Yeah I know that feeling, being the most motivated only by severe pressure of the quickly approaching deadline 😅 How I managed through uni with a good grade is beyond me sometimes lol. Meds helped a bit with that for me though

Yeah unfortunately 😭 just gotta stock up on the jokes for the real ones - or until the topic climate hopefully eases up in the future. Have a good library of gold at the ready!

I think it was just how you worded it originally that got people mistaken on what you meant haha. I at first assumed you meant the “don’t stop working” kind too… Unfortunately some people do have that way of thinking

But yeah skill development can be fun when we find the right ones for us. I’m an artist and do that in my day-to-day but I’ve always dipped into programming on and off through my life… I wanna soon put some proper effort into learning more than just the basics of a language (and without relying on vibe-coding).

It’s nice to have personal goals

Yep exactly! I used to feel guilty when I ever had a day where I did nothing other than eat, shower and game. Now, I look forward to it.

We all need our breaks to recover and recharge for the week ahead and society kinda tries to push us to feel bad about that.

Sometimes I’m working on a project or my job… Sometimes I’m working on/for myself. Still work, just the latter is paid in a different way ✨

Thanks for the censor, it still jumpscared me but it was easier to recover ❤️

Unfortunately, there’re a lot more UK rags owned by Murdoch than just that one :( and many others owned by other rightwing billionaires. It’s insane we have got to this point where our majority sources of our local news is mostly all foreign billionaire + politically captured

Lmao that was a good one

How I wish the average person would realise that they can still make jokes about trans people as you can about any group of people, just make jokes (like this) where it’s laughing with us, not at us. Where there’s no maliciousness and we’re all involved and laughing rather than being the butt of it.

Maybe someday we’ll properly get to that point. Thanks for the giggle :3

I can call you a dom but stop leaning on the switch, you’re turning the lights off :p

Yep, the world sucks at the moment… Gotta do what’s best for us in our smaller/local worlds and take each day at a time

Do what’s best for yourself ❤️

But we’re not talking about “making fun of people” - which also isn’t the same as the active demonisation, villanisation and sometimes even dehumanisation of trans people, especially from the media and in politics, rather the topic is about laws actively being made against an entire demographic of people.

And freedom of speech is protection against being arrested for your speech. It’s not relevant since no one here has suggested anyone be arrested for it.

That’s rough… Good luck though!

Hopefully you’ll have some possible downtime after the assignments? Even just for a few days or so?

It’s a shame it’s not open source, but I’ve found Affinity to be a great alternative to Photoshop + Illustrator. Especially with them recently going free. I’ve always felt GIMP has been a little… Lacking. I hope one day it has that large burst of development and catches up, like how Blender did so long ago… As I’ll always prefer open source.

I’m sadly stuck with Adobe for stuff like Substance Painter + Designer for now :/

As long as we acknowledge that having downtime, and doing activities for yourself and for your mental health is also productive. Even if that occasionally includes having a day where you’re doing very little and resting.

Burnout and such also reduces your efficiency with other tasks anyways (and can damage mental health). It’s why I disagree with the wording of “people are expected to work like machines” because even machines are given downtime for maintenance. Some people seem to expect other people to work without downtime or self-care in the name of productivity and it’s insane

The issue with this argument is HRT in trans women after 2 years reduces muscle and bone density down to the levels within the average ranges of cis women… Removing the “biological advantage”. This is widely studied and recognised in science, and it’s not even new science…

It’s the constant intake of the higher testosterone levels that causes the increased baseline strength which lowers as the hormone does. HRT for Trans Women includes both Androgen blockers (blocks testosterone) and estrogen to fill its place. Hence “hormone replacement therapy”

I’d say it’s less “being honest” and more than most people are ignorant (accidentally or maliciously) to just how much HRT affects the body and how it affects the body… Just like how trans men significantly gain baseline strength over 1-2 years into HRT

Which is exactly why sports organisations like the Olympics (before Trump pressured them to drop trans people) required a set amount of time of HRT medical history and blood tests to check hormone levels are in average cis women ranges to allow trans people to take part.

But if you believe the people on the right demanding the erasure of trans people, you’d assume it’s just “men with the biological advantages dunking on women” while ignoring all effects the body undergoes. Which then allows the constant attacking of trans people for simply existing (even though majority trans people aren’t even trying to get into professional sports… But that doesn’t make for a “good” news story or political point scoring when fighting to demonise trans people…)

Yeah, it all depends on the person :p it’s been great for me though!

Hope it does improve for you! Did you go through titration (trialing meds at a low dose and slowly increased over the weeks while being monitored) for your meds or did your doctor just give you meds and wave you away? I’ve heard of some people having that happen which sucks…

Like, for me I was on methylphenidate (concerta) at the start of titration and had to report back any side effects (and my blood pressure, weight etc) and each week the dose was increased til the positive effects were the strongest with little/no side effects. I’m pretty sure if I had told them the meds weren’t working at all or not helping much, they’d have taken that as a sign to try a different medication… There’s a lot of different types of ADHD meds and they affect us all differently (or with some, not at all or with negative side effects)

I ended up having some negative effects with methylphenidate, and was switched over to Elvanse and it was a night and day difference with no side effects (for my body - I’m not saying Elvanse will be like that for everyone :p).

Hopefully it’s just the wrong med for you and you find the right one eventually! Good luck :)

In one way, I agree, but unfortunately with Executive Dysfunction it can also affect your need to eat or look after yourself, as your brain just fails to assign or prioritise tasks. It gets really bad for me if I am or was recently overstimulated, or if I’m having a depressive episode.

I’ve had days where all I needed to do was have a shower, go to the shop, eat food then go play a game since it was the weekend. But the dysfunction hit so hard I couldn’t do any of it so just sat staring at a wall for an hour and doomscrolling for another few hours. I’d have preferred to have just played the game, but since that was one of my planned tasks, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Took majority of the day before I could break out of it and get to the shop before they closed. Almost sounds odd when explaining it but the brain is an unusual thing sometimes…

But yeah I do agree that sometimes people work themselves too hard and need to find time to stop and give time to themselves

Ah yeah I can understand that. Though I’m thankfully not going through it at this moment, I’m well acquainted with those depressive episodes :/ it definitely adds to the issue…

Be easy on yourself though, may the food and shower be pleasant for you ❤️

I think it can be caused by a lot of different neurological conditions (ADHD, Autism etc) and also a good few mental health conditions (Depression, Anxiety etc)

But it’s hard to point to exactly what causes it for each person individually without looking into it with a doctor

Damn, have you tried other meds other than the Adderall you mentioned in another comment? If not, it could be the wrong meds for you (Though saying that, I have no clue personally on how much perimenopause adds to the issue, so I’m sorry to hear that 💔)

Hope it gets easier for you though!

Oh I wish, that would make me sleep instead 😹