Comradeship // Freechat

Some of it sounds like something I could have written in more ways than I'd like to admit. I have a feeling shades of it are pretty common and it's a reason fash use "male loneliness" as an angle for recruitment.

Anyway, my main advice is to find something you're passionate about (even if it doesn't last as a passion) and work on it regularly, whether as a project or as practicing a skill. This is not a magic fix or anything, but it can at least help with feeling like there's something concrete you're working toward.

But also to do your best to internalize that if you are neurodivergent / struggling with executive functioning, there are going to be days when it's harder to stay on task, especially if you don't have outside structure imposed about it, and that your task when that's happening is not to wear yourself down and beat yourself up about not doing enough; your task is to rest and heal where you can. See this video on different types of rest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erwj2_5MlBk (it's probably more than you'd think)

Mind you, I say this, but I have a hard time internalizing it at times myself. I think because the stronger inclination is still the Yankee capitalist view of labor embedded in me. Something to do with pushing yourself being valorous. But the machine view of people, apart from just being very cynical and dehumanizing, is impractical and at odds with basic realities. Humans, unlike machines, have good days and bad days; the quality and depth of labor output of a human can vary significantly from one day to the next for a variety of reasons; humans need long breaks that machines don't and need to have a motive for doing what they're doing (and I think the motive problem becomes even stronger if you have a thing like ADHD). And so on.

Capitalism wants people to act like assembly line parts and they simply aren't. All the more so when they aren't even in a structured environment to begin with. And trying to bootstraps structure when you already have executive functioning issues can feel very Sisyphean and fragile.

So. I don't want to come off sounding like a life coach type of thing (I can find that kind of thing very annoying, personally). My bottom line is, be real about what human beings actually are and the limitations they come with. Don't be like me and burn yourself out over and over, as if this time it will be different. But do try to find at least one thing that you can tinker with that you look forward to doing. Just be careful of interest turning into obsession turning into long hours past when you should be resting.

i feel the same way and i dread graduating high school, in a weird way i really want to stay in high school forever because graduating and going out into the world and having to deal with life all by myself is horrifying and i realize going with the flow doesnt work anymore. love u comrade and i will think of u