#i've been hyperfocusing on this for two full days

[yeah-thats-probably-it]

Behold, the thing I said I was going to do! (x) Nobody asked me to, but I did it anyway. Huzzah

If you don't want to share your actual first initial, you can use a nickname or fictional character instead.

I really tried hard to make these sound as plausible as possible per the way Wodehouse usually names things, so I put an explanation of all my thought processes under the cut.

Also, many of the color category placements are based on speculation and best guesses. If you think you could make a case for the color you're wearing being in another category, you can go ahead and put it there. Category justifications and list of canon references also under the cut.

*EDIT: Some new information regarding the way Drone nicknames work has been brought to my attention. I'm appending the following instructions to the nickname section: if you can think of a food pun based off the name you chose, do so, the stupider the better

First names: This is pretty simple, there aren't that many posh British first names. They mostly reuse the same 15 or so over and over. I used this list (x) of canon Drones as my reference to work off of for all names.

Surnames: All of these are either real British surnames (found mostly here) or real British town names (found mostly here). From Googling, this appears to be how Wodehouse created most of his characters' surnames. I generally tried to avoid names that have already been used, with the exception of Phipps, because Plum really seemed to like that one.

When it comes to place names, he tends to be more liberal about making up generically British-sounding shit or swapping out the suffixes of real places. For example, there's a real town called Steeple Bumpstead, but Steeple Bumpleigh is completely fictional. So I believe my instruction above to mash two names together still squares with the Wodehouse school of naming things, Your Honor.

Nicknames: Did you know that it's REALLY hard to come up with random combinations of sounds that a) are funny, b) sound like plausible nicknames, and c) aren't too similar to funny sound combinations that Wodehouse has already used? Because I do now

Most of the Drones just have regular nicknames based on a syllable of their first or last name (Corky, Freddie, Algy, etc.). Rules of hockey nicknames seem to apply. This left me with a fairly small pool of non-name-based nicknames to use as examples. Other categories of nickname include "personal characteristics" (Barmy, Ginger), "random syllable followed by y" (Tuppy, Biffy, Oofy), "random syllables shoved together" (Boko), "food joke or pun" (Stilton, Biscuit), and "random thing" (Bingo). I tried to include nicknames from all of these.*

I first assumed "Catsmeat" was just a random compound word, which is where Fishbowl and Mousetrap came from. On further searching I found out that his middle name is Cattermole, putting him more between the "based on real name" and "smushing random syllables" schools of thought. I kept them in partly because I thought they were funny and also because I can easily hear Bertie in my head telling Jeeves all about his old pal Mousetrap's romantic troubles. I imagine there are good stories behind them.

Colors: As stated above, placements are based on memory, conjecture, and cursory searches of the text. Some are pretty easy; Jeeves likes neutral tones. Some seem more context-based or depend on the specific shade. Pajamas seem to follow looser rules for acceptable colors, so I didn't count them.

Clothing items Jeeves has approved: shirts in light blue, mauve, and "dove colored"; brown or blue suit; tie with blue and red domino pattern; brown lounge with faint green twill (The Aunt and the Sluggard); blue suit with thin red stripe (Jeeves and the Chump Cyril)

Clothing items Jeeves has NOT approved: Blue suit with thin red stripe, confusingly; green tie that gives Bertie a bilious air (The Aunt and the Sluggard); "cheerful" pink tie (Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest); purple socks (Jeeves and the Chump Cyril); scarlet cummerbund that Bertie tries to justify by telling Jeeves he saw someone wearing a yellow velvet suit downstairs (Aunt Agatha Makes a Bloomer (Jeeves wasn't swayed)); white mess jacket (Right Ho, Jeeves, but I don't think it was on the basis of color)

Jeeves seems to endorse blue and red on some occasions but not others, according to mysterious Jeeves rules. Conspicuous bright red clothing is obviously verboten (see: cummerbund).

There's little data available on green. He approved it once in the form of an accent color, but vetoed a green tie on another occasion. Might be shade-dependent or only acceptable in small amounts.

Lavender gloves and spats tend to show up when a character is dressed in formal wear. I take this to mean that it's a normal color for such, but possibly not for casual wear.

I couldn't find anything on orange, so I made a guess. I think it's a good guess.

I could only find one instance of Bertie wearing yellow: in "Jeeves in the Springtime" he tells Jeeves to bring his "yellowest shoes" and "the old green Homburg." Jeeves doesn't voice any objection in the text, but there's no way in hell Bertie got away with this.

The only thing I can find on pink (excluding pajamas) is the "cheerful" pink tie mentioned above. I decided to err on the side of conservatism and assume that all pink is a no-go, but it's possible Jeeves would be less hostile toward a lighter shade.

For expediency (ha) and because the clothing power struggles become less frequent as the series progresses, I mostly limited my color search to the short stories.

I cannot just casually make a fun little meme. It has to consume my life and turn into an entire research project.

And there you have it! Like share and subscribe, ring that bell (ha) etc. etc.

*EDIT: Some new information regarding the way Drone nicknames work has been brought to my attention. While I still mostly stand by reasoning behind the nicknames, albeit a little more tentatively, I apologize to Catsmeat, Oofy, Biffy, Pongo, and Bingo for misclassifying the origins of their nicknames. The former is actually a food pun based on a real name, while the latter four describe characteristics.

Yeah, that's right, my memes have footnotes within footnotes

[xdantesinfernox]

CEO Sentinel Prime x Bloodmoon (OC) "Fine Print"

After a rough day of work sentinel waves off Arachnid to go get him his usual coffee, and tells her to take the "scenic route" and she's out of his office quick. His office is lavish with deep oak tones, and the cleanest desk top you can almost see your reflection in it. He wouldn't accept anything less. He clapped his servos together and dimmer, more moody lights came on. He had finished his final business meeting that day, and was looking forward to releasing some needed tension, his helm already pounding.

"Ms. Moon, meet me in my office." The phone-in speaker snapped Bloodmoon out of her hyperfocused trance, taking her optics off of her desktop screen and adjusting them to take in what she now realized was the evening sun. She was so honed in on finishing her work she didn't even realize it was 6pm, everyone was already gone. She quickly saved her document before sitting up from her desk chair and letting out a deep sigh, not realizing how tired she was. She wasn't done with her work, opting to leave her belongings at her desk so she could come back after Sentinel was done with her. Oh Primus, what does he want with her? The anxiety began creeping in. She's never been called out directly by Sentinel before, not even for their quarterly performance evaluation, so a heavy air hung above her as she walked to his office, red-bottom heels clicking against the gleaming tiled floor. A gentle knock echoed against the hardwood door, "Come in." Sentinel's deep baritone voice commanded, and she let herself in.

There was a comforting warmth surrounding her as she stepped into his office, a musky scent faintly wafting in the air, the darkness of the room mixed with the low lighting helped put her racing mind at ease. "You wanted to see me, sir?" She gripped her wrist in her other servo to try and steady the shaking of her nerves. It was hard to keep his gaze as those piercing blue eyes watched her every move. She felt pinned in place. "Please, take a seat." He gestured to one of the two chairs placed in front of his desk, and Bloodmoon hesitantly shuffled to one, arms held close to her body, trying to take up as little space as possible in the vastness of the room. She had to force her optics up to meet his own as he stared her down, a pondering look on his face. "For such a hard worker, you have no confidence in yourself." He stated with a smirk.

The blatant reading took the wind out of Bloodmoon, leaving her half way breathless. "E-Excuse me?" She didn't expect to be psycho-analyzed by her boss the second she first steps into his personal office. Sentinel stood up from his large desk chair (clearly custom made to fit his large frame), and leisurely strolled to peer out of one of the glass paned windows that surrounded his office. "I've seen how hard you work," He began pacing slowly, "You stay long after hours to finish your work, come in early to prepare for the day, even take on your peers work just to help out," he followed along the wall of windows, setting sunlight glaring off the polished plating of his face, "I'm impressed." He continued pacing until he reached the paneling behind Bloodmoon, out of her line of sight.

Bloodmoon swallowed with apprehension. "Thank you, sir." Her spark bloomed with pride as the words of praise flowed through her audials, a small smiled plastered across her face. She stared ahead at the engraved name plate on his desk, shining gold in the dim light, 'CEO Sentinel Prime'. She wonders what it'd take to be a successful CEO like him.

"I'd like to promote you to be my personal secretary," He graciously offered, turning his focused optics away from the skyline to give his full attention to his best employee. Bloodmoon felt her spark drop, pulse racing as she turned to finally look Sentinel in his optics. "R-Really?" She couldn't believe it. She'd only been working in the office for 6 months at this point, there's no way she'd be up there with the long-time veterans to be deserving of a promotion. "Absolutely. You've brought some needed gusto to our team that I haven't seen in years. Our productivity has been up 50% since your hiring date," He threw in a white lie, just enough to fuel that lacking confidence Bloodmoon fell victim to. He couldn't have a sad, pathetic secretary trying to lick his boots every minute of the day. He needed someone who knew their worth, even if that worth was far below him.

"I…. I don't know what to say… When… When do I start?" She stuttered out as she watched Sentinel briskly walk back to behind his desk, pulling out a stack of papers from a drawer, "All you have to do is sign and date here and here." He pointed with adept digits, showing a warm smile as he handed an ink pen to Bloodmoon. The top page noted an incredible raise in salary, so much so there's no way anyone could say no to an offer like this, especially not when rent was due next week. Flipping through the other pages and skimming over them, she couldn't stop herself from taking this opportunity. She didn't hesitate to grab the pen from his servo, trying her best to ignore the immense warmth radiating from the extension of his arm alone, and watched as the red ink signed her name and date.

She went to hand back the borrowed ink pen, until she felt the firm grasp of Sentinel's servo around her wrist pulling her up and across his desk, landing with her back against his chassis on his lap in his chair. "HEY, WHAT'RE YOU-" Her words were cut off with Sentinel's digits shoved into her intake, oral lubricant coating them as her glossa pushed against the intrusion. His other servo held her against him by her waist, the heat of his frame making her internal fans click on unconsciously. His vents against her audials made her shiver with anticipation…

She could hear the stupid smirk on his face when he whispered against her, "You should have read the fine print." --- SOMETHING CAME OVER ME OKAY IDK WHAT HAPPENED I THOUGHT ABOUT CEO SENTINEL TOO HARD AND GOT POSSESSED LKASJDHFAKJSD

if you're seeing this thank you for reading alsjdfakjslh <3333

[starsonablackboard]

i have diagnosed adhd (semi-diagnosed? like my psychiatrist listened to me describing my experience and said "yeah you definitely have it" but i don't have The Piece Of Paper with magic words on it), but i consider it "the boring flavour". like I've never really had hyperfixations and hyperfocuses, i don't change hobbies often, I don't have special interests. my adhd is forgetting what i was doing in the middle of doing it, being physically unable to hold conversations if the music is playing in the background and and not being able to fall asleep faster than in half an hour because my brain refuses to turn off

so imagine my shock and confusion when i got sick for two weeks in the beginning of october, and my cotl interest turned into full blown psychological terminology capital h Hyperfixation.

I've drawn more in those two weeks than in previous two months, i've consumed ungodly amounts of fanfiction, I've translated 17k words of said fanfiction in one day forgetting to eat that whole day as a result (just For Fun for myself, it isn't posted anywhere), I've made this tmblr acc without ever previously even considering the option, I got into fandom for the first time in half a decade, i started every day with couple of hours of cotl gameplay poking into every corner of the game i could, i was living and breathing everything cotl and it was wonderful but also a bit scary

wonderful because i felt truly truly happy in those two weeks. I haven't thought about uni and had a solid excuse and reason to not do schoolwork (cause flu), i had all the time to myself and i devoted all of it to creating art about The Thing my brain sank it's metaphorical teeth into or consuming it. I've never before experienced such steady and bright flow of serotonin and just sheer joy, and it was fantastic. i love doing art in general but in my day to day i often don't have enough time and energy to do as much as i want to, but at that time i had a surplus of both. I've caught a glimpse of a carefree life where i didn't have to worry about responsibilities and could drown myself in creative passions

scary because however wonderful and magical it was i still do have responsibilities, and i was aware of that, and i feared what would happen if my brain still was holding onto The Thing when i got better and had to return back to them (uni stuff mainly, but you know, there's a lot of uni stuff). like hyperfixations are all fun and good when you can actually indulge them, but it's very often not the case.

it worked out for me, hyperfixation gradually turned into just strong interest and here we are now, i just wanted to share how strange this experience was for me, a person who's been living with adhd for over two decades and is well aware of it's quirks, but who's never actually experienced something like this before

[sarcasticbabywhispererjess]

Attn: Talk of death and dying of babies. Please feel free to scroll on without reading (I also wrote a lot, so I doubt many people will take the time to read it).

I ended my three night stretch by being a post-mortem photographer since the last two nights at work have been madness.

Really classic full moon shift on Saturday. Our one kid that had come in during day shift and soft crashed onto ECMO (I say soft crashed because they managed to never lose a heart rate and need compressions because of many doses of Epi). I was support nurse both nights (aka I didn't have a patient assignment, I just help everyone out if/when they need it) and on Saturday my other support nurse and both charges spent most of their time with the patient on ECMO that wasn't doing well. Then at 0620 they lost their HR and a code was called. Which would have been less of an emergency if the ECMO machine was circulating well, but it really hadn't been all night. I was on the opposite side of the unit at the time and I hustled to get over there. Ultimately the code was successful in that we got the ECMO to work, but we never got the HR back. From the ECHO we did the heart was bad, we'd done a bedside CT during dayshift and it wasn't great. They did eventually did withdrawal and the baby passed.

Last night started out pretty slow. Then the little 500g preemie that had perfed their bowel and had bedside surgery on Friday to place drains (they usually opt to do that with the very little ones instead of fully opening the belly to remove any dead bowel) decided to start acting up. Their pressor had been turned off during the day, it was back on and higher than before. Their blood gas at midnight was terrible. The attending got very hyperfocused on thinking that it was maybe a pericardial effusion because they had had a deep PICC (though, she admitted later, her perception was skewed because of a baby that had recently had that happen). What was actually most likely happening was more of their bowel was dying. Although we didn't lose the HR for the first couple of hours (though there were a few deep bradys when we were putting the Bovi pad on to prep for another bedside surgery) because, again, we were giving Epi boluses and had started a drip. Unfortunately once the surgeons got the belly open the baby started to brady, we lost the IV access we'd been using for all our IV push drugs, and then they were asystolic. Per the conversation the attending had had with the family prior to starting surgery it was decided to just quickly close the baby up so family could hold before they died (though they were already mostly gone). After they had stopped manipulating the bowel we did get a bradycardic HR back (not sure if it was PEA or not since no one checked for a pulse, though we might not have been able to feel on either way since the BP was so low). The complexes fairly quickly became wider and slowed down until they again flatlined. Unfortunately they had fully passed just before we got family into the room. A while later after they'd had their bath and spent time with the family, I went in with the bedside nurse to get hand and footprints for the legacy boxes we make for these situations. Once we were done with that we started taking some pictures including some with parents. I'm not really much of a photographer especially with just an iPhone, but I got some fairly good pictures. My faves were close-ups of their tiny little hands and feet... probably because they look quite dead in all the pictures. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get the picture printer to work, so that became a day shift opportunity because it was like 0650 and I had to give report so I could go home.

It's been a while since I've had a group of shifts like that. I'm hoping this isn't starting another grouping of patient deaths like we had a while back. I have one day off and I'm back as support again on Tuesday night. I did have plans to maybe be semi productive today and make it to the gym, but I never got a break last night and I'm a little behind on sleep from the last few days... so I'm just going to nap and chill today.

[neuroglitch]

How is the polycule looking these days? I’m poly and dating lots of people some of which I live with too and I always love to see other people living the life. I hope you’re all doing well!!!

Hey anon! Always happy to hear from other polyam people 💕

So I'm not sure when I would have last talked about my polycule so I'll just introduce them from the top.

Atm I live with two partners (one of whom is plural so in practice way more!) and I have two "external partners". The partners I live with are married, but otherwise none of my partners are currently dating anyone else, so in that sense I'm the ~glue~ of the polycule atm. Or maybe I'm just a hoe 😘😏 Aside from these guys, we got some honorary members who are "only" friends (whatever the hell that means), who are also important members of my found family.

I've used the original animal designations from our old @welcome-to-the-petting-zoo podcast.

Quinn (Cat) is all of me (Glitch).

Dae (Hound) refers to the collective formerly referred to as Fox and Trashpanda. Hound and I are engaged. These days I am more or less dating all of Hound. They are doing well. He's been taking T for about a year and he's doing pretty good, he got approved for disability pension which has given some much needed space to heal by doing his own shit. He spends a lot of time zooming up and down the countryside on his scooter 'Lucky', tattooing himself and others, and doing insanely creative awesome crafts and art projects. Hound still struggles with amnesia, and he's still a fundamentally plural person, but the strong dissociative+amnesiac barriers between system members have loosened up, making for a more integrated, yet more plural self-experience. These days a lot of his day to day difficulties come down to physical pain and exhaustion. We are currently also working towards getting him citizenship!

Moose who is legally married to Hound, and who lives with me and Hound, recently finished his education as an embedded software engineer (with a focus on robots!). He's looking for a job atm and even though that process is stressful, he's still doing a lot better from being done with uni, which was frankly a very stressful environment. So he's having a total glow-up 💕

Bear finished their education in psychology a while before me and struggled to find employment, esp. because they weren't necessarily able to work full-time - they recently got approved for "flex-job" which means they can have a 10-20 h job and get paid as if working full-time on that job. They juuuust found employment from next week, so three cheers for Bear!! 🥳🥳🥳

Bat (@the-life-of-bat )has become sooo strong since we managed to get her gender affirming surgery about ... three years ago?! Time sure flies. Like yeah, girl is still traumatized and disabled/mentally ill and whatnot. But her resilience grows by the day, and she is often found hyperfocusing on a most recent project and pulling off insane feats! Also, she's a weeb now. AND I'm old enough not to cringe at someone's genuine joy. Be proud of me! 💪🌈

Lynx and Kat are both close friends/part of the family. I don't know how Lynx feels about me discussing her situation so I won't go into detail, and much more info on Kat can be found over at her blog @compassionatereminders (or check out @2000sgirly where she is currently having a joyful fixation on early 2000s girly pop culture! Even if it's not your thing, her enthusiasm is contagious. )

Overall, we are good. There's hardships to be dealt with, and there probably always will be. Hound's mum is in the process of dying from a fairly aggressive degenerative illness, the immigration laws and psychiatric gatekeeping are tripping people up, I'm struggling to find my place on the "job market", disability and chronic illness will always be a part of all of our lives. But there's also a lot of joy and love and good tidings. And many things that slowly improve and expand and heal and grow.

I'm happy to have so much love in my life, and I'm proud of my little family of delightful freaks and misfits.

[ravenloftgm]

My TTRPG OCs

Alright there's a bunch but lets get into it. They'll get a blurb here, and I'll add hyperlinks as I give them their own posts.

Vampire the Masquerade:

Faith Meade: Backstory | Viewforth by Night: I / II / III Faith is a Sandman Ventrue full of Catholic Guilt™ and Autism™. She's a brand new fledgling who has immediately lost her sire and fallen in with the wrong crowd, notably including her new accidental father figure, a Camarilla Tzimisce. She is not fucking coping, she is not hinged, she is not okay at all, she averages more than one mental breakdown a night. She juggles this, and her highly eventful nightlife, with a successful career as a Sales Trader.

Riccardo "Dino" Rossi: Dino is an Anarch, and a Siren Toreador. He is hot, often accidentally vulgar, and his sire is a creepy piece of shit. Dino thinks he's coping great, by aggressively hyperfocusing on sex and motorcycle racing. He is also an expert (after... a learning process) in managing his sire's emotions, so his unlife has become one of performing as the perfect prized pet. I wanted to make a tragic manwhore, and I was thinking about Gino D'acampo at the time. He has become one of my most beloved characters I've ever played, because when I play Dino, he actually possesses me. I flustered the storyteller more than once. I am not typically smooth.

Kellan Voss: Kellan is my baby boy. He's a Cammie, and a Bagger Nosferatu. He wears a gas mask with tinted lenses, although when he made his debut he was also wearing a bandit mask blue-tacked onto the lenses, rendering him unable to see. The coterie pretty much met because he brought himself, his sire, and a goat to the floor at Elysium, and they came over to help. He's coping by being the class clown and being aggressively extroverted - refusing to give in to any sort of "typical" Nosferatu experience. He is stacking an impressive number of social merits for a fledgling.

Honourable mention: Brendan O'Rourke. I haven't played him yet, but I've been working on him for over a year. He's my Malkavian, but I won't say too much until the details are Final and I've got a chance to play him.

Mage the Ascension

Bonnie Raith-Ballantyne: My most beloved WoD character, Bonnie is everything to me. She's a pretty new orphan, but she's already being pulled unknowingly between Hollow One/Cult of Ecstasy/Order of Hermes. She has SUPER high willpower, and that's the basis of her character: what she wants, she gets. She is pure determination and discipline and effort. Playing her brings me so much joy and I have improved my actual real life since starting her. The storyteller has implied her Avatar has at one point been the Oracle at Delphi.

Changeling the Lost

Alabaster: My only amnesiac character, this bitch remembers escaping a weird garden, being saved from a snake with a babies face by some fucked up scarecrow looking dudes, and waking up in hospital with only the single most infuriating man in the world to explain her situation to her. She only learned anything about who she is by finding it out in real time. She's a chav. She's full of rage. She thinks with her fists. She's protective of women. She's really, really skilled with martial arts? The first woman she met in uptime was a trans woman called Erin and they immediately commit a murder together. She has killed and would die for that tiny anxious woman. She has known her all of two days. She's a Treasured Fairest, she looks like a marble statue, and she's been walking around in a pink crop top that says "Pillow Princess" on it since the murder. She's going to wind up Summer Court, if I get to play her again - the campaign didn't last but it might come back!

Dungeons and Dragons:

Euphoria: My longest running TTRPG character of all time, and the only character who I might play a second time if I get the chance. Euphoria is a pink tiefling bard who was forced to wear uncomfortable molds all her childhood so her horns and tip of her tail would grow into heart shapes. She has tattooed heart freckles. Her clothes, upon starting the character, were all pink with heart details on everything. She was sold into the circus as a baby and brought up almost constantly under Enchantment magic to be obedient. I started her at level 3, and we're now level 22 and in space. I couldn't begin to be succinct about her story, so I won't try. I'm also playing her in my BG3 run and of course she's romancing Astarion. She's a force for chaos and their trauma is so similar.

Ivory "Angel" Darling: Her campaign ended - like, we got to the end of the story, we hit level 20, we saved everyone, it's done and dusted. She's had an epilogue. I think about her always regardless. She's a 16y/o half-elf warlock (she grew up over the campaign tho) from a rich, happy family, and she joined the party to study their tiefling, as she wanted to be a demonologist. Defeating Tiamat was just the cherry on top. She had a checklist - make a career, find a husband, finish this paper - and by god did she finish it. I'm so emotional about the connections between the characters of this campaign and I will talk about her so much more. I named my Elite Dangerous pilot after her. Her son is an NPC in a friends game, two of my friends have been playing her cousins, one of them has played TWO of her cousins. Her family lore is so deep.

Pathfinder

Groz: The bartender NPC from my D&D west march game found life in a pathfinder game with my colleagues. He has half a braincell but he hits things good. He will protect you. He will also decide that bashing a door down is preferable to finding a key, and donate flesh to weird cults because they asked kinda nicely, losing him a finger. I'm probably more likely to talk about him as my D&D NPC rather than as my Pathfinder PC because we've only done 2 sessions of that campaign and it runs SO rarely.

[notquitepublic]

so, Fun Fact* time

There's a shortage of Vyvanse in Australia right now, has been since late last year, and it's not expected to clear until the end of this month (hopefully). The DEA does not care.

"Can't you just use another med?"

No.

Why not?

Fast-acting stimulants come in two varieties: amphetamine-type (Adderall, Vyvanse, dex) and methylphenidate-type (Ritalin, Concerta, Focalin). (Note: Strattera is an SNRI, not a stimulant.) Generally speaking, patients will respond well to one or the other, not both. Anecdata: I tried Ritalin for two days, on the minimum strength, and both the full and half pill gave me heart palpitations. Not fun.

There are three commercially available amphetamine-type stimulants: Adderall (mixed amphetamine salts), Vyvanse (lisdexamphetamine, an inactive prodrug that the body converts to dexamphetamine upon absorption), and pure dextroamphetamine. Only two of these, Vyvanse and generic dex, are available in Australia. We don't have access to Adderall, and given its age, it would be a miracle if the TGA approved it.

There is one (1) company that holds the patent for Vyvanse in Australia. They've been at manufacturing capacity for something like two and a half years now, and have applied for an increase in the DEA-regulated cap. The DEA has denied an increase because "well, nobody else is at capacity, so it's not a problem."

Except, of course, this is the only company that can supply Australia (and New Zealand), so whatever doses could've been made and shipped globally couldn't have actually been shipped here.

Idk, I just need to scream about this.

I've been on dex for a month now because I got incredibly lucky with finding Vyvanse and my performance at work has been on a steep decline because it's just not as effective as Vyvanse is for me. It took me a week to figure out how the dosing should work, because dex is shorter-acting and only comes in 5mg pills, so I didn't realize that the dosage I got from the converter I used is actually what I need to take every time, not across a day, like I initially thought. I'm also on a lower dose (I'm pretty sure) because I don't want to deal with splitting pills, which isn't helping.

I literally need this medication to function. I've been researching how dangerous it is to take in pregnancy because my husband has outright stated that if I have to go off my meds for nine months or more, our marriage will fail. It's not an option for me to just go without, because my life will fall apart.

ADHD for me isn't some cutesy "teehee I forget things and it's hard to pay attention," it's "I literally forget to (go to the bathroom | eat | drink water | perform other bodily care tasks) because I'm hyperfocused on something else."

My ADHD is severe.

I tick every single one of the inattentive symptoms and about half of the hyperactive-impulsive symptoms. Probably more, because my version of "sitting still" includes stimming and I have multiple coping mechanisms for dealing with the inevitable boredom and understimulation of daily life. I've got multiple comorbidities caused directly by my ADHD. It's a goddamn miracle I managed to go so long undiagnosed and unmedicated, and I don't want to go back to where I was then.

I miss actually being able to focus.

There's a disabled wheelchair-using MP here (Jordon Steele-John) who likened going without medication to him not using his wheelchair for months. It's that serious.

* funness of fact is subject to readers opinion

[nothing0fnothing]

So this one day I was sitting at the kitchen island doing my homework. The year is year 4 or 5 of primary school and the task is to write a story with the title "The (adjective) hero/heroine". I'm trying to write a 2 page story but my mom has a house full of people and I'm struggling silently to get a narrative onto the page. Her brother is drunk and starts reading what I've written over my shoulder and I start to feel really uncomfortable. He reads the title out loud and looks at my mom as if waiting for her to discipline me. She's frustrated. Not so much at his interjection but more because she's being expected to pay any level of attention to me greater than the bare minimum right now. She tells him "that's her homework" in a way that feels like although I'm quiet and doing what I'm supposed to do she's annoyed with me. He asks her if I know what it means and I start feeling this anxious feeling I would get when I knew one of my parents was starting to feel like I needed to be punished. I looked up for the first time in this conversation at her and I instinctively pull into myself, shrinking into the chair. I'm hoping if I can make myself small enough she won't hit me out of pity. I know I need to say something to move the conversation away from me right now, because I know that the longer shes focused on me in this mood the more likely I am to get hurt. In as even a voice I could find, I tell him it's what my teacher told me to write. " 'The Reluctant Heroine' " he says "Your teacher told you to write that?""Yes" I say "it's in my homework book" "So you're telling me if I go into your homework book there's going to be a note from your teacher telling you to write this?" "Yes." I say, hoping that will be the end of it. When the focus stays on me for a moment too long I crack under the pressure and fetch it out of my book bag. My mom is how tutting and sighing. I find the page and show it."Your teacher didn't write this" he says "you've written this in pencil and put the date on it." I'm starting to feel interrogated, and my anxiety level has shot up. My voice is now quivering and I'm afraid I'm not going to be believed. I have no evidence and I'm scared my father can walk in at any second now. "It's my homework book" I say. "The teacher writes it down and then I copy it" I can tell he doesn't believe me. I look to my mom and she's not even looking at me. I'm scared if he doesn't believe me soon my mom won't either, and she's going to think I've been lying to her all term. "So you're telling me the teacher writes down the homework and trusts every kid in the class to write it down?" "Yes" I say. Now regretting getting involved. "The teacher doesn't write the homework down, we always write the homework down."I know that how scared I am is starting to make this story unbelievable. I'm telling myself in my head "don't cry. Don't cry. Don't you dare cry". My mom is now at her tipping point. She will either walk away or come at me and then it will all be over. "Well if she's done it wrong she'll get a bollocking in school over it" she says before striding out of the room. He follows her. I take 10 breaths to calm down because my hands are shaking too much to write. Two teardrops fall down onto the page I'm hyperfocused on right now. I even myself out then continue to write. And never tell anyone this story. Except right now, I tell you.

[skeptykall]

((July 2024 edit — still looking for a *full time* RP partner that would also like to become good friends~.))

Alright. Back on my bullshit.

I am looking for roleplay partners! Someone that can make time to write relatively frequently (my late spouse and I wrote... Almost all day every day). I have very few other writing friends, and I'm always on the hunt for more! I'm ready to make more friends and write more regularly. Let me tell you a bit about myself.

I am 30 and Canadian. I won't write with anyone younger than 21. Minors DNI.

I have a masters degree in literature (Arthurian Romance).

I have been writing fanfic for almost 2 decades, probably since I was like? Eleven?

3-5 paragraphs preferred, but if we really click and want to do quick back-and-forths, I'm super down for that as well. Quality over quantity.

I also draw fanart and OCs (character design) and do watercolour painting. I will do fanart of our characters. 100%. It is almost a guarantee.

I DO write smut, trauma, dark themes, as well as goofies/funnies. I think both make a good balance. Sometimes a scene just be funny. Sometimes, you just wanna write p*rn, but I love plot-heavy stuff too.

I am kink-friendly and proship. Antis DNI.

I write mainly mlm, but am happy with any/all types of romance. I do prefer queer joy, so I support and write all the queer/trans folks (am queer and trans myself).

So, what about fandoms, ships, and genres? Below are my favourites, however, I can be convinced to write almost anything if I'm hyperfocused on it enough.

Invader Zim

My Hero Academia

Yu-Gi-Oh

Hazbin Hotel/Helluva Boss

Darren Shan Saga/Cirque du Freak

Pokemon

Vampire the Masquerade

Yuri! On Ice

Dishonored

Monster Prom/Camp/Roadtrip

Dungeons & Dragons (& adjacent content - mostly OC)

OCs either in the above fandoms or in the following genres: fantasy, contemporary fantasy, romance, horror, ABO, and can do realism stuff but don't prefer it.

So, there you've got it. A little snippet of me and the stuff I like to write. If you'd like to see a small sampling of my work, check out my AO3.

On Tumblr, I've been known as @screwtherules (inactive), @dibbeast and @izuku-broccoli-boi (two RP blogs that I'm... Vaguely sometimes active on). I've also been a member of a number of different roleplay discord servers, such as TMNT and BNHA, tons of D&D, and Invader Zim servers.

I can write on Tumblr, and have many times, but I don't prefer it. I generally use discord or google docs, but happy to work out a place that works for both parties. I can send other writing samples if necessary! Looking forward to meeting you!

[tenspontaneite]

I will be honest, I completely forgot about this until you reblogged it haha. Maybe I should arrange some more snippets to post, while I'm on an art holiday and not writing much and all. I especially like some of the Lux Marea plot scenes, there's a lot of day 7 stuff to share....hmm....

Yeah it's kind of a vicious tease isn't it, to keep the full story private. But alas. Sometimes it do be like that.

Beyond the Moon Gardens - Extracts (1)

For lack of anything else to post today, I’m releasing some extracts from one of my non-public fanfictions – Beyond the Moon Gardens – as my participation in the @raayllum valentine’s event.

Information on and context of the story itself is below the cut. The 10k of snippets are also below the cut.

(General overview of the content of the snippets: established rayllum, fluff, domesticity, horn care, silliness, cuddling.)

Keep reading

[theteapotofdoom]

I was really afraid you lost interest in bnha and shigadabi so I'm really glad that you still like them

Oh don't worry, these boys have hooked for life at this point!

And I still care about MHA a lot, just not AS MUCH as I used to. But it just means that MHA went from "number one obsession only thing on my mind ever" to "one of my favourite things that I like a lot". I'm just more casual about it these days, but I'm still working on my shigadabi fics, still following the manga from afar and still lurking in the shigaraki tag!

But yeah I'll be honest: you're probably going to see less MHA content on this blog at the moment. Again, I will still talk about it, but it won't be the main thing on my mind. To tell you the truth, it was a matter of time. I've been on Tumblr for almost ten years, and for many years, I was very much a multifandom blog switching from one obsession to another every two months. So it's genuinely impressive that I managed to stay hyperfocused on MHA for four years!

My life has changed a lot since I first got into MHA, I also changed a lot, and MHA itself changed a lot. And that's how things should be! As the manga is slowly coming to an end, it feels almost appropriate that this part of my "fandom life" is changing too. It will always be incredibly important to me because I made lifelong friends thanks to this manga and it genuinely impacted the way I write and the way I view storytelling. But, as you surely know, the MHA fandom can be ... a lot to deal will. It wasn't always nice. I mentioned it before, but there was a time when a certain part of the fandom almost made me drop MHA for good. That was also on me though, because I was just waaaaay too invested in this fictional world and these fictional characters. I try to be more casual about my fandom interests these days. But yeah, this fandom is intense, mostly in the best way, but sometimes in the worst way.

So I think I got some sort of "MHA fatigue" after a while. At times, it feels like we're all running in circles and having the same arguments over and over again. But again, it doesn't mean that I'm quitting the fandom for good or anything! Just that I'm taking a step back and enjoying other things. And honestly, it will only help to keep my love for MHA more vibrant every time I come back to it!

I'm still very much in the shigadabi fandom though. As I mentioned before, I'm a guest writer on the TouTen zine Monochrome! I wrote two stories for this awesome project (one sfw and one nsfw) so if you love the Touya x Tenko pairing, don't hesitate to get your bundle right now!

Okay so as always, I turn a very simple ask into a full-on introspection essay I'M SO SORRY ... It's just that since there are some changes happening on this blog and since I know that a lot of people got to know me through shigadabi, I always feel the need to "clear the air" and make sure that everyone knows where I'm at right now.

But in conclusion: I still adore Shigaraki and Shigadabi, I still read MHA, I still write for Something Good and all my other shigadabi fics, I'm just more low-key about it, and I also want to share other fandoms with you guys :D

[concubuck]

((*googles How To Go Back To Regular Activity After A Few Weeks Of Irregular Activity—*

hey y'all i haven't been on much, there isn't a particular reason for that tho. I've just been playing the sims 4. I've been hyperfocused on rewatching gravity falls in order to painstakingly recreate the mystery shack in ts4, despite the fact that several of its windows and doorways are physically impossible. I've actually installed a magic wormhole to connect two rooms that are physically unable to connect.

this takes a lot of work. It might as well be a full-time job. which is saying something, because I already have a full-time job. today I've spent ten hours painstakingly recreating a single tapestry.

you may ask, "puff, why are you doing this?" And to that, my answer is, "yeah."

anyway, that's where i've been. if anything interesting has been happening, uhhh let me know. poke me. i might poke back or i might forget for 2 days because i saw it while i was squinting at a screenshot trying to figure out where to stick a toilet in a bathroom that doesn't appear to have one.

but yeah I'm gonna try to be more active. I've got plot stuff going on I've gotta get back to.))

[chibisquirt]

You don't have to answer, but if you wouldn't mind. What are some things you've learned about ADHD from Tumblr that are applicable to you, or others you may now? I've been reading more on it and how it manifests in girls/women and was curious when I read your rb on that post about Grammarly

I don’t mind at all!  Fair warning:  this is gonna be LONG.

I’m going to start by repeating something I mentioned in that post:  I was diagnosed in third grade, which was over two decades ago.  I had my diagnosis halfway through elementary school, much less high school and two rounds of college.  So a lot of the old information about ADHD I learned as a young person, and those things are worth exploring, too.  

Example:  It’s not that I’m not listening, Mrs. Nock, it’s just that if I try to keep my hands still, then the only thing I will retain from the lesson will be keep your hands still and not the things you trying to teach, which are supposedly important! 

(Mrs. Nock was the one who said to me, “I believe you believe you’re paying attention.”  Yes, it’s been fifteen years.  Yes, I’m still mad.  If you can’t have basic respect for your students, don’t teach.)

I figured out half on my own, half because of the counselling that if I had a fidget tool that didn’t require words I would pay better attention than if I tried to sit still.  (I still remember being mocked by my dad for fidgeting well after making that discovery, though.  Apparently diagnoses should only inform compassion when they’re his.)  On the same lines, I also figured out that music in the background wouldn’t work for me if it had words, and television is too distracting for me to use at all.  (I have a friend, though, whose ADHD works the opposite way:  he has difficulty focusing if there isn’t a television in the background.  Yes, both are valid.)

So, the Classics:  

I always had trouble with organization and cleaning, had trouble with schedules and calendars and managing my time.  Those are the things they’ll warn you about, the things they’ll tell you in counselling are natural and normal things for people with ADHD to have trouble with.  Trouble paying attention, sure.  Trouble sitting still.  Procrastination.  Got it.

But if you turn those traits around and re-frame them, they become a new set of symptoms.  Adaptations for these new symptoms are more personal and universally applicable in my life, and therefore, to my mind, more useful.

Take Procrastination.  (No really: please take it.)  That just means “putting it off until tomorrow,” and there are lots of reasons to do it:  “don’t have the tool I need” is one of the biggies, “want to conserve steps” trips me up a lot, “I still have time to get to it” is HUGE for me...  But a lot of times, these are just superficial reasons.  The re-framed symptom is, Trouble making yourself do things you don’t want to do.  

ADHD is an executive function disorder.  That’s a phrase I first learned on Tumblr, by the way; it may have been mentioned by one of my earlier counsellors, but it definitely wasn’t taught.  

This is why soooo many of us have struggled with the perception (including self-perception) that we’re lazy!  But no one tells the kid in the wheelchair he’s just lazy for not playing basketball.  (Okay, they totally do.  People are terrible.  Ignore that, stick to the point.)  I reframe this the way I do because acknowledging this as a symptom, taking the blame out of it, makes it easier to find adaptation.

Now, this is a personal post.  YMMV.  But I have an easier time managing my conduct if, instead of calling myself lazy a procrastinator, I say, “I keep not doing that --> oh it’s because I Don’t Wanna --> how can I con myself into doing it?”  (Strategies include bargaining, making it easier, powering through but then allowing yourself to stop afterwards, just acknowledging that I Don’t Wanna and allowing that to be valid...)  Procrastination is an action, but “executive function disorder” is a disease and “I Don’t Wanna” is its trigger, just as much as an allergy and a clump of ragweed are.  “Procrastination” is a powerful sphynx against which I’m helpless, but “I Don’t Wanna Disease” lets me start cultivating my metaphorical catnip and researching the answers to common riddles.

And while we’re talking about procrastination--and trouble with deadlines, and schedules in general--let’s talk about Time Insensitivity.  Missed deadlines and perpetual lateness (perpetual) are external actions, just like procrastination, and they can have all sorts of explanations.  

(Shoutout to Mrs. Pollack, who looked around a classroom containing thirteen-year-old me, and, knowing full well that I was chronically tardy, declared that “anybody who’s always running late, deep down, they just doesn’t care about anybody else’s time.”  Great job with calling the thirteen-year-old a heartless bitch, Mrs. Pollack!  As you can tell, I definitely forgot it very quickly, and didn’t at all have a self-critical breakdown about it, periodically revisiting the question of my own inherent selfishness for years!!!)

But ignoring the external actions, let’s take a compassionate look inside the head again.  Executive function includes regulation of, and awareness of the passing of, time.  Again: you can’t play the basketball with no legs.  We literally do not realize what time is doing.  Sometimes we do--if we devote enough of our attention to it, which may be a large amount for some, a small amount for others, or a variable amount for the same person.  But our brains literally don’t process it the same way.  

But hold on a minute--let’s go back to that analogy.  Because actually, people with no legs can play basketball!  It’s just that you have to use the adaptation of wheelchairs to do it--and that’s an adaptation for the game and for the players.  

I use alarms.  I’ve recently seen a post about audio memos as alarms.  There are people who just slap clocks everywhere.  When I was forced to work in a kitchen with no clocks, I used the multi-setting timer and set it for like four hours so I would know if I was keeping on schedule.  I also chose a job environment where much of my shift is the same as itself, and rigid punctuality isn’t enforced--that’s adapting my environment, instead of myself.  There’s all kinds of adaptations.  But you have to know you have the condition before you can compensate for it.

Here’s a fun little story:  when I was... oh, eleven?  Twelve?  My Quaker Meeting’s youth group (#7 whitest phrase I’ve ever written) went to the museum together.  One of the stops was in the children’s section, there was a... a pegboard, I think?  With some kind of problem on it.  A puzzle.  Me and a couple others sat down at it, and it took me a while, but eventually I solved it, and I looked up.  

I blinked.  “Where is everybody?” I said.

“They left,” said my mom.  “Half an hour ago.”  

I was stunned.  “Half an hour ago?!  But I couldn’t’ve spent more than ten minutes on this!”

“I promise you, it was half an hour.”

“Why didn’t you call me??  Why didn’t you say my name?”

“We did.  Several times.”

To this day, I will swear myself blind that I never heard a thing.

Hyperfocusing.  They’ll tell you about the problems focusing; oh yes.  They’ll tell you allll about that one.  But they won’t tell you about the flip side of it.  They won’t tell you about the times when the rest of the world falls away, and the only two things in the world are you and whatever problem you’re trying to solve.  

D’y’know what, I bet that’s the reason I test well.  I just realized this now, phrasing it like that, but--I’ve always tested well, even when my actual practical applications of things are mediocre I do well with the classroom testing on it.  I scored a 39 on the MCAT, back when it was out of 45 and not whatever it is now.  (To those with the plain good sense not to want to be doctors:  that’s pretty good.)  And I just bet it’s because, once I get focused on solving the problems, the other problems--nerves, intrusive thoughts, anxiety--just don’t have room to get in.  Hyperfocusing can be a superpower, if you can harness it.  

But it can also blind you to everything else.  And it works in smaller ways, too:  once I think I understand something, it is very difficult for me to perceive information that contradicts that understanding.  I still get the map of the Elflands backwards every time I read The Goblin Emperor, just because I pictured it one way, and every indication in the text that it was the other way just fell on deaf ears.  

And this one leads right into the next, which is Rejection Sensitivity Disorder.  RSD is hyperfocus, but it’s hyperfocus on how everyone must hate you.  It’s delightful!  I’ve been diagnosed with anxiety and depression, as well, and I do have both of those things, but for my money, I think that this one symptom of ADHD--which no doctor has ever even mentioned to me--has hurt me more than both of those conditions combined.  

The last one I’m going to bring up is Auditory Processing Disorder.  Now, I’ve gone and gotten re-diagnosed twice in my life, and the last time was just a few years ago, so they actually used this one in the test.  The psychologist told me about it, she just didn’t use the phrase Auditory Processing Disorder, and she didn’t tell me that it was its own symptom--she just used it for the test.  

What she did was, she gave me two hearing tests, one to test whether or not I could hear, and then the other a list of words that all sounded alike, and I had to mark which one I was hearing.  The second part of that was very long, and very boring, and despite scoring perfectly on the first test, I got several wrong on the second.  I was actually surprised by that; I at no point suspected I had heard any of them wrong.  When she gave me the test, told me this was proof by contradiction, that we were ruling out hearing loss as an alternative explanation for my difficulties.  It was only after the test was done that she explained that the pattern I showed was actually part of the diagnosis of ADHD; that we get bored, and stop really paying attention, and that we don’t even know we’re doing it.

...Okay, but you couldn’t have mentioned the part where I also do that every day in real life, lady?!?!  It’s not just when we’re bored, it’s not just for long processes.  I do this all the time.  I actually tell people now that “I actually have a neurological condition that makes it hard for me to hear; I can tell that you’re speaking, but I can’t tell what you’re saying.”  

This is 100% true.  It is a neurological condition.  

We label this a condition, but as a society, we don’t treat it that way.  Society treats it as yet another excuse.  It’s not.  You’re not lazy, stupid or crazy.  Neither am I.  

I have a condition.  Acknowledging that is the first step of treatment.  Not five thousand sticky notes, not binders or filing systems or even taking all the doors off the cupboards (although I definitely plan to do that one as soon as I possibly can).  Not counselling sessions with so many different people I can’t even name them all, for the love of god please understand that you can’t just fix it with pills.  

(Although mad props to the people who thought Concerta would magically solve me at the age of nine!  Spoiler alert:  it did not do that!  But it did mean that my parents felt comfortable blaming me for all my failures again, so it did at least some of what it was designed for, I guess. :) )   

I have spent the last few years re-understanding my ADHD it as is:  a neurological condition, a disability, and a simple fact of life.  A starting place, instead of yet more proof of my own inherent insufficiency.  And you know what?  When you take the blame and self-hatred out of the diagnosis--when you stop cursing it as the cause of all your problems and start trying to work with it, instead--it gets a lot easier to manage. 

[words-writ-in-starlight]

hi, it's the adhd anon again. according to the dsm-v, i think i have it, which is weird bc i've never seen myself as having more trouble than others. (my grades are better than almost anyone else in my grade.) (although that might just be bc i'm interested in what's being taught - when something's not interesting or too hard, i have a pretty hard time doing it.) anyway, if it's not too much trouble, what does feel like to stim/hyperfixtate for you? (i'm so sorry to bother you in advance)

Hey, dude, welcome back!  So, okay, first things first: the stereotype of someone with ADHD automatically doing terribly in school is based heavily on the original diagnostic criteria, which categorized ADHD strictly in terms of “young hyperactive white boy who has violent outbursts and/or disciplinary problems and Just Doesn’t Do Well in academics.”  And there are people who manifest ADHD like that, it’s a stereotype with roots in reality--a lot of people with ADHD either consistently struggle with academics or eventually reach a point where their previous focusing techniques fail them.

However.

I left high school for college two years early, and if I hadn’t, I would probably been valedictorian of the graduating class, because I had a GPA well above 4.0 due to my general habit of doing extra credit whenever it was offered.  In college, I had a reputation for turning in beautifully complete lab reports and essays five pages over the minimum requirement.  I got high honors on my thesis, graduated magna cum laude, and finished a pre-medical major in half the recommended time period.  When I was a kid, the phrase “savant syndrome” got thrown around a lot, to give you some context.

On the other hand, I manifest a lot of those stereotypical ADHD symptoms: I’m loud, I interrupt people a lot, I have erratic and overwhelming mood swings that I struggle to control, I fidget incessantly and can’t stand silence, I have a tendency to get destructive when I’m angry, I have managed to seriously injure myself because I couldn’t resist a stupid impulse more than once, and if we’re all being honest, I would never have graduated high school at all, because I was on the brink of expulsion for getting into fights during class periods.  

It’s easy to feel like “I never really struggled academically” is somehow a counterargument to any and all symptoms of ADHD that you might manifest, but it’s really not.  (Heck, sometimes ADHD is even helpful--I finished my thesis a full week before anyone else and had time to fix my citations, mostly because my ADHD responds well to pressure and that crunch time hyperfocus Had My Back.)  It might take time for you to come to terms with this idea, and that’s okay!  But try to at least consider it.

All that being said, I am actually gonna answer your question, I just got distracted because the amount of time I spent making the statement “I’m faking having ADHD because I did well in school” is mindblowing and I have a Thing about it.  Forgive my ramble.

Stimming: I’m going to answer this first because the answer is going to be the most useless.  The ways I stim tend to be vocal/auditory stuff (I talk a lot when I’m alone, I sing and play music when I’m doing menial tasks, if I’m really anxious I’ll hum a single note until I calm down) or tactile stuff (sometimes destructive things like scratching my arms, sometimes neutral stuff like tapping my fingers in specific patterns or rubbing my palms over my jeans or the leather of a jacket or something).  It’s mostly things that ‘pass’ for neurotypical with very few exceptions, because I trained myself out of a lot of my ‘non-passing’ stims (rocking back and forth, knocking into walls, hand-flapping, that sort of thing) really young.  As for what it feels like to stim, it’s just...good.  It’s sort of like the brain equivalent of running your hand the right way along velvet, and discovering that you’ve been rubbing it backwards all along.  Or like the equivalent of stepping into a cool shower on a really hot day--it’s not that it’s miserable outside the shower, it’s just that the shower is extremely good.  I have a playlist of music that, for whatever reason, hits the right combination of voice and rhythm and notes and words to make my brain suddenly get calm, and it’s not necessarily my favorite music or a cohesive collection of tunes or anything (featuring Six Shooter by Coyote Kisses and also Human by Rag’n’Bone Man, which have nothing in common), but it’s Good.

Hyperfocus: You didn’t actually mention this, but I think it’s worth mentioning because it’s one of the hallmarks of ADHD.  It bears more than a passing resemblance to the concept of “flow”, but turned up to 11.  Hyperfocus is the state of being so overwhelmingly tuned in to the thing you’re currently doing that everything else falls away--which is fine, unless you’re one of us folks who can hyperfocus ourselves right through meal times.  It’s inexorable, it’s all-consuming, and it can feel pretty fucking great, which is why it’s important to be careful and find a way to hydrate yourself.  The primary difference between hyperfocus and flow is that hyperfocus is generally involuntary and does not necessarily tune you into something you planned or wanted to pay attention to.  If you ever see me publish a fic that includes a note about “I didn’t mean to write this but it’s 2 AM so here”, that’s code for “please validate me, I’ve been hyperfocused on this for two or three hours and I failed to do a lot of important things as a result.”  The other thing about hyperfocus is that afterwards, the drop coming off it is a real bitch.  It leaves me feeling hollowed out, exhausted, and kind of pettily disinterested in anything that would usually hold my attention.  Being hyperfocused is like being a machine designed to do one thing and one thing only and doing that thing feels incredible; coming off hyperfocus is like being an overtired toddler.

Hyperfixation: Hyperfixations are the ADHD equivalent of a special interest, aka: that thing you’ve been struggling not to pester every single person you know about, every single second of every single day of the past two and a half weeks.  Were you around, dear anon, when this blog was Only Animorphs, All The Time, and if you didn’t give a shit about morphin’ teens you just had to sit down, shut up, and learn some stuff, or else unfollow me?  That’s what hyperfixating looks like.  Sometimes it’s useful stuff--do you know how unbelievably useful having a hyperfixation on triage techniques is to me?  I crushed my triage training, I owned that shit, I wrote a whole chapter of my thesis on it.  Other times, it’s...well, Animorphs.  Or the American Revolution.  Or X-Men.  Or dinosaurs.  Some random shit like that.  Learning about hyperfixations, talking about them, is generally pure unadulterated joy.  On the other hand--oh, God, listen, I know how annoying I am, but I cannot stop myself.  I know I haven’t talked about anything but Animorphs in three weeks, I know I’ve made forty-five TAZ posts today, whatever you’re about to complain about, I already know, okay, I am aware, and there is nothing more painful than to have a fucking out-of-body experience watching yourself rattle on about a hyperfixation while the other person obviously gets bored in front of you.  And then you try to keep your mouth shut and it physically hurts not to talk about the thing.  It’s hard to describe what it ‘feels’ like except that ADHD brains are magpies at their core and hyperfixations are the shiny, shiny objects your brain wants to take home.

Anyway, I’m not sure how useful ANY of this has been, but like.  After a certain point, you kind of have to trust yourself enough to decide, once and for all, whether you really, truly believe you’re faking a neurological disorder for the attention.  If the answer is no, then great!  You have sussed out your symptoms and can start managing them accordingly, whether that’s some helpful apps on your phone or medication or something in between.  If the answer is yes, then you probably need some therapy, and your therapist will be able to help you get to a point where you feel able to trust yourself.

Go with the neurodivergent gods, my dude.

[disease-danger-darkness-silence]

Um also, I think we need to really discuss the fact that. Like. Obesity doesn't cause type 2 diabetes outright.

This is getting long but I'm on mobile and I have been unpacking my rage at this shit for a year now since my diagnosis so... Here we fucking go.

(This is all very... Simplified, because I'm not a biologist or medical doctor, but I do understand how my body works because I was a medical professional. But it's based on the research myself and my current physician have done together, which is us, standing on the shoulders of giants in their fields. Google scholar is your friend.)

Type 2 diabetes is insulin tolerance - you technically make enough insulin, but you have built up a tolerance so the same amount doesn't do the job anymore. Unlike a lot of other chemicals your endocrine system makes, it can be really difficult for your body to adjust insulin production - the pancreas is a delicate flower of an organ.

Type 2 can turn into type 1 (body doesn't make enough or any), but as far as what causes it, as opposed to its symptoms, it's not really even the same disease.

Turns out there is a HUGE body of research showing that type 2 diabetes causes obesity. Not, you know. The other way around.

My doctors, my whole life, spent so much time harping on my weight and nothing I did worked. I exercised. I ate fairly healthy. I did NOT cut calories because I was already prone to hypoglycemia, but I DID try to get them from good sources where possible.

The problem is that I have disordered eating (not an eating disorder - two different, although related, things) because of ADHD, autism, and general executive dysfunction. I was constantly going a day or two at a time without eating BY ACCIDENT, just drinking soda and water and coffee, and then I'd gorge on food - usually healthy, but not always - and it caused my body to just get really, really used to insulin floods to manage the sugar.

So I'm sitting here trying to do what my doctors are telling me, and feeling like shit about my body, and feeling broken, and being made to feel like I'm just not trying hard enough.

It took me settling down with a physician's assistant as my GP, instead of an MD, for me to find out that instead of focusing on my weight, my doctors really should have been focusing on eating consistently. Because I was in pre-diabetes since probably the age of 22, and now I have the full-blown thing.

I have struggled, the last year, because I'm like... Autistically hyperfocused on my diet now. I have alarms set so I remember to eat. I am constantly looking at carb and sugar content, and on the lookout for things sweetened with stevia or sucralose because I'm allergic to aspartame. I don't really like water but I've been forcing myself to drink more of it so that I'll drink less soda, and I've cut energy drinks out of my diet entirely but for special occasions (also, because the water here is NASTY, lead-and-arsenic filled garbage, I have to spend precious, precious cashmoney on PUR filters). I hate zoodles and other pasta substitutes, but have yet to find a decent-tasting and EBT-friendly (affordable, I'm saying. I'm poor. I'm so, so poor, and I can't afford the fancy diabetic food, but it's not considered a medical necessity so medicaid ain't covering it) noodle option. I can't stand cauliflower so trying to find a sub for my go-to low-spoons meal of white rice with tuna has been like pulling teeth. And add into it that metformin, the most common drug to treat type 2 diabetes, both disqualifies me from selling plasma and also causes severe stomach distress, and it's just a fucking mess. I don't know how I'm maintaining anything resembling system equilibrium.

My disordered eating could very easily have turned into an eating disorder, and only my self-awareness of it prevented that. Frankly, I love food, I just forget to eat because I don't usually experience the physical sensation of hunger. The only thing that has significantly impaired my mental health more than my diabetes and dietary needs is my housing situation, the last year.

TLDR: If you need to lose weight, do it safely. (Preferably with the help of a licensed dietician or nutritionist, if you can afford it, because they're 100 percent going to be better-informed than most MDs on the topic, but... Yeah. Not an option for everyone, I know.) But honestly? Do question why you need to, first. If I had, I probably would be a lot happier right now. And I may be even fatter but I wouldn't be fucking diabetic and miserable.

Actually I do think that it's super important to talk about the fact that cutting 500 calories a day for a 1lb a week weight loss is considered "slow" or "moderate" weight loss.

*IF* you can sustain that for a year that is a 52 pound loss in a year, which is pretty fucking fast, actually, but people act like you're a hopeless defeatist if you start talking about weight loss in terms of 1 pound a month because people want *results* but if you're talking about being able to sustain weight loss (which some people just straight up cannot for a variety of reasons and is not reasonable to *expect* everybody to be able to do) then it's kind of fucking bonkers that doctors and the American heart association and diabetes infographics and whatever talk about doing the kinds of diets that typically only last 3-6 months (12-26 pounds at a pound a week) and expect people to maintain those losses.

When you talk to doctors it is extremely reasonable to say "okay, and how, specifically, should I do that?" when they say to lose twenty pounds, but what is ALSO a very reasonable question that I never see brought up is "okay, by when?" and if they say "within the next year" it's also perfectly reasonable to say "why does it have to be in that time period?" Because if we're talking about the benefits of a 5% weight loss for reducing the weight-associated risks of heart disease or diabetes, then losing that weight over five years instead of over six months should be as effective, and is much more likely to be a lasting change instead of something that kicks off a bunch of weight cycling (which has its own terrible side effects that are bad for you).

There are some people for whom, for a number of reasons, it is impossible or near impossible to lose weight in the long term. It is possible for most people to lose weight in the short term, with a significant amount of effort. Maintaining long-term weight loss is exceptionally difficult and it seems like it's not feasible for large numbers of people, and I can't help but wonder if that's because what we're considering 'long term' really isn't long term at all.

If you've spent time around people trying to put on muscle you'll see something that I think is actually a more reasonable approach to long-term body changes, and that is recognition of the fact that you can only put on a (relatively) tiny amount of muscle in a year. For most people who have been training for any length of time, it's between 5-7 pounds and it gets harder to put on more the longer you've trained. Lifters and bodybuilders who recognize this and still want to put on muscle understand that they are in for an extremely long-term project that they have to intentionally maintain and put a lot of effort toward.

I want you to think about anyone you know who is a serious gym rat. I want you to think about how many hours a week they spend in the gym, and what they're giving up in exchange for that time. I want you to think about how much they spend on equipment and gym memberships and protein powder and first aid and very specific foods. If you know someone who's a very serious gym rat, you probably think they're a little unreasonable, that that's too much effort to put into looking good in a tank top.

But that's pretty analogous to the kind of effort, planning, and expense that needs to be put into maintaining a long term weight loss. And that effort needs to be put in forever - no matter if you're having kids or your partner is hospitalized or if your financial situation changes or if you are permanently injured, just like a bodybuilder can't expect to keep their gains if they're suddenly spending ten hours a week at the hospital instead of the gym.

I mean, people talk about weight loss and they get angry when you bring up the statistical failure of things like Weight Watchers or if you discuss how destructive dieting can be and they go "so, what, are you saying it's impossible to lose weight?" And the answer is, no, not for everyone.

It is possible for most people to lose weight. Just like it's possible for most people to become competitive bodybuilders. But we frame "mid-30s mother with two kids and a long commute and a full time job needs to lose 10 pounds and keep if off" as a task with a difficulty curve similar to learning how to cook a few crockpot meals, not similar to becoming a competitive bodybuilder.