In case you ever make the mistake of thinking that I am sensible or competent: I signed up for a graduate class with homework this semester, didn’t do any of the homework because I felt like what little “productive brain time” I had should be used for research, didn’t withdraw from the class, and didn’t talk to the professor about it until he emailed me right before he was assigning grades for the class.

(He agreed to give me an incomplete and let me do the work over the summer.  The lessons here are that 1. you can be as terrible as me and still sort of do OK and 2. people are too nice and reinforce terribleness)

pneggy:

Pretend ur invasive self hating thoughts r being said to u by a 13 y/o boy on xbox live trying to get a rise out of you like
“Your girlfriend dumped you because you’re ugly”
that’s nice tim isn’t it past ur bedtime

(via jadagul)

med changes?

I’ve been changing Lexapro dose, so that may be some of it.  Although I’m pretty sure why I was so happy and productive today is that I’ve started taking phenibut again sometimes after a few months without it, and I took a relatively large dose last night.  (I also took some the previous night, which is why the difference still surprises me)

(For a long time I just thought phenibut was a pointless substance and I shouldn’t use it, but I’m starting to realize that it really is amazing if used sparingly.  The anxiolytic effects for me are better than anything else I’ve tried, including benzos, and it’s actually somewhat energizing as well.  It just builds tolerance quickly and has awful withdrawal.  It’s risky to use it more than a few days in a row, but on the other hand it really is nice just to feel perfectly fine for once, which no mainstream psych med has been able to do for me.)

veronicastraszh:

[snip]

I’ll say, when your premises are completely wrong, your conclusions will likely be wrong as well. I’m a “SJW woman” and I don’t think “basic decent behavior” from men requires they “do favors” for me. Like, where the fuck did you get that idea? And of course, if someone is literally ungrateful, then stop doing favors for them. Easy peasy. Make friends with decent people who reciprocate. This is taught in “being a social human 101.″

About the last sentence: on the one hand, I completely agree, and on the other hand, this is much harder for a lot of people (e.g. me) than you make it sound.

The basic problem is that, once you accept that different people often have different needs, which is clearly true – the sorts of actions that count as “being decent” toward a friend with serious social anxiety, say, are different from the sort of actions that count as “being decent” toward a friend without it – then every question about what counts as “doing favors” becomes an arguable, empirical question.

Is this person not being grateful because they’re entitled?  Or are they just not being grateful because the actions I’m taking aren’t some sort of special favor, they’re just basic common courtesy as it applies to this particular person?  You could avoid this question by simply resolving to treat everyone in the same way, but this shuts out the potential for social bonds with anyone any special needs.  (I always think of this comic when this stuff comes up.)  On the other hand, if you don’t do this, you may end up buying into frameworks in which you must do something very taxing to you despite any gratitude, because it’s just “human decency” and you’d be “terrible” if you didn’t.  Making this call is not always easy.

(via starlightvero)

Can’t sleep, brain is doing bad stuff (don’t worry, not catastrophic)

May have something to do with decreasing my Lexapro dose.  I’ve gone down from 20 to 12.5 mg and now I’m half a week into 12.5 mg.  (Of course it almost certainly has to do with drinking.  Might be some interaction between the two, who knows)

Distractions welcome, although I should give lying in bed and trying to sleep more of a chance

Ah, so you’re uninterested in cuddling of any sort when there are 3+ people in the room.

Much less so, yes.  Has to do with insecurity about whether I am repulsive / undesirable / etc. – it’s much harder for the insecure part of me to “make a case” in its favor when absolutely nothing is going on except one other person choosing to do something with me.

untiltheseashallfreethem replied to your post: aprilwitching replied to your post : many…

This makes me want to take LSD.

Also is this ok to reblog?

Yes, okay to reblog (but don’t reblog this post).

Some notes and cautions about psychedelics under the cut; probably nothing you couldn’t hear elsewhere, but since you said this in response to my experience, it might be worthwhile to talk a bit about how they are for me

Keep reading

nonternary:

nostalgebraist:

nonternary:

nostalgebraist:

Part of what I’m describing as being “unproductive” is this combination of a certain franticness with a lethargy that makes it hard to channel energy into anything deliberately

I can write these really long tumblr posts, and when I’m not typing my head is filled with thoughts, but if I try to sit down and read or work it doesn’t go well.  I am simultaneously too tired to “do anything” and capable of talking your ear off about what a hipster is.  I feel like this a lot and the only thing I know that reliably cures it is doing more stuff outside the house, but I don’t have anything in particular to do outside the house.

I just spent two hours pacing around my apartment, reading Tumblr posts about gender politics, and mentally drafting a long essay about said Tumblr posts. (But not writing it.)

I have so much work to do! I haven’t had breakfast and it’s FIVE PM. WHAT THE HELL, BRAIN.

This sounds like my average day.

I can’t tell if this sort of unproductivity is something most people do, or something that’s unusual but not very unusual, or if I should see it as a possible sign that I’m not exactly neurotypical (there are… other signs).

Do you have any insight? I generally saw it as a moral failing (information/novelty “gluttony”) but that was obviously not helpful.

(Medicalizing everything is also unhelpful, but labels are helpful for finding coping strategies.)

Largely I don’t know.  In my case, part of it is perfectionism: I procrastinate tasks because I’m worried that if I have a relatively long time period in which to do them I will be expected to do them extremely well, and then pull them off at the last minute, when I switch from the “this needs to be perfect” regime to the “it is conceivable that I will accomplish nothing and every bit I can do beyond nothing helps” regime.

Another piece is some sort of inherent variability in my level of energy.  On some days I wake up and have this burning drive to learn and work from pretty much the first moment of consciousness until the moment I fall asleep; on other days I wake up, get a transient boost from my morning coffee, and then do nothing for the rest of the day.  This probably covers over half of the variance in my productivity levels, and I haven’t found any way to influence it.

As I said in the OP, I definitely find that getting out of the house, especially early in the morning, tends to lead to more productive days overall, even if the thing I did outside the house was completely unproductive by whichever metric we’re using.  Also, spending more face-to-face social time tends to lead to more productivity, and I’ll have a transient productivity gain for a few days after a social day, even if I don’t socialize on the subsequent days.  At the recommendation of the entire world I have also tried exercise for this sort of thing, but I haven’t found it as helpful (although it is no doubt good in other ways).

Medically, I have Tourette Syndrome (fairly mild these days) and an anxiety disorder (not OCD or Panic Disorder or Social Anxiety, closest to GAD, though I’m not sure I was ever specifically diagnosed before being medicated).  I got tested recently for ADHD and specifically don’t have any flavor of that.  I also have a sleep cycle disorder and use melatonin and a light box frequently.

I am also IQ Georg (my Wechsler Verbal subscore is 20-30 points higher than my Wechsler Nonverbal subscore, meaning the two can’t be combined reliably into a single IQ score, since the whole basis of IQ is that intelligence tests are supposed to be correlated.  This gap appeared on two different IQ tests taken 12 years apart.  I have not been diagnosed with anything on this basis, although such a gap can sometimes lead to the diagnosis of a nonverbal learning disability.  I have several friends, including one very close friend, with the same gap in the same direction, suggesting anecdotally that this may be some kind of well-defined “mind type.”)

(via adzolotl)

Okay wading a little bit into yesterday’s installment of the Recurring Tumblr Debacle (you know, that one), because I know some people involved are mutuals and I feel I may have some leverage here:

I think if you are making “but I reserve the right, in principle, to be friends with fascists!” your hill to die on, something has gone very wrong somewhere.

Keep reading