it drives me crazy how humans are just meant to hold each other. how come when you hold someone’s hand, your fingers just perfectly lock with theirs? how is it that when you hug someone, your face fits just right in the crook of their neck? how can your hands cup someone’s face like that’s their only primary function? it cannot be coincidence that our bodies are fully capable of holding another… we were designed to love
Listen, listen, here’s a thing… you don’t have to have ADHD in order to use ADHD life hacks if they will make your life easier. Executive Dysfunction, regarless of cause, is a mother fucker that will ruin your life and make you utterly miserable, so if something helps? Good! I am so glad for you! Please do the thing! Life is hard enough as it is without giving ourselves extra invisible hurdles to jump.
So if you’re struggling? Please allow yourself to be kind to yourself. You deserve it, no matter what society may have conditioned you to think. You are allowed to not always be struggling. You are allowed to rest, and make things in your life easier. It’s not a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of self care and adaptivbility, and those things are to always be commended.
1. if a ‘dumb’ solution works for you - its not dumb
2. call it ‘being efficient’ and suddenly you’re golden
3. you don’t have to ‘qualify’ in order to use something that helps you. It doesn’t matter if it was designed for you or not. If it works, its for you.
4. there is no shame in using a tool that works for you no matter what its original purpose may have been. It is ‘clever’ and ‘creative’ and ‘thinking outside the box’ or ‘a nifty trick I picked up’.
to repeat:
Life is hard enough as it is without giving ourselves extra invisible hurdles to jump.
Linguists throughout the ages: We have spent lifetimes gathering the significations of words and phrases in various language so everyone can appreciate them as well as possible.
Language teachers: Translate this text, no dictionaries allowed.
Linguists:
Literally thousands of artists, engineers and scientists over the years: Look at all of these awesome tools we made to help artists make more art more quickly and more easily! Now art is much more accessible to everyone!
Art snobs: If you use anything more than a pencil and ink and these specific paints and brushes you’re cheating and not a real artist. Especially if you draw digitally. That’s double cheating.
Have you ever considered how fucking astonishing babies crying is?
The young of other animals don’t make noise, or if they do, barely any at all. Baby birds only start chirping when their parents come back with the food, kittens meow to their mothers because cat communication is extremely subtle and drawing your caretaker’s attention may require a sound when you have eight siblings. At this point, they can already see and walk.
But human babies? Crying is essentially the first willful action that they learn. Months before being able to move on your own, or even hold your own fucking head up, or being able to choose when and where you defecate. Before anything else, a skill more valuable than anything else, is a distress call.
A distress call specifically intended to be impossible to ignore.
Before object permanence or theory of mind, without even an understanding of what help they need, who could provide it, and whether they choose to do so, a human being is capable of expressing that there is something wrong in the state they are in, that they are powerless to correct on their own.
This is what was evolutionarily selected above silent babies that did not attract predators. This is what was selected instead of young who could instantly walk. This is what was selected as the ideal offspring for the human race. Not one that runs. Not one that hides. Not one that can fend for itself. A creature that can communicate, if only the simplest, most inherent message:
I need help.
Humans are incredibly social creatures. We evolved under the reliance other humans would be there to help us.
“We evolved under the reliance that other humans would be there to help us.”
And you know what?? We consistently show up for each other. No matter how much capitalist society tries to alienate us from one another, we show the fuck up and help each other out when it comes down to it.
Communication and cooperation is inseparable from the human experience.
Asking for help is the first, most important thing you ever learn to do, so please don’t forget that friends.
Y'know, I’m really loving the return to a “tropes are good” mindset. Embrace the cliché. Use the overused. If it makes you feel good to read and write, don’t stress if it’s not completely original. It’s so much more fun to not agonize over having to make every aspect of a piece revolutionary
Just because a story is predictable, it doesn’t mean it’s not a good story.
