#from my partner

[subdee]

ADHD anon. Thank you for your answer. A lot of what you said was very relatable. I've also had periods of my life where the ADHD seems to improve without medication. Tasks that require me to be on my feet and with people seem to be what works. The ADHD gets worse when I'm using the computer regularly.

It's interesting that you recommend Thinking Fast and Slow. My dad gifted me this book with the earnest advice to read it and I never did. Maybe I should.

If you don't mind me asking one more thing: How does the ADHD affect your ability to care for a baby? I ask because my partner and I both have ADHD and kids might be a thing for us in the future.

My partner is capable of holding high ranking, highly demanding, specialized jobs. He operates on the same high and low energy states that you mentioned. He works so effectively when he's on adderall, but when he crashes it can turn into an emotional breakdown for him.

Neither of us are currently taking medication because the side effects are too disruptive to our lives. My partner recently quit his job due to mental health problems. I'm not too concerned about the financial end of this because his skills are in high demand, but I am worried about this intense emotional/energy cycle becoming a non-stop issue for his health. I also worry that he won't be able to help with childcare for this reason, even though he has an evident paternal instinct around kids and he was raised by a house husband.

I have a hope in the back of my mind that if we did have a baby, parental instinct would override the difficulties of ADHD. However, I suspect this is not something I can know for sure until it's too late to go back on the decision.

"Tasks that require me to be on my feet and with people" <- This is it exactly, yes, thank you. By this measure there are a lot of people with ADHD who manage by either creating or lucking into the right environment (shout-out to the self-help book Driven to Distraction that recommended, essentially, being a dude and marrying a woman who could attend to all the details for you lmao).

About the parent thing... We've only been parents for about four months now so I don't want to pass myself off as an expert. For me, I'm on the older side (late 30s) but I don't think I could have had children any younger than this. Children really require a lot of managerial and organizational skills, especially as they get older and you have to manage their schedules for them. I never had those skills when I was younger, but I was essentially forced to develop them at work because I'm in a position of responsibility where bad things will happen if I don't do my job properly.

And the other part of that is, not only did I have to learn the skills, but after a decade of teaching I **feel** skilled and valued at work, and also in my relationship with my spouse (we've been together seven years). All of that gave me the confidence to try having a kid....

I don't think everyone has to be as old as me, but I think it helps to FEEL settled, to feel that you'll figure it out even if it's tough. And then raising a kid is a big financial commitment and job protections for new parents in the US aren't great, lolsob, so even more than the ADHD I would say that being confident I wouldn't **lose my job** if I took six months off to care for a child was the biggest factor in feeling ready.

As far as whether you'll be able to manage caring for a baby while having ADHD... it really depends on your situation and what kind of support network you have... If there are grandparents or other extended family/friend in the picture to help out, or if you have the money for paid help, then you can relax a little bit.

I haven't found focusing on the baby to be any kind of problem, though, because, well, you have to do it. You know? There's no getting around the fact that baby needs you to feed and change and bathe and burp and hold and play with them and etc etc. They can't even fall asleep on their own without you (alas)!

So whether you feel able to do it or not you just have to do it, unless again you have that great support network. I don't know about you but I personally find that a lot of ADHD difficulties go away when it's something concrete I have to do, with clear consequences if I don't do it right now.

About your partner, I don't know your specific situation but I wouldn't have a kid with anyone I couldn't rely on to help out with the childcare. Of course we all have our breaking points and sometimes RJ needs downtime and sometimes I need downtime and neither of us is 100% all the time *especially on days like today when the baby has been waking up every hour all night long (and this has been going on for weeks (and I'm almost always the person getting up in the middle of the night))* But no way I personally could be the only person caring for Baby. I need my husband to occasionally be the person who gets up in the middle of the night so I can sleep, who occasionally plays with the baby so I can have the morning off, who occasionally feeds the baby because my back hurts, etc etc. I'm sure your guy is lovely but babies take a lot of time and energy.

That's my personal two cents, and you'd know better than I would how often you'll be able to count on your guy when you need him. Maybe a more traditional split with your guy making the money and you doing the childcare would work for you guys, it seems to work for some people. Maybe he'll step up when it's clutch time, some people perform better under pressure. Really it all depends. I couldn't be the woman in this relationship though, not under any circumstances:

https://botharetrue.substack.com/p/i-cannot-handle-my-sons-crying

Anyway. It depends on your baby too, and whether you grew up around children and know how to care for them (I didn't) or whether you'll be muddling through. Some babies are easier to care for than others. Ours is good-natured but he had stomach issues and now he has sleep issues. Also he's at the age when he craves stimulation and if we don't take him somewhere interesting at least once a day he gets cranky and indignant - he also needs tons of exercise every day like Michael Phelps or he can't settle enough to eat or sleep - ADHD probably to be honest.

One thing that no one tells you about babies but that helps in caring for them - they come with a learning curve. They are actually pretty easy to care for in the beginning and the difficulty increases gradually. So you do have some time to adjust.

[inkskinned]

having good & true friends will literally save and protect you in a million unfathomable ways. like okay we have written so many times about lovers. but the way a platonic friend laughs and cries with you. the way they hold your hand at 14 years old and at 34. the way they keep a little silver tie to you, touching base over and over and over. how you can go years without talking, only to re-meet and discover: oh shit! you're still cool!

there are people who have been in my life for more than half of it, and i have loved every version of them. do you know how fucking beautiful that is. yeah love will save the world. but the way friends love you is gonna save the you.

[rambles-about-minecraft-ocs]

theres something so funny to me when hermits are talking about redstone and theyre like "and then theres an etho hopper clock here-"

like. of course they use etho hopper clocks, itd be weirder if they actively avoided using it, considering its like. a redstone thingy that is very useful and still works even after all this time, and from what i understand it was like. a pretty big deal in terms of useful things you could do with redstone back when he first made it because it opened up ways to do even more things with redstone

and like for the most part theyve probably been referring to that particular thing as an etho hopper clock for longer than theyve even known etho personally, considering the etho hopper clock predates his joining hermitcraft by at least 1-2 years, and several of the other hermits joining hermitcraft by even more. so of course they still call it that

on a related note, most of them likely had at least heard of etho before meeting him, even if they didnt personally watch him (tho i know some did) since he was an old school minecraft youtuber. like his original season 1 of "lets play minecraft" started when minecraft was so new it hadnt been officially released yet. literally back in minecraft alpha. he was a minecraft youtuber OG

so with those two points taken into consideration it completely makes sense that "etho hopper clock" is something ingrained into the terminology of anyone that does stuff with redstone somewhat regularly. theres no reason it wouldnt be

but when you put it into contrast with like. their actual interactions with etho. it kind of cracks me up???

its like. in my head the vibes are this: imagine building something and being like "okay guys, for this machine we need to use an archimedes screw, which is named of course after its inventor archimedes, a man so genius that to this day he is regarded as one of the most brilliant inventors and mathematicians to ever walk this earth" and then like thirty minutes later you go to a restaurant and you see archimedes, of classic antiquity fame, trying to eat a sandwich but the ingredients keep falling out in increasingly comedic manners. so you of course call him pathetic to his face, and then ask if he wants to try out your new totally-not-a-scam product that you carry on you at all times for opportunities like these. and for some reason he doesnt just say yes, but buys two

[ionomycin]

phoenix and the priestess

[cariocake]

i like to imagine a sleep deprived riz opens his briefcase and a bony white hand quietly passes him the exact document he needed and riz is too keyed in to even acknowledge it

[stil-lindigo]

warmth.

a comic about not being alone.

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creative notes:

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[te4k3ttle]

Is this loss

[marzipanandminutiae]

thoughts on "tradwives" as a 19th-century social historian

It's great until it's not.

It's great until he develops an addiction and starts spending all the money on it.

It's great until you realize he's abusive and hid it long enough to get you totally in his power (happened to my great-great-aunt Irene).

It's great until he gets injured and can't work anymore.

It's great until he dies and your options are "learn a marketable skill fast" or "marry the first eligible man you can find."

It's great until he wants child #7 and your body just can't take another pregnancy, but you can't leave or risk desertion because he's your meal ticket.

It's great until he tries to make you run a brothel as a get-rich-quick scheme and deserts you when you refuse, leaving your sisters to desperately fundraise so your house doesn't get foreclosed on (happened to my great-great-aunt Mamie).

It's great until you want to leave but you can't. It's great until you want to do something else with your life but you can't. It's great. Until. It's. Not.

I won't lie to you and say nobody was ever happy that way. Plenty of women have been, and part of feminism is acknowledging that women have the right to choose that sort of life if they want to.

But flinging yourself into it wholeheartedly with no sort of safety net whatsoever, especially in a period where it's EXTREMELY easy for him to leave you- as it should be; no-fault divorce saves lives -is naive at best and dangerous at worst.

Have your own means of support. Keep your own bank account; we fought hard enough to be allowed them. Gods willing, you never need that safety net, but too many women have suffered because they needed it and it wasn't there.

[lotus-pear]

mourning black and the death of ideals

[threewishgoldfish]

I'm back on my bullshit. Aeorian wizard kisses!

[inkskinned]

in internet posts it is easy to cut them out of your life. they are hurting you! they aren't listening to you!

they held your hair back. they lent you lipstick. they held your hand at the train station and got you home safe. they rounded on your bully, got loud, said get fucked, spitting-mad in your defense.

they also cut the hair off again. told you that you should really think twice before wearing something like that. took you for granted. took your insecurities and threw them in your face again.

you know logically it should be easy. all the internet advice comments always read it will feel better. like an equation - if a person is rotten, you just remove them. you pull the tooth that's hurting.

but it was never a big flare-up moment. you don't live in a sitcom. they never tried to take your boyfriend or steal from your apartment. they showed up to birthdays and they wrote songs about you and bring you water without you asking. once you found out they carry an emergency inhaler for you, even though you haven't had an asthma attack in years - just in case.

where is the line? people fuck up. sometimes they fuck up badly. sometimes people have raw personalities, like a powerline, and being around them is dangerous. addicting. sometimes they can't help themselves, but you know they're trying. sometimes they are just rough-around-the-edges. sometimes they don't even realize how they sounded when they said that. sometimes it's just - you've both loved each other for so long now, the way this thing hurts goes back to the root.

and that's the fucked up part. you have pushed your fingers against the sweetheart of memory. things these days are electric, tense, harrowing. they didn't used to be. there were a lot of good days in there. sometimes you want to just close your eyes and say can this be over yet? do we still need to be fighting?

doing that would give up any chance you get of getting an apology, but you don't always know that you need an apology, you love them. once they flaked on your birthday party. once they told you to get over it, people are always dying. they also let you crash on their couch for a week after the breakup, handfeeding you when you were so sad you couldn't eat. they are also judgmental about everything, occasionally react to banal statements with an attitude that is weird and fiery. they also love you like a lighthouse sometimes, so strong they cut the storm like lightning.

but the problem is that you might be storm. you might be the thing that needs breaking. what if you are two forces who are desperately, horribly drawn to each other, shaped by the other person's passions, and both good for each other and bad in equal measure.

what if you're both just people, and you're no saint neither.

just cut them off! swallowing the saltwater, you catch yourself in the mirror. you've been shaking more than usual. there's an ache in you that is oblique, loud, impossible to soothe. is this what it looks like? when life is "easier"?

your mouth will always have a hole, is the thing, if you remove the tooth.

[foldingfittedsheets]

I don’t know why but I often don’t give off Person Energy. That fundamental personhood that makes someone notice when you’re in a room or on a couch.

People will walk into rooms that I’m in first and then startle when I address them half an hour later. My beloved will walk by me on the bed while texting to ask where I am.

It’s pretty exclusively when I’m chilling, when I’m out and about or at work I register to other people, but at rest I go below a human spectrum of energy output. I don’t really have a point except to be fascinated as to what I’m doing different than other people.

[unicornpopcorn14]

Chuuya's reaction to Dazai getting hurt during the Lovecraft fight has always been so interesting to me...

Because it's the kind of worry you'd never expect from a character as gruff as Chuuya, who had displayed nothing but hostility towards Dazai so far. Usually, characters that are labelled as "angry" or "anger issues" (which Chuuya is much more complex than that but you get my point) act more as a tsundere type of way when the one they "don't care about" gets hurt. And show their care in very, very subtle ways (ex. their eyes widen, their mouth parts and closes again, etc) before putting up their front once more.

Chuuya, however, is open, and vocal about it. His worry is clear not only to us, but to Dazai himself, the one he shouldn't be displaying the concern to (as per the cliche). Shouldn't it be some sort of secret that Chuuya does care? Isn't that what skk's dynamic has been shaping up to be until now?

I'm telling you- the way my mind blanked when Chuuya just casually.... showed concern not once, but twice, was a sight to see.

Besides, the context makes it much more confusing, because Dazai isn't some rookie, and Chuuya knows that more than anybody. He was the youngest executive in Port Mafia's history, of course he can handle a hit or two. Of course he'd seen him handle a hit or two, sometimes without batting an eye.

Heck, Chuuya himself was hurling Dazai like a ragdoll in their reunion, which was their last meeting. And you could argue that he was going easy on him, but Dazai has mostly withstood the same damage (as far as I could see), and Chuuya was as bitter as ever.

So that kind of contradicts both what we knew of Chuuya so far, and how their dynamic was shaped to be. I mean, that just makes Chuuya a hypocrite, yeah? What makes him care now, all of a sudden? What makes him care at all?

Well, to me, this backasswards reaction implies one (or more) of the following:

- Dazai rarely got physically hurt during their partnership and thus this is an unexpected thing for him to see (during a mission).

- The four years of separation made Chuuya unsure of how much Dazai can withstand physically now. Also the fact that he isn't in the mafia anymore, aka fighting enemy organizations on the weekly, would naturally make Dazai lose his touch in a way, what prompts Chuuya's reaction.

- Dazai getting taken off guard took him off guard which led to panic. Especially since the situation was (momentarily) out of their depth. Seriously wtf even was Lovecraft?

- During the dungeon scene Dazai was an enemy, while in the Lovecraft fight he was as an ally. The difference might be significant to Chuuya.

- This has always been Chuuya's reaction to Dazai getting hurt regardless of the situation.

- "Only I can hurt him like that" ahh logic

- Asagiri was still experimenting with their dynamic and thus there are some inconsistencies.

This scenario didn't play out again (after their reunion) for me to exactly determine which one is more plausible, but it is 100% canon for Chuuya to shamelessly show his concern and run to Dazai to check on him before properly dealing with their opponent, which I find to be such an appealing layer to their dynamic, and a good spin on the type of character he gets stereotyped as.

Bonus: Dazai also becomes a softy when Chuuya's hurt, especially post corruption. Dead Apple alone displays that multiple times.

All in all, Skk are doing a terrible job at maintaining their 'hostile' and 'antagonistic' relationship post their reunion. Freaks.

[vaguely-concerned]

are. are you telling me that if the romanced mage warden dies and alistair is king, he deadass stares greagoir down over her dead body and grants the circle of ferelden its autonomy after ordering it rebuilt somewhere safer. first you have to deliberately leave him behind so he won't die for you and then he does that for you once you're gone, even when you're broken up??? absolute and literal king behaviour of the highest order????? the actions speak louder than words of it all??????? I think I hauve covid

[everchased]

at least it'll be wonderful while it lasts.

(a little post-game downtime discussion, when they have the time and space to talk about these things. also in my canon, scratch gets to stay. :/)