vass

In my AP Art class, there was a girl who was just starting to experiment with mixed media. At this point she was still playing around, trying to decide what direction she wanted to go with her portfolio. So one critique day, she brought in an abstract canvas with some rhinestone highlights and painted and real peacock feathers. She loved sparkles and peacock feathers so she thought she’d try introducing them a *little*. And after everyone had given some input, the teacher gave her his advice, VERY roughly paraphrased here:

“So here’s the thing… I do not like this style. These are just elements that do not speak to me personally, but I see that you like them, and you’re doing interesting things with them.

“My biggest critique is, I only merely *dislike* this piece. I want you to make me HATE it. Go crazy with the things that you like. Don’t hold back trying to make it palatable to people like me. Because I am NEVER going to like it. And if the audience does not like it, it should drive them crazy seeing how much YOU love it.”

Her portfolio was chock full of neon colors and glitter and rhinestones and splashes of peacock feathers and it was a delight. Our teacher despised every piece lol, but she got great marks and I think even won some awards. And more importantly, she was happy and proud of the results. Because she didn’t limit herself by trying to appeal to people who were never going to enjoy what she enjoyed.

there's an app called one sec which BLOCKS all other apps on your phone. It can also restrict specific apps. It injects a delay in opening the apps - you can customise the message and delay length.

Android (One UI, maybe just samsung, I'm not sure) phones have settings that can whitelist specific apps during specific times or when a particular "mode" is active. This is under Modes and Routines.

In my experience these are the only ADHD apps that work.

More ADHD pro tips: uninstall as many apps as possible

Set your browser to close tabs automatically after a certain amount of time inactive (mine is 7 days I think). If you REALLY need the open tab, bookmark it.

If you really need the delay, set your phone/ computer browsers to clear cookies daily. This will force you to need to log in to websites every day. This introduces DELAY and FRICTION between you and the easy, habitual distractions.

DELAY and FRICTION are short term solutions. The habits run pretty deep and humans can get used to anything; you'll figure out ways to go around the blockers you put in place in time, and you'll need to create new blockers. Use the time to address the longer term ROOT CAUSES, because that's what's gonna actually make it stick.

ROOT CAUSES is harder. What would you rather be doing, if you weren't on your phone? Journal. Journal a lot. Take long solitary walks (LEAVE PHONE AT HOME!) and try to figure out what you really think, what you really want, when you're not on your phone.

I find I tend to use the phone to Escape. I have worked pretty hard to build a life I don't always want to escape from, as well as some mindsets. I know another very common mode is Seeking, and whatever you're trying to find in Phone chances are it's not there.

I will second One Sec, though! The delay on opening apps is helpful when you’re stuck in that loop of opening an app, closing it, and then immediately opening it again. Plus they have ways of blocking apps that are harder to get around than the built in screen time limitations.

I like to read fanfiction in bed and will stay up all night. If I have it hard block after a certain time, I’ll get all grumpy and defiant and decide I don’t need to listen to that and turn it off. So instead, starting at a certain time, I can only open the app for fifteen minute increments, but as many of them as I want. I have to wait 12 seconds between opens and a screen comes up to encourage me to do a round of box breathing, and then I can open Firefox again. After 8 opens, I have a new setting to only allow five minutes at a time, AND each time I open the app it adds 10 seconds to the wait before I can open it again. That means if I really really want to finish a chapter I can buy the friction gets worse and worse each time until I’m waiting well over a minute to open it again. Usually once it’s over a minute I’m out of “the zone” enough that it’s pretty easy to decide I can stop reading and go to sleep.

Anyway I’m a huge fan, it helps so so much and has dramatically improved my quality of life around phone use.

did you know that they are capable of imitation? don't worry! apparently no one else does either, but i have personally overheard them doing terrible approximations of not only red-winged blackbird songs, but also rooster crowing, ring-necked pheasant squawking, and what i now believe to be an eastern meadowlark song (which i have captured on video, something about which no one gave a fuck!!)

they are supposed to be drawn to marshes with deep water, over which multiple females will weave nests in single male controlled territories of typically 1k to 6ksqft. the waters of this marsh are wading depth, and the males control micro-territories of what cannot be more than 500sqft each-- territories that they share neutrally with marsh wrens.

A great many people who crossed the same alligator spike pit moats as me told me it's wasn't that bad, and then casually revealed they were gifted grandpa's spike-proof suit and had alligator-charming lessons starting in toddlerhood, and mom's map of the spike layout to study. They thought this was normal, and genuinely believed they had navigated the alligator spike pit moat without an unusual amount of assistance.

As a corollary, the alligator spike pit moat does not, in fact, weed out unserious and/or terminally mediocre individuals, because many of those people have been gifted alligator-grappling tools and spike-resistant boots. Alligators and spikes deter a great many enthusiastic, hardworking, and talented people who don't have a bunch of fancy protective gear and extensive training in alligator spike pit navigation.

As a second corollary, I am very grateful for the unusual amount of assistance I received in crossing the alligator spike pit moat.

A disturbing number of people did, in fact, acknowledge that the alligator spike pit moat was intended to keep people like me away from people like them and loudly expressed their displeasure that I was not eaten by alligators. One of them used the word 'besmirch'.

An equally disturbing number of people have attempted to use my successful navigation of the alligator spike pit moat as proof that my kind are not being kept out on purpose-- if I navigated it, everyone else is clearly just being lazy. Many of these people seemed to hope that my adventure in the alligator spike pit moat would make me see their point of view re: the alligator spike pit moat being necessary to ensure meritocracy bootstraps were happening in a meritorious and bootstrappy manner. It did the opposite.

“A Fragment out of Time”, published in 1974. Kirk / Spock. page 1 page 2

Good parents forgive this debt. Bad parents expect it to be repaid, one way or another. The accepted currencies are varied and cryptic and might be mostly innocuous or they might be horrifically criminal.

Many families don’t realize that there is a debt until the child defaults on it somehow. That could be for any reason—the child simply fails to deliver on the parental investment by not adequately being the child they paid for.

[Image description: Horizontal rectangular graphic; the background is the Disability Pride flag, with adjoining red, yellow, white, aqua, and green stripes slanting together from the top left to bottom right corners on a dark gray background. White text in the center foreground says "Disability Pride: / Suggested Reading / Columbus State Library / library.cscc.edu."]

July is Disability Pride month, and that means it's time for a bigger, better, updated Disability Pride reading list!

A Disability History of the United States, by Kim E. Nielsen

Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist, by Judith Heumann

About Us: Essays from the Disability Series of the New York Times, Peter Catapano and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, editors

Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice, by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and how to Be an Ally, by Emily Ladau

Disability as Diversity: Developing Cultural Competence, by Erin E. Andrews. Companion case study volume here.

Exile & Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation, by Eli Clare

The Minority Body: A Theory of Disability, by Elizabeth Barnes

Nothing about Us without Us: Disability Oppression and Empowerment, by James I. Charlton

The Problem Body: Projecting Disability in Film, Sally Chivers and Nicole Markotić, editors

Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies, Nick Watson and Simo Vehmas, editors

My Wonderful Life as a Vegetable, Lars Feldballe producer/director

The Disability Rights Movement: From Charity to Confrontation, by Doris Zames Fleischer and Frieda Zames

Disability Experiences: Memoirs, Autobiographies, and Other Personal Narratives, G. Thomas Couser and Susannah B. Mintz, editors

The Routledge Handbook of Disability Activism, Maria Berghs, Tsitsi Chataika, Yahya El-Lahib and Andrew K. Dube, editors

Black Disability Politics, Sami Schalk

Year of the Tiger: An Activist's Life, by Alice Wong

Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century, Alice Wong, editor

From the Periphery: Real-Life Stories of Disability, by Pia Justesen

Young, Disabled and LGBT+: Voices, Identities and Intersections, Alex Toft and Anita Franklin, editors

Disability, Media, and Representations: Other Bodies, Jacob Johanssen and Diana Garrisi, editors

The Routledge Handbook of Disability Arts, Culture, and Media, Bree Hadley and Donna McDonald, editors

Occupying Disability: Critical Approaches to Community, Justice, and Decolonizing Disability, Pamela Block, Devva Kasnitz, Akemi Nishida, Nick Pollard, editors

Use our catalog to search for more titles on this topic!