[Image ID: A Facebook post. The original poster’s name and icon have been redacted. The post reads:
Some
times I get tired of being the “nice disabled person”. ‘curb cutouts make
things much easier for moms with strollers.’ I don’t care. Mobility
impaired people literally can’t get off the sidewalk without them.
‘Captions are great for kids who are learning to read.’ Yeah, and they
are also a necessity for deaf people. here’s my hot take. Disabled
people should not have to frame accessibility in a way that helps abled
people to get the accommodations they need to live a decent life. /end
ID]
alright kids let’s break this down one last fuckin time (and this is a breakdown of just aesthetics)-
goth: all black, often very elaborate, gothically inspired (obviously), not branded
emo: still lots of black but much more casual, skinny jeans, certain brand shirts (usually music-themed), converse/vans, jewelry, specific hairstyles, think 2000’s hot topic kids
punk: lots of black again, very elaborate but in a completely different way, studs, chains, patches, piercings, leather, another set of specific hairstyles and bright hair colors, really rooted in anarchical themes
grunge: old clothes, flannels, oversized, layers, ripped jeans, distressed **if you’re buying “grunge” clothes new, you’re a fucking sham, the entire grunge aesthetic arose from garage bands too poor to afford clothes that weren’t thrifted, poorly sized, and already worn out**
additionally, all of these include elements of gender non-conformity and prioritize self-expression as well as identification as belonging to a group
and remember!!! all of these are actual subcultures, not just aesthetics, so when you say you’re “being goth/etc” remember to specify that you mean aesthetically, because its not fair to boil an entire subgroup of people down to just their aesthetic trends
add-on for scene as well ‘cause I’m nothing if not obsessive about subcultures and their differences
scene; similar in general style to emo( skinny jeans, brand shirts, converse/vans, hairstyles ), but with a heavy focus on bright colours; neons, rainbows, reds, and very little black. patterned/graphic pants and shirts. accessories everywhere, especially arms/wrists. “raccoon eyes”. tutus, fishnet, facial piercings and raccoon tails. even MORE hot topic than hot topic.
pyramid schemes are attractive to people because it gives the notion of job independence and freedom which everyone craves at their core because nobody is built for some stupid 9-5 office job or a retail job requiring you to stand for 8 consecutive hours everyday no one wants to work everyone wants to be free and i get now why people fall for them so easily
So my therapist has been helping me get to grips with my ADHD, and also the concept that I’m not shit at being an adult, I just can’t do things the way everyone has always told me to do them. Like every single “organize your life” books have always left me wanting to cry with frustration, and after I got hold of a copy of
Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD
by Susan Pinsky I realized that was because they primarily focus on “aesthetic” over “function”. And the function of most standard “organize your life books” is to “make things look Show Home Perfect”.
So the standard “hide all your unsightly things by doing xyz” may look nice for the first week or so, but by the end of the week it’ll look like a tornado made of pure inhuman frustration ripped through the house as I try to find the fucking advil.
To give you an example of the kind of hell I’ve been fumbling my way through the last 20 odd years: dishes will be washed and left in the drying wrack but never put away. Which means I can’t wash more dishes, which means dishes pile up, which means I can’t make food, which means I don’t eat, which means my CFS gets worse, which means I don’t have the energy to put the dishes away, and so on so forth until I have a meltdown, cry to ETD (who also likely has ADHD but has never had it confirmed) about how I can’t cope with life, and then we fix it for a while, but inevitably end up back at square one within about a week.
Pinsky’s solution to this was “remove an obstacle between you and your goal, if that means taking all the doors off your kitchen cabinets to make things easier, so be it.”
And lemme tell you, fucking revolutionary.
Laundry never ends up in the hamper??? why???? is it a closed hamper??? Remove the lid. Throw it out the window. Clothes are now miraculously finding their way into the hamper??? Rejoice????
Mail ends up spread out over every available flat surface? Put a sorting station right where your mail arrives. Put a shredder or “junk” basket under it. Shred or dump the junk immediately. Realize you only actually have two real letters that need attention, feel less overwhelmed, pay your bills on time.
Like I’m not saying this book is miraculous, but it did help me realize that I was effectively torturing myself by trying to conform to certain ideals of “perfect house keeping”, and presenting a certain image rather than just allowing myself to live in my space as effectively as possible. And why? Why was I doing that? Cause people with different lives and capabilities are perceived as the norm? Fuck that. If this was a physical problem I wouldn’t be forcing myself to conform to an ableist standard, so why am I doing it with this?
My lived space will never look a certain way, and that’s okay. It will never look show home perfect, and that’s okay. It will likely always be cluttered and eclectic where nothing matches, and that’s okay. Sometimes I will have odd socks on because sorting them out required too much mental energy, and that’s okay. Actually fuck sorting socks, just buy all your socks in the same color. Problem solved. Boring sure, but also one less thing to do, which means more time to hyper fixate on fun things. Which really, what else is my life for if not to write screeds and screeds of vampire shit posts, I ask you.
Additional rec: If y'all are having trouble w organization, you might find clutterbug on YouTube helpful. She’s one of those mom youtubers whose entire channel is dedicated to cleaning and organizing (one of my fave genres of YouTube videos) and she has a quiz on her website you can take that tells you the kind of “bug” you are and the organization styles associated with each one. P sure she has adhd herself and talks about it in some of her vids, but I think definitely anyone struggling with organization can learn something from her. She’s recommended the taking doors off of things and other helpful tips.
She talks a lot about systems that work for different people n how much visual clutter they prefer and whether they’re better suited to micro-organization or macro-organization and I think it’s been helpful for me to understand myself better (and sometimes you can have one style for certain parts of your life and another style for different parts which seems obvious but was helpful for me to understand). She talks a lot also about how everyone in her family has different styles and how she manages them and I think that could be beneficial too for people who don’t live alone and may get frustrated with one another in that department.
