained and exhausted. None of this is anybody’s fault, it’s just the way I’ve been wired.

Thankfully we had the function at home so I could basically retreat and hibernate in my bedroom if things got too much for me. To an outsider, it may seem like I’m being anti-social or lazy but in actuality, it’s a combination of being introverted, shy, reserved, autistic, anxious and depressed that makes me feel this way. Still I’m learning to cope with it better. We had the party catered for by a caterer named Erica from the Finger Food People plus the cake and cupcakes were designed by my friend and former team-mate Cathy Horne.

On Monday night, I went to a Yin yoga class with Aaron Petty at Level Up Yoga in Berwick. I was still feeling very much tired and worn out after the hectic weekend I had and so I felt like I really needed more of a restorative practice tonight. The wind was howling loudly outside the studio and the walls were shaking a little but I was safe and sheltered inside. It was another intimate class tonight with just the two of us (we can make it if we try!). Tee Bee and I.

Tonight we did a number of restorative poses and Yin-style stretches including Seated Forward Fold, Bridge Pose and Waterfall, Deep Neck and Side stretches. As usual, the class brought up a lot of emotional issues festering inside of me which currently lies around my uncertainty about work and the future as well as my social skills and wanting to make more friends. https://www.yogajournal.com/yoga-101/types-of-yoga/yin

(Why do I find it so hard to put myself out there and socialise? I wish I had more friends in my life. I wish I got to hang out more with them. I feel so powerless at work with all these roster and management changes. I can’t handle it. What’s wrong with me? I’m a doormat. I get so easily emotional whenever I make a mistake or somebody else insults me or I can’t answer a customer’s question. I feel so dumb sometimes. I’m lucky to still be working here.)

The above is pretty much what came up for me and is very typical of my thought patterns about myself, my situation at work and my social life. But yoga helps to turn these negatives into positives. To be able to let go of these stories which are holding me back in life, some of which are simply untrue. And it’s what I love about Aaron’s philosophy towards his yoga practice. He is always encouraging, supportive and accepting. Never judgmental or harsh or critical. Thank you Aaron for being there for me. https://www.aaronpetty.com/teaching-schedule/

On Tuesday morning, I did my first Boxing / HIIT Power small group training session with CinFull Fitness in Narre Warren South. I’ve known Cinamon Guerin for about a year or two now from participating in her Body Combat classes at Casey Arc. Now she also runs a personal training business on the side with small groups of clients in her home garage. I’ve contemplated coming along to a class for a while now but it was either not the right time or life got in the way. But now I’m finally giving it a go. https://www.moneycrashers.com/health-benefits-boxing-workouts/

It was just myself and Sarah today who is one of Cinamon’s regular clients. After filling in my registration forms (I go into a lot of detail as always), I was ready to get started. We warmed-up by doing alternating exercises (Wall balls, Ball slams, Battle Ropes, Kettle Bell Swings) at 30 seconds each. Next we did some weighted back squats and squat pulses, TRX exercises (Ring Rows, Squats, Lunges) and some lifts with the dumb bells (Bicep Curls, Overheads, Tricep Push-ups).

Lastly we did some basic boxing drills. I’m still fairly inexperienced when it comes to boxing though I have done a couple of group fitness boxing classes and a little with my personal trainer Mandi Herauville in the past. Thankfully Cinamon didn’t make it too difficult for us today. I gotta get back into the swing of things. I still have moments of self-consciousness whenever I’m workout out. Being comfortable with looking at myself in the mirror is still something I struggle with due to my body image issues and being overweight.

But it’s something I really want to work on and improve over time. One day at a time. The thing I love about Cinamon is her ability to make fitness enjoyable and accessible. It’s really tough work but the results you get from working out are worth it. My mental illness does have the tendency to interfere at times whenever I’m exercising, often to extremes like questioning whether I’m going to pass out or have a heart attack. It’s more than I’m still unfit at times and so it’s no surprise that I’m puffing and panting quite quickly.

These fears are irrational though as being out of breath, fatigued and profusely sweating are all normal by-products of working out. Of course you have to still be mindful about not overdoing it or causing yourself an injury. Cinamon constantly asks how we are feeling and that’s a sign of a great personal trainer. No client wants to be dragged off to Casey Hospital in a paramedic van because precautions weren’t taken during a session. And so in that sense, I feel very comfortable and secure with Cinamon training me. Personal safety should always come first. https://www.facebook.com/CinFullFitness/

On Thursday night, I attended the Young Adults AS Peer Group meeting at MS Australia - the Nerve Centre in Blackburn. Tonight’s discussion topic was on self-motivation which is something I’ve been struggling a lot with recently. My quality of sleep has been noticeably worse lately, dipping to around 4-5 hours per night with broken periods of me waking up at around 3-4am and then 6-7am. Sleep disturbances and insomnia is nothing new for me but it seems to be getting harder to manage of late.

Sleep deprivation really has a devastating affect on my moods, concentration levels and energy levels. Hence why it’s been difficult to motivate myself most days unless I have set appointments or shifts at work. But even then I notice that I’m tired, restless, irritable, moody and struggling to function at times. I have found that meditation, listening to calming music and going to bed helps to a certain degree but not always.

I honestly had mixed feelings about tonight’s meeting but I feel like a lot of it is clouded by my current mental state. Bumping into Gayle again, I felt really hesitant like I was walking on eggshells around her and didn’t want to draw her attention. I decided to sit by myself after I arrived but it didn’t take long for Gayle to drag me out of my chair. I did appreciate her trying to encourage me to mingle with a couple of new “Aspies” but sadly it fell flat for me.

I almost felt like saying “Hi I’m Michael. I’m socially awkward and introverted. Nice to meet you.” Because that’s exactly how I feel inside in any group situation. But thankfully Max was lingering around to make socialising a bit easier for everyone before the meeting started. Gayle’s proposal was still haunting me in the back of my mind. I just know that I don’t have the social skills, the personality nor the confidence to be a group leader hence why I’ve been so evasive and dismissive about it. However, they are things I really do need to work on.

The meeting itself ran alright. We got divided into three separate discussion groups like last time. I ended up being in Max’s group outside on the sofas. Though I personally only came up with one decent suggestion to contribute, we still managed to get some great ideas written down on the butcher paper for ways to get more organised in our daily lives. These include:

Using planners, calendars, diaries, post-it notes and notepads

Setting alarms at scheduled times on your phone

Writing to-do lists, prep lists and shopping lists

Using filing systems such as folders and display books

Preventing problems before the arise

Persistence in the face of setbacks e.g. extending deadlines

Ensuring that you take regular breaks and reward yourself when tasks get completed

I could feel myself getting easily distracted and struggling to maintain focus tonight at times so I decided to leave early. The jury is still out as to whether the Young Adults Aspergers peer support group is the right venue for me to make new friends. It’s been a constant challenge for my entire 32 years of existence to find a place where I belong, to connect with like-minded people, to be understood, accepted and included. The one positive is that at least I’m slowly becoming a familiar face at Aspergers Victoria. Putting yourself out there and speaking up in a group is fucking hard to do but at least I can say I’m trying and I’m not giving up. https://aspergersvic.org.au/young-adults

On Friday morning, I went to my Body Pump class at YMCA Casey ARC in Narre Warren. To be honest, I was still feeling worn out and restless after arriving at the facility. My low mood could be attributed to the recent “Blood Moon” appearance this week as well as the colder weather. Thankfully our instructor Gina was in a loud, bubbly mood this morning and a workout was exactly what I needed in order to lift my mental state up and feel better.

Today we did release number 106 which features the following tracks: Tell Me You Love Me by Galantis & Throttle, Walk On Water by Thirty Seconds to Mars, Tribes by Chase & Status and Revenge by Pink Feat. Eminem. I have to say that the soreness and burn didn’t really kick in for me until about half way through the workout when we started doing lunges, squats and squat pulses then push presses, power presses and push-ups.

But it felt awesome being able to push through how challenging this release was and to know that everyone else in the room was feeling the same way. Laughing, having fun and enjoying whatever exercise your doing will always be an important aspect for me because otherwise what’s the point of it? http://w3.lesmills.com/israel/en/classes/bodypump/music-tracklists/

“One foot in front of the other babe. One breath leads to another yeah. Just keep moving, oh. Look within for the strength today. Listen out for the voice to say. Just keep moving, oh... So my love, keep on running. You gotta get through today, yeah. There my love, keep on running. Gotta keep those tears at bay, oh. Oh, my love, don't stop burning. Gonna send them up in flames. In flames.” David Guetta & Sia - Flames (2018)

“Drowning in the static of a thousand whispered doubts. I need to break the silence before my oxygen runs out. So can you hear me?. "Can you hear me?". As I call in to this dark and lonely. Passage, am I getting it through? Because all I want to do is get a message from me to you.” Evermore - Can You Hear Me? (2009)

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ronnykblair · 6 years ago

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“Bad Blood” Book Review: Fooling Most of the People for a Long, Long Time

While I read Bad Blood, John Carreyrou’s detailed account of the rise and fall of Theranos, two thoughts immediately came to mind.

First, if North Korea ever launched a startup, Theranos would be it.

The company operated the same way Kim Jong Un does: non-functional products, “launches” that backfire, massive fraud, dead employees, and a creepy old guy who monitored employee email and Internet usage.

Second, this story is amazing. They need to make it into a movie.

Then I realized that they are making it into a movie starring Jennifer Lawrence, with Adam McKay from The Big Short set to direct.

After extensive research, I’ve determined that North Korea did not officially back the company, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the Kim family invested via Rupert Murdoch or Betsy DeVos.

Bad Blood is my favorite non-fiction book of the past decade.

It’s so good that it almost seems like fiction – a John Grisham thriller, maybe.

It takes the best parts of history’s most famous downfall stories and injects even more intrigue by adding the one element those stories lacked: human life.

This book isn’t directly related to recruiting or working in the finance industry.

But there are so many valuable takeaways that are indirectly related that I decided to write this review anyway:

What is This Book About, and Why Should You Care?

In case you’ve been living in a cave in Antarctica for the past ~3 years, Theranos was a massively hyped “unicorn” healthcare startup that aimed to perform hundreds of blood tests from a single drop of blood pricked from your finger.

No more needles! No more vials of blood!

Just one small problem: it is impossible to do this.

Blood from your finger is different from the blood in your veins because it is partially oxygenated, it’s contaminated by interstitial fluid, and the volume is very low.

In plain English, there’s not enough data, so you can’t solve the problem with a medical device.

You can do a few simple tests, such as the one for glucose levels, with finger-pricked blood, but not the hundreds of complex tests out there.

Despite that, Theranos still managed to raise $900 million over the years at a peak valuation of $9 billion.

But after more than a decade of lying to investors, threatening employees, and using non-functional devices to diagnose patients, Theranos finally began to implode in 2015.

That’s when WSJ investigative reporter John Carreyrou received a tip about the company, began his deep dive into it, and finally published the article that sparked a firestorm.

After that, the company’s trajectory resembled that of a spaceship being sucked into a black hole.

Regulatory agencies banned Theranos from running a lab, Walgreens ended its partnership, the COO was forced out, investors and partners started suing the company, and the SEC charged the CEO and COO (Elizabeth Holmes and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani) with massive fraud.

A criminal investigation is underway, and indictments are likely. Most likely, Theranos will soon be liquidated, and both the top executives will be in jail.

This story is a textbook example of how to do everything wrong at a startup.

And it’s a cautionary tale of what to avoid and how to detect deception if you’re an investor.

So… How Did a North Korean Startup Survive for Over a Decade?

Even if you’ve followed all the WSJ’s reporting on Theranos, you probably have one big question: How could such a fraudulent company last for so long?

Didn’t anyone notice that the Empress had no clothes before a reporter came along?

Bad Blood makes it clear that plenty of people were skeptical from the start.

The company never published peer-reviewed literature, its Board of Directors consisted of fossilized former diplomats who knew nothing about medicine, and it never attracted serious life science VC investors.

The original Ph.D. student who founded the company with Elizabeth Holmes thought her first idea was “science fiction,” and dozens of disgruntled employees quit along the way, convinced that the entire operation was a Potemkin village.

I can’t explain the company’s survival in one sentence, but here’s my summary:

Business Partners: Walgreens was paranoid that CVS would get the technology first, so they entered the partnership without proper due diligence. One skeptical consultant kept warning them, but he was silenced. This one goes in the FOMO (“fear of missing out”) bucket.

Investors: The company raised money mostly from family offices and VCs with no healthcare experience. And they pointed to early investors, such as Tim Draper and Larry Ellison, as evidence that “the smart money” was on board.

VCs with a track record in life sciences, such as Google Ventures and MedVenture Associates, passed when they realized the company couldn’t answer basic technical questions.

Employees: Pretty much all the employees figured out that the company was a fraud, which is why turnover was extremely high.

However, Theranos was super-secretive and used expensive lawyers and private investigators to threaten ex-employees who could have become whistleblowers.

Regulators: Theranos operated in “regulatory no man’s land” by labeling its diagnostics “lab-developed tests,” which are not regulated by the FDA.

Eventually, the regulators caught up to them and started conducting surprise lab inspections because of tips from anonymous ex-employees.

Patients: The company used its broken device(s) to test patients in Arizona and California, which later resulted in ~1 million voided tests.

Amazingly, they threatened doctors and patients who left bad Yelp reviews, but nothing could hide fraud on this scale.

These live deployments finally pushed it over the edge and alerted the broader population to the scam.

What I Loved

I’ve followed the Theranos story closely, but Bad Blood was great because it put together all the pieces in a logical order and gave them more emotional resonance.

The book conveys superbly the human tragedy, ranging from patients who received the wrong diagnoses to employee Ian Gibbons, the chief scientist who “committed suicide” under suspicious circumstances.

But what I loved most were the vividly drawn characters.

In particular, “Sunny” Balwani, the #2 at Theranos, seems like an amalgamation of every single horrible VP in investment banking.

Not only did he micromanage employees while knowing nothing about the product, but he also had the social skills of an autistic monkey.

When an employee quit and refused to sign a confidentiality agreement, Sunny sent a security guard after him, called the police, and then told the police the employee stole property.

When they asked what property was stolen, Sunny replied that the employee “stole property in his mind.”

Oh, and the whole time Sunny was at the company, he was also in a romantic relationship with CEO Elizabeth Holmes, who was ~20 years younger.

Award-winning corporate governance!

Areas for Improvement

That said, the book isn’t perfect.

There are a lot of characters to remember, and sometimes I lost track of who was doing what at which time.

The book moves in rough chronological order, but chapters tend to be thematic or character-based rather than time-based.

So, similar to TV shows like Westworld, the exact timeline can be a bit confusing (though the lack of robots makes it far less convoluted than Westworld).

Finally, the transition where John Carreyrou enters the story toward the end is a bit jarring, since the preceding chapters are written in the third person from the perspective of others.

Takeaways for the Finance Industry

Here’s what you can learn from this story even if you have no interest in startups, venture capital, or medical devices:

1) Story, Story, Story

Your story is everything. That’s why we focus on it heavily in the Interview Guide and the articles on this site.

A great story can sell anything, whether it’s a product or yourself in a job interview.

Elizabeth Holmes was a great storyteller who idolized Steve Jobs, and like Jobs, she could also sell anything.

But if the claims in your story can be disproven easily, your story will fall apart.

It’s not unusual for an early-stage biotech startup to make aggressive claims about its future products.

But what was unusual – and fraudulent – was to claim that the product was ready for real-life usage, when it clearly was not, and then to use it on patients.

This is why it’s a terrible idea to lie or even “spin” facts that can be easily disproven in interviews, such as your abilities in other languages, graduation dates, grades, employment dates, and job titles.

So many readers have gone too far with spinning that I’m going to rewrite the article on the topic later this year.

2) Healthcare != Technology

Many technology companies that launch apps, software, and even hardware adopt a “fake it ‘til you make it” attitude.

That’s fine for technology because no one dies if a smartphone app crashes.

And many students have famously dropped out of university and then started world-class technology companies… because you don’t need that much experience to get started.

Healthcare, though, is a different ball game.

Your product can’t “kind of work” unless you want to kill people.

And it’s almost impossible for 19-year-old university dropouts with no medical experience to start important healthcare companies.

If you’re trying to move into finance, you can use these industry differences to your advantage.

For example, if you have significant medical/biotech experience, you’re much stronger as a career changer candidate if you target healthcare groups at banks and VC firms.

They want people like you because no university graduate could understand those sectors as well as a Ph.D. or industry executive.

But if you want to get into the industry at the last minute, or you don’t have real work experience, it’s better to target sectors such as technology or consumer/retail where you can get up to speed quickly.

3) The Fallacy of Expertise Transferability

Many students at top universities believe that since they got into a top school, they are experts at everything – or at least, they could quickly become experts at anything.

The Board members and early investors of Theranos embraced similar logic:

“I’m the former Secretary of State/Defense or the founder of a multi-billion-dollar tech company. Therefore, I can also be a successful healthcare investor!”

Except… they’re completely different fields.

Facing down the Soviets in the Cold War is impressive, but it doesn’t make a 90-something former diplomat qualified to judge the merits of medical devices.

I outlined in a previous article how you can outwit and out-hustle Ivy League students to win job offers, and this point goes along with the advice there.

Yes, other candidates might have better credentials or higher GPAs…

…but will they take the time to learn the in’s and out’s of stock pitches, find contact information for hundreds of industry professionals, and then contact them in a socially calibrated way?

I’m not sure, but most “experts” would say it’s beneath them.

4) Focus on the Right Things for Your Development Stage – Not the Trappings of Power

As Theranos raised $900 million, Elizabeth Holmes spent much of the money on lawyers, new offices, a contingent of bodyguards, and yes, even bulletproof glass for her office (!).

She also put a ton of time and effort into distribution partnerships and sales.

For an early-stage technology company, it’s not necessarily wrong to focus on sales before your product is fully functional.

But for an early-stage healthcare company, nothing matters except for developing a working solution, passing clinical trials, and winning approval from regulators.

If your new device or vaccination or surgical method doesn’t work, partnerships won’t save you.

Consistently, companies focus on the wrong things and ignore the stage they’re at.

I even did the same thing back when I made the mistake of creating a $5,000 product for a $500 market.

In a way, I made the opposite mistake of Theranos: I had products that worked, and I wanted to make them even better to the point where no one noticed or cared.

But it was motivated by the same mistake: not understanding the stage I was at.

5) If “The End Goal” is Your Focus, Rethink Your Life!

When Holmes was young, a family member asked what she wanted to be when she grew up.

“A billionaire!” she replied.

That answer demonstrates why the fraud reached this level before collapsing: rather than trying different skills, becoming good at one, and then pursuing it, Holmes started with the end goal in mind.

And she stopped at nothing to pursue it, even if it meant lying to investors, threatening employees, and putting patients’ lives at risk.

Most entrepreneurs start working in a specific industry, get to know people, learn the key problems, and then launch new products/services.

Otherwise, it’s impossible to know what people will pay for and which solutions are feasible vs. science fiction.

Idolizing Steve Jobs and aiming to become a billionaire aren’t real goals; they’re aspirations of teenagers who do not yet know themselves.

As far as applicability to the finance industry, well, take a look at the comments thread on this article about finance as a long-term career.

Final Thoughts and Reality Distortion Fields

Both Steve Jobs and Elizabeth Holmes possessed “reality distortion fields” that let them recruit subordinates and convince investors, Board members, and the public of almost anything.

But Jobs also had a firm grasp on his own reality, and despite some exaggerations and problems, delivered products that worked.

By contrast, Holmes forgot to apply self-shielding, which let her reality distortion field twist her own perception of reality.

Aside from the upcoming indictment and trial, I don’t think we’ll be hearing much from her.

But if you want to find out more, the rumor is that she might head to North Korea.

Apparently, she’s an excellent fit.

The post “Bad Blood” Book Review: Fooling Most of the People for a Long, Long Time appeared first on Mergers & Inquisitions.

from ronnykblair digest https://www.mergersandinquisitions.com/bad-blood-book-review/

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i-am-an-accidental-hipster · 7 years ago

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other generations angry about millennials killing industries.

but seriously, those industries often deserve to be killed.

lets look at the list, shall we?

(i am drawing from this list right here: http://mashable.com/2017/07/31/things-millennials-have-killed/#hwO45tc0RZqb )

1. Beer: well, i guess the prohibitionists would be happy with us

2. J. Crew: (i didn’t even know the brand existed. i buy everything from salvation army, because i can’t afford new or expensive clothing)

3. Department stores: seriously, why would i go there? the entire point of such a place is to bombard you with so may advertisements and options that you feel compelled to buy what you can’t afford. I can get what i need from the internet, thank you.

4. Motorcycles: They are unsafe and impractical. i know this will rub motorcycle users the wrong way, but the fact of the matter is, they have very little in terms of safety features, cars don’t tend to see you in the road (the gorilla effect), and they don’t have enough carrying capacity to justify their use. also, the particular article it linked to said Harley-Davidson is complaining, and i say screw you, none of your stupid motorcycles have mufflers i don’t want to hear you from half way across the planet.

5. Diamonds: literally just pretty rocks, made out of one of the most common elements on the planet. their price is vastly inflated artificially by those who sell them. if i want to impress or attract a girl, i am most certainly NOT going to waste my cash on something useless to her. it’s hard enough to earn money as it is without spending it on freaking diamonds.

6. Golf: WHO THE HELL CARES ABOUT GOLF!?! it’s not even really that fun. Miniature golf can be fun on occasion, but mostly because of the set pieces. but regular golf? also, if you wanted anyone to actually pity the golf industry, maybe you shouldn’t keep TAKING LAND FROM PEOPLE WHO COULD USE IT MUCH BETTER

7. Bar Soap: meh. it’s just easier to use other kinds of soap. no hard feelings

8. college football: i am not wasting my money to watch a bunch of idiots throw a poor excuse for a “ball” and repeatedly smack into each other.

9. Lunch (?): ok, i don’t actually know what this one is about, or even how one would go about measuring this. and the article seemed to be broken, so i couldn’t find out. Do they mean less people are attending restaurants for lunch? because if that is the case, my parents literally told me to do exactly that, because making lunches at home is cheaper, and not much is added to the experience having lunch elsewhere. so yeah, i don’t think the problem is millennials here.

10. McDonalds: Ew. Next

11. Vacations: ok, so apparently this is about how millennials don’t take as many vacations because they are spending to much time working, making baby boomers and other generations feel guilty about vacationing? ok, for one thing, if you are feeling guilty about vacationing because some guys in their 20s aren’t doing it, maybe the guilt is actually coming from a different source. secondly, WE. ARE. NOT. RETIRED. heck, many of us were only recently able to get a job because the previous generations SCREWED UP THE ECONOMY. so no, we aren’t taking vacations as much as you, because WE CAN’T FREAKING AFFORD TO FALL INTO DEBT, IDIOTS

12. Paper Napkins: shouldn’t this be a good thing? like, yay we aren’t wasting paper needlessly any more? yay save the trees? i dunno

13. cars: expensive. Expensive to buy. expensive to rent. expensive gas. if i live in a place with public transportation (which i do), you can be sure as hell i am using THAT (which i am) rather than a car (which i am not)

14. crowdfunding: um, i may be wrong, but didn’t we start that? i think we have a right to destroy what we created.

15. wine: no, wine is always going to be around. as long as there are Catholics, there will be wine.

16. Wine corks: those things are freaking deadly. look it up.

17. toyota scion: never heard of it. next

18. fabric softener: i heard it ruins clothes, and my clothes are plenty soft already. also, my mom never used it, so why should i?

19: marriage: OK NOW IF YOU WANT MILLENNIALS TO LIKE MARRY EACH OTHER MAYBE YOU SHOULD MODEL HEALTHY MARRIAGES YOURSELVES. seriously. basically every friend i have has had at least one either abusive or neglectful parent, and many of their parents are divorced. if you wanted us to value marriage, maybe you should have gotten your FUCKING SHIT TOGETHER BEFORE YOU GOT MARRIED. my mom married a guy because “he made me laugh”, only to find out he was an evangelical atheist who kept trying to convert her from Catholicism for the next 20 years. it ended up screwing up literrally everything. because of him, my mom banned freaking Harry Potter from the household because they had a year and a half long fight over it. I even gave my dad a solution that would allow it into the house (i would “proofread” every book before giving it to my sisters), but NOOOO he had to WIN the STUPID ARGUMENT. he could NOT JUST LET IT GO. so yeah, i am not surprised that my generation doesn’t want to get fucking married. the only reason why i am still considering it is because part of me just wants to prove i can be a better husband and father than my dad.

20. McWrap: again, ew. next

21. Handshakes: i don’t know about everyone else, but as an autistic touching people is FUCKING WEIRD.

22. Canadian tourism industry: what. i didn’t realize that was a thing.

23. light yogurt: just because we can’t afford it doesn’t mean we don’t like it. i personally like light yogurt. it is just too expensive.

24. gambling: we are not idiots. we know we aren’t going to win anything. we never do

25. hotels. well, given that most of us can’t afford to travel, this is not surprising at all.

26. relationships: see 19

27: marmalade: such an unpleasant word. i’m not eating that

28. running: i live in southern california. i am not running around outside, thank you.

29. cereal: i don’t eat breakfast. it’s enough work to just roll out of bed and stubble to the bus stop.

30. anti-aging industry: anyone who is complaining about this clearly needs to read Tuck Everlasting, or The Forests of Silence, or Tolkien's story of the Fall of Numenor, or The Farthest Shore. Immortality sucks, man. i don’t want it.

31. Buffalo wild wings: yeah, i totally want to fill my stomach with THAT greasy mess.

32. focus groups: ???how???

33. travel marketing: still can’t afford to travel, man.

34. working: nah, you just won’t hire us

35. credit: we aren’t idiots, we know banks will try to screw us over

36. trees: so apparently this is because we won’t give up books for a kindle. WELL EXCUSE US FOR NOT KILLING THE BOOK INDUSTRY>

37. The American Dream: i think by now it has become clear who did that.

38. America: *hint* it’s not us, it’s those idiots who bought houses they couldn’t afford, and then through a tantrum when the banks charged interest on their loans, causing an economic collapse. also wallstreet. fuck those guys

39. Democracy: so, this is about how we don’t protest any more. you know why we don’t? because we have found that every single time we do, somebody goes “damn millennials and their radical ideas. it was ok when we did it in the 60s, but not now”. you want us to rally and protest, but only for the things YOU want to see.

40. Home Depot: meh. lowes is better.

41. Self-Pity: well, this is a gross misinterpretation of statistics. we feel bad for ourselves because YOU ALL FUCKING SCREWED US OVER

42. the 2016 election: that was not our fault. who did you give us to choose from? lets see, most of them were either highly intelligent but under-qualified, or extremely qualified but also untrustworthy, or downright insane. in the end, it was down to three candidates: a misogynist clown, a snake, and a guy who wanted to give everyone free college education. Y’all chose the snake and the clown. just saying.

43. consumerism: duh

44. suits: who cares

45. dinner dates: my experience working at a bakery might indicate otherwise.

46. movies: so we can’t afford to attend. sue us

47. sex: we are having less sex because we aren’t idiots and we know what sex does and we have better things to do than to drop everything to raise a family while we are still going to college. by now there are enough stories floating around of condoms that just failed to work, and frankly i do not want to be responsible for any girlfriend i might have getting an abortion because we both know we can’t afford to have a child. so guess what? abstinence

48. gyms: why would you pay to go to a place and sweat? you can walk outside to do that.

49. serendipity: nah, you killed it. see 19

50. loyalty programs: dude, if another hotel is cheaper or better, i’m using that one

51. loyalty in general: ok, false. we just want to survive, ok? also, loyalty must be earned. if my company is treating me poorly, or is treating my customers poorly, than yeah, i’m not going to be loyal to it.

52. taking risks: *sigh* so, this is false, clearly false. i can barely make my self say the cursed acronym, but *inhale* YOLO

53. patriotism: no, we just aren’t fanatics. we are loyal to our country so long as it continues to serve our interests. and if you dare tell me that that is not patriotic, read the gosh dang declaration of independence.

54. cruises: MONEY. also, it’s literally just a casino on a boat.

55. applebee’s: money. the article even admits it. so how is it our fault?

56. fashion: fuck fashion. give girls fucking pant pockets you perverts

57. hangout sitcoms: i can’t imagine anything more boring to watch

58. the big mac: it’s not even that big

59. stiletto: i don’t know what that is

60. romance: see 19

61. 9-to-5 workday: again, JUST FREAKING HIRE US (i actually have a job now, and am enjoying it immensely, and would work more hours if there were more available, but my employers, being the nice people that they are, have actually maxed out the number of people they can employ affordably. there are so many people who need a job in my city, and my employers are trying to employ as many as they can, particularly millennials and recent immigrants. it’s the other businesses around that are making it hard for us to get jobs.)

62. the NFL: see 8

63. gen X retirement: *sigh* IF YOU WANTED YOUR RETIREMENT MONEY MAYBE YOU SHOULD HAVE MADE SURE YOU COULD AFFORD THE INTEREST FOR THE LOAN ON THAT FUCKING HOUSE

64. the Olympics: how?

65: brunch: are we supposed to be hobbits now? you want us to have second breakfast?

66. the EU: i don’t really understand this one. it seems to say that millennials ruined the EU by liking it too much?

67. baby names: I’M NAMING MY KIDS ALBERTUS MAGNUS AND URIEL ANGELO AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO STOP ME MWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

68. banks: this article actually gets it right, you can read it in the title. we are ruining banks, and it is the fault of the banks. REVENGE!!!

69. Oil: i can’t afford it. next

70. everything: this article actually sums up just about everything i just said

#millenials

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