mhmmm

Possibly a stupid question, but are you having a menstruation cycle, and if yes, are you tracking it? I was not able to infer the likelihood by your previous responses...

I'm asking because a certain amount of being high energy before and during ovulation, and more down between ovualtion and menstruation is very common, with some people having more severe bodily symptoms (PMS) in the down phase, and there is also a supercharged version of PMS with mainly depression like symptoms, called PMDD. It's caused by a sensitivity to hormonal changes and can develop at any point in life. The monthly cycling sounds a lot like it.

(Possibly not applicable to you, then please ignore it, but maybe useful info for others).

Not for me, I literally don't notice it unless I know it's happening right now and "listen" for it.

But I've been told by other patients that they feel it as light-headedness or dizziness, may feel their heart pounding or like they can't breath, or like the heart/body skips a step, and if the arrhythmia exacerbates to fibrillation, people lose consciousness very quickly (and may or may not die if untreated). Maybe that translates to your experience, but I don't know. Generally it's described more as a continuous feeling for some time, from a couple of seconds up to hours. But it varies a lot. ECG monitoring helps there.

But my specific arrhythmia were also found quite a long time ago, by chance during a standard exam for sports competition fitness as a child. So for pretty much my whole life I've been barred from stimulant and basically psychopharmaceutical medication of any kind, since pretty much all of them can cause or exacerbate heart conditions.

Seeing as I totally don't notice episodes, a scenario where someone didn't go to that exam and unsuspectingly walks around with that same or similar heart condition completely untreated, and kills themself by self-medicating and slipping into fibrillation is totally possible.

That said, it's also not a very wide-spread condition, just a rare possibility. Still, please continue to advocate for yourself to have that checked out!

(Edited for an attempt at brevity)

The problem I have with self-medication (of ADHD meds or any other substance) is not so much that people are doing it - as you said, it's a rough world out there, and you do what you can to survive and function.

But - "Medical supervision of treatment" is (or should be) not just a couple of empty words. All ADHD meds can have serious side effects and contraindications that you don't necessarily know about beforehand or notice by yourself. Discovering your un-diagnosed heart disease by taking amphetamines without supervision and getting life-threatening arrhythmia can just feel like "I'm getting a bit dizzy for a time after taking the meds, no need for concern, I'll just take it easy" (I know, because I have arrhythmia, and wouldn't know it if I hadn't had an ECG, as I barely notice it happening). Medical supervision should catch that kind of thing, that's what it's for.

You and I don't know who reads this and what kind of conclusion they will draw, and what kind of risk assessment they do beforehand trying it out themselves. Giving you the benefit of the doubt that you have done your full research, and are aware that there is a chance you might harm or, if particularly unlucky, kill yourself doing this (especially if you cannot verify the purity of your medication, it could be cut with anything), and have weighed that against the benefits of being able to do work and function better in everyday life, I have no problem with you self-medicating or talking about doing that.

But if you don't transparently communicate these risks, and how you came to your conclusion that this is the only way for you, it looks to others like an easy way to forgo the harder, non-medical, not-as-effective but also not-as-dangerous ways to treat yourself, implying that everyone can and should do it this way.

And I understand why some communities want to curb that from the get-go. Some rules are written in blood.

Absolutely, yes. I managed to get "has to be treated in a clinical setting as it's actually exhaustion depression" burnout trying to keep a job in research. And I wondered for the longest time afterwards how on earth I am supposed to earn a living being that way.

It really helped to realize that as long as I can pay for rent, food and other basic needs, I am not actually required to a) stick with anything I do or any path I choose and b) be accountable for my life or "career" to anyone other than myself.

With that in mind, I am now trying to find another way - I read (among other things) the book "How to be everything" by Emilie wapnick, which is basically career advice for people who want/need to do lots of things instead of having one specialist career path. It helps you explore what you actually need in terms of money and free time and variety, and gives you some example ways of how you could structure your life to meet these needs, with pros and cons.

As a result, I now set myself on a track to qualify for a job field which would allow me to meet my modest financial needs by working part time (yes, it's software development), while still being paid during qualification. I'm hopeful I'll always find something interesting to do in that field without requiring that soon-burnt-out need-to-know-everything-about-it-NOW passion for it all the time (which was quite necessary in research to tolerate the shit working conditions, and which I cannot sustain), and allows for ample time and energy to cycle through temporal interests at my leisure.

I can't tell you yet if this idea actually works out for me, but I feel that I've covered all my bases to be sure that it feasibly could (which included an internship to make sure the working conditions aren't shit, as well. Discovered they can be, but aren't everywhere, so I tried to keep where they wouldn't be for the getting paid part). I'm really quite happy to be on the way to finding it out, though. I'm starting in September. Check back in 4 years and I can tell you for sure!

My household is on a mission to make "websing" the word, as short for web searching. "I'll have to webs that!" is just really funny to us... and works in German, too! "Das sollten wir mal websen."

it's not caught on yet outside, but we remain hopeful.

As my bullet journal I'm using a Midori MD notebook (A5, one page a day) with a pretty calendar sheet wrapped around for looks and the "official" plastic cover for protection. It's nice, but not for those who dislike ghosting (I don't care though). For the next year I'm thinking of going back to leuchtturm, mostly because I will need a more calendar-like format and less space, so it doesn't make sense to lug around nearly 400 pages. And leuchtturm is pretty solid.

As my longform journal I'm currently using a nuuna A5+ notebook barely fitting into my Galen leather notebook cover. Some inks bleed through but I really like the 3mm dotted lineature and the outer design. I used to use the galen A5 tomoe river notebooks (blank) with this cover (same purpose), but I only have one left with the original TR and felt like delaying it's use for another year. TR is great for showing ink properties, but feels a little bit flimsy.

For work I have a B5 stalogy notebook without cover, great for dated short notes. Also TR paper.

For various personal projects (like PNP characters and notes) I tend to use Clairefontaine paper bag notebooks, as they are good, look nice but are comparatively cheap.

For random notes I use the dotted A5 spiral pad by Brunnen. Works great for notes, even shows some sheen, bleeds through for wet pens, though. Since I'm going back to university next month, I'll probably invest in an A4 one again.

Compared to magpies, hooded crows are much more grey than white in the lighter areas, but I see what you mean!

That's a hooded crow, or Corvus cornix. They are pretty much the default kind of crow where I live!

Klare Sache: Bürgergeld muss runter, und fertig ist der Lack!

/s

I've also seen her feed them off of her trash food find in a way that makes me fairly sure that those three smaller ones have been in her nest not too long ago, wide open beaks and everything... only to have one of them grab the whole thing and run off to eat it alone.

She didn't even follow them to get it back. Very "Oh, kids will be kids, and I wasn't that hungry anyway..." energy.

I've been there, as well. Luckily (or something like that), I'm sufficiently poor to be noticably anxious about spending more than 200 EUR in one go, and with that managed to convince myself that now that I know the parts and their price, I can hold off until I have accumulated half the extra funds by saving (drew up a saving plan and everything as the last step of obsession, and then re-focused on saving).

That was in January. I have stopped tracking my money and actively saving for this by April, and now the new PC build is again just something I wanna do some day, but not right now.

Negotiating with myself to first work towards possible and reasonable, but ultimately unlikely financial circumstances, and then predictably running out of steam, is my go-to strategy for expensive stuff I really want right now, but don't actually require to fulfill a need. Works surprisingly well!

I process ideas and concepts mainly visually, in forms, colors and movement entwining (the movement especially is the most important!).

Verbal thoughts occur, but they are more of a chorus, or chord, rather than one voice - there is always several aspects sounding out together, and it can be hard to pick the dominant one to verbalize for communication.

There are thoughts which have already been translated to words before and I can communicate then easily, but also deeper areas or newly occuring "movements" which are still only visual, and I have to put in a lot of work to put them into words.

There's more, but this is as far as I have pre-verbalized...

Only this - I once read a book that talked about minds as a rainforest, brimming with life and built in layers and impossible to fully grasp at once. I think that metaphor works pretty well.