My complete and total inability to keep anything clean or tidy for any amount of time is a symptom of my depression. I may never be able to do this. It’s important that I remember that and forgive myself when I clean something out (like my car) and it ends up trashed within a week.
Depression IS A DISABILITY. Requiring accommodations is okay.
Medications don’t make you better, they don’t cure your depression. They serve as an aid. Their purpose is to help you get to everyone else’s minimal level of functioning.
Depression can cycle through periods of inactivity. This doesn’t mean it’s gone away.
The reason I don’t feel like other people understand me is because … well … other people DON’T understand me. They can’t. They don’t have my disability.
Paranoia is par for the course.
Depression can and will interfere with your physical mobility. Forgive yourself when you can’t physically do something.
It’s entirely possible that I may never be able to live by myself. I can’t take care of myself. I need help to do it. And that’s okay.
Sometimes people hit a place in their life where things are going really well. They like their job and are able to be productive at it; they have energy after work to pursue the relationships and activities they enjoy; they’re taking good care of themselves and rarely get sick or have flareups of their chronic health problems; stuff is basically working out. Then a small thing about their routine changes and suddenly they’re barely keeping their head above water.
(This happens to me all the time; it’s approximately my dominant experience of working full-time.)
I think one thing that’s going on here is that there are a bunch of small parts of our daily routine which are doing really important work for our wellbeing. Our commute involves a ten-minute walk along the waterfront and the walking and fresh air are great for our wellbeing (or, alternately, our commute involves no walking and this makes it way more frictionless because walking sucks for us). Our water heater is really good and so we can take half-hour hot showers, which are a critical part of our decompression/recovery time. We sit with our back to the wall so we don’t have to worry about looking productive at work as long as the work all gets done. The store down the street is open really late so late runs for groceries are possible. Our roommate is a chef and so the kitchen is always clean and well-stocked.
It’s useful to think of these things as load-bearing. They’re not just nice – they’re part of your mental architecture, they’re part of what you’re using to thrive. And when they change, life can abruptly get much harder or sometimes just collapse on you entirely. And this is usually unexpected, because it’s hard to notice which parts of your environment and routine are load bearing. I often only notice in hindsight. “Oh,” I say to myself after months of fatigue, “having my own private space was load-bearing.” “Oh,” after a scary drop in weight, “being able to keep nutrition shakes next to my bed and drink them in bed was load-bearing.” “Oh,” after a sudden struggle to maintain my work productivity, “a quiet corner with my back to the wall was load-bearing.”
When you know what’s important to you, you can fight for it, or at least be equipped to notice right away if it goes and some of your ability to thrive goes with it. When you don’t, or when you’re thinking of all these things as ‘nice things about my life’ rather than ‘load-bearing bits of my flourishing as a person’, you’re not likely to notice the strain created when they vanish until you’re really, really hurting.
Almost two weeks after reading this, and I’m still kind of blown away at what a ridiculously fruitful definition this is. Like I had no idea that load bearing things were a thing that needed to have a word for them, but now I’m like holy shit I’m so glad that there’s now a word I can use to refer to this really important class of Thing.
This is astounding. Load-bearing. Forget spoons, this concept is wonderful. I’m going to update my Spear Theory with this.
So today I tripped. Fell flat on my face, it was awful but ultimately harmless. My service dog, however, is trained to go get an adult if I have a seizure, and he assumed this was a seizure (were training him to do more to care for me, but we didn’t learn I had epilepsy until a year after we got him)
I went after him after I had dusten off my jeans and my ego, and I found him trying to get the attention of a very annoyed woman. She was swatting him away and telling him to go away. So I feel like I need to make this heads up
If a service dog without a person approaches you, it means the person is down and in need of help
Don’t get scared, don’t get annoyed, follow the dog! If it had been an emergency situation, I could have vomited and choked, I could have hit my head, I could have had so many things happen to me. We’re going to update his training so if the first person doesn’t cooperate, he moves on, but seriously guys. If what’s-his-face could understand that lassie wanted him to go to the well, you can figure out that a dog in a vest proclaiming it a service dog wants you to follow him
WHO IS REALLY OUT HERE IGNORING A SERVICE DOG?? If ANY type of dog approaches me im in. no questions asked, where you going? can i come?
This is not a joke. I was at a premier showing tonight, and my immediate thought was how disasterously unsafe this movie is for my photosensitive epilepic friends. @markingatlightspeed I’m tagging you with this specifically because this would be extremely dangerous for you to watch.
There are multiple scenes in this movie with full-screen, black-and-white flashing strobe effects. They all happen without warning, and last anywhere between a few seconds to more than two minutes. In a darkened movie theater, this means the likelihood of a seizure could be VERY HIGH if you are sensitive to these effects.
If you have photosensitive epilepsy or another disorder that is triggered by strobe lights, I would highly recommend you DO NOT SEE THE INCREDIBLES 2 IN THEATERS. Wait until the movie’s released on digital/Bluray, and you can watch it in a fully-lit room, with someone with you who will be able to help if the strobe effects do trigger a seizure.
this seven year old girl got half an arm (just like lusie in the gifs) 3d printed and it only cost $50
can we just compare that with the average price of buying a prosthetic
3d printing is gonna help so many people holy crap
No no no, guys, this gif set leaves out the literal best stuff from the video.
So a few years back, this guy who accidentally cut off his fingers, teamed up with a special effects artist/puppeteer and created a 3D printable prosthetic hand, that used the movement of the wearer to be able to grab things. The guys who did this said they were just going to post the schematics online, which in turn lead to creating a network of people with 3D printers, who were willing to print prosthetics for people. The network of volunteers, turned into an organization that gives prosthetic arms/hands to kids who need them. They have science types improving the designs and creating new ones, they got a grant from Google, classrooms and scout troops are getting involved and making prosthetic hands for people.
Everything about this is amazing.
It’s stuff like this that makes technology awesome :’)
Commissioned by Calia Marini, based on how she describes them in her story “The Last apple of Idunn”. Thanks for commissioning me! 😀 I had so much fun with this one!
Holding the Bowl 