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The thing that sucks about depression is being unable to tell if you should actually be upset about something or if you’re spiraling into a pit of lies and overreaction created by your fucked up brain.

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There’s a lot of info in here and I'm glad that you’re taking care of yourself (though you’ll be missed). But the big takeaway I’m getting from this is the possibility of a NEW BOOK!! Woohoo!

Break

Hi! So I’m going on a social media hiatus for a while starting today. (There will still be a new vlogbrothers video from me every Tuesday and a new episode of our podcast Dear Hank and John each week.) 

There are a lot of reasons for the break, but it boils down to this: For both professional and personal reasons, I want and need to write a book, and so I want to direct all my energy toward the story.

I’ve also had a difficult few months in terms of dealing with my mental illness, which is a chronic (but treatable!) part of my life, and I’m hopeful that taking a step back from online life will help me regain some equilibrium. 

How long will this last? I don’t know. Rosianna will keep things updated around here on the crash course/art assignment/public health/AFC Wimbledon/etc. fronts. If she’s posting, you’ll know because she’ll put RHR in tags.

I made a post earlier today with lots of updates on various endeavors, so if you’re curious about any of our ongoing projects you can find and/or follow them here.

Thanks for everything. DFTBA.

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When I was teaching Special Education I often said every child should have an IEP (Individual Education Plan). When I became a classroom teacher I strived to behave as if everyone did. Now I homeschool my kids and everyone does.

[My piano teacher] never seemed to judge me for my mistakes. Instead, he’d try to fix them with me: repeating a three-note phrase, differently each time, trying to get me to unlearn a hand position or habitual movement pattern that was systematically sending my fingers to wrong notes.

I had never thought about wrong notes that way. I had thought that wrong notes came from being “bad at piano” or “not practicing hard enough,” and if you practiced harder the clinkers would go away. But that’s a myth.

In fact, wrong notes always have a cause. An immediate physical cause. Just before you play a wrong note, your fingers were in a position that made that wrong note inevitable. Fixing wrong notes isn’t about “practicing harder” but about trying to unkink those systematically error-causing fingerings and hand motions….

Often, I think mistakes are more like bugs than errors. My clinkers weren’t random; they were in specific places, because I had sub-optimal fingerings in those places. A kid who gets arithmetic questions wrong usually isn’t getting them wrong at random; there’s something missing in their understanding, like not getting the difference between multiplication and addition. Working generically “harder” doesn’t fix bugs (though fixing bugs does require work).

…These days, learning disabilities are far more highly diagnosed than they used to be. And sometimes I hear the complaint about rich parents, “Suddenly if your kid’s getting B’s, you have to believe it’s a learning disability. Nobody can accept that their kid is just plain mediocre. Are there no stupid people left?” And maybe there’s something to the notion that the kid who used to be just “stupid” or “not a great student” is now often labeled “learning disabled.” But I want to complicate that a little bit.

Thing is, I��ve worked with learning disabled kids. There were kids who had trouble reading, kids who had trouble with math, kids with poor fine motor skills, ADD and autistic kids, you name it. And these were mostly pretty mild disabilities. These were the kids who, in decades past, might just have been C students, but whose anxious modern-day parents were sending them to special programs for the learning disabled.

But what we did with them was nothing especially mysterious or medical. We just focused, carefully and non-judgmentally, on improving their areas of weakness. The dyslexics got reading practice. The math-disabled got worksheets and blocks to count. Hyperactive kids were taught to ask themselves “How’s my motor running today?” and be mindful of their own energy levels and behavior. The only difference between us and a “regular” school is that when someone was struggling, we tried to figure out why she was struggling and fix the underlying problem, instead of slapping her a bad report card and leaving it at that.

And I have to wonder: is that “special education” or is it just education?

Maybe nobody’s actually stupid. Maybe the distinction between “He’s got a learning disability” and “He’s just lousy at math” is a false one. Maybe everybody should think of themselves as having learning disabilities, in the sense that our areas of weakness need to be acknowledged, investigated, paid special attention, and debugged.

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I can hardly believe it's only been a week and a half since I started swimming. I'm HOOKED! #borntoswim #justcallmeariel #haes

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After an hour in the lap pool I decided I deserved to splurge for lunch. #sawadeethai #padthai #rollarestaurants

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Saved the world so now we need margaritas. #sixflags #justiceleague

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We're ready to save the world! #sixflags #dccomics #justiceleague

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Let's just let that sink in for a minute.

People suffering from schizophrenia may hear “voices” – auditory hallucinations – differently depending on their cultural context, according to new Stanford research.

In the United States, the voices are harsher, and in Africa and India, more benign, said Tanya Luhrmann, a Stanford professor of anthropology 

The experience of hearing voices is complex and varies from person to person, according to Luhrmann. The new research suggests that the voice-hearing experiences are influenced by one’s particular social and cultural environment – and this may have consequences for treatment.

Fact Source: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/july/voices-culture-luhrmann-071614.html

for more facts, follow Ultrafacts

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#spaceshipearthsunday #instadisney #epcot

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Accessory #junephotoadaychallenge #instadisney #jackskellington #sillyhats

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In my home (I love to decorate with mementos of our adventures!) #junephotoadaychallenge #postcards #souvenirs #travelgram

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This sweet little girl in pigtails is FIFTEEN today! ❤️😱😍💖🎂

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Circles #junephotoadaychallenge #instadisney #travelgram

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All of this is absolutely true but it's also absolutely true for more established sources of information like teachers. We were all taught a lot of bullshit history and in my small town some of the science was bullshit as well. I believe one if the most important things we can learn is critical thinking and how to apply it to information, regardless of the source.

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This morning is all about double checking crowd calendars for clients so they're not battling long lines and congestion when they could be zipping down Splash Mountain, meeting princesses, and watching parades. #perksofusingatravelagent #behindthescenes #snapshotgetaways #wdw #magicalmonday #thisISmagic

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Had such a good time last night. Our view from the pit was AWESOME thanks to my mom's friend on the road crew. #ericchurch #theoutsiders #mizzouarena

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Ready for Eric Church! #theoutsiders #mizzouarena #ericchurch