#i’ve been on a fridging rant lately

[kleftiko]

❦ IF YOU’LL LET ME

cw: mature, early seasons spencer, loss of virginity, soft sex, fem!reader, praise, mentions of alcohol

“hey, spence. it’s late.”

his eyes dart down to your chest, words stuck in his throat but you don’t seem to mind. instead you continue to dab your shirt, holding open the door and turning your back as you head in to allow him to follow you into your hotel room.

the plush duvet folds under your weight as you sit on the bed, spencer stands awkwardly eyeing the table beside the fridge.

“you were drinking?” he asks.

you chuckle a bit and motion to your wet shirt. “i was trying, but the mini bar had other ideas.”

his nimble fingers pick up the small bottle, briefly glancing over the label before bringing it to his nose and grimacing at the smell.

“didn’t know you like whiskey.” he says.

“spencer.” you lean back on your hands, eyes trailing over his lanky frame and combed back hair. “what are you doing here?”

“am i not welcome?”

“you’re always welcome,” you shake your head. “if you let me know why. we’re flying back home in the morning, something bothering you?”

spencer attempts to place the bottle back on the table, but his clumsy fingers knock it over, causing a disruptive sound to ricochet through the room as the glass comes in contact with the wood. he awkwardly tries to catch it, placing it back up right and taking his hands far away from it.

the boy’s gaze moves back towards you, his mouth opening to answer your question when he looks back down at your chest and flushes, turning his head towards the door.

“don’t you want to change your shirt?” he asks.

the dark fabric clings to your skin, highlighting your silhouette and putting your tits on display.

“it’s my room.” you say and stand up. he doesn’t look towards you.

“i can’t imagine wet fabric that reeks of alcohol being preferred to a clean and warm shir—“

“—spence.” you cut him off, standing in front of him. “what’s wrong?”

his focus flickers to your face for a split second.

“nothing is wrong, i just… i was thinking…”

your instinct is to pull a joke at his words, but with his demeanour you could tell this was really bugging him, so you refrain.

“about?” you prompt softly.

“you…” his fingers travel back to the mini whiskey bottle, tinkering with it. “i’ve been thinking of you a lot lately…”

you couldn’t help the small smile that tugs at your lips.

“you have?” it comes out in a soft tone, and spencer nods. “what about me?”

you had an idea as to what has been bugging spencer. with the warm weather finally making a comeback, morgan has been going on his yearly appreciation rants about spring break. women having fun and warm weather we’re two of his favourite things, the sex that usually leads to that was just a bonus.

everyone figured spencer hadn’t had an experience like that, not having gone through the typical childhood, after all. and it didn’t take a room full of profilers to notice the way his eyes stayed on you for a second longer than everyone else.

spencer sighs.

“morgan said i should just go for it.” he mumbles.

you take a step closer to him, looking up through your lashes at his handsome face. “i agree with him.”

you see his adam’s apple bob from a harsh gulp.

“can—can i kiss you?” he whispers.

you nod your head.

and his lips are soft. spencer is so gentle and awkward as he kisses you that it’s you who grabs his hands and guides them to your hips. it seems he has a hard time touching you and kissing you at the same time, alternating between the two every few seconds and setting a choppy pace. you feel him start to get angry with himself at not being able to do both at once.

you pull away. “it’s okay, spencer.”

“i’m sorry, i’m new to this.” he rambles quickly and you giggle, taking his hand and pulling him to sit on the bed.

you take the place next to him and look into his eyes, bringing his hand back to your waist.

“you can do whatever you want.” you give him permission.

his hands start to wander your body. those curious fingers that clumsily knocked over the whiskey now exploring the curves of your body. his focus followed his hands, and you watch his face, smiling at the look of wonder on his face as his touch travelled higher up.

when they reach your face, his hands cup your jaw and he pulls you slowly towards him. you hum softly into his mouth, getting lost in his gentleness.

it’s not longer before you find yourself pressed up against his body, enjoying your own exploration of him until you come down to his pants.

“do you want to continue?” you ask him after feeling his hard on.

spencer gulps a bit, but nods. “please, if you’ll let me.”

you smile at him and move back, finally taking off your wet shirt, his eyes once again zone in on your chest. he reaches out a tentative hand, and when he doesn’t get a slap on the wrist he touches your skin.

it gives him a surge of confidence and he goes back to kiss you. the make out session staying slow but heating up as you two began to undress each other, both looking with wonder at each other’s bare bodies.

you find him mounted on top of you as you lay on the soft duvet, his fingers between your legs as he listens to the noises you make.

“how are you so good at this?” you gasp, eyes screwed shut.

“the clitoris has over 10 000 nerve endings, more than any other part of your—”

you kiss him, not meaning to shut him up but you just couldn’t help it, he was too cute.

he lets out a small whine when you pull away from him, and you can’t help but coo as you grab a packet from the nightstand.

“don’t worry, spence, it’s not over.”

he breaths a sigh of relief, allowing you to roll the condom onto him before you fall onto your back again.

“are you sure about this?” he asks, grabbing the base of his dick to line up with you. you nod.

“please, spencer, if you’ll let me.”

your eyes close in content as he fills you up.

“you feel so good.” you mumble, and he pulls back a bit to thrust softly.

you don’t hold back on noises, wanting spencer to feel confident that he’s doing a good job.

“w-wow.” he gasps.

“i know, baby, i know.” you reach your hand up to card through his hair. “you’re doing so good.”

he picks up the pace again, breaths becoming heavy as he gets the hang of making himself feel good.

you feel him going quick, muttering about being close as you tell him, “you’re making me feel so good, spencer. please cum, i want you to feel good, too.”

he groans your name, voice catching in his throat as he cums into the condom, but he doesn’t stop. you hear his pained noises of over stimulation as he continues his thrusting.

“spencer, what are you doing?” you ask, a bit concerned.

“you didn’t cum. ‘need to make you feel good, too.” he mumbles.

“oh, baby, no.” you go to kiss his lips, drawing his attention away from thrusting as he melts into you. “you made me feel so good already, this night is about you.”

“but—”

“—no buts.” you give him another kiss. “lay down with me now, you need rest.”

you can tell he wants to argue some more, but his body betrays him, falling into your embrace as you hold him.

“you did so good, spencer.” you reassure him, fingers in his hair as you coax him to relax.

“i did?” he asks, tone unbelieving.

you kiss his forehead. “so, so good.”

[zxmickeyzx]

Mumbattan Cafe Ch. 1

Barista! Pavitr x Artist! Miles

Miles came into the cafe for some chai tea, to see his friend Gwen on her shift and make some art while relaxing in the cafe. Instead he got some Barista who looked very annoyed when he tried to order and then became very passionate about ranting to him about how people say chai tea instead of just saying chai. Miles didn't mind him lecturing him on it though.

At least it was from someone so cute.

Masterlist ~ Next

Today was an opposite day for Miles. For once he woke up pretty early, early enough to put on some nicer clothes than usual, wearing a simple pair of army green cargo pants with a red sweatshirt and his usual headphones around his neck. He usually wore sweatpants, some kinda t-shirt that could get messy and a bomber jacket since it was easier to wear when rushing out of his apartment for classes and no one really cared what you wore in college. Especially in art classes.

Since he got up pretty early this time around he decided to do some light cleaning in his room and around the house. Ganke was thankfully a heavy sleeper so Miles could be as loud as he wanted in the mornings or late at night. Miles still wonders how he was acing all his classes.

As soon as he was done cleaning up his space for a bit, he decided to see if his friend Gwen wanted to hangout. He liked the energy that would bounce off each other while doing their craft. The amount of inspiration they both got was something to behold. They were good friends from the academy as well as being in most of each other's classes so it was bound to happen. At some point he used to have a crush on her, but they never pursued anything and realized they were better off as friends.

As Miles was waiting for a response from Gwen, he started thinking about what he should eat. He could whip up something, but with the way his mother raised him, he might get full cooking while tasting the food to make sure he gets it right and he didn't want to deal with the dishes afterwards. Maybe he could make a quick sandwich. Yeah that sounded pretty good at the moment.

Before that sandwich idea really took off his phone vibrated in his hand. It was his friend Margo asking him if he had done the assignment Mr.O’hara posted on class site. He did the assignment as soon as he could because he usually felt like Mr. O’hara usually had it out for him. He quickly responded to Margo telling her yes, and sent his version of the instructions to the assignments since his teacher liked to over complicate things in his wording and instructions. She texted him a quick thanks and asked what his plans are for today, to which he responds he is waiting for Gwen to text him back about hanging out.

“Morning”

Miles looked up to see Ganke half-awake, going to the fridge to rummage through it. His friend settled on some cereal by the time his phone vibrated again.

Turns out Gwen is working at her Job currently since someone called out sick according to Margo. The cafe Gwen worked at was a small but decently popular place. He could see her and grab a quick bite to eat. He loved the vibes of the cafe, it felt homey. Maybe even stay and draw some art.

Miles ponders on the thought a bit more, until his thoughts are interrupted.

“Miles!”

He whipped his face to look at Ganke, who sighs.

“Dude, you okay? I’ve been trying to get your attention for a bit.”

“Yeah man, just thinkin about somethin real quick. Need something?”

“Just wanted to ask you if you finished the work Mr. O’ hara assigned.”.

“Yeah man, I just sent margo the simplified instructions, Ill send it to you real quick”

“Thanks man. Appreciate it”. He goes back to eating. Miles just shakes his head, knowing Ganke wont start until the real last minute.

Miles wishes he could relax and then do work without having to rush. But they way his mother and father raised him to do work early and relax as a reward which worked pretty well for him but also gave him an unofficial teacher assistant role for all of his friends.

Ultimately he decided to head out, so he grabbed his art bag with his wallet and keys. Then quickly said goodbye to Ganke and went out. The moment Miles stepped outside he took a deep breath to enjoy the autumn air. He was more of a summer guy but he appreciated this season due to representation of new beginnings. Plus being back in school is always something he looked forward to.

The cafe was about a 30 minute walk, not bad. He puts on his headphones and just enjoys the moment.

He waved to some people he saw almost everyday by his place while walking.

After a bit he arrived at the cafe. It was a decent size cafe, with cute outdoor seating and indoor decorations. It went for the simplistic aesthetic which Miles could appreciate.

Once inside the cafe, it gave off a warm-home vibe, welcoming you inside. The cafe was a bit empty, he guesses he beat the morning rush.

Miles tried to look for a certain blonde with pink tints in her hair, but could only see a cashier and the barista at the moment that didn't fit that description. The line wasn't that long, so Miles decided to hop to the back of it to wait for his turn.

He might as well grab something to drink and eat while he is here even if he could find Gwen.

Maybe she was on break.

He tried looking at the menu trying to figure out what he should order. Maybe a bagel with cream cheese and strawberry jelly.

Yeah that sounded nice right now, but what to drink. He then hears the person in front of him mention to someone on the phone that the cafe had the best chai teas.

Chai tea huh? That didn't sound too bad to have at the moment. Perfect drink to relax with on a day like today.

While waiting for his turn he decided to text Ganke and ask if he wanted anything from the cafe at all. To which his roommate quickly respond “Im good”.

After about 15 minutes of waiting, it was finally his turn to order.

“Hello Sir, Welcome to Mumbatton Cafe! How may I take your order?”

Shit.

The cashier was cute.

He had beautiful, lush black hair with waves like the ocean. Warm brown skin that gave off a golden hue and deep chocolate brown eyes. Miles could almost stare into them forever with how mesmerizing they were.

He almost did until the cashier spoke again.

“Sir? Have you decided yet?”

Oh yeah he was here to eat not to stare and be known as a weirdo.

Miles cleared his throat before speaking.

“Sorry about that, uh, can I have a bagel with cream cheese and strawberry jelly?”

The cashier nodded with a smile while putting his order into the system.

'He has a nice smile' Miles thought to himself.

“Alright, and anything you’d like to think with that?” The cashier asks while looking down at screen of his order.

“Oh yeah, I heard the chai tea here is good, so I’d like to try some.”

There was suddenly a silent pause. Like the air just shifted. The Cashier's face turned annoyed, almost angry-like.

In a lowered voice Miles heard.

“What did you just say?” The cashier's eyes widened as he slowly looked up at Miles.

Miles was confused with the sudden change of mood. He didn't think he said anything wrong. He only said the name of a drink. Maybe he misunderstood what Miles had said.

“Um, chai tea?” He repeated slowly so he could be understood this time.

If looks could kill, Miles thinks he would be ten feet under.

Next

Tagged List:

@ar1-thecat, @marrz-sucks,

[hannahssimblr]

Chapter Twenty-Five (Part 2)

Life settles into a comfortable rhythm quickly once Jude is home. I go to work where I’ve spent the day usually not concentrating, and come home to find him on the steps of our apartment, we exchange a couple of words, ask about each other’s day, and then we rush to bed and spend the next several hours getting each other off until we’re hungry enough to stop. We’ll have eggs, maybe toast, cheese, or whatever else is in the fridge and then fall back into bed again.

Sometimes I get up to do my morning runs with Shane, conscious of the fact that time with him is running out, and yet usually, unless Jude comes with us I’ll find myself tangled up in the sheets with him for an extra hour, maybe two, making me late for work more times than I can count. 

“I’m getting pissed off at you,” Simon tells me when I drag my exhausted body up the stairs at eleven in the morning and slump into my desk. “Like, I know I’m not paying you a salary but I’d like it if you actually showed up on time, it feels like, you know, a bit of a basic thing…” He rants on for a while while I gaze out the window, and then eventually he tells me that I’m in for a week of cleaning paper off the floor and organising the shelves. It’s fine, it’s hard to focus on being creative when most of my brain power is used up thinking about orgasms instead. 

The investment firm in Sandyford rejects Jude’s application in mid June, and he is incensed. “Didn’t they even look at my portfolio?” He’s complaining as we skate around a roller rink in west Dublin. “My CV is solid, my work is good, I just think they don’t know what they’re missing.”

“Maybe it’s because your degree is irrelevant,” I point out, and he huffs with annoyance. “A degree shouldn’t matter, if a person is good then they’re good.”

I laugh at his pouty face, “You’re sounding like you’ve never been rejected before.”

“I have, of course I have,” But when I ask him when those rejections were he can’t seem to think of any, which proves my point. Mister five hundred points in the leaving cert, 1.1 fine arts degree is finally getting a taste of what it’s like to be just like the rest of us. I tell him that this fact is quite satisfying to me and he cracks a smile. “Well, I didn’t want to work in an investment firm anyway, so it’s not like I really care that much.”

He keeps the momentum up and applies for two other jobs, one as a content designer for a recruitment consultant, and the other as a runner for a soap opera. Both reject him fairly quickly. He gets the first email while we’re bowling with Claire and Shane, and the other while we’re visiting Jen at Michelle’s house. He is so devastated both times that we spend the night afterwards over analysing what he might have done to make them dislike him, as though there was some direct personal reason behind it all.

“I suppose that it’s just hard to break into a new career,” I say in an attempt to be soothing as he stares despondently at my bedroom ceiling. “Once you’re in and you have some experience then I assume it gets easier, but like, I don’t know. I’m just hoping that’ll be the case for me when I have Mezzotint on my CV.”

“It’s the recession,” He announces, although I’m not really sure that we’re technically still in one. “There’s just no creative jobs available except for these corporate nightmare ones.”

“The runner job wasn’t corporate.”

“But the pay was shit,” I can’t argue with this, so I say something vague about everything happening for a reason, and then I do a quick google search for creative jobs in Dublin and find almost nothing of relevance.

“There’s an opening for a… um, a technical design coordinator/manager?”

He throws his neck back onto the mattress in frustration and misery, “What the fuck does that mean?”

“I’ve no clue, but there’s also an instructional designer position for-”

“Look, it’s okay, Evie,” he puts his hand over my screen and pushes it away, “I think I’ll just wait and see. Something is bound to come up.”

But by late June nothing has, and he starts to feel tetchy again. We get away for the weekend to keep his mind off it, and while we sun ourselves on the beachside deck of our West Cork glamping cabin I feel inspired to ask him, “Have you considered widening your job search? Maybe there are jobs outside of Dublin that you could do.”

He considers this, “I suppose. Maybe if the commute wasn’t so bad, or if I could get a little flat somewhere, then I’d come visit you on the weekends.”

I’d prefer him to be close to me in Dublin, but at this point it really does feel like we’ll take what we can get. He gets out his phone and I look in as he opens to jobs within 500km. Dozens suddenly load up, and I’m briefly ecstatic before I quickly realise that the majority of them are in England. 

“Oh,” I say, reading down the list, “London, London, London, Manchester, Bristol, London, London.”

“Useful for next year,” He mumbles, and hits the off button.

“I’m sorry, Jude,” I say, and he takes my hand to kiss it. “It’s going to be fine. Maybe it’s just because it’s summer, you know? People are on holiday, nothing much is happening. I’m sure that by September there’ll be more jobs. And anyway, I think it’d be nice for us to just spend time together and enjoy the weather.”

“Maybe you should just apply to a job in England,” I say defeatedly, “I think you’d be happier if you were working.”

He rubs his eyes, “Yeah, maybe, I don’t know. I just hate the uncertainty of it, you know, like everything in my life felt like it was laid out until now. I went to elementary school, then secondary school and college and it seemed obvious. Now it’s like… what do I do next?”

I tell him I don’t know what to say, because these thoughts frighten me too, but most adults seem to have figured something out. We sit in a bleak silence for a while contemplating our choices and our futures and then Jude gets a burst of manic energy and insists we go and get some chips from a takeaway so that we can be distracted from depressing things. 

We make a rule then that we can’t talk about jobs. Applying to them, relocating for them, cover letters, CVs, these all become forbidden topics. As a result we have a perfect weekend. We swim in the Atlantic, we explore the Beara Peninsula and marvel over the views of the mountains across the bay and little colourful houses dotting the coast. It’s sheep and spongy seaside grasses, dramatic, ocean worn cliffs and other beautiful things that are so different from our slice of the country, and when the evening falls and we huddle back into our cabin, Jude figures out how to put the stove on and we sit on the rough, worn rug and watch as the stars rise over Bere Island. 

Beginning // Prev // Next

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

There’s a video on YouTube of the finals of the 1995 Open Mic Awards, broadcast on the BBC in September, 1995. I haven’t seen it before, but I think this calls for a post in which I write my thoughts down live as I watch.

- Right off the bat, here’s Barry Cryer telling us about the recent stand-up comedy boom, and he lists the most important, moneymaking comedians who’ve been to the Fringe: Monty Python, Rowan Atkinson, Jo Brand, Julian Cleary, Eddie Izzard. So I guess it’s 1995.

- They announce at the beginning that it’s a contest for any comedians who’ve never been paid to do stand-up comedy before, they started with over 500 and now they’re down to 8. So that’s sort of cool, that we talk (well, I talk about this, maybe other people don’t so much) about what comedians started at the same time as each other, but any who are in this have started at exactly the same time, having never been paid for it before but now being good enough to make this shortlist.

- Oh, here’s Boothby Graffoe hosting the event, a man whom I know as a voice on Radio 4, looking a lot more telegenic than I picture most people on Radio 4.

- First judge is Tony Hawks (the S is important there, not the skateboard guy), the guy who wrote two books that are on my shelf: Round Ireland with a Fridge, and One Hit Wonderland. I read both those books about ten years ago and recall them being quite funny and the former making me really want to go to Ireland. I mean, I already wanted to do that, and that’s why I read the book, but the book made me want that even more. Looking back, it's possible that that book may have been vaguely condescending, an Englishman saying "look how cute and quirky Ireland is." But if that was the case then I didn't pick up on it at the time.

- “[The stand-ups in this competition], they’ve not really done it much for money… if you’ll pardon the expression…” Tony Hawks making a joke right at the beginning in which I think he’s called Lee Mack an aspiring whore (it’s relevant to know that Lee Mack is one of the finalists).

- I apologize for anything I said about assuming voices on Radio 4 are less-than-telegenic. The next judge is Sandi Toksvig, and she has never, ever been less-than at anything.

I’m so pleased to see her that I’ll even overlook Boothby Graffoe using the word “comedienne” to introduce her.

- I’ve not heard of the next judge, apparently he’s an important decision-maker at the BBC. Or he was one of those, at least. Now all the decisions are being made by... oh God, I'll end this point here, I've done enough ranting about the cancelation of BBC topical comedy lately, I won't get into it again, I promise.

- Barry Cryer is the fourth and final judge, and they immediately make several jokes about how incredibly old he is. In 1995. His recent death was very sad, but he did have a long run.

- Barry Cryer on what he looks for in good stand-up comedy: “Originality. No sex, 70s, or Star Trek.” That's interesting to me. In the last 10 years, 90s nostalgia has been everywhere. In 2023, 00s nostalgia is taking hold (I don't mean to be dismissive about that, it's certainly taken hold of me). In 1995, someone was complaining that 70s nostalgia was so ubiquitous it had become unoriginal. As, apparently, had Star Trek and sex.

- I’ve seen pictures and videos of Baby Lee Mack before, I know what he looks like, I was prepared for this. But still, Jesus Christ.

- There is an amazing contrast between how much Lee Mack has physically changed since this video (drastically), and how much his comedic style has changed (not at all). It’s not my favourite comedic style, but I do respect it when it’s done well, which I think it is in Lee Mack’s case. And to be fair, he did make me laugh a few time in the set from this video. His stand-up DVDs made me laugh as well, when I watched them a few years ago.

It's now been more than two years since I watched Lee Mack’s stand-up DVDs, but I still recognized a couple of jokes from this 1995 set – they made it into his first DVD, which was released in 2007. His later shows no longer recycled exact jokes from 1995, but they never changed style.

I also respect a comedian who decides what they want to be early on because they truly love that thing, and then they continue to love it enough to stick with it. And I think that is real for Lee Mack, I’ve read his autobiography and so much of it’s about being really into the comedians who came before him and did that style. Comedy changed around him as he grew up, he definitely saw the alternative comedy stuff and then the other styles that branched out from there, but no, he wanted to be one type of comedian that is what he did. It's worked damn well for him, credit goes to Lee Mack for that.

- Next up are three comedians I hadn’t heard of, a couple of whom were a bit funny, followed by:

John Oliver has some stand-up jokes in his early career about how he looks like he’s Jewish, and I never understood those jokes until I saw pictures of him from even earlier in his career, when he did look exactly like a young David Baddiel. He wrote those jokes back when he looked like that, so people probably did often assume he was Jewish, and then kept telling them even after he didn’t look that much like that anymore.

I think I’ve just had a similar moment of understanding about all the jokes in The Mighty Boosh based on Julian Barratt’s eyes being too small. By the time they filmed the Mighty Boosh things that I’ve seen, he’d apparently learned to open his eyes properly, because I heard those jokes and thought, okay, they’re a bit small, but not really enough for the jokes to make sense. This, however, suggests that the issues used to be more pronounced. I'm not sure that man even has eyes.

- On the subject of The Mighty Boosh, you know how Julian Barratt’s the straight man there? Apparently he wasn’t always. He packed an impressive amount of offbeat stuff into only a couple of minutes there. Not even really a character act, just fucking weird. Possibly just as weird as the old clips I've seen of Noel Fielding's 90s-era stand-up. I see how they ended up together.

- I’ll be honest, and say the next one is the actual reason I’m here:

Jesus. I've seen a lot of different Daniel Kitson looks from different Daniel Kitson eras, but had not seen that one before. This gives me the same feeling I get from watching his Blockbusters thing, which is... okay, I love finding old footage of comedians I like, but if they're an actual child in that footage, at what point is it a weird thing to have? I think he's actually older here than he was on Blockbusters, but looks younger, possibly because of the shorter hair and/or the vest.

Seeing his age right after Lee Mack and Julian Barrett puts that difference in perspective, too. I’d been thinking that them all being in this means they all started at the same time so are the same comedic generation, but they’re really not. Because that is a small child. It takes a hell of a lot of confidence to think you can do something like this when you’re that young. I say this as someone whose brother started doing stand-up when he was sixteen… it requires an uncommon level of self-regard.

- I’ve now watched the set, and it was primarily about A-level results, his glasses, and his failure to get a girlfriend during high school. I have heard him do material even in his polished shows as an adult about his glasses and his failure to get a girlfriend in high school, and I can even think of a couple of routines that have discussed his A-level results. So he didn’t stop using the topics. Just changed every single other thing.

There was only one tiny bit when the crowd laughed too early, he got mildly annoyed and said that was just a word, that wasn’t the joke, and it was this little flash of reality. Like for about a second and a half, a curtain moved and you could look at this strange teenager and see Daniel Kitson. And then the curtain closed again and it’s just a kid with way more confidence than anyone that age should be allowed to have.

- The video cuts off the ending, but I looked it up and learned that Julian Barratt won. Which makes sense, especially if the judges were, in fact, looking for originality. He definitely had that. A very weird and creative set that would lead you to never guess he's destined for "straight man" status in his double act.

[alarawriting]

52 Project #51: Dex

This story is highly autobiographical in a way that's actually kind of painful and embarrassing, and you'll all know why after you read it. And you'll also know why it has taken me two and a half years to write one year's worth of stories and I'm still not done.

BTW I hope like fuck none of the Reddit handles in here are real, but I didn't have a chance to check them all.

***

Jason had promised his boss he’d have a debugged version of the code checked in by morning.

He’d been tracking down a bug when he’d gotten sidetracked reading Stack Overflow. Dammit. He’d just lost an hour, and he still had no idea why his code wasn’t working the way it was supposed to, and it was 10 pm. Teresa was expecting a new version to be checked in by 9 am and she was expecting that it would run.

This was a job for more Coca-Cola. Jason got up, went downstairs and got himself a slice of pizza and a cold Coke.

His mom, also burning the late night oil at the kitchen table, hunched over her laptop, said, “How is it going? You think you’ll have what your boss is expecting by tomorrow?”

No. “Yes,” Jason said. “I just need a few more hours to track this down.”

“Well, you’re running out of them. You’d be better off getting a good night’s sleep, then waking up fresh in the morning early enough to work on it then.”

Mom was 57 and had apparently forgotten everything she had ever known about how night owls worked, despite having spent her younger years routinely staying up until 2 am. “Is that what you’re doing?” Jason couldn’t help saying.

“I’ve got a house showing tomorrow, I just have to make sure that I have my talking points memorized.”

“Why? Does the house really suck?”

“It doesn’t really suck. It’s a good house, really. Great bones, a nice big yard. But I’m gonna have to redirect the prospective owner’s attention away from how ugly the carpet is and things like that, because the seller? Whoo-ee. There’s people who have no taste, and there’s people who never fix anything, and there’s people who own dogs, and then there’s my seller, who is all three.” She sighed. “I tried to get them to rip the carpet out and install hardwood flooring before putting the house on the market, but the market is hot right now; I don’t blame them for wanting to charge forward. I just think they’d get more if their house didn’t smell like dog and look like water damage had a horrible transporter accident with the 1970’s.”

“That bad, huh?” He leaned up against the fridge, sipping his Coke. “You wanna go over your spiel with me, Mom? Some late night practice before you go to bed?”

“Yeah, actually, that sounds good.”

So Mom talked enthusiastically, if hoarsely, about the four bedrooms and the two and a half bathrooms and the recently modernized kitchen and how great the neighborhood was, and Jason listened, because he wasn’t contributing nearly as much to the mortgage as his mom was and she was also paying most of the utilities, so her career was important, not to mention what stress did to her heart.

When he got back to his computer it was 11:30 and he’d finished his Coke and pizza. He thought about getting ice cream, but best not to do that until Mom went to bed, if he didn’t want to get sucked into another conversation. Not that conversations with Mom were bad; they were much more entertaining than debugging code, which was the problem.

He opened up his coding window, stared at it for thirty seconds while doing nothing, and then convinced himself that maybe Reddit would have an answer to his question.

It didn’t. It did have answers to how to solve a particularly difficult problem in his current favorite game, a number of people who wanted to know if they were the asshole, some great reviews of movies on streaming that he hadn’t had a chance to watch yet, political rants, and some really entertainingly stupid coding mistakes that people had posted.

It was 12:30 am. Teresa was expecting this at 9 and she was expecting it to work.

His eyes glazed. The act of reviewing the code for the tenth time, looking for the bug he hadn’t yet been able to find despite knowing the general area it had to be in, was almost physically painful. He checked his brackets, again. The error didn’t look like a missing close bracket, but that didn’t mean anything. If he had a dollar for every time the error didn’t look like a missing close bracket but turned out to be one, he’d have maybe twenty dollars, which wasn’t a lot in terms of actual money but was a lot of times for the same stupid thing to happen in his code.

The software was supposed to warn him when there was an unclosed bracket, but half the time, if the code was particularly complex, it didn’t. It just re-interpreted the bracket locations and then his code broke.

One more time. Stepping through. Why the fuck was it stopping there? There was nothing there that could account for the error.

Time to go get ice cream. Maybe some sugar would help him stay awake and focused enough to get this done. Another Coke, possibly, too.

When he sat back down, he had Discord messages, so he needed to check them. And messages on Slack, which he could be checking in the morning, and probably should be, but maybe one of his co-workers had found an answer to his problem. They hadn’t, but Priyal had a different question and that one, he thought he could quickly get an answer to, so he fired up Google, dug in, and got her answer for her, which he sent. She’d have it in the morning. Unlike Teresa, who probably would not have what she was expecting.

It was 2 am. Stupid of him to get sidetracked with Priyal’s problem when he was having such difficulty with his own. He flicked over to Reddit again because this was unbearably boring and if he didn’t give himself a break from it, he’d fall asleep.

But he had to go back to debugging the code. Or to sleep. He could handle Teresa being pissed off in the morning a lot better if he got some sleep.

Third page of the subreddit he was on. Four. Man, he needed to keep up with this stuff, there was so much here he hadn’t read yet.

Fifth page of the subreddit. He really, really needed to get back to work. It was 2:30.

A screenshot of something really stupid from Cicada. Damn, someone actually posted something that stupid? Over to Cicada to see if there was context that explained it. There wasn’t, but there was a lengthy thread of people absolutely shredding the OP. Including someone he followed, and he should probably catch up with that.

No, he should get off Cicada and go back to coding. Or bed. His eyes were burning. Bed was probably a better idea. Give up on finishing the debug, tell Teresa he hadn’t found it yet and would need another day.

That was an interesting news article, though. He had to check that out.

No, he didn’t. He needed to go to bed.

Jason’s mouse clicked the link to the article. His eyes read the page, despite burning with exhaustion. Some frantic voice in his head was yelling, screaming, get up, put the computer down, you need to be awake to deal with Teresa in the morning, it’s late, you’re doing nothing useful, get up.

Back to Reddit.

Stop this. Get up. Go to bed. You need to go to bed.

3:30 am. He could barely keep his eyes open, but they were still riveted to the computer, his butt still glued to his chair.

Get up get up get up and go to bed, go to bed, turn the monitor off, you need to go to sleep so you can deal with Teresa tomorrow, get up, go to bed, go to bed

4 am. Look, there was his Firefox home tab, with articles from Pocket. A few of those looked interesting.

Don’t read them, you need to sleep, you need to sleep

Right, right, he didn’t have time to read them right now. He just needed to open them all so they would be there for him tomorrow. If he didn’t do that, Pocket would refresh and he’d lose all of them.

Wow, did they really find carbon deposits on the moon? He had to check that out.

Stop it, stop it, you have to stop it, you need to sleep, stop it

5 am. There was no way he’d be up at 9 to deal with Teresa.

Email. “Hey, I’ve been up all night bashing my head against this thing and I’ve made progress—” This was a lie. “—but it’s still not running. I’m gonna have to look at it with fresh eyes tomorrow. I’ll be logging in around 11 am.” This was also a lie, it would probably be closer to noon. But since he worked from home, all he needed to do was drag ass out of bed around 10:30 to send everyone a status update, tell them he was diving into the code and probably wouldn’t see incoming notifications until he came up for air, and then dive back into his bed instead.

Set an alarm for 9:30 am. Set an alarm for 10 am. He’d blow through them both, of course, but they’d wake him up enough to actually wake up when the 10:30 alarm went off, and then he’d convince himself to get up and send the status message by promising himself he’d return to bed.

Check out that article about a different way to manage your ADHD?

No. Go to sleep. Off the computer. Sleep.

Right, but obviously, he needed to put on his Spotify for music to fall asleep to, and adjust the volume because he couldn’t let it be too loud or it would wake Mom up, calm and peaceful or not.

Pop over to Reddit one last time.

5:30 am. Sleep!

The panic finally overwhelmed the inertia and he managed to drag himself off his chair, turn the monitor off, and stumble to bed. Now to get some sleep.

Oh, except now, he couldn’t sleep because he was overwhelmed by his anxiety and fear about not getting enough sleep to deal with Teresa even if he slept until noon because she was going to be seriously pissed off with him because this was the third time he’d blown the deadline.

It was another hour before exhaustion finally claimed him, and he knew that because the sun had risen.

***

He’d never set the 10:30 alarm.

He’d never set the 10:30 alarm, he’d blown through 9:30 and 10 just like he’d planned, but he’d never turned on the 10:30 alarm, so it was half past noon and he’d never sent that status message, so everyone would know he overslept way past the point Teresa would be okay with after an all nighter, and there was a meeting at 1 pm and he had to shower and shave because it was going to be a meeting with video so he couldn’t look like he’d just dragged himself out of bed.

Or maybe he could. He sent Teresa a message on Slack. I think I’m sick. My throat’s sore, and I’ve got a migraine. And I don’t have the program working anyway, so there’s really nothing to show anyone. Can we postpone until tomorrow?

The response was almost immediate. You need to figure out how to manage your time better. You’re sick because you stayed up all night.

Yeah, but I was trying to solve the bug.

If you can’t get something fixed by 11 pm, it’s not going to get fixed. You should have gone to bed.

I know, but I wanted to try. I was getting close. This was a lie. I thought I could get it done before morning.

Yes, and instead you made yourself sick and the program still doesn’t work. ☹  I’ll postpone the meeting this time, Jason, but we need results before tomorrow. Sorry that you’re sick but you know as well as I do it’s because you didn’t get any sleep.

Yeah, I know. I’ll pull myself together, have some coffee, and get back to work. I’ll try to have it done before 5. This was a lie. He knew perfectly well he wasn’t going to get it done by 5, not when he was this tired.

Do you want me to have Jorge review it? Maybe he can see something you missed?

No, that would be the worst possible thing, because then Jorge would know that he’d made basically no progress last night. I don’t want to add to his workload, but if I’m running into trouble later today I’ll pass it over to him, see if adding some eyeballs might help.

All right, I’ll let him know.

And now Jason was awake, the imminent terror of Jorge finding out that he had done basically nothing last night flooding him with enough adrenaline that he could focus enough to turn on his monitor and get back to work.

***

He had to stop living like this.

Sooner or later he was going to get caught, and he was going to get fired. He couldn’t stay focused on his work when it was boring, which debugging generally was; he enjoyed the act of creating code, making things happen, but when it wouldn’t work, it was an exercise in frustration and soul-crushing despair. He couldn’t keep up with his own documentation, he missed emails and chat messages because he was obsessed with something else when they came through, and he wasn’t even spending his time doing things that were fun; endlessly surfing Reddit and checking the news and articles wasn’t something he did because it was incredibly fun. It was just more bearable than focusing on work, sometimes.

It wasn’t like there would ever be a programming job where you never needed to debug, or never needed to polish off the last few functions that you’d kept skipping because of how tedious they were. He knew that. He’d gone into the profession knowing that. But when he was younger, his meds had worked better. Or maybe he’d just been better at being able to go without sleep. Or not as acclimated to the panic. It was the panic that got him moving, that made it so he could do the boring jobs. He had to be terrified of the consequences of failure before the fear and anxiety could override the whatever-it-was that kept him sitting in his chair, playing video games or surfing the Internet, rather than doing the boring parts of his job.

It had gotten worse since he started working from home. In the past, he’d had the fear that his boss might come by and see him goofing off. So he’d still goofed off, but carefully, always prepared to jump back into his work at a moment’s notice. Sometimes he’d pushed himself, polished off what was normally three or four days’ work in one afternoon, and then goofed off for the next three days. Because he could. Because when he was on, he was magic. The insights were lightning, his speed was legendary, his accuracy was amazing. When he was on.

He was off most of the time. And more and more often, nowadays.

Medication didn’t work anymore. It just made him jittery and irritable, so he’d stopped taking it. Overdosing on caffeine did the same but somehow felt more palatable, and he’d grown to associate the feeling of being competent with the tastes of coffee and Coke, so he used those instead. Then he couldn’t get to sleep. On the nights when he actually managed to get a satisfying amount of work done, he might have a beer or two to unwind and let himself relax and sleep, but that was impossible to do when it was late and he wasn’t done. Which was most nights, nowadays.

He couldn’t keep living like this. He couldn’t depend on a state of fear to enable him to work. Sooner or later he’d slip up, he’d be caught, and he’d get fired. And then he’d have to admit to his mother that he got fired. That terrified him far more than the thought of having to get another job. Jobs weren’t that hard to come by, but his mother’s disappointment and sorrow was utterly horrible.

Jason had spent his childhood alternately disappointing her and making her proud. She thought he was stable now, that the problems that had plagued his childhood – the inability to do homework, the losing it when he had done it, the dishes he didn’t wash, the laundry he didn’t do, the leaves he didn’t rake – were gone. And it was true, nowadays he could get the laundry done, because he’d figured out how. Pile it up in front of his door, and as soon as it got too irritating to open his bedroom door, he could gather up the laundry in his arms and dump it in the wash. It helped that he’d finally figured out that he didn’t need to sort anything if he washed everything in cold water and never bought anything that was white.

He didn’t know any way to pile up a debugging project in front of a web browser. He’d tried using software that blocked him from doing anything that wasn’t work related, but the trouble was, Reddit was a legitimate source of information on how to fix issues he’d never encountered before, and Stack Overflow and other sites and forums dedicated to development problem solving were enticing time sinks of entertaining information. There was no way to solve this programmatically, because no AI was capable of telling the difference between “this is useful stuff you need to solve this problem right now” and “you’re just reading about all these other problems other people have had so you don’t have to work on your own problem.”

And even if there was…

Jason was one of the best programmers at the company. He was only 29, but he’d been doing this since he was 12. So people came to him with their problems, and he was usually able to solve those. Most problems people had were something he’d encountered so often he could fix them when asleep, which had actually sort of happened a couple of times – he had once or twice found that he’d sent an email at 3 am that he had no memory of sending, when he’d been pulling an all-nighter, that elegantly and correctly solved a co-worker’s problem.

Their problems were easy, and the feedback was immediate and gratifying. People thanked him profusely, told him he was a genius, sometimes gave him homemade cookies or delicious ethnic lunches (this was the thing he missed most about working in the office, but too many of his coworkers were also working from home; he’d gone in once or twice after lockdown was over, but it had never been the same again.) Everyone had nothing but great things to say about Jason’s willingness to help a coworker out and ability to solve their issues. His own problems, not so much. But he got a lot of leeway for being the genius who could fix everyone else’s issue.

When he was stuck, it was rare that anyone else could help him with it. And it was rarer that he was willing to let them. The humiliation of needing help, of what if it was a simple, stupid thing and it destroyed his wunderkind reputation that he’d missed it, made it so he never wanted help, not with the big problems he couldn’t solve himself. If your whole life was based on your skill at swimming, how close did you have to be to drowning before you were willing to call for help?

Jason managed to get the code working a little before 3 pm, after ignoring three messages from Teresa that maybe now it was time to bring Jorge in, and one from Jorge asking if there was anything he could do to help out. He then gratefully handed it over to Jorge. It’s working, but I could use some more thorough testing than I’ve been able to do. (I have done minimal testing because testing is so boring it makes me want to spork my eyeballs out, but I’ve made sure that it runs start to finish in the most basic scenarios and that the more complex functions kick in when given at least one example of data that should make them kick in.) The QA department would beat the crap out of it later, but the programmers didn’t hand over code to them until it at least ran, most of the time. Well, some of the time. Well, at least the one time they tried it.

He needed a nap, badly, but he was too wired to get one, and it wasn’t a good idea. If Jorge did find something in testing, he needed to at least look responsive. So he started reading the article tabs he’d opened last night, when he’d promised himself he’d just open them so they’d be available for him today.

Oh, and there was the article about a new treatment for ADHD. That was timely.

***

“The newest ADHD treatment on the market isn’t a pill, and it isn’t an app. Dex™ is an implant, that promises to revolutionize treatments for the long-forgotten invisible victims of ADHD… the ones who grew up.”

Oh, that was definitely promising. It had long been a source of deep irritation to Jason, and pretty much everyone else he knew with similar issues, that ADHD was treated as a disorder of childhood. Once you were grown up and out of the educational system, you were an adult and you could adult like an adult, because you were an adult! Right? It was a blind spot in the entire system. The go-to medications for kids could have long-term effects that got more and more unpleasant as you got older… such as developing high blood pressure. Or desensitizing to it, as Jason had. (His doctor had claimed that was not possible, but tolerance was a thing for pretty much every other drug, including allergy pills, so Jason thought that was bullshit. He was planning on changing doctors. As soon as he got around to picking a new one.)

But… implant?

“By utilizing dopamine, the natural chemical made by the body that promotes motivation, Dex™ enables adults with ADHD to stay focused on the important things in life. Their work. Their family. Their loved ones.”

Aaand it was off and running into marketing bullshit. Jason scrolled through the article, but it was pretty obviously pay-for-play.

Another article was more promising. “The idea behind Dex sounds frankly somewhat terrifying. A brain implant that uses AI learning algorithms to dose you with chemicals that make you want to do things? It sounds straight out of a science fiction dystopia. But in fact, the science behind Dex is rigorous.

“One of the biggest problems people with ADHD face is that they can’t motivate themselves to do what they know they need to do. This has long led to sufferers of the disorder being told they are ‘lazy’ and ‘unmotivated’, or worse things. But it turns out that this is a genuine medical condition. Science has identified the neurotransmitter in the brain that gives us motivation. It’s called dopamine, and people with ADHD don’t produce enough of it.

“By jolting the brain with a dose of dopamine every time the Dex user is doing something they need to do, it helps them stay focused and on task, even with the boring tasks that most ADHDers are famous for being unable to do. Wash the dishes. Remember to take out the trash. Finish that essay.

“Some have concerns because Dex is manufactured by Ulysses… the newest medical/pharmaceutical company to place its wares on the market. Ulysses’ focus has been on combining artificial intelligence with low-dose, just-in-time medication, such as the anti-anaphylactic implant Destiel or the—”

Wait. Wait. Did this company seriously name a medication Destiel? Who was that for, people who had never been in their teens on the Internet while a certain TV show had been airing?

“—or the virus-fighting Ajaxon, but—”

Too late, Jason couldn’t take a company seriously that named their product something like that. He flipped away to read about a nonprofit who would paint your roof with super-reflective white paint for free, to help fight climate change.

***

Jorge didn’t find any critical bugs, and Jason managed to take a nap after hours, which was good, because anxiety about the meeting that had been postponed started to creep in around 10 pm, and despite the fact that he knew he needed to be well-rested for the meeting, which had been moved to 1 tomorrow, he had to get online and play a video game to relax.

It was 3 am before the need to go to the bathroom forced him to get off the computer. He gratefully accepted the out his bladder had given him, and as soon as he was out, he went straight to bed. The light from the monitor was irritating, but if he got up and went over to the computer to turn off the monitor, he might succumb to the temptation of just checking one thing, and then who knew when he’d get to bed? It would go to sleep eventually, and in the meantime, he could use a sleep mask.

He hadn’t forgotten the alarms, this time. 9:30 am was probably too early to wake up when he’d hit bed at 3 am, but after yesterday, he knew he had to be online and responsive from early on to make up for his fuckup. Didn’t mean he had to actually work. As three cups of coffee made their way down his throat, he browsed online comics, read email, skimmed articles, answered Slack messages, pretended to be contributing to the discussion about the strategy for the meeting, and finally ended up at r/AMA, because when he googled Dex, he found that one of the people who’d developed it had done an AMA on it.

“I’m one of the lead scientists on the development of the new ADHD treatment, Dex. AMA”

He read over her initial post. Her name was Suzanne Burke and she worked for Ulysses, which was a subsidiary of the online retail-and-cloud-computing giant Jupiter.com. This was troubling. Jupiter was known for its forays into AI, having gotten its start with neural networks that recommended books to people, and was now well known for its near-ubiquitous AI household assistant, Ray-Ray. Mom had gotten one of those for Christmas last year, but Jason hadn’t let her hook it up. His specialty wasn’t cloud security, but he’d been working in IT long enough that he had no trust whatsoever in an appliance made by a giant corporation that could turn your furnace off and on and was probably sending all your data back to the mothership. On the other hand, he was guessing that Ulysses had been bought out by Jupiter, because naming a medical device after a fan fantasy of a gay relationship between a monster hunter and an angel from a TV show that had ended a few years ago did not seem like the kind of stupid mistake Jupiter would make.

[u/ineedcheese: How does it work?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Diving in the deep end I see! OK, for any of this to make sense, I have to give you guys a simplified run-down of how ADHD itself works, because it isn’t “ooh! Shiny!” It’s a serious medical condition.

[Firstly, ADHD is described as Attention Deficit Disorder because from the outside looking in, that’s what it looks like. A person with ADHD can’t pay attention. Unless they’re really interested, and then they can’t stop paying attention. But that’s really more of a symptom. What it should be called is Executive Function Deficit Disorder or maybe Executive Dysfunction Disorder.

[You can think of a brain as having multiple multi-threaded tasks, like a computer. One of those tasks is consciousness, of course, but the rest of them run in the background and you are rarely aware of them. Until they break. Executive function is the manager, the dispatcher that takes commands from consciousness – or other parts of the brain, I’ll get to that – and, generally, informs consciousness of what it should be doing. It handles the passage of time, so you have some idea how long an hour is. It remembers where you put your keys. It allocates your attention to speech, to reading, to tasks.

[A lot of this is performed by stimulating the brain to release dopamine. Now, if you’ve ever sought out help for depression, you’ve probably heard of neurotransmitters. There’s tons of them, but the ones you hear about most are serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. Very very roughly, and with the caveat that some recent evidence calls some of this into question, we can describe serotonin as the happiness chemical, dopamine as the motivation chemical, and norepinephrine as the excitement, fight-or-flight chemical. Very roughly.

[Basically everything a person does, is done because it feels good to do it – in some way – or, being smart animals, we know that not doing it has a bad result. If we don’t wash the dishes we get roaches – brr! If we don’t do our homework, we get a bad grade and Mom and Dad yell at us. In a normal brain, small amounts of motivational dopamine are released when we set ourselves to a task that will prevent a bad thing, but that we don’t inherently like. Or, sometimes, to a task that we enjoy, but maybe it’s hard and we’re not always feeling it. Wash the dishes, get a tiny amount of dopamine because yay, you have successfully fought off the roach apocalypse for another day.

[People with ADHD don’t get that. The small amounts of encouragement dopamine aren’t there. We don’t wash the dishes because we enjoy it, and it turns out, we don’t do it because we are afraid of the roaches. We do it because our executive function has decided that roaches are bad, and it will reward us with some dopamine for doing things to keep the roaches away. Everything we voluntarily do, we do because it gives us at least a little dopamine.

[I want you to think about the mythical Sisyphus, endlessly pushing a rock up a hill, because he’s been told he can be free of Hades if he gets it to the top – a thing he wants, a lot. What if someone tells him, the deal’s off? You’re never getting out of Hades, no matter what you do? Well, he probably wouldn’t keep pushing the rock, because what’s his motivation?

[That’s what washing the dishes is like if you have ADHD. It takes time, it’s not pleasant, and it doesn’t reward you with that little bitty bit of dopamine. So what’s your motivation to push the rock up the hill? You can intellectually know that washing the dishes is a good idea and that not doing it exposes you to disease, yucky tastes, and maybe roaches, but you don’t do the smart thing because it’s the smart thing. Or at least, most of us do not. We do the smart thing because executive function rewards us for doing it. And people with ADHD do not get that reward.”]

[u/beepityboopbop: “It handles the passage of time, so you have some idea how long an hour is.” Unless your name is Karen and you’ve called for technical support, in which case five minutes is an hour]

[u/paleshadowofawoman: Suzanne Burke you seem to have a serious fixation with roaches]

[u/semicolonbang: Yeah did the roaches eat your baby?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: They ate my last relationship. My girlfriend and I broke up because of roaches.]

[u/semicolonbang: that sounds like an interesting story]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: it is but it’s got nothing to do with Dex so maybe I’ll answer it in a few days if I feel like it]

[u/ineedcheese: that’s a lot of stuff about how ADHD works but how does Dex work?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Getting to that. People with ADHD gravitate toward things that overstimulate the dopamine reward system, because it’s the only way they get any. Playing video games generally gives you lots and lots of small rewards along the way. Endlessly bingeing Netflix feels good while you’re doing it because television is created to entertain and reward you.

[Now, being smart animals like the rest of humanity, ADHDers really do not want to spend their entire lives playing video games and bingeing Netflix. They want the same things anyone does – to do work that’s rewarding, to have satisfying relationships, to get along with family and make friends. But to accomplish those broad tasks, usually you have to do a lot of small tasks that aren’t inherently rewarding themselves. It’s hard to have a satisfying relationship if your girlfriend blames you for having roaches because you didn’t wash the dishes.

[So stimulants enter the picture. Adderal, Ritalin, and the most powerful and oldest stimulant of all: norepinephrine. Excitement, fear, anger, sexual desire, they all release norepinephrine, which tells the body to rev up. Charge up with energy. It’s time to run away from that tiger! Or beat the crap out of the guy macking on your girl! Or ride your horse, which is terrifying and exciting because you’re moving faster than a human can, on top of an animal who is perfectly capable of doing whatever it wants instead of what you want.

[People with ADHD procrastinate, because the fear of the consequences of not doing the task eventually becomes high enough that that provides the motivation. If you can’t have dopamine, you can at least have some norepi. I don’t want to write that paper, so I pretend it’s not happening… and my executive function is so bad at keeping track of time, it’s easy for me to pretend, until the night before I have to turn it in, and my professor has reminded all of us to do it. Now I’m terrified. I’ve done exactly nothing on this paper, I’m gonna fail my class, my mom and dad will be disappointed, my asshole ex will laugh at me, I’ll suffer shame and disgrace for generations to come. Now I’m scared enough, flooded with enough norepinephrine, that I can do the thing. And maybe I will even get a dopamine reward when I’m done, because “congrats on getting us away from that tiger, buddy!” is a thing that even most ADHDers get.]

[u/semicolonbang: “It’s hard to have a satisfying relationship if your girlfriend blames you for having roaches because you didn’t wash the dishes.” Personal experience much?]

[u/estesrocketsarenottoys: “Or beat the crap out of the guy macking on your girl!” not exactly feminist]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: “not exactly feminist” maybe not, but try being a lesbian with a beautiful girlfriend who all the guys are hitting on and she is really weirded out and upset by it and she just wants to be left alone, are you going to tell me you would not want to punch them in their sexist faces?]

[u/semicolonbang: your life story seems very interesting Suzanne Burke]

[u/ineedcheese: I still don’t know how Dex works]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Dex works by releasing small amounts of dopamine when you do a task you know you have to do, even if you don’t want to.

[We’ve used sophisticated AI to analyze the brain states of thousands of volunteers who recorded a moment by moment diary of what they were doing for a week and how they felt about it, and from that we’ve figured out how to distinguish the brain state of “I really, really hate doing this and there is no good reason to” – Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill after Hades has told him, the deal’s off buddy – and “I hate doing this, but it’s a step toward getting what I want.” When you make yourself do the thing you don’t want to do, but you know it will be good for you to do it, Dex rewards you with a little dopamine. Just like your own executive function would have, if you had one that worked.

[Dex can also tell when you’re caught in that paralysis loop – “I really should be working on my paper, but instead I am reading Reddit” – how many of you are in that place right now?]

Jason blinked. Wow, that was a little on the nose. This was posted a week ago, though, so she wasn’t talking about him. Specifically.

[If you’re doing a thing, but you feel guilty about doing the thing because there’s something you should be doing instead… Dex can uptake your existing dopamine. Basically, Reddit bores you! So you go looking for some other source of entertainment. Well, if you take that moment and use it to write your paper, or wash the dishes, Dex will make you feel good about doing it.]

[u/thisuserdoesnotexist: How good?]

[u/peterporkerthesuperbspiderham: Yeah, doesn’t like heroin or morphine also give you dopamine?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Not that good, and not exactly, but we’re not going to get into that. Dex isn’t addictive. Video games are a lot more addictive than Dex. Not that I ever blew a few hundred dollars on DLC, or anything.]

[u/thisuserdoesnotexist: How do you know?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Because we’ve tested it. There have been years of clinical trials at this point. There are a lot of people who were very, very upset at the thought of ever losing Dex… but we drilled down on that, and they were more like, wheelchair users upset at the thought of losing their wheelchair than addicts upset at losing their fix. They described how Dex made it possible for them to focus, to get things done that they’d always wanted to be able to do. Not that it made them feel good. Because it doesn’t. Tiny jolts of dopamine for washing the dishes doesn’t feel good. It just feels like it makes washing the dishes tolerable.]

[u/chaosisawonderfulthing: Should we be concerned about Jupiter’s involvement in this project?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Jupiter didn’t buy Ulysses until we were already in clinical trials, so no. They’ve been very hands off, actually.]

[u/ineedcheese: how does this fix me forgetting my appointments?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: it doesn’t. But if you’re like most ADHDers you’ve been told, “Oh, just program a reminder on your phone!” And then the reminder to take out the garbage comes through, but you don’t feel like taking out the garbage, so you ignore it. Or you forget to add the reminder about the doctor’s appointment because that just seemed like a lot of work and you didn’t feel like it. What Dex will do is allow you to use those tools to manage the parts of ADHD that it doesn’t directly fix. You won’t remember the doctor’s appointment, but you will feel like putting a reminder into your phone about it was a worthwhile thing to do, when you made the appointment, and you will feel like getting up and going to that appointment is more worthwhile than checking Facebook, again.]

[u/stephaniestick: no one uses Facebook anymore]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Or Cicada, or Instagram, or Tumblr, or whatever.]

[u/ineedcheese: so it’s not as good as medication.]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: In what way?]

[u/ineedcheese: medication helped me remember things I was supposed to do.]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: If medication works best for you, that’s a fine thing, and we’d advise you to stick with it. But a lot of adults can’t take the medication, or it doesn’t work for them.]

[u/mushroommushroom: Or they won’t prescribe it for you. I was diagnosed as an adult and my doctor told me, basically, no one will prescribe amphetamines for someone my age.]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: also true.]

[u/paleshadowofawoman: you said it makes things unrewarding to do if you feel guilty about doing them. What if you feel guilty about everything?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: you absolutely should not use Dex if you have a scrupulosity complex, or in any other regard feel a lot of guilt over things you really shouldn’t feel guilty about.]

[u/beepityboopbop: so no Catholics, got it]

[u/mushroommushroom: A lot of people feel guilt over having sex, even if it’s healthy consensual sex.]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Yeah, so it turns out that the human sex drive is so powerful, Dex can’t do anything with it. We tried. We recruited a few volunteers who wanted Dex to reduce their interest in sex, because they were trying to not cheat on their spouses, or they wanted to get more done… or whatever. We didn’t probe very deeply. It didn’t work for any of them. It can help with more traditional addictions, alcohol or smoking, but it does not actually seem to reduce sex drive even in people who feel guilty about having sex and want to have less of it.]

[u/supermansshorts: But you can use it to stop smoking?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: If you feel bad about smoking, yes. If you know you shouldn’t smoke, and you would like to quit, but you are compelled to smoke anyway, having Dex will make smoking feel a lot less fun, which will help you quit. But you still have to do the hard work.

[Dex doesn’t magically solve all your problems. I’m pretty sure there is no implant that could do that. What it does is it gives you the tools you need to solve your own. When you have work to do, and you don’t want to do it, but you want to want to do it because you need to do it… Dex isn’t smart enough to know to reward you for that the first time you make yourself do it. It has to read your brain state while you’re doing it to know that this is a thing you should be doing that you don’t want to. You have to summon the willpower to do it the first time, yourself.]

[u/chaosisawonderfulthing: Because willpower and ADHD are so well known to be found together.]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: I actually think people with ADHD have enormous willpower, because they don’t get rewards for doing the useful things they have to do to stay alive and healthy. Other people aren’t really using willpower alone, they’re using the fact that it feels good to do a thing you need to do. People with ADHD have literally no emotional motivation at all, no brain chemical telling them to do the thing, but often they manage to force themselves to do it occasionally anyway. I think that takes a lot more willpower than doing a thing that rewards you with a little dopamine.]

[u/mushroommushroom: How do you get it?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Currently, only a psychiatrist can prescribe Dex.]

[u/mushroommushroom: Not a regular doctor?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: No, and actually, we recommend that you be in therapy while working with Dex. Among other things, there’s a phenomenon called spin doctoring that you might need a therapist to help you recognize and work through.]

[u/chaosisawonderfulthing: You obviously want us to ask what spin doctoring is.]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Haha, yes! OK, so you’re all familiar, I hope, with the fact that the brain has two lobes. They have a lot of overlap in function, though in a lot of people only the left side controls speech. But you are not two people, because there’s an entire wall of connecting neurons, the corpus callosum, between the two.

[Well, back in the old days, one treatment for really severe, life-threatening epilepsy was to sever the corpus callosum. So in a sense, patients became two people, but only one of them could talk. They did an experiment with those people. Sat them in front of a viewer where each eye could be shown a different image, and while they were doing tests, they sent a message to the right eye, go get a Coke. The right eye connects to the right lobe, which doesn’t usually have the ability to talk.]

[u/thisuserdoesnotexist: Doesn’t the right brain control the left side and so on?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Yep, but the crossover happens below the head. So the eyes, being in the head, are still connected to the lobe on the same side. Anyway, so they’d tell the right brain, go get a Coke. So the right brain would get the body up and head for the Coke machine. Now, keep in mind, the left brain has not seen this message, and without the corpus callosum, and given that the right brain can’t talk, the left brain has no way of knowing why the body is heading for the Coke machine.

[You would think this would be terrifying. Your body is doing something and you never told it to! Aaahh! Horror movie! But when they asked people, what are you doing? They got answers like, “I was thirsty”, or “I wanted to stretch my legs a bit.” None of them expressed any fear or uncertainty about why they were doing this, and also, none of them knew they’d been told to go get a Coke.

[So the theory goes, consciousness is not actually where all of your decisions come from! Maybe not even most of them! A lot of stuff is being done by deep processes in the brain that are black boxes, that consciousness has no insight into. But when those processes decide that the entire collection of stuff that is you needs to do something, consciousness often smoothly and easily rationalizes why you are doing the thing, without any recognition that that’s what you’re doing. It feels to you like you got up to stretch your legs, and while you’re at it, why not get a Coke? When the real reason is, the right side of your brain, which your left side can no longer hear, was told to do it.]

[u/supermansshorts: Is the right side of the brain, like, vulnerable to mind control?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Oh, no, no. These were volunteers who’d agreed to do the experiment and follow the instructions. It’s not like the right side of your brain is a completely different person from the left side. Even if you sever the corpus callosum, both sides are still you, near-identical copies who think and feel much the same way about everything. So if the left side signed the papers and spoke the agreement, it’s likely that the right side also agreed, for the same reasons. The right side wouldn’t have done something like “jump out a window”, it’s just as capable of making rational decisions as the left side is. But it agreed to follow instructions the same as the left side did, because if the left side was the kind of person who’d volunteer to follow the experimenters’ instructions, then so was the right side.

[Anyway, so spin doctoring. Consciousness is so good at coming up with rationalizations for why you are doing a thing that some deeper process said to do, it doesn’t even know it’s doing it. So a lot of the time, we make decisions based not on anything rational, or even an emotion we understand and recognize, but something deep down that we’re not even aware of.]

[u/mushroommushroom: Like Freud’s ego and id.]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Similar, yeah, but it’s more like, there’s all these different processes happening, and consciousness isn’t actually aware of any of them, just their outputs. And when the body as a whole acts on one of those outputs without going through consciousness first, consciousness comes up with a reason why they wanted to do that.]

[u/ineedcheese: But I do things all the time that I literally have no idea why I did it, like one time I poked a cake my mom had just iced and when she asked me why I did that, I didn’t even know.]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Yeah, spin doctoring doesn’t always work, particularly since the ADHD brain is particularly vulnerable to processes just totally bypassing consciousness and doing a thing. That’s called “poor impulse control.”

[But the point is, we do things for reasons we don’t even know, and then our consciousness comes up with a reason why we did that thing, and then it enters our database of “reasons to do or not do things.” Like… if I found it very hard to do a thing, I might, for the sake of my pride, come up with “I really hate doing that thing” or “I think it’s stupid” or “That thing is completely unnecessary.” But maybe the only reason it was hard was I wasn’t getting any dopamine from it, and maybe Dex could fix that for me… if I was willing to try to do it, but the spin doctor might have already convinced me, doing that thing is dumb and why should I?

[One of the roles a therapist or psychiatrist can play with a patient trying Dex is to work through the spin doctor’s bullshit. Help you try out things you have already written off, or break patterns you think are just the best way to do things when maybe they’re not.]

[u/ineedcheese: Like what kind of thing?]

[u/snowflakespecialaisle10: Writing documentation if you’re a programmer.]

Ouch. That one especially hit home.

[u/semicolonbang: How is the implant done? Like do they drill through your skull?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: It’s a laparoscopic surgery done up through the nose. Outpatient surgery, you go home the same day.]

[u/supermansshorts: And that doesn’t fuck up your nose?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: Oh, your nose hurts like a bitch for about a week. When I did it, it drove me a little nuts because I have allergies, but blowing my nose would cause giant nosebleeds. Now, we give people a cocktail of antihistamine, numbing solution, and decongestant in a nasal spray, and apparently that works a lot better.]

[u/semicolonbang: You did it yourself?]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: I told you that I lost my girlfriend because I never washed dishes and then we got a roach infestation and she blamed me, and you think I wouldn’t be signing up for the clinical trial the moment we opened it to human trials?]

[u/mushroommushroom: To be fair, the roaches probably came in on your groceries or from the next door neighbor or something. Not washing the dishes just gave them a source of food and water to breed from.]

[u/ohsuzannaburke: I mentioned that. Turned out that was not a helpful argument.]

At this point, a Slack message popped up, and Jason had to turn his attention to that. It was from Teresa.

Jason, I haven’t heard from you in a couple of hours. Are you going to be ready for this meeting?

Ready, eager and waiting, he typed back. Shit, the meeting was in ten minutes. And look, there was the Outlook reminder he had reflexively shut off the moment it popped up, popping up again. Good thing Teresa had decided to poke him.

***

The meeting went well. Great, in fact. Jason was able to demo his code, and nothing went wrong. There were a couple of features he hadn’t implemented that the upper-level managers were concerned about, but Teresa backed him up, because he’d told her a month ago that those features would have to come in a later version. She politely reminded the upper-level managers that she’d informed them in email a month ago that those features wouldn’t be in this version. “Controlling scope is a very important part of controlling costs,” she said, and they couldn’t disagree.

Afterward there was a second, internal meeting of the team, which didn’t go quite as well because Teresa was banging the documentation drum. “If you got hit by a bus tomorrow, no one here would know how to support your code,” she said.

“Good thing I never go anywhere. No bus injuries in my future,” he said, and everyone laughed.

“But you know, they say that most accidents happen close to home,” Adrian said. “Seriously, Jason, I know doc’ing sucks, but you gotta get it done.”

Adrian extensively documented his own code, and got it done approximately 20% as quickly as Jason when he was on. And probably only 75% as quickly when you factored in how much time Jason wasted. “I know,” Jason said.

Stacy, the business analyst charged with writing user manuals, said, “It makes my job a lot easier when there are docs.”

“I’ll take a few days and go back through and do that.”

Then they talked about next steps, and the QA team revving up to test. Duane tried to get Jason’s help with a different problem he was working on, but Teresa deflected it, unfortunately. “Jason’s focus has to be on fixing his documentation,” she said. “Jorge, maybe you could team with Duane, see if the two of you could get any traction on this?”

“Sure,” Jorge said, dashing what small hopes Jason had of being able to find an acceptable task to work on that was not documentation.

When the meeting was over, he opened up his code, stared at it for three minutes trying to figure out where to even begin documenting. Due to the lack of documentation, he wasn’t even 100% sure he knew what all these functions did.

Fuck it.

He jumped over to Reddit, where he still had the Dex AMA open, which reminded him that he’d wanted to google Suzanne Burke’s claims and generally the whole thing, because the idea of a brain implant that could help you control your own behavior wasn’t real far off from conspiracy theorists’ paranoid fantasies of the CIA putting mind control devices in your brain.

Three hours later he’d learned some things:

All the bad reviews of Dex came from people who had obviously never used it or didn’t even really know what it was, people who were complaining about absurd things (“I wanted it to help me stop eating snack chips so I filled my room with snack chips to test it and it didn’t work, I still ate snack chips”) or things no one had never claimed it could fix (“I still keep losing my keys”), or people who had gotten one of the earlier versions at the start of clinical trials. Most of the most recent reviews either raved about it or said something like, “It’s a lot of hard work to re-engineer your whole life even with Dex, but with Dex I can actually do that work without getting in my own way”, or “It’s an adjustment and you’ll find there are things you are used to wanting to do that you don’t even really want to anymore, and that can be bothersome, but they’re usually things you wanted to stop wanting to do”. Most of the complaints that remained after the positive reviews and factoring out the old and/or stupid ones were about the surgery – “They said my nose would hurt for about three weeks but it’s been six weeks and it still hurts when I blow it”. One person had a bad allergic reaction and they had to take it out.

There were many complaints from friends and family members of someone using Dex. “He never has time to hang out anymore”, “We used to spend hours chatting on Discord and now she blows me off after like half an hour”, “He’s like some kind of zombie drone where it’s all about work, work, work” (this was troubling, but when Jason drilled into that, it turned out to be a boyfriend who was annoyed that his paramour didn’t want to spend hours a day canoodling, because he had work to do.)

There were a lot of conspiracy theories about how Jupiter was using Dex to mind control people on behalf of the government, the New World Order, the Jews, the reptilians, the liberal left, fascism, or corporations. These were all presented with tremendous hysteria and very little actual evidence. One persistent theory was that the founder and CEO of Jupiter, who’d expressed an interest in space colonization, was going to use Dex to mind-control a sizable workforce into going into space to build his space colonies. Another one seemed to think that Dex had been created by the infamous tech billionaire who’d managed to destroy Twitter, as if all tech billionaires were the same guy, or had some kind of hive mind agenda.

One credible theory claimed that the device had a wireless component to receive updates, and that therefore it could be used in the future to send ads to people, somehow. The wireless component turned out to actually exist, and it really was sending brain scans back to Ulysses for analysis, and Ulysses really was sending out software updates. Ulysses claimed this was fully anonymized, that the analysis was necessary in order to improve the software that ran Dex, and that the software itself was so unusual and proprietary that it would be literally impossible to infect it with malware. Jason was suspicious. All of that sounded very plausible and also something a corporation could decide to throw out and do something evil with the moment the board of directors decided they could get away with it. He couldn’t figure out exactly how it could possibly send ads, but he was sure it could be nefariously used for something.

In the end, there were two factors that decided him on not bothering to look any further into Dex. The existence of the wireless connection to Ulysses’ servers, and the fact that he’d have to find a psychiatrist if he wanted to be prescribed it. Finding a psychiatrist sounded easy enough, but given that Jason had had “change doctors” on his to-do list for two and a half years, and hadn’t been to a dentist in longer than that because he just never got around to making an appointment, he had no illusions.

But without researching Dex as an excuse to himself, he had no good reason not to work on his documentation. Just the usual reasons. It was boring, he didn’t want to, and he couldn’t make himself do it without a stunning amount of caffeine in his system.

Well. Time for early evening Coca Cola, then.

Jason had a system. Complex carbs, he thought, slowed him down and made him sleepy. Simple carbs, sugar, were a quick shot in the arm of energy, but there’d be a crash afterward. Greasy protein was even worse than the complex carbs, so pizza was absolutely terrible for focus. (This did not stop him from eating it when it was available.) The secret was lean protein, cold vegetables (because warmth made him sleepy), and sugar. So grilled chicken or salmon on a salad, and Coke. It was a pain in the ass to make this for himself; salad, in particular, was annoying because you had to wash it and then somehow you had to dry it, or wait hours for it to dry on its own, or your croutons would get soggy. He put in an online order at a local place, and then turned to video games.

The good thing about ordering food online was that, when it showed up, it would automatically disrupt whatever he was doing, so it was a great way to break free from something he probably shouldn’t be doing to switch to something he should. The bad thing about ordering food online was that it resulted in multiple interruptions while he was trying to relax with the game, because they called to confirm the order, and then they called to find his house, and then they called to tell him they were on the porch downstairs. And then Mom called up to tell him his food was here, and why hadn’t he asked her if she wanted anything?

But now he had his food, and his Coke, so it was time to focus on this thing.

This boring thing.

This thing he would rather do almost anything than be doing.

He slogged through it, incredibly slowly. He’d add a comment, scroll down, pop over to Reddit or a newsfeed or Youtube or literally anything other than this documentation, do that for several minutes – he had no idea how many – and then abruptly remember he was supposed to be doing his documentation and go back to it. As the night wore on, he became less and less efficient, more time spent not documenting, less time unraveling his own code to figure out what he did and write it down. But he couldn’t just go to bed; he had to make enough progress that he looked like he was making progress. But he couldn’t stay up all night, because then he would oversleep tomorrow and he would look bad.

The two balanced each other at 3 am, and he was finally able to go to bed, the documentation close to sort of done. Not to sleep, though, because he’d had way too much Coke and he was much too worried about what Teresa would think. Was this enough to show due diligence, or would she be angry that it wasn’t complete?

***

It took four days.

Four days of Teresa pestering him about whether the documentation was finished, four days of having nothing required of him that he actually wanted to work on. Four days of dodging the documentation as much as he could by helping everyone else out. Including helping with their documentation, because as annoying as documentation in general was, it was much better when he was getting the warm fuzzies for helping someone else, directly.

There was a weekend in the middle of those four days. Jason promised himself he’d work on the docs over the weekend and then didn’t even open the file. Then he promised himself he’d get up early on Monday to do some work on it, and instead woke up at 10, having missed a 9:30 scrum.

At 2 pm on Tuesday, he was finally able to report being finished with documenting his code. He checked the final version in, breathed a sigh of relief, and got himself a beer. He’d finished the slog. Time to unwind. He didn’t officially clock out, because frankly he’d been working so ridiculously late each night that if he weren’t salaried, they’d owe him a whole extra paycheck, so it was only fair. While he didn’t log off Slack or close his email, he did dive into a video game that occupied the full screen and wouldn’t let him see if messages came through. He told himself he’d pop out periodically and check.

Six hours later, when he finally checked, he had a Slack message from Teresa to come into the office tomorrow. It was much too late by now to ask her why.

***

“You’re letting me go?”

He stared at Teresa, a feeling of cold and heat at once sweeping through his veins. “You know I’m the best programmer in the department, right?”

“No one disputes that,” Teresa said, conciliatory. “But it takes you too long to get your work done, because you’re always in late, or leaving early.”

“I’ve been working until 3 am for a week now! And I only left early yesterday because I’d finished my documentation, and I needed a break.”

“Right. Jason, other programmers do not take four days to finish documenting their code. They document it as they write it. If you’d been hit by a bus over the weekend, we wouldn’t have had any idea how the code works, and I’d have to put someone on tracing it back and figuring it all out.”

He realized, then, that she’d just been waiting for him to finish it before she fired him. “I’m always helping out everyone else in the department, that’s why I’m slow sometimes.”

“You’re a great help, and you’ll be missed, but we need programmers who can work standard hours and hit their deadlines. I’m sorry, Jason, but it’s out of my hands. Upper management looked at your metrics and told me you’ve gotta go.” She shook her head. “I know you have personal effects here at the office, so you can go get those. Charlie here will escort you.”

Charlie wasn’t dressed any differently than anyone else at the company, but he was probably security. Certainly Jason didn’t recognize him, so he wasn’t in IT. “Fine,” he snapped.

“We’ll need the work laptop back,” she reminded him. The one he had never taken out of the box, because the box had the specs on it and he’d realized that it wasn’t nearly powerful enough for his needs, so he’d been doing all his work on his personal desktop.

“I’ll drop it off.”

He knew that by now he’d already been locked out of all the computer systems, so he wouldn’t have a copy of any of his Slack messages, or the code he’d just finished. If he wanted his email he’d have to find a way to convert his Outlook OST to an archive without actually opening it, because if he opened it, it would probably ask for a password and then just endlessly prompt him for a login until he closed it. He wasn’t sure he wanted to keep his email that badly.

What a dick thing, to make him come into the office just to fire him. But then, it would also have been a dick thing to fire him by Slack message or voice call or email, and then he wouldn’t have had a chance to get his very minimal amount of stuff, which included a few cartoons he’d pinned to his cubicle wall and a family picture he’d photoshopped to completely remove Dad, so it just had him and Mom. Not that he couldn’t print out another copy of that, but the frame had come from a college friend he wasn’t in touch with much anymore, and he had sentimental attachment to it.

***

Mom was home, in the kitchen, on her laptop, as he came in, because of course she was. “Honey? You okay?”

For a moment he contemplated saying “Fine,” and stomping off to his room like he was still 17, but Mom would get it out of him sooner or later. Better bite the bullet now. “I got fired.”

“Oh. Oh, Jason, I’m so sorry. Anything I can do to help?”

Not tell me about how it’s my fault, I hope. “Not really, but thanks for the offer.” He took a deep breath. “I’ve got savings and I’ve got health insurance until the end of the month, and more if I take COBRA. I want to see a psychiatrist about these problems I’ve been having.”

Mom nodded. “That might be a good idea. Maybe there’s a new medication you could try.”

“There’s this thing I was looking into, called Dex. It’s like an implant that helps you train your brain to focus? I’m thinking maybe I need to take it more seriously.”

“That might be a good idea. Do you need help with finding a psychiatrist?”

He was about to say no, it’s fine, I’ve got it handled Mom… and then thought better of it, because that kind of thing was the strategy that just got him fired. “Yeah. I need you to keep reminding me I need to do it. Even if I get bitchy about it.”

“Oh, I can do that,” Mom said, amused. “Also, I don’t know how quickly they’ll get your COBRA paperwork to you, but you need to get on that immediately. Check the mail every day—”

“I’d think they’d email it.”

“They might, but probably they’ve turned off your email? Do they have a personal email address for you?”

A good question. “I think they have my Gmail…”

“Check that every day. Including the spam boxes. And check the regular mail every day. There’s some time limit they’re under for how quickly they have to provide you that, but I don’t remember what it is. And it’s to their advantage if they wait a few days so maybe you’ll forget. You need to be on that. You could try to go through the marketplace, since losing your job is a qualifying event, but that’s likely to be much more disruptive, and COBRA is probably cheaper than that.”

Jason nodded. “Keep me honest?”

“I sure will.”

“Gonna hit up Dice and Linkedin, maybe Monster, see how quick I can land a new job.”

“Good luck.”

***

But he had savings, and it seemed like a dumb idea to take a new job and then get brain surgery. Sure, the AMA had said it was outpatient surgery, but what if there were complications and he had to take time off? It might be a better idea to find out if he was getting Dex or not before he got a job.

He found a psychiatrist who didn’t take his, or anyone’s, insurance, which was expensive, but living with your mom for several years and paying only a third of the mortgage and half the utilities, while holding a good job, had enabled him to save up a fairly large nest egg. She was the kind of psychiatrist who never actually told you what she thought, but spent all her time asking you what you thought about things. She presented options and made suggestions and offered to help by writing prescriptions for whatever she had suggested that you had decided to go ahead with.

The company had given him one boon; they hadn’t told the state they’d fired him for cause, even though doing so would have saved on their unemployment insurance. Unemployment was less than a third of what he’d been making, but on the other hand, he didn’t have to order food out nearly so much when he wasn’t breaking his neck for the company that had just fired him. He could actually cook. He could help his mom when she cooked, and learn how to make some shit he didn’t already know.

Jason tried three non-stimulant medications over the course of eight weeks. One of them made him horny as hell, which was unfortunate as he didn’t have a significant other, and he felt like jerking off three times a day was a waste of his time. One did nothing. One made him overwhelmingly sleepy. He tried stimulant medication, again, a slightly different formulation, but still felt like it made him jittery and his heart raced and he got headaches and was irritable. A lower dose of stimulant medication gave him the same symptoms, just a little less of them, and lower than that didn’t actually work at all to help him focus.

This wasn’t the first job he’d been fired from for not being able to keep to a schedule or make deadlines, and if he didn’t do something, it wouldn’t be the last.

In the end, he talked himself into asking his doctor about Dex, just like the commercial said.

***

Outpatient surgery, it turned out, was still surgery… it just didn’t involve a lengthy stay in the hospital. When his mother came to pick him up, because he wasn’t allowed to drive after surgery, his nose was starting to hurt like a motherfucker. They’d given him a nasal spray that would keep the area sterile, promote clotting, and relieve pain, and they’d given him decongestants because it was EXTREMELY IMPORTANT, according to the aftercare nurse and the directions he was given on paper, that he not sneeze or blow his nose. If his nose started to run, they’d given him a second nasal spray that was a direct decongestant and antihistamine, and he was supposed to use that instead. If he had a nosebleed, he was to use his spray and lay down immediately until the bleed went away. Yes, his nose would clog up, because there was a healing wound and the spray was promoting clotting; he would just have to breathe through the other nostril. And this was supposed to go on for up to two weeks.

Joy.

They also gave him regular painkillers, which he quit taking about four days later because seriously, how do people get addicted to the sensation of having a fuzzy head? He had enough issues with being half-brained from exhaustion, he didn’t really want to add opioids to the mix. Tylenol and the nasal spray would do.

It was at that point that he decided to engage in the difficult task of trying to get a new job. He’d already updated his resume, but he hadn’t uploaded it; he’d already done some initial keyword searches for jobs, but hadn’t actually applied to anything.

He opened the job search site, logged into his profile, and began the laborious task of adding his newer skills from the job he was just fired from, and updating the length of experience he had with the other ones. It was nightmarishly boring, just like it had been every other time, so he popped over to Reddit. Just for a little while, just to do something more entertaining for a few minutes.

Except Reddit wasn’t entertaining.

He browsed around for a while, looking for something to catch his attention, but frankly nothing was as compelling as the idea of getting the goddamn resume done and out there, so he could get a job, get health insurance he didn’t have to pay an arm and a leg for, and stop making his mom anxious. So he went back to the job search site, and this time, managed to get the entire task done without interrupting himself. It wasn’t fun, but it was something he wanted out of the way, and he was able to power through it, and then finish doing the same thing with two other job search sites.

It wasn’t until after he was finished that he realized.

Holy shit. This thing works!

***

After that, Jason went a little nuts, self-admittedly, with his new superpowers of actually being able to focus and get shit done.

The AMA had been correct. He wasn’t any better able to remember where he put his keys than he had ever been. But he was able to order a bunch of devices that could be hung on key rings or slipped into wallets, that he would be able to use an app to find, and then get them set up and put them on the devices they needed to be attached to. He got “Find my Droid” configured for all the times he lost his phone, and a bunch of chargers he could plug in all over the house, including QI chargers, that he could leave the phone attached to whenever he didn’t want to deal with carrying it around, so now it wouldn’t die out of his custody.

He wasn’t any better at remembering that he had appointments. But he was able to focus enough to put in sufficient reminders, that would catch him at enough points in time, that he wouldn’t be blindsided… and enough to actually check the reminders when they showed up, rather than just absent-mindedly dismissing them. After he next saw his psychiatrist, he actually put his upcoming appointment on his calendar, so he didn’t have to run around like crazy trying to find the little appointment card when he finally remembered that there was an appointment.

He remembered to wash his clothes three days before a job interview, so he had options. (It was virtual anyway, but it did require his camera, so he wanted to look good.) He showered and shaved that morning, rather than forgetting and then racing to try to get it done before the interview. He actually ate breakfast, not just coffee, because he paid attention when his alarm went off, didn’t just snooze it, and managed to drag himself out of bed early enough that his mom was still home and making herself eggs and bacon, which she shared with him. He used Linkedin and Google to read up on the companies he was being interviewed for before the interview, so he actually knew who some of the people were and had some familiarity with what they did.

And in the meanwhile, he kept the dishes clean, the trash taken out, the kitchen floor swept, the toilet paper on the roll and the empty rolls in the trash can, the soda cans in the recycling bin, and he even got around to fixing the bathroom shelf above the toilet and taking his mom’s car to the mechanic for her, because a 30-year-old guy was a lot less likely to get scammed by a mechanic than a nearly 60-year-old woman.

This was fucking awesome.

He wrote a few of the personal programs he’d always wanted to get around to, like the one that helped him use his phone to take an inventory of his and his mom’s shit, so if there was ever a fire, they could back up their claims of what was lost… and then he actually went around taking the photographs, labeling them, and using the program to push them into the database he’d set up. He remembered, finally, after about twelve increasingly upset emails from Teresa, to bring in that work laptop and drop it off. He returned his library books, paid his fines, and checked some more out, and then returned them on time. He set up a blog and started writing about programming challenges he’d encountered in his career. He put a Pi Hole on his mom’s wifi network to block ads at the router so none of the computers had to work at that. He bought a cheap laptop and set it up with Linux like he’d always planned, and actually did the experimenting he’d always wanted to do.

His time on Reddit plummeted, and was mostly confined to subreddits about the games he was into, where he knew people and had stuff to say that he cared about, rather than endlessly surfing sites like r/AmITheAsshole and r/TodayIFuckedUp. He still gamed, in the evenings, for a reasonable amount of time that didn’t interfere with his sleep schedule, and felt no guilt about it because he was getting his important shit done, so he had every right to relax as hard as he worked. When he wasn’t doing job interviews or searching for jobs, during the day in what would be working hours, he was reading up on new technologies and actively teaching himself new skills.

Jason’s mom cried when she told him how proud she was of him for taking this step and getting his life turned around. He himself wanted to cry, sometimes, when he realized that he’d wasted 30 years of his life without this, and that ordinary people, people without ADHD, just lived like this. Out of the box. Without having to have a foreign object shoved up their nose and into their craniums.

The day he got the new job, he happily updated his LinkedIn, after making connections with old co-workers so they could see he’d landed on his feet and he wasn’t a total fuckup. A couple of them contacted him, asking if he could help out with some problems they were having. He asked them to go back to Teresa and get authorization to pay him as a contractor. They didn’t ask again after that.

He even went and updated his profile on some dating sites. Now that he had a job again, and now that he no longer felt constant guilt over what he wasn’t getting done at his job, it was time to try to get back into that game. He hadn’t had a partner since shortly before the first lockdown… that was a long time to go without.

And then his first paycheck arrived, and he grinned to himself. He’d been good… at least since getting the Dex implant. He hadn’t bought anything unless he needed it or it would help him improve skills and be more marketable. No new games, no new DVDs, no books, no new phone, no new speakers for his PC, no replacement pump and filter for the fish tank that had no fish in it and was at this point just an algae-growing experiment, no cast iron skillet because Mom had sold hers at a yard sale due to her hands being too arthritic to hold something so heavy while cooking, nothing.

It was spending spree time! He’d been promising himself this since he got Dex. Save his money while he didn’t have a job, keep spending as tight as he could, and he’d go on a spree as soon as he got a paycheck.

He went to Jupiter.com first, because that was where he could get most of everything he wanted, maybe even everything he wanted. Two new games he’d been jonesing for. Several graphic novels, a science fiction novel, and a memoir. A box set for a TV show he loved, because relying on streaming had gotten more and more erratic as fights over licensing continued. PC speakers with surround sound that were two generations better than what he had, and an upgraded graphics card. Fish tank supplies – maybe he was finally going to be responsible enough to keep fish alive. A hat, because it looked cool, even though he couldn’t imagine a circumstance where he’d actually wear it.

For clothes, though, and the cast iron frying pan, it was better to shop local, where he didn’t have to pay shipping, and he could immediately return anything that had an unpleasant texture. So he went over to Target’s web site, and was immediately bored out of his mind.

He tried to convince himself that the search tools for clothes were more specialized here, and he was more likely to be able to find one thing that fit and then six other things like it in slightly different cuts or colors. No go. It was like looking at the red color scheme and the font was draining the life out of him.

Which was ridiculous. He forced himself to look for the cast iron frying pan. That should be simple and easy.

But they had multiple options, and it seemed like just such an enormous amount of work to sort through them.

He went back to Jupiter.com. The fonts seemed cleaner, the pictures more inviting. The cost of shipping was challenging, though. But he could fix that. Just click the button for only free shipping, and look at that! He could even get three of different sizes. He added it to his cart without thinking about it much.

Clothes continued to be a challenge. It was kind of fun to go hunting, but his frustration was building, because there were so many items coming up in his searches that weren’t what he searched for at all. And no way to tell the texture of anything just from pictures, whereas with a local store he could go there and check things out.

So he tried going over to Walmart, which was disgusting, and JC Penney’s, which was overwhelming, and some of the sites for fancy mall stores, which just seemed to not have any kind of selection. He was used to buying from Target. They had good search filters for men’s clothes, that rarely pulled back complete bullshit. He should go there.

Except when he went there, everything looked overwhelmingly hard and chaotic and he just didn’t want to. All the fun of clothes shopping drained away.

And then he went cold.

Jason tried going to Barnes and Noble’s web site for a specific book. It was too hard to use the site. He’d used it before, but somehow it seemed really inferior now. He tried going to a PC online retailer to look for the video card he had already bought from Jupiter. The filters were too unresponsive. He went to Swappa to find a used phone to replace the one he had, and almost immediately gave up because none of the products looked good and he was feeling a general sense of unease about the idea of buying a used phone from a shady online store… even though he’d gotten his last three phones there and had been satisfied.

Shit. Shit.

He had to post about this. If this was happening to him… he couldn’t be the only one. He opened up Reddit and found the thread about Dex, clicked the new post button…

…and lost all enthusiasm for the task. Jesus, did he really have to write a post about this bullshit? Who cared? Probably everyone would jump his shit. It wasn’t like he had any scientific proof. And the idea of having to explain, in detail, what was happening? Humiliating.

No. No. That was more of it. He had to write this post. He started typing, grimly, using the same fortitude he’d used when he’d spent four days documenting his code so his boss could fire him.

“I really loved Dex at first, but”

“but some disturb”

“but I found”

“but there’s one thing”

Nothing looked right. The documentation, at least, had been right when he’d written it. Everything he was writing now just looked terrible and whiny and like there was no point to saying anything.

But he had to do this. He had to write this post. The thing in his head had to be making him not want to do this, not want to say this, but he’d gone for 30 years forcing himself to do things he really, really didn’t want to do.

“I really loved Dex at first, but its changing what I want, its bad, you shouldn’t”

No. Fuck. What was that? That was utter shit. Couldn’t he even be bothered to capitalize and use punctuation?

“I really loved Dex at first, but it won’t let me write this post about what it’s doing to me”

Fuck this, go read r/AITA.

Go read his video game subreddits.

Check Microsoft Teams, which his new company used instead of Slack. Maybe someone had a late-night request for help? Or something he was supposed to do tomorrow that he could get started on tonight instead?

No!

“I really loved Dex at first, but it makes me”

An hour of reading the news.

“makes me feel bored with shopping”

Just one round of his video game. Just one.

Six rounds later.

“shopping anywhere but Jupi”

This dog growled at the baby sitter, you’ll be shocked when you find out why!

25 screens later of a story he had predicted the end of when he’d started reading it.

“Jupiter. I go to tar”

Had anyone online ever posted that stupid ditty where they sang “shop at tar-jay” like the word Target was French? Go check.

“target or any other site”

Wow, it was late, shouldn’t he go to bed? Bed sounded really great. He really shouldn’t disrupt his sleep schedule for this now that he’d gotten a new job and finally established a good sleep schedule, right?

Focus.

“site and it makes me feel like it’s boring, or too complicated, or just bad”

How about his favorite TV show? Was there going to be another season of that?

“just bad, until I go to Jupiter, and then shopping feels fun”

Yeah. That was it. That was the message. He didn’t need to keep doing this. He could stop and post it here. Actually he should spell check first, right? And it was late, maybe he wanted to hold off on posting until tomorrow, when he could look at it with fresh eyes.

“feels fun. And it wont let me”

1 am. This was ridiculous. He had work in the morning. He couldn’t lose this job just because of something stupid like this.

Another half hour of reading the news.

“let me write this to warn you.”

Right! Wrap it up, turn off the monitor, go to bed! He’d done his part. The message was out there!

Jason absent-mindedly turned his computer off, and only then, wondered if he had ever actually hit post.

Well. He could check on it in the morning.

After work. And his chores. And he was supposed to game with his friends tomorrow, so after that, too.

Oh, fuck this. He'd spent his life struggling against things his brain didn't want him to do, and it was awful and it had traumatized him and he never wanted to go through that bullshit again. If he'd forgotten to hit post, oh well. Let someone else do it. Jason was done beating his head against the wall of things he really didn't want to do, that he thought he should do, forever.

[underthetree845]

Hello! You've been tagged! You don't have to do anything if you don't want to, but if you'd like, list 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last 10 people who reblogged something from you! Learn to know your mutuals and followers!

—

i hope you're having a wonderful week so far, april! 🩵

Aw hey Mack! This week has been kind of a rollercoaster (emotionally, assignment-wise), but I know it’ll be okay as long as I don’t give up. 😊

Thank you for sending this! (In no order) five things that make me happy are:

1.) Sharing food, especially food I’ve made. I often cook for my family, and I get happy whenever I see someone eating something I made in the fridge. I also like providing for my friends at school or for someone who’s starving because they forgot their lunch. Even if I didn’t make it, sharing food is something I like doing. I always appreciate when it’s done for me. My grandma is by far the best cook in our family, I also feel a small sense of pride and joy when she compliments what I make.

2.) Playing piano. Even if I procrastinate practicing, a very unique feeling flutters in my chest when the melody is flowing just right and I get to sit there and just make music.

3.) Ranting about my favorite characters/stories. I’m one for character analysis and stuff like that, I latch very hard onto things that interest me, so when someone gets excited with me or even just listens when they have no idea what I’m talking about, it means a lot.

4.) Interacting with little kids. I’ve babysat before, I have a little sister, I enjoy taking care of people, I know it isn’t always easy, but the highs are worth the lows when caring for children, in my opinion :)

5.) Staying up late. I find it therapeutic. It’s quiet, no inhibitions, no expectations.

[shadedgarden]

I’m Tired: a Rant

After my stay in the hospital in the summer, I asked  my boss if it was alright that I have a gradual return to work with 2-3 shifts a week for a couple of weeks before returning me to my usual 3-4 shifts. It’s now December and I was never returned to my regular shifts. I asked for more hours and he said there weren’t any to give away.  I have things to eat but my fridge is definitely empty. I get paid on friday, but I will absolutely still be in overdraft. I’m glad I have some credit to fall back on!  Some things happened in my family recently that has 100% canceled our holiday get together.  I went through my old sketchbooks and saw how prolific I used to be and how enthusiastic I seemed to be about making art, and I wonder where that went. I’ve been trying to find my artistic voice again and realizing I haven’t actually been enjoying the process like I used to. I put down a sketch today with the intention of painting it and just...am not feeling it at all. So I’ve been looking at the work of other artists, and now there’s this AI thing and I just don’t feel like I fit in anywhere with what I do.   It’s hard to describe how I’m feeling right now. A weird combination of unnecessary guilt and shame but also a profound sorrow. I miss my family.  (my parents are both passed away, and there has been other recent deaths in the family which put a lot of strain on those who were left - it’s contributed to what’s happening now. It’s weird because it should be bringing us closer together, we’re all that’s left. We should be grateful to still have each other, but it’s like no one cares. We’re just tired and worn adults.) 

I’m grateful for what I do have. It’s a miracle. I don’t want to be complacent. But damn I am just not in a good head space lately. 

[alarajrogers]

upcoming WIP

This is the first part of the next 52 Story and I wanted to share it with you guys because I cannot think of another place where this would be as profoundly relatable.

This isn't autobiographical at all. I don't even use Slack. :-)

The following is a description of ADHD hell (not literally hell, this guy is supposed to be alive) and may be triggering to, well, probably all of us.

***

Jason had promised his boss he’d have a debugged version of the code checked in by morning.

He’d been tracking down a bug when he’d gotten sidetracked reading Stack Overflow. Dammit. He’d just lost an hour, and he still had no idea why his code wasn’t working the way it was supposed to, and it was 10 pm. Teresa was expecting a new version to be checked in by 9 am and she was expecting that it would run.

This was a job for more Coca-Cola. Jason got up, went downstairs and got himself a slice of pizza and a cold Coke.

His mom, also burning the late night oil at the kitchen table, hunched over her laptop, said, “How is it going? You think you’ll have what your boss is expecting by tomorrow?”

No. “Yes,” Jason said. “I just need a few more hours to track this down.”

“Well, you’re running out of them. You’d be better off getting a good night’s sleep, then waking up fresh in the morning early enough to work on it then.”

Mom was 57 and had apparently forgotten everything she had ever known about how night owls worked, despite having spent her younger years routinely staying up until 2 am. “Is that what you’re doing?” Jason couldn’t help saying.

“I’ve got a house showing tomorrow, I just have to make sure that I have my talking points memorized.”

“Why? Does the house really suck?”

“It doesn’t really suck. It’s a good house, really. Great bones, a nice big yard. But I’m gonna have to redirect the prospective owner’s attention away from how ugly the carpet is and things like that, because the seller? Whoo-ee. There’s people who have no taste, and there’s people who never fix anything, and there’s people who own dogs, and then there’s my seller, who is all three.” She sighed. “I tried to get them to rip the carpet out and install hardwood flooring before putting the house on the market, but the market is hot right now; I don’t blame them for wanting to charge forward. I just think they’d get more if their house didn’t smell like dog and look like water damage had a horrible transporter accident with the 1970’s.”

“That bad, huh?” He leaned up against the fridge, sipping his Coke. “You wanna go over your spiel with me, Mom? Some late night practice before you go to bed?”

“Yeah, actually, that sounds good.”

So Mom talked enthusiastically, if hoarsely, about the four bedrooms and the two and a half bathrooms and the recently modernized kitchen and how great the neighborhood was, and Jason listened, because he wasn’t contributing nearly as much to the mortgage as his mom was and she was also paying most of the utilities, so her career was important, not to mention what stress did to her heart.

When he got back to his computer it was 11:30 and he’d finished his Coke and pizza. He thought about getting ice cream, but best not to do that until Mom went to bed, if he didn’t want to get sucked into another conversation. Not that conversations with Mom were bad; they were much more entertaining than debugging code, which was the problem.

He opened up his coding window, stared at it for thirty seconds while doing nothing, and then convinced himself that maybe Reddit would have an answer to his question.

It didn’t. It did have answers to how to solve a particularly difficult problem in his current favorite game, a number of people who wanted to know if they were the asshole, some great reviews of movies on streaming that he hadn’t had a chance to watch yet, political rants, and some really entertainingly stupid coding mistakes that people had posted.

It was 12:30 am. Teresa was expecting this at 9 and she was expecting it to work.

His eyes glazed. The act of reviewing the code for the tenth time, looking for the bug he hadn’t yet been able to find despite knowing the general area it had to be in, was almost physically painful. He checked his brackets, again. The error didn’t look like a missing close bracket, but that didn’t mean anything. If he had a dollar for every time the error didn’t look like a missing close bracket but turned out to be one, he’d have maybe twenty dollars, which wasn’t a lot in terms of actual money but was a lot of times for the same stupid thing to happen in his code.

The software was supposed to warn him when there was an unclosed bracket, but half the time, if the code was particularly complex, it didn’t. It just re-interpreted the bracket locations and then his code broke.

One more time. Stepping through. Why the fuck was it stopping there? There was nothing there that could account for the error.

Time to go get ice cream. Maybe some sugar would help him stay awake and focused enough to get this done. Another Coke, possibly, too.

When he sat back down, he had Discord messages, so he needed to check them. And messages on Slack, which he could be checking in the morning, and probably should be, but maybe one of his co-workers had found an answer to his problem. They hadn’t, but Priyal had a different question and that one, he thought he could quickly get an answer to, so he fired up Google, dug in, and got her answer for her, which he sent. She’d have it in the morning. Unlike Teresa, who probably would not have what she was expecting.

It was 2 am. Stupid of him to get sidetracked with Priyal’s problem when he was having such difficulty with his own. He flicked over to Reddit again because this was unbearably boring and if he didn’t give himself a break from it, he’d fall asleep.

But he had to go back to debugging the code. Or to sleep. He could handle Teresa being pissed off in the morning a lot better if he got some sleep.

Third page of the subreddit he was on. Four. Man, he needed to keep up with this stuff, there was so much here he hadn’t read yet.

Fifth page of the subreddit. He really, really needed to get back to work. It was 2:30.

A screenshot of something really stupid from Cicada. Damn, someone actually posted something that stupid? Over to Cicada to see if there was context that explained it. There wasn’t, but there was a lengthy thread of people absolutely shredding the OP. Including someone he followed, and he should probably catch up with that.

No, he should get off Cicada and go back to coding. Or bed. His eyes were burning. Bed was probably a better idea. Give up on finishing the debug, tell Teresa he hadn’t found it yet and would need another day.

That was an interesting news article, though. He had to check that out.

No, he didn’t. He needed to go to bed.

Jason’s mouse clicked the link to the article. His eyes read the page, despite burning with exhaustion. Some frantic voice in his head was yelling, screaming, get up, put the computer down, you need to be awake to deal with Teresa in the morning, it’s late, you’re doing nothing useful, get up.

Back to Reddit.

Stop this. Get up. Go to bed. You need to go to bed.

3:30 am. He could barely keep his eyes open, but they were still riveted to the computer, his butt still glued to his chair.

Get up get up get up and go to bed, go to bed, turn the monitor off, you need to go to sleep so you can deal with Teresa tomorrow, get up, go to bed, go to bed

4 am. Look, there was his Firefox home tab, with articles from Pocket. A few of those looked interesting.

Don’t read them, you need to sleep, you need to sleep

Right, right, he didn’t have time to read them right now. He just needed to open them all so they would be there for him tomorrow. If he didn’t do that, Pocket would refresh and he’d lose all of them.

Wow, did they really find carbon deposits on the moon? He had to check that out.

Stop it, stop it, you have to stop it, you need to sleep, stop it

5 am. There was no way he’d be up at 9 to deal with Teresa.

Email. “Hey, I’ve been up all night bashing my head against this thing and I’ve made progress—” This was a lie. “—but it’s still not running. I’m gonna have to look at it with fresh eyes tomorrow. I’ll be logging in around 11 am.” This was also a lie, it would probably be closer to noon. But since he worked from home, all he needed to do was drag ass out of bed around 10:30 to send everyone a status update, tell them he was diving into the code and probably wouldn’t see incoming notifications until he came up for air, and then dive back into his bed instead.

Set an alarm for 9:30 am. Set an alarm for 10 am. He’d blow through them both, of course, but they’d wake him up enough to actually wake up when the 10:30 alarm went off, and then he’d convince himself to get up and send the status message by promising himself he’d return to bed.

Check out that article about a different way to manage your ADHD?

No. Go to sleep. Off the computer. Sleep.

Right, but obviously, he needed to put on his Spotify for music to fall asleep to, and adjust the volume because he couldn’t let it be too loud or it would wake Mom up, calm and peaceful or not.

Pop over to Reddit one last time.

5:30 am. Sleep!

The panic finally overwhelmed the inertia and he managed to drag himself off his chair, turn the monitor off, and stumble to bed. Now to get some sleep.

Oh, except now, he couldn’t sleep because he was overwhelmed by his anxiety and fear about not getting enough sleep to deal with Teresa even if he slept until noon because she was going to be seriously pissed off with him because this was the third time he’d blown the deadline.

It was another hour before exhaustion finally claimed him, and he knew that because the sun had risen.

***

He’d never set the 10:30 alarm.

He’d never set the 10:30 alarm, he’d blown through 9:30 and 10 just like he’d planned, but he’d never turned on the 10:30 alarm, so it was half past noon and he’d never sent that status message, so everyone would know he overslept way past the point Teresa would be okay with after an all nighter, and there was a meeting at 1 pm and he had to shower and shave because it was going to be a meeting with video so he couldn’t look like he’d just dragged himself out of bed.

Or maybe he could. He sent Teresa a message on Slack. I think I’m sick. My throat’s sore, and I’ve got a migraine. And I don’t have the program working anyway, so there’s really nothing to show anyone. Can we postpone until tomorrow?

The response was almost immediate. You need to figure out how to manage your time better. You’re sick because you stayed up all night.

Yeah, but I was trying to solve the bug.

If you can’t get something fixed by 11 pm, it’s not going to get fixed. You should have gone to bed.

I know, but I wanted to try. I was getting close. This was a lie. I thought I could get it done before morning.

Yes, and instead you made yourself sick and the program still doesn’t work. ☹ I’ll postpone the meeting this time, Jason, but we need results before tomorrow. Sorry that you’re sick but you know as well as I do it’s because you didn’t get any sleep.

Yeah, I know. I’ll pull myself together, have some coffee, and get back to work. I’ll try to have it done before 5. This was a lie. He knew perfectly well he wasn’t going to get it done by 5, not when he was this tired.

Do you want me to have Jorge review it? Maybe he can see something you missed?

No, that would be the worst possible thing, because then Jorge would know that he’d made basically no progress last night. I don’t want to add to his workload, but if I’m running into trouble later today I’ll pass it over to him, see if adding some eyeballs might help.

All right, I’ll let him know.

And now Jason was awake, the imminent terror of Jorge finding out that he had done basically nothing last night flooding him with enough adrenaline that he could focus enough to turn on his monitor and get back to work.

[min-pathologica]

problem alert 🚨 vent / rant below

my dad has to move out of his apartment at the end of the year, probably in late december. according to the snap he sent me, he plans to move in here. no problem at all, he’s my favorite relative and we can handle 4 people in the house and a dog since my grandmother and old dog died in june. besides, he deserves stable living conditions, and having to go an entire town up to do his laundry when he could just stay here sounds like a waste. so why not, i figured? see if my grandfather approves.

but of course, gpa and his stupid secret girlyfriend are a major roadblock. seriously, no good has come out of that relationship except for gpa starting a diet of 40% pineapple juice, getting some naturally-branded dick supplements, and leaving the house more often. and there are two problems here: one, being that gpa clearly wants to marry her and bring her in with her two stepkids. that’s three additions, none of which sound like a good idea. i can barely handle one visitor in the house if it’s not my dad. speaking of, he’d be the fourth. we only have two open bedrooms, and so much space in the fridge. problem number two, gpa’s still keeping his girlyfriend a secret from my dad. i think he’s scared of my dad being mad at him, but i’m scared of my dad being upset at all. i’m pretty sure he’s the only one who was close with my grandmother, so finding out gpa’d been seeing some new girl not even two weeks after her death would hurt like a bitch. he’s super anti-cheating, so i don’t think he’d approve very much of that either, plus there’s a bit of awkwardness between all of us and gpa. so i’m not telling him either. now see, gpa understands he can’t just hop to it with telling my dad, because there’s a brain somewhere in that shiny bald top of his. so instead, he’s chosen to keep it a secret from him for the six months after their relationship started. it started in july, which means he’ll tell my dad in early january. if what i’ve been saying so far lines up at all, this raises a major red flag: he wants to tell me dad around the same time my dad has to move. i don’t think that’s an ideal situation.

usually, when i have dramatic sitcom-type issues like this, there’s the thing i should do, and the reason i should not do that thing. but there is nothing i can do about this i don’t think. slay bye bye

[tragic-stardust]

Cereal girl (a poem im working on)

Cereal girl, never fully there

So small and strange, almost inhumane

Wet cigarettes and dark alleys

I could be your cereal girl

Thin matress with alcohol stains

She’s always either eerily quiet

Or mumbling some rant about

Connection

The universe

Stars

Dead lavender on her bedside table

Being crushed by unread books

And empty notepads

I could be your cereal girl

Ink stained fingers and chipped nailpolish

Empty fridge, broken toaster

Accept that nothing is a given

But share with her a fragile promise

Cereal girl, her fingers turn blue

When you swap spit you taste death

Everything is physical

Nothing is physical

Your heater dies near the end of winter

She starts a fire in her being

Burning for you

Burning out

Burning from the inside out

Cereal girl, always almost here

On her way

She’s running late

I could be your cereal girl

She’ll alway hold your hand

But she might fade away

She sees the world in your eyes

You see God in hers

Her heart is an unmade bed

Her mind a club filled with spiked drinks

You don’t need to understand her

But dont dismiss your fear

Let me be your cereal girl

I’ll make you coffee in the mornings

I’ll disappear without a trace

I could be your cereal girl

You’ll adore her

As a drowned person does the sea

Scandalous intimacy

Blood beneath your fingernails

She’ll fade away

But you’ll always see her

In the flowers growing on the sidewalk

In your new haircut

She lives in the lump in your throat

She’s curled up in the back of your closet

She’ll make you dinner

She’ll kiss you goodnight

She’ll give you everything but permanence

She’ll give you everything but herself

Maybe she was never yours

Maybe she was always yours

But you can’t shake this feeling

Like butterfly skeletons

Like graphite on paper

The space between spaces

Let me be your cereal girl

Whispers and millipedes

Endurance, enjoyment

Cold tiles, warm baths

And you fear she’s been dead from the beginning

Her hairtie still on your wrist

Finding the body for months

You try to breathe, your lips are dry

How did it end?

How did it start?

Did you do this?

No, i’ve been dead from the beginning

[lunar-goodness]

Sorry, I’ve got to rant about my coworker for a sec. We had some blood from 2 different patients that had to be bagged up to be sent out today and she was getting it ready and while she was doing that she asked me if one of the samples already went out on Friday, and I’m thinking of course it didn’t it was too late in the day Friday for it to be picked up so I looked in the fridge and the sample she was looking for was right there, in the exact same spot as the other sample would have been sitting in. I honestly don’t know how it was physically possible for her to grab one sample and not the other because they were practically on top of each other with how close they were. And this is not the first time she’s done this, but literally all samples that have to wait to be sent out sit in the same basket in the fridge, stacked right next to each other, I don’t get how she keeps doing this!!!!!!!! She’s not a very detail oriented person, which I get not everyone is going to be but working in a medical profession you kind of have to pay attention to the little details.

[listen-to-the-trees]

Mincemeat Pies and Apple Tart

Combo post! Cause I’m lazy!

So, for Thanksgiving (I’m not only lazy, I’m also behind. Possibly because I’m lazy. Actually, no shut up it’s been crazy busy lately) I decided to go with two mostly seasonally appropriate bakes. Not to mention, it’s the one time of the year you can find mincemeat in the stores.

I’ve never had mincemeat. Not bad.

So I’ve finally decided that there’s just something about the British-to-American conversion of ingredients that’s getting in the way of the pastry crust. Despite all my rantings, I don’t actually believe that Paul Hollywood doesn’t know how to make pastry dough. And yet time after time he expects me to roll out a sticky gooey concoction that only vaguely resembles pastry dough, as it falls apart in my hands. I even tried adding additional freezing time to the fridge cooling time to know avail. Not. A rollable. Dough. So once again I had to basically craft my pie (or tart) shells by hand. This was especially annoying for the mincemeat pies because there were a) more of them, and b) lids required. Trying to get smooth lids that completely covered and crimped at the edges and weren’t crazy thick while the dough clung to my fingers and eschewed the company of its fellow pastry was not. fun.

But honestly, it turned out okay. They don’t look half-bad, only a. couple broke on pulling them out of the tins, and they tasted great. So I’ll call it a win.

The tart wasn’t bad either. I’d never had or made frangipane before, but it was tasty. It called for tragically little apple for an apple tart, but I solved that by basically doubling the amount of apples I decorated the top with (there are no apples anywhere deeper in the tart).

The only real problem was that it was supposed to bake until browned and just set in the middle. It never got anywhere near as brown on top as the picture, and it was hecka wobbly even after I kept adding time until I finally gave up and took it out of the over. By which point I discover that under the tin it was darker than it should be.

Whatever.

It wasn’t burnt and everyone enjoyed it, so that’s what matters in the long run.

[yoongiessparkle]

✬ 15/11/22 ✬

ᴠᴏʟᴜᴍᴇ : ▮▮▮▮▮▮▯▯▯

Emotional rant->

I am drenched in negativity right now. While having to study in a foreign country, I come across a lot of emotional bourden’s which is not the best combined with the amount of material we have to study. I just have to accept my situation the way it is and need to know that I am never alone, even if I physically am.

My biggest enemy lately has been the fact that I have emotions. I need to shut them off and try to live, breathe and exist just for studying. This would make everything a lot more easier.

𝐍𝐨𝐰 𝐥𝐨𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠. . .

▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ 100%

Anywas, I have one more class left and then I will come home, prepare what I have to study the next day and go to sleep…. at 6 pm. Yes this sounds crazy but I will try to change my sleep to 6pm-12am. So I can study from 12:15am till 7am. This would give me the absolute best study time.

So… just 3 more h and I can sleep. I gotta buy some food though so I don’t starve to death. Lately I’ve been borderline starving, because I don’t have the time to go buy food so I’m always left at home with an empty fridge and pantry.

It might seem silly that I am struggling with something like this… well I am actually trying my best to not loose it completely at this point so, let’s all not be so judgemental towards others.

↳˗ˏˋ My study plan for tomorrow ˊˎ˗ ↴

30 pages Biology

Anatomy ch. 14 till p. 422

Physics Chapter 6

revise previous chapters in Anatomy

See yall (⌒‿⌒)っ*+*

.・。.・゜✭・. .・。.・゜✭・. .・。.・゜✭・. .・。.・゜✭・. .・。.・゜✭・. .・。.・゜

.・。.・゜✭・. .・。.・゜✭・. .・。.・゜✭・. .・。.・゜✭・. .・。.・゜✭・. .・。.・゜✭ .・。.・゜

[ifeveristoday]

I know they’re still in development/talking stage about the Buffy revisit series, but there is one solid gold wish that I want to have happen: do not value style over substance. The way Netflix/cable has changed tv production values in the past twenty years-episodic TV looks better and richer now than it did in the nineties and eighties (which seems to be the big spring where all present ideas come from - but that’s because Millenials and Gen Xers are creative leaders now) but the glossier and more advanced special FX gets, I don’t think the story writing basics have kept up. Especially if they’re going to revisit Sunnydale in the hs years again - I don’t want them to Riverdale it. What makes Buffy special are the characters and the lore of it, along with the specific California-ese of the language and dialogue. Updating it so there are more poc leads is definitely a step in the right direction but I hope they avoid the pitfalls that the original show had such as fridging and tokenism.

[tmntxthings]

So I may be having some trouble at school and I was wondering if Gn! Reader could try and get some help in math from Donnie? (Or all if this is a HC situation.)

either way, just reader begging Dee or the others for some help and being super duper grateful when their grade goes up?

Mathematically Inclined

author’s note: I personally hate math, I’m an English major, I went as far away from math as possible, would’ve been nice to have Donnie help me out in statistics last semester T-T

warnings: cursing, fluff :D

—————————————————————————

It was the end of the world. You had t-minus two days until your big exam. And it was comprehensive of every single chapter you had to learn that semester. And you had went through a lot of chapters, twelve, but who’s counting right?

You had your notes and you had previous chapter exams and even homework to go over. But it wasn’t clicking, and you were starting to feel DOOMED. Holding back a dramatic sob and thinking of how tragic your transcript would look with a big fat ‘F’ for college algebra. You decided you needed help. Normally, you’d just suffer in silence, you weren’t the type to rely on others. In fact, you were very proud to have gotten this far on your own. If this had been any other subject you’d have it in the bag. But it was math.

“Donnie please I need your help,” you said into your phone. “With what exactly?” Donnie asked, currently he was working on multiple things. He hadn’t left his lab in days, he hadn’t even answered your first call! “I’ve got this really big test and it’s make or break time. If I fail this I’m getting an F.” If Donnie couldn’t teach you then you just didn’t know what else to do. Studying on your own wasn’t going well. It was too late to schedule for tutoring. You waited with bated breath for Donnie’s answer, “when’s the exam?” it wasn’t an answer but at least it wasn’t a straight up rejection!

“Two days!” You whimpered, “please Dee, please please please help me!” You were resorting to begging for pete’s sake! You heard a long sigh, “alright but you have to come here, bring some energy drinks.” And the nerd hung up in your face.

You couldn’t believe it. He said yes?! You were scrambling to get all of your things in your backpack. Thankfully you had the drinks already in your fridge, your roommate liked to stay up late gaming when they didn’t have school work to do. “Borrowing a couple of these I’ll get you more!” You called over your shoulder as you raced out of the door. Heading for the lair but specifically to Donnie.

You had an energy drink in your hand, giving it to Donnie as soon as you passed through the lab doors. And boy did he need it! His eyes looked so strained like he hadn’t slept for days! “Dee what’s up?” You asked, concerned for your friends health. “Just been busy, can’t afford to sleep right now, I’m so close to finishing its maddening.” The purple turtle sighed as he looked over your notes.

“What seems to be your issue? I mean everything you have written down is correct,” it was your turn to sigh. “Yeah well that’s just it, I’m never the one doing the problems I’ve been using the internet for homework…” you grumbled, more than embarrassed to admit your faults. “So, you’ve been cheating?” Donnie raised an eyebrow. “I mean is it really?! Everything so far has been online, I’m just using the resources I have available. And now the last test is in person?! It seriously blows!!” You huffed at the end of your rant, only to see that Donnie was smirking.

“So you don’t know how to do any of this yourself and you want me to teach you a semesters worth of work in less than two days?” The way he put it, it sounded impossible! You slouched over, elbows on your knees, hands to your face. “So it’s hopeless?” You mumbled. The last bit of hope you had finally draining. “I didn’t say that, just wanted to clarify,” you peeked out of your hands to see Donnie had a small smile on his face. You wondered if he thought this was funny. You swallowed your irritation, latching onto the last spark of hope.

“Alright let’s do this.” You said, determination written on your face. You cracked open your own drink and took a long swig then with a pencil in hand you waited for instructions. “Start with this, x raised to the 5th…”

The whole first day was pretty rough. It was nonstop problems. Going from the basics of chapter one and building your way back up. By the end of the day you had a solid piece of foundation and at least knew how to start tackling the problems from chapter one to five. “How about a break, we could both use a nap, we’ll pick up where we left off,” Donnie was yawning and he stood stretching out his legs and arms. You leaned back in your swivel chair, “sounds good to me,” you said tiredly as your eyes instantly closed. You’d fall asleep right there in one of his lab chairs.

“C’mon you goof, you’ll hurt yourself sleeping there.” You blinked drowsily, not wanting to move but forcing yourself to get up, following his lead as he led you to a couch in the back of his lab. “Wake me up in an hour,” you mumbled sleepily as you curled up on one end of the couch. Donnie shook his head, throwing a purple blanket over you and going to the other end. He scrolled through his phone for about five minutes before setting a timer and falling asleep too.

The snooze button was hit a couple of times as the both of you grumbled at the rude awakening an hour later. “5 more minutes!” You pleaded and Donnie who was more tired than you readily agreed. 15 minutes later your eyes were widening as you sat up from your spot on the couch. “Shit shit shit! Donnie we gotta go back to studying!” You said and he was jumping up from his position, “mhm yeah I’m awake!” he yawned as he grabbed the blanket and wrapped it around himself, walking back over to where your notes were on his table.

“Alright… where were we.. oh yeah!~” Genius Donnie was back into the swing of things before you were fully seated. The rest of the studying became a blur. Truly you didn’t even know if you would be able to remember it all but you got through all the material with Donnie’s help, all 12 fucking chapters. “Anddd that’s about it!” Donnie said tapping the white board he had brought over to write the equations out with you. He had learned quickly you were a visual learner. “With four hours to spare,” you practically weeped as you looked down at your phone. “3 hour nap and then I’ll head there,” your words were slurred from sleep deprivation. Honestly you didn’t know how Donnie could function without sleeping for days on end.

“Back to the couch!” He said half dragging you there as your feet stumbled multiple times. Both of you collapsed onto the couch. “Thanks Donnie, really I appreciate it,” you murmured, snuggling into his side and falling asleep faster than he could reply. If he wasn’t so tired himself he’d be pushing you away, he couldn’t even find himself to be embarrassed, “geez,” was all he could say, closing his eyes as he felt his cheeks rise in heat. Thank god you were already passed out, he didn’t know what he would do if you had seen him blushing! He tried to ignore the feeling of your cheek pressed against his plastron, or how your hair was so soft. He was speaking a mantra in his head just wishing to fall asleep along with you, it took a couple of minutes but he finally did.

You woke up with a start. Something felt wrong and you gasped, waking up Donnie who had his head resting on top of yours. “Wha- what’s wrong?!” He said rubbing his eyes to clear the blurriness. “What time is it?!” You said scrambling for your phone but it wasn’t on the couch. Donnie raised his wrist tech, “you’ve got 30 minutes,” he breathed out and you were running to your things. “Oh my god, I’ve gotta go, thanks again Donnie, see ya later, wish me luck!” And you were out of his lab door, like a whirlwind. “Good luck,” he said even though you were already gone, and he smiled, hoping you’d get a decent grade so you could be happy and get some sleep.

Three hours later you burst into the lab, “HEY-“ Donnie had started to yell thinking it was one of his dumb dumb brothers but stopped once he saw it was you. “Oh Y/n? How’d it go?” He placed down the tech parts he was working on. Removing his gloves and wiping his brow, turning to face you. You had tears in your eyes! “Y/n?” He said softly, and you ran forward lunging for him. “Oomph-“ he was more than surprised thinking you’d be mad if you were crying but he felt you squeeze his torso. “I knew what I was doing!! I’m pretty certain I made a bangin’ grade! Definitely a C+ if not a B!!” You squealed happily as he felt the happy tears pour down your face.

He sighed with relief, thankful that was the reason for the tears. “That’s great to hear Y/n,” he was happy for you. “Thank you so much Donnie, you’re the best!! You’re my hero!” You said your face tilting upwards to look at him with shiny eyes. He gulped, not knowing what to say and feeling overwhelmed and more than a little sheepish at the compliments. “Ah- well- you’re welcome,” he managed to get out. “Do you wanna celebrate with me?? I’ll get anything! Your favorites!” You beamed up at him, still holding him tightly. He couldn’t stop himself, he couldn’t hold it back any longer. His face flushed a dark green and he nodded. More than happy to get his favorite pizza to celebrate your success. “Yeah sure,” he said trying to seem unfazed even though his face felt hot.

You giggled, a slight blush coloring the top of your ears. “I’m on it then!” Your hands slowly letting him go as you turned your back to order the pizza. Donatello’s hands hadn’t moved from his sides but he was clenching them into fists now, resisting the urge to pull you back to him. Oh Galileo was he screwed! He blew out a breath, doing it anyway, pulling your back to meet his plastron as he rested his chin on your head. Trying to act like this was totally normal, he hummed looking down at where you were at with the online order. “Get some cheese sticks too,” he mumbled and you were turning red as you relaxed into his hold, “s-sure!”

Maybe math wasn’t so bad after all… you thought to yourself, especially if you got to study with such a cute genius! You clicked order and closed your phone, moving your head to look upwards as he lifted his chin off of your head to be able to peer down at you. “I think I like math now..” you said a little dumbfounded. Donnie couldn’t help it, he burst into laughter, holding you tightly to him, you were just too cute. “I don’t know, I think I like something else,” Donnie smirked after his laughing subsided, he noticed your burning ears and bit down on his lower lip, thinking you were absolutely adorable.

[kairakeiji]

oikawa’s always had an affinity for sunrises.

it’s one of the reasons why he loved argentina so much. the orange and pink hues cast on the blue waves made for a stunning backdrop for his morning activities. he loved rising with the sun and running along the beach as the people around him began the day’s hustle. it’s not immensely hot yet there’s not a single cloud in the sky. perfect weather he deems, the sole reason why his early alarms are somewhat tolerable.

so when he woke up to the sun already high in the sky, he was rather confused by the different scenery.

oikawa rubbed his eyes as he checked his phone, sighing when he realized he forgot to turn his alarm on last night. he blinks when his focus turns to the window, the sun’s rays immense along with the heat. a yawn escapes his lips when he looks down at his bed, quirking a brow at the messed up sheets next to him.

normally there’s a person there when he wakes up, normally he’ll kiss them before starting his day, but today, the space next to him is empty, the person who’s usually there is missing. the smell of food wafts into the room as a small smile appears on his lips. he pads out of bed happily and to the kitchen where he spots you standing next to the stove with a spatula in hand. you turn to him at the sound of his footsteps.

“morning sleepyhead,” you smile.

and oikawa smiles when he walks towards his person.

“hi,” he mumbles as his arms wrap around you, kissing your temple as his body slouches onto yours.

“tooru,” you laugh as he rests his weight on you. “you’re too heavy.”

“i woke up late.”

“i can see that.”

“and you didn’t bother to wake me?”

“of course not,” you shake your head, “it’s your day off, of course i’ll let you rest.”

“day off,” oikawa repeats softly before taking a glance at the calendar on the fridge.”

it’s wednesday.

it’s his day off.

“right,” he sighs as his grip on you tightens, “day off. i forgot we moved it this week because of the game on sunday.”

“and,” you sigh before putting the last pancake on the stack. “today’s a special day too.”

oikawa straightens up as you slip out of his grip, “something special?”

you blink, “don’t tell me you forgot.”

“i didn’t,” he answers immediately.

“good,” you grin, “i thought you’d be too busy to remember.”

“right,” oikawa sighs as he rubs the back of his neck. “i would never forget.”

and instantly his brain racks for any important date that he could think of.

your birthday was two months from now, and even if it was your birthday, you wouldn’t be cooking.

your anniversary was last april, he took you to the city that day.

a promotion? you’d probably rant about it a couple days before.

game day? the next game is next sunday and the playoffs don’t start for another two weeks.

he stares at you as you set the plate of pancakes on the table next to the rest of the food you cooked.

what is it?

“don’t forget,” you call out, snapping the boy’s focus back to you. “we need to call iwa, makki, and mattsun during breakfast,” you remind him.

he only stares, “why?”

“what do you mean why?” you laugh. “we call them every year on your birthday.”

oh.

his birthday.

he forgot.

“wait,” you grin as you walk towards oikawa, “don’t tell me you forgot.”

“you didn’t even greet me,” oikawa only stutters.

“i did silly,” you sigh. “did you not hear me this morning?”

and he only shakes his head.

“damn,” you nod. “you must’ve been out then, i thought you were awake and then just went back to bed.”

“i was still asleep,” he reminds you as you wrap your arms around his neck.

“so let me say it again then,” you smile as you meet his gaze.

“happy birthday tooru.”

and the butterflies in his stomach make him feel like he’s seventeen all over again meeting you for the first time.

“thank you, my love,” he smiles before pressing a gentle kiss to your lips.

“i can’t believe you forgot,” you laugh against his lips.

“i’ve been busy,” he tells you as he pulls back.

“i know, i know,” you sigh. “training, games, volleyball, i get it.” you smile as you stand up on your toes, kissing his cheek. “but today, we take the day off and celebrate okay?”

like he could ever say no to that smile.

“sure,” he grins happily.

“and i made all the plans for today,” you tell him before spinning him around and pushing him to the table. “but for now, breakfast.”

“breakfast,” oikawa nods. “the plan already sounds wonderful.”

“and there’s a lot more coming,” you tell him excitedly.

a small sigh leaves his lips as you stick a candle in the top pancake.

“i can’t wait.”

a late hbd to pretty boy tooru <33

thanks for reading! reblogs/interaction are incredibly appreciated <33