My partner was also the one who suggested I get checked. I hope you'll be able to find the support and help you're seeking soon, because it really makes a difference.
All those flaws you've kicked yourself over for a lifetime suddenly become manageable and doable with medication, in my own experience. It's such a: "Wait, that's it? That's all it takes?" moment.
I agree. Society was not built upon accomodating the neurodivergent, and we've had to struggle a lot as a result. I've also thought about it a lot as well, so there's nothing wrong with that.
I spent a lot of time growing up wondering why I wasn't "normal", like everyone else. I grew up unable to socialise well with my peers and unable to keep up academically with the demands of my academic environment. I was always struggling to stay awake in class, or focus on a subject I desperately needed to learn. I had to drop out of the sciences because I was struggling horribly and my teacher treated me quite badly for my lack of ability to keep up.
I wonder now if I could've done better if my parents were aware of ADHD and had gotten me the help I very desperately needed, because my mother is still in denial to this day that I'm anything but normal, only lazy, selfish and inconsiderate. I was called a lot of horrible things because of things I couldn't control. I developed depression, but frequent therapy and counseling as of late has reduced how intense the mood swings are.
So, given a choice, I likely would've wished to be more normal in my own eyes.
When I went into university and met incredibly accepting and loving people, I really thrived. It's just sad that many like us have to struggle undiagnosed for such a long time, only to realise that with medication, managing our shortcomings would have been made so much more achievable.
I still spend a lot of my time unmedicated because I've come to accept and love myself, including the ADHD diagnosis that I got on my own last year. The diagnosis helped me find mechanisms that actually work for me, and I'm better off for that.
I am no less of a person in my own eyes, but the judgement of a society is a lot of weight to bear.
Man, I remember laying my hands on Pokémon Blue before I could even read most of the words there. My uncle had bought it for my cousin brother who was 4 years younger than me, lol.
The older Pokémon games are a linear enough experience that literacy helps, but isn't required since as a child they'll likely explore everything anyway and will eventually trigger the right flags to allow for progress. I played like that up till RSE.
Gosh, sorry to hear that. I'm also "functional", but I'm that duck paddling madly underwater to get anywhere.
I thought my psychiatrist was also going to say I'm normal because my parents insisted I was when I gave them the childhood ADHD assessment form.
I read a few questions to my mother because she didn't want to read it herself, and stopped at about 5 before giving it to my dad to fill out. The final question being: "Does your child have trouble completing schoolwork or household tasks?"
Her answer: (on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being normal and 5 being very bad ADHD) 1, you didn't have trouble, you're just lazy.
All my life, hearing "you have potential, but you're just lazy", or "I didn't see you dozing off playing games". No, I'm not lazy, and yes, I have fallen asleep gaming, multiple times.
I hope you'll be able to find that diagnosis or at least proper support for your struggles. Just because we function, doesn't mean we can't function even better with help and medication.
I'm in my 40s and I'm retroactively angry about my life.
I'm a lot younger, but I can relate. It feels like we've been robbed of a much better life we could've had, had we known sooner.
If you're not always on medication, like me, I try to actively do a few things:
I generally have problems with going to bed on time (it's still 2:30am, but I'm working on it...), and I realised that I could go to bed more immediately if I brushed my teeth when I took my shower so I wouldn't get into task paralysis doomscrolling on my bed and either staying up way too late or falling asleep with bad oral hygiene.
Other things is like putting out the laundry basket in the middle of your path the night before so it's easier to grab it and bring it over to the washing machine the next morning. I use Google assistant to set a timer now so I'm more likely to remember to hang the clothes out to dry. It's not perfect, but I've at least had to rewash my clothes less due to me forgetting.
There's still that agony of "oh god I have to do a thing", but on days you really need to get small (but seemingly insurmountable) tasks done, I make a list of all the tasks I need to do, write a number next to the task in the order I have to do it, and then note down roughly how long it takes to do something.
Then, I set the timer, and set it to count down. It provides just a little additional push to start doing things, even if it's an absolute slog.
P.S. could you tell me more about how your task paralysis and workaholism would impact you? That seems quite interesting
In some countries that have lower currencies, a AAA game (like Cyberpunk) on PC or a Switch game (think Pokémon) can cost up to 5 days of minimum wage, even with some regional pricing.
Piracy makes gaming somewhat affordable since PCs may be available through cheaper 2nd hand markets and can be used for other purposes besides gaming.
I learned to crack open my laptop shell and replace the battery, which saved me 30 bucks when capacity was dead and I was getting a spicy pillow in the works.
My model had an easily searchable servicing guide, and I'd followed it to replace the thermal paste as well. That being said, I am looking for a future replacement as it no longer runs some indie games I have and there's no way to upgrade its internals to newer standards. My dear laptop is future e-waste, as it pains me to say.
This industry needs to go back to focus on repairability. It would push for more sustainable part and product designs, which has become a big factor in purchase consideration lately.
The FATE series. No, not the anime, the Diablo ripoff computer game with stolen music sold by WildTangent. I was a kid that got by playing only demos, and this game was one I reinstalled over and over again to get those free plays.
It's a pretty simple dungeon crawling game with procedurally generated floors where you have to get to floor 5x and defeat the named boss there so you can reincarnate and start it over again.
I reinstall it every couple of years to play it. It's got hardly any story, quests are generated for the floors you're about to reach, stats are randomly generated. It's just pure gameplay, though a bit repetitive as it can be. I love that it has a similar fish mechanic to Torchlight for your pets.
I remember seeing a nostalgia post on the game on Reddit and the developer of the game series had commented on the post. It was like meeting one of your heroes. Definitely very memorable for me.
The third game supposedly has all the content from the first two, so here's the steam link if anyone's curious.
No, but I understand that. I've been on bad terms with my own mother following an incident last October where I swore at her when she refused to hear me out when I tried to explain myself. The full thing is obviously a bit more complex.
Our only interactions since have been arguments where she's said very verbally abusive things and it's hard. She's done better than her own mom, who's just generally verbally abusive by only doing so while mad, but there's some things you can't say without having to make amends later, and she's run up a list.
Difficult families are difficult. I hope things improve for you as well.
True, I think in Japan kids weren't considered human until they survived to a certain age due to how child mortality just worked in the past (the exact number slips my mind atm).
Based on Linfamy's video here, sometimes parents would even "return" children shortly after birth, just because childbirth was safer than abortion measures of the time.
I got my Sofle V2 in 2022 as a job change present for myself. I've since changed jobs again, but the Sofle V2 continues to be the keyboard I bring into office.
For a long time I was just bringing it into work in the box it came in, but during the job change period, I bought some fabric, an Apple TV (gen 2) travel case and replaced the moulded foam with a fabric base. Had to do a fair bit of sewing but the result has been pretty great.
It gets a lot of curious comments in the office, and I've gotten fairly proficient at Colemak DHm. I'm planning on upgrading the microcontrollers so I can enable tapdance soonish.