Arty Fibro Geek

I'm so desperate keep track of everything and not forget anything at work recently that I now have a Ping stuck in the on position no matter what I do. It's the "oh I just remembered something I needed to tell you" Ping. Every time I talk to Anyone at work I can't walk away because I am Convinced I'm forgetting to tell them something! But then I can't remember it, so I just leave.

And right now I am sitting here, absolutely convinced that I said "Oh, good reminder! I better put that in my calendar" to someone in the last 4 hours. But I have no clue who or where, and I have no hope of remembering what.

Credit: Pinterest

Hello everyone,

I found some myths about ADHD on Pinterest and wanted to share it with you. I would also share the link, but it appears to not be working properly.

I’ll link it here in case it starts working or something.

I know the text can be hard to see, so I’ll put it down below:

8 Common ADHD Myths

There are more than a few myths and falsehoods surrounding Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The ones listed below are a few of the most common ones.

IT'S NOT A REAL MEDICAL CONDITION

ADHD is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. It is a proven medical disorder and has been for years.

PEOPLE WITH ADHD ARE JUST DUMB OR LAZY

Studies show that people with ADHD often have above-average intelligence and ADHD doesn't make a person lazy.

PEOPLE WITH ADHD NEVER ACHIEVE ANYTHING

Justin Timberlake, Michael Phelps, Adam Levine, Richard Branson, Channing Tatum and Simone Biles all have ADHD and have reached the top in their fields.

KIDS WITH ADHD WILL OUTGROW IT

Up to 50% of children with ADHD will still have it in adulthood. Most adults with ADHD are undiagnosed though, and only a minority get help.

EVERYONE WITH ADHD IS HYPERACTIVE

People with the Inattentive subtype of ADHD are not necessarily hyperactive. The hyperactivity exists on the inside, but can be hard to see for others.

ADHD ONLY AFFECTS BOYS

Girls are just as likely to have ADHD. However, it does seem that more girls have the Inattentive subtype which is harder to detect, so they would be diagnosed less often.

ADHD IS CAUSED BY BAD PARENTING

Wow. Not only offensive, but also blatantly false. It's highly unlikely that someone found a way to 'parent' several neurotransmitters out of their kids brain

ADHD DIDN'T EXIST IN THE PAST

Yes it did. ADHD has had several names like Mental Restlessness, Minimal Brain Dysfunction and Hyperkinetic Disorder of Childhood. The name ADHD may not have been around, but the disorder itself was.

yeah no it's totally a Thing that should get talked about more.

that's SO much in common.

(but also, studies have found that 50-70% of autistics also have adhd. that number's much lower, 20-50% for adhders who are also autistic. but that adhd number is from studies with children, because adult adhd is basically never studied. so, grain of salt there.)

I found some helpful information about executive functioning, since I know a lot of people struggle with it. There’s going to be tons of photos. So sorry in advance. I’ll leave the link here so you all can read it if you want. I hope many of you find this helpful.

Executive Functioning

But something I've only seen mentioned in one (1) Reddit post, which took some extensive digging to find, is the same effect extending to ALL things measured in numbers. Distance, weight, length, height, amount, space, volume, percentage... For me, small numbers are a bit easier, I could approximate a centimetre probably, but a metre would be much harder and 10 or 100 would likely miss the mark by a lot. Also, anything that can't be easily measured with a ruler or a measuring tape (like weight or volume) is even harder since I don't encounter reference points (like a 1kg hand weight) for those as frequently as I see visual representations of specific lengths.

It's not dyscalculia or anything like that, I'm decent at math (and the OP of the Reddit post was a math major) and I have no other difficulties with numbers, it's just a disconnect in translating real life experiences like sensory input into numbers (and possibly also inconsistent processing of sensory input? Like how the same sound volume is okay one day but hurts my ears the next?), which I think is basically the same thing as what happens with time blindness. For now I've been calling it "measurement blindness" since I've never seen a name for it anywhere, but maybe "quantity blindness" could also work?

I've talked to other people with time blindness to see if they experience this too, but so far none of them have known what I'm talking about. I'd really like to know how many of us are out there and if anyone knows literally anything actually scientific about this very inconvenient phenomenon!

Tl;dr: bc I am wordy:

It's like time blindness but for all things measured in numbers

Not dyscalculia or caused by it

Pretty much never seen it talked about anywhere

Yeah, that is a good question - why do some scifi twist endings fail?

As a teenager obsessed with Rod Serling and the Twilight Zone, I bought every single one of Rod Serling’s guides to writing. I wanted to know what he knew.

The reason that Rod Serling’s twist endings work is because they “answer the question” that the story raised in the first place. They are connected to the very clear reason to even tell the story at all. Rod’s story structures were all about starting off with a question, the way he did in his script for Planet of the Apes (yes, Rod Serling wrote the script for Planet of the Apes, which makes sense, since it feels like a Twilight Zone episode): “is mankind inherently violent and self-destructive?” The plot of Planet of the Apes argues the point back and forth, and finally, we get an answer to the question: the Planet of the Apes was earth, after we destroyed ourselves. The reason the ending has “oomph” is because it answers the question that the story asked. 

My friend and fellow Rod Serling fan Brian McDonald wrote an article about this where he explains everything beautifully. Check it out. His articles are all worth reading and he’s one of the most intelligent guys I’ve run into if you want to know how to be a better writer.

According to Rod Serling, every story has three parts: proposal, argument, and conclusion. Proposal is where you express the idea the story will go over, like, “are humans violent and self destructive?” Argument is where the characters go back and forth on this, and conclusion is where you answer the question the story raised in a definitive and clear fashion. 

The reason that a lot of twist endings like those of M. Night Shyamalan’s and a lot of the 1950s horror comics fail is that they’re just a thing that happens instead of being connected to the theme of the story. 

One of the most effective and memorable “final panels” in old scifi comics is EC Comics’ “Judgment Day,” where an astronaut from an enlightened earth visits a backward planet divided between orange and blue robots, where one group has more rights than the other. The point of the story is “is prejudice permanent, and will things ever get better?” And in the final panel, the astronaut from earth takes his helmet off and reveals he is a black man, answering the question the story raised.