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I’m a Black trans man living in the conservative suburbs of Texas without a car or public transportation. I am in need of monetary help with transportation and groceries for the rest of the month as I put my efforts toward securing housing for myself and my cat out of state.

I’m asking $200 toward transportation (I use rideshare services) and $100 toward groceries. $300 total; everything helps tremendously. Thank you!

Since the post I made last night about improving executive functioning was so popular, I figured I should pull these out of my comments and give them their own post, in case it's helpful for people.

I have worked with the publishers of all of the books linked below and can vouch for their psychology books. The publisher of most of them, New Harbinger, is an extremely credible evidence-based psychology publisher.

Obvious disclaimer that everyone's brain is different and what works for someone else may not work for you.

Is there evidence that executive functioning can be improved? Yes. This book appears to be a very thorough overview of the field, and contains both advocates and detractors of cognitive training, for a balanced perspective. From the table of contents, I would really recommend jumping straight to Part 3: Developmental Perspectives for executive functioning (EF) writ large.

Certain therapy modalities are specifically designed for skill-building in areas like impulsivity, decision-making, emotional regulation, and cognitive flexibility, all of which are EF skills or very dependent on EF skills. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is probably the best field to look at for these - skill-building in those areas is its core goal.

Some DBT workbooks:

The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook: Practical DBT Exercises for Learning Mindfulness, Interpersonal Effectiveness, Emotion Regulation, and Distress Tolerance

The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Teens

There are also a lot of workbooks for ADHD that are sometimes more broad but also can help with executive functioning:

The Adult ADHD and Anxiety Workbook: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Skills to Manage Stress, Find Focus, and Reclaim Your Life

The CBT Workbook for Adult ADHD: Evidence-Based Exercises to Improve Your Focus, Productivity, and Wellbeing

The Neurodivergence Skills Workbook for Autism and ADHD

General executive functioning workbooks:

The Executive Functioning Workbook for Teens

Executive Functioning Workbook for Adults: Exercises to Help You Get Organized, Stay Focused, and Achieve Your Goals

Yes, even if you're neurodivergent. I don't have ADHD, but it is allegedly a thing with ADHD as well. And I am autistic, and after a bunch of nerve damage (severe enough that I was basically housebound for 6 months), I had to completely rebuild my ability to get my brain to Do Things from what felt like nearly scratch.

This is specifically from ADDitude magazine, so written specifically for ADHD (and while focused in large part on kids, also definitely includes adults and adult activities):

Here's a link on this for autism (though as an editor wow did that title need an editor lol):

Resources on this aren't great because they're mainly aimed at neurotypical therapists or parents of neurdivergent children. There's worksheets you can do that help a lot too or thought work you can do to sort of build the neuro-infrastructure for tasks.

But a lot of the stuff is just like. fun. Pulling from both the first article and my own experience:

Play games or video games where you have to make a lot of decisions. Literally go make a ton of picrews or do online dress-up dolls if you like. It helped me.

Art, especially forms of art that require patience, planning ahead, or in contrast improvisation

Listening to longform storytelling without visuals, e.g. just listening regularly to audiobooks or narrative podcasts, etc.

Meditation

Martial arts

Sports in general

Board games like chess or Catan (I actually found a big list of what board games are good for building what executive functioning skills here)

Woodworking

Cooking

If you're bad at time management play games or video games with a bunch of timers

1) Make it easy, make it accessible, and make it appealing. If anything this is the most important thing, all tips going forward are based around this concept.

2) That thing you think would help you but you haven’t bought/done it yet because you’re technically surviving without it? Buy it, you need it. It doesn’t matter if people around you might think it’s wasteful or that you’re lazy, you’re not, just do it, trust me.

3) Expanding on tip #2, if you’re like me and eggs are your main source of protein because they’re quick and easy and feeding yourself is a near insurmountable task- buy yourself an electric egg cooker, make a bunch of hard boiled eggs and keep them in your fridge for quick and easy protein to add to any meal (handful of crackers, a hard boiled egg and a banana? 5 star meal right there. Or mash them up with some mayo for egg salad sandwiches). Other easy proteins include: potstickers (put them in instant ramen), edamame (they have microwaveable snack packs), chickpeas (put in salads!), beans (can of beans microwaved with shredded cheese and some tortilla chips), peanut butter (with crackers, apple and cheese, adult lunchable style), and tofu (cut into cubes, throw them into a ziplock with some seasoning and potato starch, shake that shit up and bake it until crispy).

4) Spend a little extra (if you are able) on daily use items that excite you, it will make you more likely to remember/want to do said daily task. For example: the only reason I remember to use sunscreen is because I bought some fancy japanese sunscreen that smells like roses so I get excited to use it, same for laundry detergent and body wash! there’s a gajillion different body wash scents out there, switch it up!

5) If there’s a task you continuously struggle with take a moment to think about which part of the task is making it difficult, it could be something even as small as “I don’t put my dirty clothes in the hamper because my hamper has a lid on it and lifting the lid is one step too many-”, sounds a little stupid huh? But trust your gut, it’s not stupid if it works. See tip #2 and BUY A HAMPER WITHOUT A LID.

6) If you are having trouble starting a task, break the task down further, sometimes the way I start a task is just by going “Ok step 1) stand up-“ and so forth. Don’t worry about the task as a whole just take it one step at a time.

7) If you’re halfway through a task and have to stop, leave it out. All this, “Put things away when you’re done with them.” is bullshit. you will be much more likely to finish the task if restarting it is easier because you left it out plus it’s a visual reminder. You can also create faux deadlines like “I gotta finish this project before my friend comes over on tuesday because after I finish it I can clean off the dinner table.” etc.

8) It’s okay to outsource tasks and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, humans are designed to ask for, and to require help (what do babies do when they’re first born?? cry for help!!) ask for help and receive help without shame, if it makes your life better, you are WINNING.

9) If you have one big overwhelming task that you think you need to get done before anything else, but you feel motivated to do other tasks, do those other tasks first, it’s okay. Otherwise in all likelihood (at least in my case) you’ll put everything off until the last minute and then have to do said overwhelming task and those other tasks won’t get done at all. Doing those smaller tasks also lowers the mental load and you can use them as a motivation launch pad to tackle bigger things.

10) If you notice you tend to not put something away/forget to do something, perhaps consider moving and storing the item closer to where it ultimately ends up or where you are more likely to see it. For example, my makeup, pills, and mail are all stored on my desk because that’s where I tend to do my makeup, take my pills and deal with my mail. I used to store my pills in my bathroom medicine cabinet but all too often I would forget because they weren’t in my line of sight. Now that they’re on my desk, I have multiple chances per day to pass by them, go “oh I gotta take those.” and take them.

11) Open storage, open storage, OPEN STORAGE.

12) Motivation can look like all kinds of things. sometimes the only reason I get out of bed is because I remember I have a fun snack and I get to go eat it if I get up. It’s okay to lean into those simple “animal-brain” type motivators, you’ll eat because then you can use that fun new kitchen gadget you got a daiso? Neat. you’ll shower because then you can paint your nails that fun new color you got? Fantastic. You’ll go to the dmv and do that annoying thing because you’ll take yourself out for boba after? Superb. Lean-IN to those small motivators, they aren’t stupid or childish, they are VITAL.

13) Don’t buy into the cult of “if it’s worth doing, do it properly” it’s guaranteed to set you up for failure. If it’s worth doing, do it in whatever capacity you are able to. I put sunscreen on once a day because that’s fucking better than not doing it at all and I sure as all hell will fail at reapplying it multiple times a day. If it’s worth doing, do it half-assed babieeee.

Stakes - What would happen if the protagonist failed? Would it really be such a bad thing if it happened?

Thematic relevance - Do the events of the story speak to a greater emotional or moral message? Is the conflict resolved in a way that befits the theme?

Urgency - How much time does the protagonist have to complete their goal? Are there multiple factors complicating the situation?

Drive - What motivates the protagonist? Are they an active player in the story, or are they repeatedly getting pushed around by external forces? Could you swap them out for a different character with no impact on the plot? On the flip side, do the other characters have sensible motivations of their own?

der (die) Außenseiter(in) -- outsider; underdog das Lotterleben -- dissolute lifestyle die Nippes (pl.) -- knick-knacks das Schmiedeeisen -- wrought iron

ablösen -- to replace; to remove (etwas) herausrücken -- to hand (something) over hinterherhinken -- to lag behind zermürben -- to wear down; to demoralise

bereift -- frosted enttarnt -- exposed; uncovered höhnisch -- mocking starrköpfig -- stubborn

go down a wikipedia research hole by clicking the first term you don’t understand

binge a crashcourse series end to end (personal recs: world history, history of science, big history, philosophy)

find free books on project gutenberg

download some western classics for free

borrow books and audiobooks from the libby app or borrowbox

start a commonplace book

take a khan academy course

browse MIT’s free online course materials

teach yourself to code

go on a google scholar essay dive

try the open access button to avoid some paywalls for academic media, or install unpaywall that does a similar thing

research the history of the place you where you live

tempt the wrath of the duolingo owl and learn a language

search for online streams of the local tv in your target language’s country and use as background noise for immersion points

print and scrapbook favourite poetry and literature quotes

improve your handwriting by doing handwriting exercises

learn philosophy with the philosophize this! podcast. actually just check out all the educational spotify podcasts there are many good ones

start a weekly club with friends to share new and interesting things you’ve learnt that week

clean and reorganise your study space, physical or digital

check out online museums

fave educational youtube channels that I adore: vsauce, crashcourse, smarter every day, kurzgesagt, school of life, tom scott, r. c. waldun, vsauce3, primer, mark rober, veritasium, asapSCIENCE, scishow, TED-ed

Here are some rules about how to use quotation marks, dates, times, numbers, and addresses in German texts:

Quotation marks:

Quotation marks in German texts usually look like this:

„Hallo, ich heiße Espen.“

„Ich glaube nicht“, sagte er, „aber ich bin mir nicht sicher.“

Er sagte: „Ich habe einen Apfel gegessen.“

Date:

The date is written in the form day/month/year, usually like this:

am 3. August 2023 (read: "am dritten August 2023")

am 03.08.2023 (read: "am dritten August 2023")

Time:

The time is usually stated in a 24 hour format (otherwise you add 'in the morning' or 'in the evening' to clarify):

Es ist 18:40 Uhr. (read: "Es ist 18 Uhr 40")

Es ist 4 Uhr nachmittags.

Numbers:

The points and commas in numbers look like this:

eleven thousand = 11.000 (e.g. 11.000 Maschinen)

eleven point three = 11,3 (e.g. 11,3% Umsatz)

Address:

Addresses on letters are usually written like this:

Max Mustermann (first & last name)

Musterstraße 11 (street name & house number)

12345 Musterstadt (postcode & city)

And you probably won't have much trouble once it is installed either. The default settings are reasonable, and can be changed. It's a very easy to use OS. I have had no problems doing most of the ordinary things I use an OS for. My most used programs on Windows was already things like Firefox, VLC media player and Libreoffice on windows, and they function just as fine on Linux Mint (and are indeed installed by default).

Gaming has given me some trouble, but honestly Lutris has solved most of them. Granted I run mostly so old games on this laptop that Scummvm and dosbox is a solution for many of them. And installing 32 bit libraries has solved others (running the command in this link in the terminal solved so many issues alone). I play very old games, if you can't tell.

Sure, part of how Mint is so user-friendly is that it imitates Windows graphical user interface. But to be honest, it does mean users coming from Windows are already used to the interface. And Mint imitates only the parts of it that work, like the taskbar. And Microsoft has had a bad habit of making the gui look like a phone or a tablet for years now, so Mint does a Windows-like gui better than Windows at this point.

Mint is better than Windows in being a user-friendly operating system in general. Windows being spyware and full of bloatware is well-known and LInux gets away from that bullshit. And just how polite MInt is about updates is a massive improvement. No forced reboots here while an update takes ages to install.

Mint is a long-term support distro, which means it focuses on stability over the latest updates to packages and programs, introducing updates not when they are first released, but after a while when any bugs have been ironed out. And that improves the OS's stability a lot, which I value over getting bleeding edge updates. If you want updates as soon as they happen, and are willing to tinker a bit to fix things, there are other distros which use a rolling-release model.

It is less demanding on the hardware without compromising functionality. Like the majority of Linux distros takes up way less space on the drive and less memory compared to Windows, you can get more life out of an old computer this way.

Learning to install the programs I wanted and make the changes I wanted did involve a few web searches but nothing actually difficult. And there's always a lot of people to ask who really want to help, if you can't find an answer yourself.

There are Linux versions of element, Skype, signal, discord, Firefox, Tor browser, Steam, calibre, audacity, and a ton of other programs. For a few, like f.lux, I now use an applet with a different name that does exactly the same thing.

04-18-2023

Cleaned my kitchen and my desk this morning! It feels great to have a space that is calm and not cluttered, but now I have to get actual work done.