A billboard from the 70s archives. Timely today in Washington.
There are truly very few forces in the world as strong as the inertia of staying up way too late doing fuckall
As someone recently diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, one thing that’s been helping me grapple with the intense shame I have over all my “wasted potential” is accepting that potential doesn’t exist and never did.
This sounds so harsh, but please bare with me.
I procrastinated a lot growing up. I still procrastinate today, but less so. And yet, I got good grades. I could write an A+ paper that “knocked [my professor]’s socks off” in the hour before class and print it with sweat running down my face.
I was so used to hearing from teachers and family that if I just didn’t procrastinate and worked all the time, I could do anything! I had all this potential I wasn’t living up to!
And that’s true, as far as it goes, but that’s like saying if Usain Bolt just kept going he could be the fastest marathon runner in the world. Why does he stop at the end of the race??
If ANYONE could make their top speed/most productive setting the one they used all the time, anyone could do anything. But you can’t. Your top speed is not a speed you’re able to sustain.
Now, I’ve found that I do need to work on not procrastinating. Not because the product is better, even, but because it’s better for my mental health and physical health to not have a full, sweating, panicked breakdown over every task even if the task itself turns out excellently. It’s a shitty way to live! You feel bad ALL the time! And I don’t deserve to live like that anymore.
So all of this to say, I’m not wasting a ton of potential. I don’t have an ocean of productivity and accomplishments inside of me that I could easily, effortlessly access if I just sat down 8 hours a day and worked. There’s no fucking way. That’s not real. It’s an illusion. It’s fine not to live up to an illusion.
And if you have ADHD, I mean this from the bottom of my heart: you do not have limitless potential confounded by your laziness. You have the good potential of a good person, and you can access it with practice and work, but do not accept the story that you are choosing not to be all that you are or can be. You are just a human person.
Acetic acid is derived from the Latin a, meaning “without”, and cetos, meaning “whale”. This is an accurate name as whales are not usually found in vinegar.
my best tip for anyone trying to get back into reading is to remember that you can read books to avoid other responsibilities in ur life and it can become a vice if you play your cards right
wild pear tree by Kaveh Akbar
i go to the shop and I ask if they have any raspberries. they say no, they used to sell raspberries, but they haven't had any in stock in the last 15 years. I ask if there's somewhere else I can go to buy raspberries. They say no, with confidence and pride, they're the only shop around who has ever sold or will ever sell raspberries. Other shops might sell other fruit, sure, but they have a monopoly on all raspberries forever. I ask if they're possibly planning on them selling them again in future? they say they can't tell me that.
on the way home, I encounter someone eating raspberries. I ask and they tell me that they grow their own, they got some seeds from the shop back in The Raspberry Days and kept them. They take me to a field of many beautiful raspberry plants and invite me to pick my own, they're free for all the town to pick whenever they'd like.
someone comes up behind us. It's the shop manager, President of Nintendo Shuntaro Furukawa. he hatefully throws a bob-omb that blows up and kills both of us instantly for stealing 200 trillion dollars worth of potential Raspberry Shop That Doesn't Do Raspberries Anymore profits that they weren't making and then he turns around to the camera with a big thumbs up and says don't do piracy or something ok please
executive dysfunction is literally like. ive had a random dollar on my floor for two weeks and i dont know when ill fit it in my schedule to pick it up. people dont realize this
working retail
when ever I start hearing the horns of the apocalypse I just say out loud to myself "the tumpet. bwaaa" and it makes me feel better every time