Avatar

Not (Doing) Enough

@invisibleoctopus / invisibleoctopus.tumblr.com

edge (he/they) | 26 | ♎ | queer + nd | im the dirty proshipping freak in ur dni

my wife: who was that problematic author, the one who did enderman's game? uhhhh... orville redenbacher?

me: can I post that

me reading one of the links in that moral ocd post and SELF SHAMING/CRITICISM CAN BE A COMPULSION??? OH..........

i genuinely think ocd is incredibly underdiagnosed bc i will see people posting what are obvious rituals, compulsions, intrusive thoughts, spiralling, hyper morality, etc and its like Have You Considered This Might Be An Issue

it isnt actually good or normal to have moral dilemmas every day about which posts you reblog. it isn't actually good or normal to check and recheck every message you send "just in case" you sent porn instead of a 'hi how are you'. it isn't actually good or normal to believe that your day will only go well if you have a specific keychain or whatever with you. like i'm not going to diagnose you but i do think some of you need to look into obsessive-compulsive disorder beyond "ha ha funny man wash his hands" portrayals.

I always tell people that even if they’re not pursuing diagnosis they should at least look at OCD support organizations’ pages on moral scrupulosity because that mindset is one you can literally see people developing in real time online.

I find this can help chip away a bit at stigma and confusion for people who have misconceptions that rituals can’t be mental (much of what people will describe as “checking for thought crimes” sounds a LOT like a mental ritual), as well as guide them towards tools for breaking the cycle of intrusive thoughts, obsession and ritual—or at the very least help persuade them that rituals reinforce, rather than “fix” those obsessions.

Like I do absolutely think people, especially ones who have access to counseling already, should raise and ask about these issues, including “I’m wondering if I might have OCD because…” (that is part of how I got diagnosed!), but these resources can be helpful for those who maybe haven’t had that kind of thought pattern before but encouraged themselves to do so because of social pressure to the point where they now have to un-learn it (essentially where it’s become disordered thinking) but will maybe balk at the idea of diagnosis because it hasn’t always been like that, or similar situations.

I try to emphasize that tools like this are open to anyone for whom they might be helpful, whether or not they have diagnosed OCD. Especially because some people who may get a diagnosis in future can still educate themselves now, and perhaps work towards one that way.

But for real, since I’ve started talking about OCD on my blog I’ve had literally half a dozen people talk to me (anon or not) about “…oh shit I had no idea OCD could look like [xyz thing]” and have The Realization, some of whom I know got diagnosed later and others of whom felt empowered to look into it when they hadn’t before because they were worried that seeking help with scrupulosity would be “appropriating OCD experiences” (people struggling with scrupulosity being scrupulous around needing help is definitely a bigger thing than I realized—it’s not just stigma or ignorance!).

Which is why I try to emphasize that everyone can and should take some time to learn about this stuff! The worst that can happen is you go “hm that doesn’t describe my experience” and you still know more about OCD and are better-prepared to support people who do have it.

Just saw on Quora a guy asking if Poland was more German or Russian and every reply was a Polish guy detailing the ways they wanted to kill him

quick linguistic history lesson. the term “woke” originates from african american communities to describe being “awake and aware” of the current sociopolitical climate. this term has been used since at least the 1930s. it wasnt until 2014 during the ferguson protests that the term entered the wider vernacular. mainly as a result of black twitter. and as is common with many things coined by the black community. it was repeated and commercialized to death to the point where now most people only using it mockingly. including people on the left. the point is. “woke” is not a bad word. the alt right wants it to be one.

Whenever I take a long car ride I end up exhausted afterwards, and I’m always like “why am I so tired? I was just sitting around doing nothing all day.”

But the answer, it turns out, is I was doing something. Riding in a car jars your body in many directions and requires constant microadjustments of your muscles just to stay in place and hold your normal posture. Because you’re inside the car, inside the situation, it’s easy not to notice all the extra work you’re doing just to maintain the status quo.

There’s all sorts of type of work that we think of as “free” that require spending energy: concentrating, making decisions, managing anxiety, maintaining hypervigilance in an unfriendly environment, dealing with stereotype threat, processing a lot of sensory input, repairing skin cells damaged sun exposure, trying to stay warm in a cold room.

The next time you think you’re tired from “nothing”, consider instead that you’re probably in situation where you’re doing a lot of unnoticed extra work just to stay in place.

opening my body’s task manager to see what’s taking up all my cpu

Also, just to add: we should not lose sight of the fact that the mammalian brain is a ridiculously  energy-hungry organ. A human brain makes up 2% of the body’s weight and volume and 20% of its caloric requirement. Thinking is physical work.

Competitive chess players carb-load before tournaments. And lose weight in the process.

It took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize that thinking physically takes up energy. I would be like “why don’t i have energy I’ve been sitting inside studying all day” ma'am it’s because the phrasings, evidences and vocabularies in your brain are eating the energy

If I’ve been really focused on crafting or something, there will invariably come a point where my brain is just like “Warning! Warning! Out of Energy!”.

Getting a snack usually fixes it.

I get post-exertional malaise from just… Going places. I sit in a wheelchair, I take one bus and spend some time in a different building… And when I get home, I’m sick.

This post helped a little cause I always feel bad about it.

leaving the house is abso-effing-lutely EXHAUSTING and it’s okay to BE exhausted after having to do stuff

Legit, the exertion of driving a vehicle is why you should have a water bottle and some snacks in your car if you have to drive any sort of distance.

Avatar
bernardperroud

Utroba Cave in the Rhodope mountains, Bulgaria. Carved by hand more than 3000 years ago (?), it was rediscovered in 2001.

Archeologists hypothesize that an altar built at the end of the cave, which is about 22 m deep, represents either the cervix or the uterus.

At midday, light seeps into the temple through an opening in the ceiling, projecting an image of a phallus on to the floor.

When the sun is at the right angle, in late February or early March, the phallus grows longer and reaches the alter, symbolically fertilizing the womb before the sowing of the spring crops.

These people were drawing dicks on the ground with the sun in 1000 BCE. All you fools messing with Sharpies need to step up your game.

“Hee! That looks kind of like-”

“Come on, self, don’t make it weird.  It’s just a cave.”

*reads article*

“Oh.”

Its come to my attention that a lot of people do not know how to deal with a hot car in summer. A lot of people will get back to their car, after hours of it being parked in the full sun, and will open the door to be blasted in the face with furnace-level temperatures, and you'll just clamber in and shut the doors and leave the windows closed and you'll start driving that thing, and you'll wait for the air-conditioning to battle and overcome the heat.

Thats. Insane to me.

The inside of a car can get up to 40°C/104°F hotter than the outside temperature. Why would anyone get inside that????? It's gonna take your air-conditioning at least half an hour to combat that and bring the temperature down to something even remotely reasonable, and in the meantime you're sitting there risking heatstroke.

Now, I understand that it's currently winter in the northern hemisphere, which is where most of this site lives, but a) I'm in the southern hemisphere and today was Lots Of Degrees, and b) y'all should read this now and commit it to memory or queue it to reblog in summer or whatever, because it boggles my mind that some of you get into a car whose interior is literally oven-hot.

So!!!! Some tips!!!!!

  • Get a sun visor. One of the big ones that goes inside your windshield. You will not believe how much cooler those things keep your car. Get one, use it. Leave it to bounce around in your back-seat on cooler days, but have it on hand for the stinkers. They range in price but two-dollar stores usually have them for pretty cheap.
  • Leave the windows of your car cracked open. It doesn't have to be much. Literally just the tiniest amount will mean that the heat building inside your car has a way to escape, meaning the interior temp will naturally be kept lower. The larger the opening, the better, but depending on the neighbourhood you're parking in, maybe it would be better to have them open just a sliver. Even the tiniest crack will help. Ever tried warming up an oven with the door open? It doesn't work well. This is the same concept. If there is a way for the hot air to escape, the inside of your car will stay a lot cooler than it otherwise would have.
  • If you're fancy enough to have an openable sunroof (that's the dream) then leave that open a bit as well.
  • Youve just gotten back to your car and opened the door, and its hot as fuck in there. Open another door, ideally on the other side of the car, and let the hot air escape. If you can open all four doors and the boot, then thats even better. A bunch of the hot air will flush out. Not all!!! But a lot. Give it anywhere from a few moments to a few minutes, depending on how much of a hurry you're in.
  • Get in, start the car, open all the windows. Yes, even if you hate having the windows open.
  • Put the air-conditioning on full blast, and make sure the recycle is turned OFF. This means it pulls fresh air from outside the car (hot, but less hot than inside) and pumps that into the car, further displacing the heat inside the vehicle.
  • Start driving, still with the windows down. Once you get up enough speed, the force of the air from outside coming in will blast the rest of the excess heat out of the car.
  • The temp inside the car will now be roughly equivalent to the temp outside the car. Still hot!!!! But MAJORLY less so, and majority more handle-able by your air-conditioner.
  • Put all your windows up, and switch the air-con over to recycle. This means it takes the air in the car and cools it, then spits it back into the car, meaning that with each cycle, the air gets progressively cooler a lot faster.

If you do this, your car will be a hell of a lot more comfortable a hell of a lot sooner than it would be if you got into a 60°C/140°F cabin and just.... endured that, until your aircon could overcome it.

This post has been brought to you by an Australian who knows not one but TWO people who get into 60°C cars and wait 15 to 30 minutes for their car to drop back down to a temperature that's even REMOTELY tolerable.

i love how i go on tumblr way more like the day directly after i have an insomnia night like... go sleep deprivation go

You are using an unsupported browser and things might not work as intended. Please make sure you're using the latest version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge.