CIRCLE WITH A DOT

the problem with my protagonist being an angry self-hating little dude is that I am now stuck in "angry self-hating little dude" mode when I need to be making dinner

I like being a discovery writer. I mean, I’m not a total pantser, I go in with a rough idea of what I’m at, but at this point in my notes all it says is “horrible chaotic shit happens for about five or ten minutes in story-time” and I am delighted to discover exactly what that entails.

#amWriting

@cazmockett possibly only because there was nothing in the tank, so to speak

@onorio I was pretty deep into it so that was going well, at least!

jesus CHRIST. I was at the tensest part of the fucking story, hunched over my laptop with my fingers rattling away and my mind entirely on the nightmare scene I was creating

and my fucking headphones yelled “POWER OFF” in my ears.

I need a cup of tea and a lie down.

#amWriting

Slowly chewing my way through part two of The Hand That Touches Flame. It’s been a struggle because a lot of this section is about building tension, and writing tension makes ME tense, and I haven’t slept properly in a while so the emotional contamination is stronger than usual.

It’ll be fun once the tension breaks, though! For a given definition of “fun”.

@iwein Same to you, very much so.

@iwein The meds definitely do harm and I don’t blame anyone for deciding they’re better off without them! Unfortunately, my ADHD is severe enough that without meds I don’t perform basic self-care like brushing my teeth, so even if the system collapsed tomorrow I’d still need them.

@swaldman I was lucky too, except that my luck came in the form of being frankly unnecessarily clever hence the first despite all the difficulties. But I also know the pressure of everyone expecting you to sail through…

@flyhigh Technically I don’t “need” to clean my bathroom, or do the laundry, but I could easily put them off, if I felt lazy.

@MontgomeryGator Or like trying to drive with the handbrake on…

@diffractie Oh I sympathise SO HARD, I am so, so sorry you didn't have the support you needed. I came extremely close to crashing out in fourth year myself and I think it was only luck that got me through. You deserved better.

@davidr Or even worse: putting blood, sweat and tears into trying to get myself to do a task and failing anyway!

Bastard brain disorder.

(a first-class degree is the best degree result you can get and you only need an average of over 70% for it, as the difficulty is tuned so that achieving this is quite hard.

my final average was 77%. by my fourth year my marks were high enough that I only had to pass my remaining modules (40%+) to still get a first, so that was all I did, because I was BURNED OUT.)

the thing is, I did my entire undergrad degree in physics undiagnosed and unmedicated and I STILL got a first.

even though a lot of the time I'd sit down to revise (something I wanted and needed to do) and would just end up crying. for eight hours at a time, sometimes. sitting there. barely doing anything. even though I desperately wanted to. even though I liked the subjects. it was absolute misery. my partner will occasionally remind me of how much I was clearly suffering.

but I kept doing it anyway. day after day. putting myself through that ordeal.

and I thought that was laziness.

if I'd had meds for my undergrad degree I probably would have gotten an overall module average of over 90%. it wouldn't have actually meant anything except maybe beating this one girl to the prize for best undergraduate (and she deserved it!), but... idk. it would have been nice to feel, for once, like I was living up to my bastard fucking potential.

it wasn't until I started taking ADHD meds that I realised what laziness actually was.

laziness is when you know you're perfectly capable of doing a task but you can't be bothered!!

laziness is NOT "my entire brain starts up an agonising struggle process that causes tremendous anxiety and unhappiness the moment I even think about doing something that doesn't maintain a steady feed of dopamine"

another one of those days where I wake up feeling horrible because I have to Do Things today and it's going to be a Struggle and I am going to Let Myself Down

and then I take my ADHD meds. by the time I've finished my first cup of tea, I feel perfectly capable again. like doing the laundry and cleaning the bathroom are not, in fact, insurmountable obstacles but instead just mildly tedious tasks.

@dlakelan I think it's pretty understandable to be into Rand as a young person, as long as folk grow out of it. It's one of those regrettable phases, like thinking double-vodka Red Bulls are an acceptable thing to drink, or pretending you can skateboard when you definitely can't.

@WiteWulf hell yeah, I'm okay with that idea, that is one very cool-looking machine!

@dlakelan Yeah, she's an interesting psychological case study, in that you can see where she was coming from, but unfortunately she was terrifyingly effective at spreading her awful, stupid, fundamentally broken ideology to others.

This post was originally a lot longer because I just started ranting about how much I loathe Objectivism and frankly, none of it was new or valuable.