Something I Think A Lot Of Able Bodied People Dont Understand Is That Being Chronically Ill Affects Your

s/o to this skeleton babe from 1936

Reblog if you understand that disability is not a monolith and two people with the same disability do not have identical experiences ✨

Hey. You know what they taught me in my environmental studies classes, about how to work in this field and be able to keep doing it without burning out and crashing? And also about how to get the general public to care about what we do?

Ragebait isn't actually a very good strategy. Hope is. Showing people it's possible to make a difference is. Imagining a better future is. I think other movements need to learn this.

For years the strategy was to show people horrible things so they'd be angry and want to do something, but it turns out it's really easy to cross the line into them thinking 'oh god it's all horrible and we're doomed' at which point they get paralyzed with hopelessness. So that's not the recommended strategy anymore and instead we try to connect climate issues with things people care about and show them how they can help in concrete, achievable ways. Anyways, I'm still in this field three years later and I don't feel crushing despair about it so I guess it's working. Y'all should join me. Put down the images of sad polar bears and other assorted horrors; pick up something hopeful and useful instead.

Nothing is quite as tragically funny to me as how finds are treated on site vs in a museum setting.

In a trench on a dig site: oh look another undecorated pottery sherd. The hundredth from this trench today! *holds with bare hands, covered in mud* nice, where’s the cassetto? YEET! I’ll clean that with a worn out plastic toothbrush in a bucket of water later. Another sherd? Oh damn, it’s from the wrong SO layer - into the spoils heap you go :(

The same pottery sherd, in a museum: so we need to sign this sherd out to examine it in a temperature controlled room. I’m going to wear powder free gloves and hold it with two hands no more than an inch above the padded surface of this table because I’d rather die than have any harm befall this sherd.

Or, in other words:

No hate to either museum-based archaeologists or field archaeologists. I have done both.

Also this is not to say I condone this. This is just a representation of the absolute whiplash my mostly-museum based arse got upon seeing how things were done on my first dig.

People only have so much patience for those of us with chronic illnesses, chronic pain, and or mental health difficulties.

At the beginning there is so much support (or at least more support) but when they realise you're not recovering as quickly as they'd like... you get avoided, isolated, told you're exaggerating, etc. They seldom think about how those of us with chronic issues feel. How overwhelming it is to deal with everything day in and day out. There is so much anxiety, depression, grief, etc when dealing with chronic issues regardless of what they are.

If you're even more isolated because people refuse to see how much you're struggling or you're not recovering "fast enough" for the people around you just know you're not alone! There are so many of us in the same boat too

"Can I Please Eat In The Computer Room Tonight?" by Nicole Nikolich (2025)

When people make it clear they consider nonbinary to be synonymous for "no transitioning", or "nondysphoric", or, if you're extra lucky, "basically cis".

this is exorsexism.

bonus points if they have limited definitions of transition and dysphoria. i have transitioned and i have dysphoria, but just for people like me they'll love the goalposts.

being disabled will really have you thinking/saying things like “yeah i’m not really THAT disabled. as long as i take my meds twice a day (and as needed), eat and drink exactly the right things, keep the perfect balance of being active and resting, the weather is stable, and nothing unexpected happens AT ALL… i’m totally FINE! i probably should not even call myself disabled at this point because i’m doing so well!”

if you don’t want to call yourself disabled, that’s fine and it is your choice! but if you’re only “fine” or “doing really well” when a bunch of different variables are all lined up perfectly, then maybe you are not fine actually. just a thought!