For me it was the fact that I would always be slower than everyone else and I would have to put in twice the effort.
not to sound corny, but becoming self aware of who I am a couple of years ago and identifying the best path forward. since then, my life has been so much better.
its really hard to admit to yourself what your faults are, but once you do, the next steps should work on how to fix the problem and not beat yourself up over it. I’m not exagerating when I say I’ve never been happier.
At least you seem to have self awareness and insight, which is more than most people.
It’s that i won’t be having a long full life like my parents and I will have a much suffering up to my painful death.
F
Here’s to you, Nicolo and Bart,
Rest forever, here in our hearts,
The last and final moment is yours,
And agony is your triumph
I relate to your situation OP.
I have ADHD and I think the hardest part about living with it is coming to terms to the fact that I’ll have to constantly put in more effort to meet the neurotypical standards for school and work. It’s exhausting to have to mange my symptoms in a world where every task throughout my day is designed to be preformed within a set time frame and getting off-track, even for a little while, even if it’s unintentional is seen as incompetence. I struggle to be able to let myself relax especially when I’m overstimulated due to this. Luckily, my country is pretty progressive and workplaces are schools are required to provide accommodations but unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that everyone will take my needs seriously.
Let me tell you a short story about Kevin.
He had the same realization, so he went to trade school to avoid the parts of education that involved a lot of studying in the traditional sense. So he ended up as a decent welder.
Fast forward a few “normal” jobs where he couldn’t quite fit because of the everyday drudgery of working either as a maintenance man or a factory worker, doing the same things over and over: He ended up applying to a job where the tag line was basically “no days are the same”
He started working with sea fastening. You know those ships with a large superstructure in front of a completely flat back deck? His employer was in charge of all sorts of fittings and welds onboard ships so that containerized systems could be easily mounted in a secure manner.
And said company was usually contracted by my former AND current employer to do the sea fastening aspect of mobilization.
And yes, Kevin is a real person. And as soon as I see his name on the personnel list, I know it’s all going to go well and be a lot of fun while we’re at it. Kevin and I have been drunk on all continents together. (Well, except from Antarctica… so far). Be it occupying a Texas BBQ joint for an entire day while doing the layout planning from there, or chilling (literally) in a Singapore pool after a long days work.
Oh yes, ADHD… he mentioned that he probably wouldn’t have ended up where he was without it. I’m not saying his situation is universally transferable, but it’s all about finding ones element.
His only ADHD-related failing that I’ve noticed is that he usually struggles with airports. But that’s fine - we usually park our asses in a quiet airport lounge anyway.
I’m looking into doing something similar to Kevin, I want a job that’s more flexible but I’m worried that jobs like that won’t pay great. I settled on becoming an ultrasound tech because the college program incorporates a lot of hands on training, considering it’s in the medical field it’s a well paying and secure job. But, I do wonder if it’s truly right more me sometimes…
A flexible job is one thing. But a job that requires a flexible person is something else entirely. Kevin is paid quite handsomely for his willingness to pack his gear and fly halfway around the world to do his thing on short notice.
I suspect that for every ADHD person like Kevin, there are a dozen struggling because they can’t find the right job (probably not least because the act of job-hunting is itself terrible for people with ADHD).
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i’m convinced that calling it misinformation is part of the problem.
misinformation is the proper word for it, but the word carries with it the connotation that it’s intentional or ill willed; so misinformation that doesn’t seem to have either are given a pass.
for example: take the piece of misinformation that you shouldn’t go swimming 30 minutes after you’ve eaten; it’s misinformation like any other but allowed to perpetuate because it doesn’t seem ill willed or intentional.
that means that any misinformation that seems innocent is allowed to perpetuate and that’s how propaganda takes hold; repeat it enough times and it seems like an established & unquestionable fact and, therefore, innocent, so it flies under the rather and keeps getting perpetuated as fact like the misinformation with swimming & eating
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and you’ll forever be struggling with it because that type is impossible to distinguish from the other type if you don’t have the right frame of reference to detect it.
your experience with eating and swimming gives you a frame of reference that lets you detect that swimming less than 30 minutes after eating is bullshit, so you’re able to recognize it as the misinformation that it is and having a proper frame of reference like this is the only way to combat any misinformation.
it’s impossible for anyone to have a frame of reference so broad that they can detect all misinformation; not even a group of people can either. becoming something of an expert on the subject of the misinformation is the only thing you can to do help it and, even then, being an expert is relative.
instead, you have to see misinformation as weeds in a mental garden that you will forever have to keep maintaining for your entire life; more weeds will always find their way into your garden and it’s up to you to keep clearing them out so that your flowers can shine through and recognize when the flowers you’ve chosen are the wrong ones for the garden.
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the weeds are the misinformation and if those are getting killed off too; then your problem isn’t misinformation.
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Good observation. At least with some of the more rational Republicans that I have conversed with over the years in the US, that has been one of their complaints with people on the left. That is where some of them come up with “nanny state” (setting aside that they have dozens of other ways they would love to create a nanny state themselves).
That happens because it’s a social act. People who don’t want to, but have to due to some sort of obligation or as an indirect action towards achieving something else.
Activism is a chore they have to do, so without people in charge sincere in what they do and aware of this type of obligation, any attempt at serious activism will end up half-baked and likely to do more harm than good.
It’s tough to find people who do something for the sake of it and not as a springboard meant to pursue other interests.
The fact I don’t have chocolate right now
It is very hard and sad, knowing my house has no easily consumed chocolate.
I could make some chocolate peppermint crinkle cookies but that would take awhile… why can’t chocolate just appear next to me right next to my drink! Alas.
Once all my cooking bowls are cleaned, I’ll make some! We had waffles this morning, so all the cooking bowls are dirty.
Oh right Ihad some chocolate on those waffles.
I need more! We all need more.
If I have chocolate it’s usually for a very short period of time
People are disappointing, even family
Blood doesn’t make someone family; the bonds we form with someone make them family.
I feel this in my soul unfortunately. Learned some wild stuff about my family not too long ago and it’s hard to reconcile things now.
Same, not recent but I have a long list of eye opening facts I’ve collected throughout my life. Eventually you just accept it all. It’s not been easy to get to this point, it took a lot of mental anguish to get this numb to it all.
Disappointing doesn’t even feel like a strong enough word.
How about disgustipated?
That America is a failed country, and there’s no point to staying and fighting if I can get out
I really wish I had a feasible way out.
I suffer from combined anxiety, agoraphobia, and panic attacks. Going for a walk is a nice and relaxing thing for most people, but for me it’s a battle from start to finish. I can’t be too far from a “safe” place, like my house or my car, or I begin to have panic attacks.
I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that the outdoors are difficult for me and I have to constantly go against my instincts and force myself outside.
Loss of friendships can be the result of very minor events that triggered someone or were not communicated well. This does not mean that anyone is necessarily “bad” or lacks care for the world. That can be true but it is not always true. The hardest thing to come to terms with is that despite the above in many cases there is no way back to friendship with that person
“Friends come in and out of your life like busboys in a restaurant, did you ever notice that?”
Stephen King
Knowing the people who I ideally want to date or would have a better chance of dating, will forever be out of my reach because of missed opportunities in the past. For example, there’s a couple of friends I know I would’ve loved to date. One of them I could’ve had but nobody said anything to eachother and it had been 14 years ago when that chance came and went. We just mesh well together and can go the distance when it comes to conversing and getting along. But, I’m forever friend-zoned because nobody said anything when emotions were high back then.
And another thing is accepting the fact that you aren’t as compatible with some of your friends when you thought you were. The painful part is realizing this after so long. I had a massive friend exodus last year. I’ve lost friends whom I’ve been with for 15 years, 10 years, 5 years and 3 years in that order. And it was simply because at somepoint, we just ignored the part where we weren’t as heavily compatible as we once were. And it showed the more times we were at odds with eachother. Hell, I lost another friend this year who I had hit it off well for 3 going 4 years and it’s the same example.
“Friends come in and out of your life like busboys in a restaurant, did you ever notice that?”
Stephen King
That an unfortunately large portion of my family are stupid MAGA’ts. I always knew they weren’t exactly tip top in the faculties department but they usually had the right directions. That’s shits completely gone now. Sort of in relation to that. Just how dumb the average level is. The lack of troubleshooting capabilities, the disregard of knowledge, the irrational hate for the ‘other’ the just complete contempt for anyone who doesn’t directly effect you day to day. The schdenfraude from the faceless trump voters is a nice trickle but it’s becoming maddening how much of it there is. I’m finally beginning to understand the need for so much history in school. Unfortunately there is an uncomfortably large portion of the population that simply can’t learn from words and can only understand experience. It almost feels like a hidden great filter.
I’ll never be the same again after my brain injury.
In some ways thats a good thing but Im not 100# sure I’ll get all the walking stuff back exactly
