I've made a horrible mistake.
what the hell is a tumblr. who are you people.
#hellsite
mmm. metal gear. did it make me gay? no, but it probably wasn’t helping.
ok so being a parent IS really hard but not the way you think. well its probably hard the way you think but its ALSO really hard because my toddler pronounces peanut butter like "peepee yaya". and see, because he learns from me, i can't say "peepee yaya", no matter how much i want to, because i have to teach him that it is actually pronounced "peanut butter". and dont even get me started on how he pronounces "shaun the sheep" (shit the shit)
executive dysfunction is telling yourself for two and a half hours that you need to shower bc you smell like your workplace and you absolutely Cannot do Anything Else until you shower, doing Any Other Thing before showering is illegal!!! but you still haven’t for some reason??? you’ve just been sitting on your bed in a towel scrolling tumblr for 2+ hours thinking “I need to shower right now immediately” and growing increasingly frustrated that you are still not clean and you haven’t eaten or done your laundry either
ok actually no I’m reblogging this because a) I am clean now (and I smell amazing, thank you), and b) I had a heckin Realize and I wanted to share it with y’all in the hopes it’ll help someone else with a brain like mine.
I figured something out about myself a long time ago– it’s only just now occurred to me that I was in fact solving a problem caused by executive dysfunction, and I haven’t been implementing this solution lately because my brain went “that’s a relatively new term to me and therefore a Different problem that requires a Different solution”. thanks a lot, brain.
anyway, long long ago, before I knew these fancy schmancy Official words, the problem, as I phrased it to myself, was such:
sometimes I get Stuck. I was doing something, or on my way to doing something, and then… I just. got stuck.
“Stuck” looks like refreshing my feed or dashboard repeatedly. or it looks like staring at a spot on the wall. or chewing my fingernails. or picking at a stubborn sticker. all the while, my brain drifts through various unrelated topics I wouldn’t be able to recall if asked. sometimes I can get Stuck for hours before realizing I am Stuck. sometimes I get so Stuck that I go to bed that way (feeling especially bad for being unproductive) and I have to just reset everything by sleeping.
one day I asked myself, “why is this happening? why am I stuck, right now, at this moment in time?” the answer, as it turns out, was pretty simple: I was trying to make a decision, and I got distracted. I haven’t moved forward because I haven’t answered that one question or made up my mind.
let me rephrase this in terms of executive dysfunction: many people have expressed that it feels like knowing you need to do a thing but not feeling “ready” to do it. many with ADHD may also be familiar with the feeling of needing things to be “just so” before you embark on a task- you need your setup to look a certain way, or you need to set a timer, or have the right music playing, etc.
when I get Stuck it’s often because I got lost somewhere in that setting-up process, and my brain took the opportunity to nyoom off into Distraction Town.
getting myself Unstuck is solved, 95% of the time, by tracing my steps back to the original decision I was trying to make- often something small and inane- and then troubleshooting from there. (out loud! verbal processing is totally punk.)
- “what was I trying to do?”
- “was I trying to decide between two things?”
- (the answer’s usually yes.)
- “what were they?”
- “okay, let’s decide.
- “okay, that’s settled. let’s move on.”
- and then I am free as a bird to nyoom in the direction of The Thing I Wanted To Do All Along, in the amazingly disorganized, scattered, yet rapid-fire way that I do many things.
so!!! in the case of my first post, where I hadn’t showered for 2 hours? turns out I had been trying to decide what music to listen to in the shower. (another hack: my chances of getting Stuck while showering decrease by 75% if I have music playing to help me keep track of time.) I couldn’t immediately make up my mind, got lost in thought, got distracted, and drifted. once I stopped and asked- “why am I stuck?”- then I remembered- “oh yeah! I wanted to listen to music”- and then decided- “I want to listen to Daft Punk’s Discovery album”- I was finally heckin able to shower. and also eat, and also throw my clothes in the dryer.
and may I add I only zoned out once, during the slow part of “One More Time.” :P
I’m not saying this is a foolproof method. sometimes I don’t have a reason for being stuck, and that’s okay! I’m also not saying this is how every adhd brain works. it’s just how my brain works, and I’m sure there’s at least a few who can relate. for those few, I hope this helps!!
a lot of people are reblogging the original post without the update and leaving frustrated comments and that makes me sad! if I can find ways to hack my brain than so can you! executive dysfunction is a real and frustrating challenge, but don’t buy the lie that there’s no way to work with it or around it!!!
Clovis Bray head balancing on a pair of legs wearing fishnet tights
who needs a frame with legs like these?
bro we're all going scuttling later, you should come scuttle with us
“average person eats 3 spiders a year” factoid actualy just statistical error. average person eats 0 spiders per year. Spiders Georg, who lives in cave & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
happy 10 years of spiders georg everyone
So i make daily D2 emblem concepts (currently at day 184), you can follow the thread on my art twitter but heres a couple i made recently that i really like!
violet-lavender-fem not shadowbanned when
Never
Who makes the captions at Watcher and can I buy them a Christmas present? These feel like an inside joke that only us deaf, hard-of-hearing and auditory processing disordered folks are privy to.
We’re so often forgotten about or overlooked on YouTube; made to put up with shitty auto-generated captions (comparable to trying to have a conversation with Ryan’s spirit box) or reliant on other fans to make them for us. Someone puts effort into these not only being accurate, but funny, and I love them for it.
Having ADHD is that your brain either feels like
Or
And it can switch in a matter of seconds.
bold of you to assume im not
THATS IT THATS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE
birdy.., !’
Yep that's what it's like






