I'm losing my mind over newborn hedgehogs fucking look at them they're so creature

what the fuck. who allowed this

i always assumed the quills only grew after birth so i was worried but

also now i know theyre called hoglets and thats awesome

IG : @emperorofmischief

I want to add this article here … they not only find it relaxing, it gives them control over their environment and it makes their stress levels go down!

Speaking of therapy, I say, as though we're old friends, and you're not a stranger trapped in this metaphorical elevator with me and you can hear the suspension wires starting to fray.

I've been doing a lot of work recently that's focused on imposter syndrome and the feeling that no matter how well or how much I do, I'm not good enough. That I'm somehow tricking everyone into thinking my work is actually good.

Some days it's a minor niggle in my head that I can gentle and soothe with logic and affirmations. Or smother, depending on the mood. Other times it's loud and all-consuming and the mental anguish it causes me is so real I can feel it twitching in my muscles. This desperate fight-or-flight instinct with nowhere to go and nothing to fight but myself.

Anyway, because I'm several types of Mentally Unwell™, I was switching between workshop sheets ahead of next week. Filling in different forms. (Trying to get a good grade in therapy) And I got my "recognize your harmful ADHD coping mechanisms" worksheet mixed in with the "you're not actually lying to people, you just feel like you are because your brain is full of weasels" worksheet, and seeing them side by side made something go topsy turvy in my head, and I just had to sit and breathe for a couple of minutes until the urge to scream passed. Because it clicked, it all suddenly clicked.

The reason the imposter syndrome workshops and therapy sessions aren't sticking was because I do routinely trick people into thinking I'm someone I'm not.

Because I'm masking my ADHD for their convenience.

I've always known there was something wrong with me. My neurotypical peers made it abundantly clear I didn't fit in or was failing in some way I couldn't see nor remedy, no matter how hard I tried.

So I compressed myself into a workaholic box of hyper-competence in the hopes they'd stop noticing the flaws and exploit like me instead. And then subsequently lived with the daily fear that if they looked too close, they'd realize I'm a monumental fuck up with enough personal baggage to block the Suez Canal.

If you ever need someone to burn themselves to ashes for your comfort and convenience, I'm your gal.

Or I used to. Until I had a bit of a breakdown, and the rubber band holding my brain together snapped and pinged off into the stratosphere, never to be seen again.

Unfortunately, the trauma of living like that didn't also fuck off and instead left a gaping maw where my personality ought to be, so now I get to deal with that aftermath.

And it's that aftermath that's affecting the imposter syndrome shit. Because yes, I am hyper-competent and good at what I do-- but it doesn't feel real because that is how I mask.

And the truly frustrating thing is I am good at what I do. I am not pretending. I worked hard to be good at this. It just feels like I'm dicking around because 90% of my personality turns out to be trauma masquerading as humor in a trenchcoat, and having people genuinely like something weird I'm doing is so foreign my brain has decided it's just another form of masking.

I'm pretending to be a good author so people will think I'm a good author, and my brain thinks we are in Danger of being found out. We are in Danger, and writing is Dangerous because then people will know I'm Weird and not whatever palatable version I've presented myself as for their NT sensibilities.

Like the neurotic vampire with a raging praise kink wasn't an obvious giveaway.

Anyway. I got nothing else. Thanks for listening.

I'm going to go be very normal in another room and not stare into the abyss of my own soul for a bit.

I brought this post up with my ADHD therapist today (who also has ADHD), and she got so still that I thought our Zoom call had frozen.

Turns out she just needed to stare into her soul for a bit and it looked like this:

Every so often, I see notes from this post go past in my activity feed, and the tags really do look like a mass of people screaming as the suspension wires holding up the metaphorical elevator snap and we all plunge into the abyss.

Sorry/happy to have helped rip the bandaid off that coping mechanism for you. Hope it wasn't too load-bearing...

Anyway. I'm starting EMDR trauma therapy for this soon because I haven't been able to gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss DBT my way out of this one, so, y'know, really puts the trauma of masking in perspective when you have to resort to the same desensitization and reprocessing therapy you use to cope with the cPTSD from literally almost dying.

I'll let you know how it goes.

EXCUSE ME THERE IS A PLANT THAT CAN MIMIC FAKE PLANTS?????

IT'S CALLED A BOQUILA TRIOFOLIOLATA AND IT'S FUCKING WITH MY BRAIN

IT APPARENTLY CAN MIMIC OTHER PLANTS AND AT FIRST I WAS LIKE "oh cool man it must take it's genetic code and copy it or feel the roots or something like that!! :3"

AND THEN I READ AN ARTICLE ON IT AND THESE FUCKING PARAGRAPHS HIT ME LIKE A BUS

LIKE READ THIS SHIT

WHAT THE FUCK MOTHER NATURE

I went to find the article. It's fascinating.

In retrospect, consider the number 1 thing every grade-schooler knows about plants is they take in light, the idea they might be able to see should not wreck my shit as hard as it does

Twenty years ago, February 15th, 2004, I got married for the first time.

It was twenty years earlier than I ever expected to.

To celebrate/comemorate the date, I'm sitting down to write out everything I remember as I remember it. No checking all the pictures I took or all the times I've written about this before. I'm not going to turn to my husband (of twenty years, how the f'ing hell) to remember a detail for me.

This is not a 100% accurate recounting of that first wild weekend in San Francisco. But it -is- a 100% accurate recounting of how I remember it today, twenty years after the fact.

Join me below, if you would.

this is such a specific intersection of 3 of my favorite things, i’m kinda obsessed

#スコティッシュフォールド #scottishfold #茶トラ #ロロ #lolo #コケティッシュフォールド #コケティッシュホールド #レッドタビー #cat #neko #ねこ #猫 #ネコ #茶トラ #cats #ピオ #pio #piopio おはロロ&おはピオ〜😆😸👋

Apparently people who don't have executive dysfunction think that actually working on something is the hardest part of doing something. And that's why they get mad that you call the rest of the project "easy" after you've finally worked through doing the plan and know what to do when you're working.

So when you're through with the epiphany of how to make it physically possible to make the thing you're making, and you're sharing the plan with excitement, because the hard part is over, and now you only have to get your hands moving and do it, they get mad at you like

"it's not that easy! It's a lot of hard work! >:C"

they mean it, because

to them, working is the hardest part.

They don't have to fight their brains to get started. They don't have to fight their way through making the choices, making the plan, making yourself make the thing. People who don't suffer from executive dysfunction think that the hardest part is actually doing the thing.

when you have executive dysfunction, it’s like... you’ve just clawed your way up a long steep embankment of loose gravel, and you flop exhausted into the construction site, and you’re like “oh thank fuck, time to lay some bricks, i absolutely could do this all day” and the guy who drove to the site goes “what’s wrong with you man bricklaying is hard graft!”

not as hard as crawling up the gravel mountain bro

there’s also good hard and bad hard. doing the thing might be hard, but at least you’re doing it; it’s good hard. just getting to the thing in the first place is hard and it’s fucking miserable. executive dysfunction puts so many bad hard things in your way before you can get to even the good hard things.

sometimes i describe it as my transmission is broken, every thing else works fine but no matter how hard I pump the gas pedal, I ain't getting anywhere because I can't

“Our Lady of New Frontiers, Nichelle Nichols”

My last painting of 2022, and I wanted it to be a painting carrying me into the new year, a tribute to an amazing and inspirational woman.

Star Trek has been a show I have watched since I was a wee one. I started with TNG as a child, but when I finally watched TOS in college, its impact was undeniable, both today and especially during the time it aired.

Although the famous speech says “final frontier”, Nichelle Nichols was a woman leading the way onto new frontiers, a beacon of hope, resilience and possibility. So that is what I wish to carry with me into the new year.

prints can be found through my site: www.lindsayvanek.com

I think one thing we need to address in the US if we want to de-stigmatize multi-generational households that include ADULTS from multiple generations, is that parents need to learn how to have adult relationships with their offspring.

Should my daughter deign to live with me when she's an adult she will not be my some vassal that has to obey my household rules. She graduates into being a peer in setting and managing the boundaries, cleanliness and appearance of our home.

Too many parents want to have relationships with grown ass adults in which the parents maintain control and authority, and in which they leverage money and history to get their way from an adult who, very reasonably, wants to be able to make choices and have influence. And then those parents wonder why their kids keep their distance!

But then people act like I've lost it because I let my 5 year old pick the color of paint in her room- a room I seldom spend time in except to take care of her, and a room in which I want her to be comfortable and happy.

I'm not gonna let her choose a paint color for the kitchen right now, because she's capricious and bad at negotiating so we can pick a color we all like. But when she's an adult, if she's still living here? Why shouldn't she get to influence her environment?

People like to have agency. We limit the agency of children because they make choices without the full ability to understand the results (sorry baby, you are gonna get vaccinated for pollio even if you don't like it. You don't understand pollio).

But limiting an adults choices in their own home, just because you don't think that home should be a real home for them because it's just for you, is kind of an asshole move, to me.

No need to argue with me if you disagree. You can have your own opinion.

But I couldn't treat my kid that way, and I have seen enough to know that not every parent treats their adult children like permanently incompetent interlopers.

I didn't just buy this house for ME. I bought it for MY FAMILY. My baby is my family, and she will be no matter how old she gets.

if I were an elf and bitches were like "the age of elves is ending...we must go into the West..." ok??? I can live being a minority??? I don't really need magic I'm chill with like. being here? "the age of men is beginning" great. fantastic. I'm friends with quite a few men actually. they have really good cuisine. Maybe they'll do a better job handling things than our lot who consistently have apocalyptic wars. I could live in a city if I really had to. Damn head off into the west if it's all that to you. have fun on your weird boats.

so happy to present my contribution to the @clanoftwozine !!