i thiiiink i’ve done it like once before, yeah LOL (i also don’t remember oof)

my brain is an endless repository of gif reaction images and pop culture references huehuehue

i am alive, and sort of okay but also sort of not u.u Been dealing with a looot of jaw pain from teeth problems, and fatigue because I’m switching from Concerta to Wellbutrin so I haven’t been taking my meds 🥲

I’ll be starting the Wellbutrin tomorrow after my trip to the dentist, I’m nervous but hoping it works to treat my ADHD better. Concerta helped in some ways but it was really unpredictable and inconsistent, and required waaaayyy too many factors to ensure it would do its job, factors that I could just, y'know, implement and rely on without the meds making me feel way too hyper and unfocused (which is really all they were doing, like yeah they were helpful to get my energy up but once my energy was up it was REALLY hard to use it efficiently and wound up just being overstimulating and exhausting x.x)

Concerta did at least help me get some of my shit on track, but it had diminishing returns for me and frustrating side effects sooo my doc and I are hoping that Wellbutrin (a non-stimulant SSRN) will help balance me out better. Might take Concerta again alongside it in the future (but at a lower dose obv) if I need that extra energy boost.

Biggest thing rn though is def my jaw. I’ve been anywhere from a 4 to an 8 on the pain scale for the last month now, every single day. It’s made it very difficult to get work done, esp when I have a tendency to clench my jaw when I’m drawing. No clue if it’s bruxism or TMJ or another side effect of the Concerta or just my wisdom teeth stirring up trouble, but I’ll be finding out tomorrow. At the very least, the wisdom teeth def need to go, they’re in pretty bad shape and I’ve been putting off extracting them for waaay too long. My husband’s gonna be at work so my work husband is coming with me instead lmao

but yeah! that’s my lil’ life update. shit’s hard rn but i’m hoping (begging) it’ll ease up soon. at the very least, i am alive and that’s what matters 🥲 ty for checking in <3 (and for being patient while i crawl through the shit pipe lmaoo)

Ouu IDK how much help I can offer because I am still VERY bad at navigating my ADHD some (most) days, but ! I’ll do my best to list out some tips that have helped me, all of which you can implement with or without meds (though medication can absolutely make it easier to implement these tips, medication unfortunately isn’t available to everyone , and those who are medicated can undoubtedly attest that they’re unfortunately not a miracle fix-all drug, you still gotta do a lot of the work yourself sigh)

• Put your phone further away from your bed so that in the morning you’ll have to physically get out of bed to turn off your alarm (and at night you won’t doomscroll before bed!) You do still have to force yourself to stay out of bed, but having some kind of morning routine can help you do that (putting on your slippers, making coffee, brushing your teeth, washing your face, etc etc.)
• Break tasks down into smaller steps! So if you have a chore like “do the dishes”, break it down into steps like “clean bowls” “clean spoons” etc. This will help it feel more manageable by allowing you to focus on individual aspects of the chore, more achievable because each step is a lot smaller, and more rewarding because you can identify progress in smaller, more tangible amounts.
• If you struggle with hydrating, get some sugar-free fruit flavor packs for water. Turning water into sugar-free juice doesn’t make it any less water! (and this logic can be applied to other food aversions - need to eat vegetables but hate eating them? Melt cheese on top of them or mix ‘em into something you like! The nutrition is still there even if you have to disguise 'em.
• Head full of tangled up thoughts? Write them down wherever you can. Can be in paragraph form, lists, etc. and it doesn’t matter if you’re writing in a physical journal or just in a Notepad file. The act of writing your thoughts down can help them feel less overwhelming and trapped inside your own head.
• Don’t put it down, put it away.
• Just because you start a task doesn’t mean you have to finish it all at once. Dishes piling up in the sink? Laundry needs to be done? Pick one thing you can do to progress that task and focus on that one thing, like cleaning a single cup or putting your socks in the hamper. Often times this can even trick your brain into motivating itself to complete the chore, because you’ve already started it so you may as well finish it. And if you can’t, well, you still made more progress than not starting it at all!
• When you get home, keep your shoes on if you can (or if you don’t wanna track dirt and mud inside, switch to a pair of shoes that are clean). I find getting necessary chores done is easier when you’re still dressed, get into your comfy clothes *after* they’re finished.
• Pick the path of least resistance, not the path you think will “overcome” your ADHD in ways you think will be acceptable to others. It’s a disorder, you can’t force your brain to operate like how you think a neurotypical person’s brain works. If something isn’t working for you, then find ways to achieve the goal in ways that will, even if it seems “silly”. For me this looks like doing as many dishes as I can before my dinner is finished cooking (because I need clean dishes to eat anyways and I need *something* to pass the time while I wait lmao), or using Spongebob toothpaste because it tastes better than Colgate (I hate mint, bleh), or streaming when I need to get work done because it’ll force me to focus for an audience. The goal is still achieved, even if it’s not the way a neurotypical person might do it.
• Be wary of apps and products that promise to “fix your ADHD”. These are grandiose promises that can’t actually achieve such a thing, as ADHD is a complex disorder that affects people in many different ways and is, again, a disorder. That said, there are apps that can be very helpful, but don’t explicitly market themselves as fix-all’s to ADHD. The apps I like to use most for managing my tasks and scattered thoughts are Obsidian, ToDoIst, Pomofocus, and Finch. Other than those, I just use Google Calendar for my scheduling because it can be integrated with other apps (and I can use it from both my desktop and phone), and if I’m away from my phone, I’ll just scribble things onto note paper or whatever’s accessible (like receipt paper when I’m at work lmao)
• Be patient and kind with yourself. If being hard on yourself was the solution, it would have worked by now. Seriously, this one’s hard to remember because a lot of people with ADHD (myself included) often feel a lot of shame towards themselves for not being able to “just do the thing”, but ADHD is an executive functioning disorder, as well as a dopamine regulation disorder. Just like how you wouldn’t shame someone in a wheelchair for not being able to use stairs, you shouldn’t shame yourself for not being able to do things the “conventional” way, especially when those conventions were created by neurotypicals who don’t live with the same hurdles we do. Celebrate all the small wins you can, forgive yourself when you fail, and look for any accommodations where you can find them, even if those accommodations are non-conforming.
• Have a body double. This can be someone who’s physically near you or even just an accountability buddy who you chat with and share progress with online. For example, Banshriek is not just my assistant, but someone who subconsciously helps keep me at least somewhat on track with Rekindled (even when I’m late on updates, I do still fail at keeping on track lmao) because now I have another person on the project who’s both helping me finish new episodes but also wants to progress the story and release new episodes to y'all just as much as I do!
• Set up blocks of time for specific things. When you wake up, open a Notepad file or even just write down on a scrap piece of paper what you wanna get done that day, and give it specific times to do those things. Oftentimes creating a list of just vague things to accomplish can do more harm than good, because it just winds up weighing down on us and we don’t have any sort of realistic roadmap or sense of how long these tasks should take (and that can result in creating unrealistic expectations to build Rome in a day lmao). Adding in timeframes for each task helps you rationalize how much time you actually have to spend in a day, and prevents you from spending too much time on any one thing if you’re at risk of doing so. For example, if I lay out my own day, I might write out something like “1 PM - 4 PM: Tattoo appointment” “5 PM - 6:30 PM: Dinner” “7 PM - 10 PM: Rekindled Page 2 flats” “11 PM - 12:30 AM: Video game break” “1 AM - 2:30 AM: Rekindled Page 2 flats and/or shading”, etc. I keep the timeframes wide enough to allow for some overflow in case I underestimate how much time I really needed (but also, this means sometimes I overestimate it too, which gives me more time in the day to progress on to the next thing by getting the task done sooner than I expected!)
• I have no miracle tips for this because it’s still my biggest problem BUT - get more sleep. Seriously. I know our time blindness compels us to stay awake as long as we can to finish all the things we put off throughout the day, and because going to bed means “tomorrow” will happen and we’ll have to go through all those unbearable routines to “get our day started” and all that junk, but for the love of god, get more sleep. You don’t have to suddenly go to bed at 8 PM like some kind of old person, but try and go to bed even just a half hour earlier for the next few days. And then when you get used to that, go to bed a half hour earlier than that. Small changes create bigger and more consistent results. I know you really want to stay up to do whatever it is you’re doing, but you and I both know that 5 hours of sleep each night isn’t sustainable and it’s not making you feel good because it’s just creating that negative feedback loop of wishing you had gone to bed earlier and wishing you had gotten out of bed earlier and wishing you weren’t so lethargic all the time and wishing you could have your mornings and afternoons back. Even medication doesn’t magically fix this problem, you really do just gotta try and go to bed a little bit earlier, one night at a time.
• Not a tip but a resource, How to ADHD is one of my favorite ADHD-related Youtube channels of all time, they do a great job at analyzing the unique struggles of ADHD and offering unique and ADHD-tailored solutions, like getting past the Wall of Awful or tackling the ADHD Tax.

Phew, that was a lot of tips! But I hope they help you or anyone else reading this. Ultimately how I navigate my life and symptoms are gonna vary from how you navigate yours, and I know that a LOT of these tips sound like the same tired bullshit a lot of neurotypicals tell us, but the reason why it’s tired bullshit is because NT’s tell us to do these things as if they’re common sense and easy, but they’re not for someone with ADHD. They are still helpful and in some cases necessary, but it’s about learning how to approach them with an ADHD brain rather than trying to conform to them from the point of view of a neurotypical. It’s not as easy as “just drink more water” and “get more sleep”, but we can create our own ways of achieving these goals, whether it’s adding raspberry flavor to our water or saving our favorite non-electronic hobbies (like knitting, playing instruments, etc.) for wind-down time before bed.

Sooo yeah! I hope that helps! It’s currently 12:30 AM here so I’m gonna go work on Rekindled for another hour and a half or so, and then wind down for bed with some gaming uwu (I’m gonna try to get to bed by 4:00 AM tonight, I promise! I said it out loud here so now I’ll do it for real >:0)

i am alive, and sort of okay but also sort of not u.u Been dealing with a looot of jaw pain from teeth problems, and fatigue because I’m switching from Concerta to Wellbutrin so I haven’t been taking my meds 🥲

I’ll be starting the Wellbutrin tomorrow after my trip to the dentist, I’m nervous but hoping it works to treat my ADHD better. Concerta helped in some ways but it was really unpredictable and inconsistent, and required waaaayyy too many factors to ensure it would do its job, factors that I could just, y'know, implement and rely on without the meds making me feel way too hyper and unfocused (which is really all they were doing, like yeah they were helpful to get my energy up but once my energy was up it was REALLY hard to use it efficiently and wound up just being overstimulating and exhausting x.x)

Concerta did at least help me get some of my shit on track, but it had diminishing returns for me and frustrating side effects sooo my doc and I are hoping that Wellbutrin (a non-stimulant SSRN) will help balance me out better. Might take Concerta again alongside it in the future (but at a lower dose obv) if I need that extra energy boost.

Biggest thing rn though is def my jaw. I’ve been anywhere from a 4 to an 8 on the pain scale for the last month now, every single day. It’s made it very difficult to get work done, esp when I have a tendency to clench my jaw when I’m drawing. No clue if it’s bruxism or TMJ or another side effect of the Concerta or just my wisdom teeth stirring up trouble, but I’ll be finding out tomorrow. At the very least, the wisdom teeth def need to go, they’re in pretty bad shape and I’ve been putting off extracting them for waaay too long. My husband’s gonna be at work so my work husband is coming with me instead lmao

but yeah! that’s my lil’ life update. shit’s hard rn but i’m hoping (begging) it’ll ease up soon. at the very least, i am alive and that’s what matters 🥲 ty for checking in <3 (and for being patient while i crawl through the shit pipe lmaoo)

They’re .abr brushes so they’re supported by any software that is compatible with ABR. Most of the brushes actually work best in Photoshop due to its unique brush engine (and the fact that many of them were designed for Photoshop first), but can work in both Clip Studio and Procreate as well.

Unfortunately I’m not sure if they’d work in Medibang as IIRC it relies more on a bitmap brush system similarly to IbisPaint, and converting ABR to that kind of format is a lot easier said than done (plus even if it was doable, you’d undoubtedly lose a lot of the core functionality of these brushes).

That said, if you don’t have access to an ABR-compatible software, your closest equivalent to the brushes within that pack would be anything that resembles watercolor, gouache, pencil and ink, and impressionist brushes. Those are generally what a lot of those brushes are save for the pattern stamps n such, so even if you can’t access those brushes specifically, I’m hoping you could find Medibang-compatible brushes that are close to the real thing so long as you look in the right places !

It is an unfortunate drawback to the nature of these brushes that they were designed for Photoshop first, it means they inevitably aren’t going to work in every software. I’ve looked into converting them in the past but the process would just be way too extensive for me to do on my own and again, it wouldn’t guarantee the brushes would even resemble their ABR versions which would defeat the point of trying to convert them in the first place 😅 Still, I hope you’re able to find some Medibang equivalents using the tips I mentioned above, and if you want an ABR-compatible software that won’t cost you your firstborn like Photoshop, Clip Studio’s perpetual license goes on sale at least 2-3 times a year, and Procreate is still incredibly cheap on the iOS store if you have an iPad.

Sorry I couldn’t be of more help! Hopefully some day Medibang will be ABR-compatible, Clip Studio wasn’t always compatible with ABR either so the odds might be low but they’re definitely not zero ! :‘0