executive dysfunction is telling yourself for two and a half hours that you need to shower bc you smell like your workplace and you absolutely Cannot do Anything Else until you shower, doing Any Other Thing before showering is illegal!!! but you still haven’t for some reason??? you’ve just been sitting on your bed in a towel scrolling tumblr for 2+ hours thinking “I need to shower right now immediately” and growing increasingly frustrated that you are still not clean and you haven’t eaten or done your laundry either
ok actually no I’m reblogging this because a) I am clean now (and I smell amazing, thank you), and b) I had a heckin Realize and I wanted to share it with y’all in the hopes it’ll help someone else with a brain like mine.
I figured something out about myself a long time ago– it’s only just now occurred to me that I was in fact solving a problem caused by executive dysfunction, and I haven’t been implementing this solution lately because my brain went “that’s a relatively new term to me and therefore a Different problem that requires a Different solution”. thanks a lot, brain.
anyway, long long ago, before I knew these fancy schmancy Official words, the problem, as I phrased it to myself, was such:
sometimes I get Stuck. I was doing something, or on my way to doing something, and then… I just. got stuck.
“Stuck” looks like refreshing my feed or dashboard repeatedly. or it looks like staring at a spot on the wall. or chewing my fingernails. or picking at a stubborn sticker. all the while, my brain drifts through various unrelated topics I wouldn’t be able to recall if asked. sometimes I can get Stuck for hours before realizing I am Stuck. sometimes I get so Stuck that I go to bed that way (feeling especially bad for being unproductive) and I have to just reset everything by sleeping.
one day I asked myself, “why is this happening? why am I stuck, right now, at this moment in time?” the answer, as it turns out, was pretty simple: I was trying to make a decision, and I got distracted. I haven’t moved forward because I haven’t answered that one question or made up my mind.
let me rephrase this in terms of executive dysfunction: many people have expressed that it feels like knowing you need to do a thing but not feeling “ready” to do it. many with ADHD may also be familiar with the feeling of needing things to be “just so” before you embark on a task- you need your setup to look a certain way, or you need to set a timer, or have the right music playing, etc.
when I get Stuck it’s often because I got lost somewhere in that setting-up process, and my brain took the opportunity to nyoom off into Distraction Town.
getting myself Unstuck is solved, 95% of the time, by tracing my steps back to the original decision I was trying to make- often something small and inane- and then troubleshooting from there. (out loud! verbal processing is totally punk.)
“what was I trying to do?”
“was I trying to decide between two things?”
(the answer’s usually yes.)
“what were they?”
“okay, let’s decide.
“okay, that’s settled. let’s move on.”
and then I am free as a bird to nyoom in the direction of The Thing I Wanted To Do All Along, in the amazingly disorganized, scattered, yet rapid-fire way that I do many things.
so!!! in the case of my first post, where I hadn’t showered for 2 hours? turns out I had been trying to decide what music to listen to in the shower. (another hack: my chances of getting Stuck while showering decrease by 75% if I have music playing to help me keep track of time.) I couldn’t immediately make up my mind, got lost in thought, got distracted, and drifted. once I stopped and asked- “why am I stuck?”- then I remembered- “oh yeah! I wanted to listen to music”- and then decided- “I want to listen to Daft Punk’s Discovery album”- I was finally heckin able to shower. and also eat, and also throw my clothes in the dryer.
and may I add I only zoned out once, during the slow part of “One More Time.” 😛
I’m not saying this is a foolproof method. sometimes I don’t have a reason for being stuck, and that’s okay! I’m also not saying this is how every adhd brain works. it’s just how my brain works, and I’m sure there’s at least a few who can relate. for those few, I hope this helps!!
a lot of people are reblogging the original post without the update and leaving frustrated comments and that makes me sad! if I can find ways to hack my brain than so can you! executive dysfunction is a real and frustrating challenge, but don’t buy the lie that there’s no way to work with it or around it!!!
I keep catching brief glimpses of primitivist discourse about how indoor plumbing is bad and we should be shitting in the woods like our disease ridden forebears
The jobs are not ‘taken’. Why not use the appropriate verb: the jobs are ‘given’ by businesses to those who will do tough and demanding labor.
Those hard workers are almost always immigrants.
There are plenty of Americans who do “tough and demanding” labor, though.
The phrasing you’re looking for is “people who will work under conditions that wouldn’t be tolerated by “legal” citizens (because they inevitably violate a number of rights and laws that we take for granted,) but who won’t complain or go to the authorities because THEY would be the ones getting arrested and punished, rather than their abusive employers.”
BIG DISCLAIMER: i was 9 when 9/11 happened, so this might be more about my own crystalizing tastes than anything else. i think it’s a pretty darn good theory tho and other people have validated it.
BIGGER DISCLAIMER: i am not saying that country music prior to 9/11 was free from nationalist, racist, misogynist undertones – i just think that these themes became more the norm!
MY HOT TAKE:
with very few exceptions, including goodbye earl, before he cheats, and daddy Iessons (side note – all women!) 9/11 ruined country music. around 2014 onward we’ve got margo price, sturgill simpson, jason isbell etc., who are making country music great again (wink), but those folks are mostly considered “alternative” country. the mainstream country music for well over a decade now is a glut of trash performative patriotic / working-class-but-not-really lab-crafted budweiser-sponsored nonsense that has managed to sound rebellious (or has convinced its fans that it sounds rebellious) without ever actually questioning any power structure. so much so that artists who ACTUALLY criticized the government were literally blacklisted for nearly a decade (the dixie chicks)
pre-9/11 country music, though not perfect or ideologically pure by any stretch, did not have the raging american flag painted truck boner that comes to mind for a lot of people who say “i like everything except rap and country”
SPECIFICALLY, toby keith’s “courtesy of the red, white, and blue (the angry american)” (2002) literally destroyed country music. it was a direct answer to the 9/11 attacks and war song in support of the invasion of afghanistan. the lyrics read like a disjointed feverish email chain letter forwarded from your great uncle sprinkled with glittering american flag gifs and heavily saturated pictures of bald eagles. the entire song is lifted from an estimated 248 peeling bumper stickers collected from rusted trucks on cinder blocks in overgrown yards, cut up and arranged to fit a catchy, formulaic tune that is almost certainly the background music playing in george w. bush’s head at all times.
“we’ll put a boot in your ass, it’s the american way
and uncle sam put your name at the top of his list
and the statue of liberty started shakin’ her fist
and the eagle will fly, and it’s gonna be hell, when you hear mother freedom start a’ringin’ her bell”
country music and the new country musicians that toby keith paved the way for became so pro establishment and so unquestioningly nationalistic that, again, the dixie chicks who went against this grain were blacklisted by the industry and received death threats from country music fans. hell, there are folks who STILL froth at the mouth at the mere mention of the dixie chicks.
9/11 killed outlaw country – how can you sing the praises of law breakers when your main circuit consists of singing to troops? there are some great classic country songs critiquing the police state – especially from johnny cash and merle haggard – now country music artists hold fundraisers for FOPs. new country music is basically in-law country music.
you don’t have to write a pro-bush patriotic anthem to be part of this post-9/11 ruination. playing meaningless songs about living in the heart of (read: white) america, eschewing the city (read: not white), and cracking open a cold one with the boys for “authentic” country music is also important to the war effort.
there’s a progression of themes here:
post 9/11 top tier: war anthem, vocally patriotic, directly used as pro war propaganda;
which paved the way for: “things used to be so much better” thinly veiled racist laments, good for campaign ads;
which paved the way for meaningless party anthems – attempts to make things “like they used to be” and craft a reality that neither the artist nor listener likely ever experience.
that brings us to what most people think of today when they say they hate country music: the country party anthem – “tiny hot gal in tight jean shorts who can drink beer like the guys, she doesn’t like beyoncé Like Other Girls, oh she’s so into me and my truck, i’m gonna take her fishing after i finish sowing my corn – sung by a guy who’s never touched a tractor” – has overtaken the tragic, done me wrong, despairing country ballads of tammy wynette, george jones, and even up into pre-9/11 contemporaries like reba mcentire and george strait. you didn’t necessarily have to be country to relate to their pain. now you have to perform suburban redneckness to enjoy luke bryan.
when was the last time you heard a sad country song?
after 9/11, cowboys (whether or not they had ever been near a cow) weren’t allowed to be sad anymore (no more done me wrong country), and they certainly weren’t allowed to question authority (no more outlaw country). partying hardy became the most important American Thing and if you don’t sing about that, our Enemies Will Win.
so – understanding that country music has always had bad stuff, and that like any genre it suffers from commercialization, 9/11 DESTROYED COUNTRY MUSIC. and toby keith gleefully helped destroy it.
for some further evidence of the decline of country music, please listen to the dixie chicks’ “long time gone” which is an indictment of the industry (i believe it was written before 9/11 but my point still stands – the genre was on the decline and 9/11 was the major cultural event that hastened the decline).
maybe i am a curmudgeon – almost every generation of country music has had its own “country music is not what it used to be” anthem, but i really think something distinct happened with 9/11.
Can confirm. Alan Jackson and Toby Keith, the blacklisting of Dixie Chicks, literally the only singer I can think of that ever spoke out against anything from 2001-2010 was Johnny Cash. I’d also say that the uber-patriotic stance lead to the shiny, vapid County Boy® nonsense that lead to so many of the solo artists all sounding and looking the same.
Johnny cash wrote an entire album about the destruction of Indigenous lands and of Indigenous people, Kris Kristofferson has been an activist most of his career working closely with the UFM, Woody Guthrie was a social justice advocate and union activist, Dolly Parton has tackled explicitly feminist issues even in the 60s and has been an avid supporter of her lgbt fans, Willie Nelson made Farm Aid to try and help farmers in danger of losing their farms due to mortgages keep them and is also an avid supporter of LGBT rights as well as marijuana legalization, Lorettea Lynn wrote about birth control in the 70s and had her song banned, i could go on!
When in the correct hands, country music is a powerful medium, but post 9/11 it’s been handed off to apathetic white men who have turned it into the most useless genre of music out there.
Okay, I looked up the video and Robin Seplut seems to be this guy (from where, I’m not sure, somewhere in Europe but I don’t know the language) who has taken it upon himself to take care of all these stray cats living in or around this abandoned flat. The kitten above was a case where the previous video with him (her actually, by the looks of it) involved Robin taking them to the vet due to vomiting and diarrhea, hence the blunt title that the kitten is completely healthy.
He never speaks in his videos either, the most you get out of him is the descriptions and comments on the videos and him beckoning the cats. This guy has a very wholesome channel.
He’s been feeding and looking after stray cats what looks like all over town, somewhere in Russia. I’m pretty sure this kitten is Melissa, who he ended up adopting.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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