zero escape 999 is like. something terrible happened that i can’t tell you about, but i can show you. i am calling for help and you’re answering. we cannot exist without each other. all of our stories connect in this painful and necessary way. i love you. i love you. i love you.
professors who have only interacted with other academics for years: “what do you MEAN you don’t know multi-variable calculus yet??”
professors with small kids: “thank you for not putting the lab equipment in your mouths when I turn my back”
Bringing this back to share that one time I slept through part of a zoom meeting with my PhD advisor (who has a toddler) and he told me it was fine, that just meant I was a good sleeper
Professors who work with graduate students: if you finish the multivariate calculus work this week you can put one (1) piece of lab equipment in your mouth
Once had a professor whose previous career was giving educational zoo tours to children, so he’d say stuff like, “now let’s meet our friend, acidic keratin!”
in high school I was in the child development class where we ran the preschool. Class ended and I moved onto the next class, an art class. Sit down next to my friend who was working on a serious piece and casually asked for my thoughts on it, looking for serious critique.
Preschool mode had not turned off so I looked at it, clapped my hands and said “WOW Really great work! Amazing!”, in that same kind of voice you’d say to a toddler who presented you with a random scribble on a piece of paper.
Friend loved the reaction at least lmao.
hey i saw these tags and i think i’m about to kiss you on the mouth rn
The thing about knitting is it’s much harder to fear the existential futility of all your actions while you’re doing it.
Like ok, sure, sometimes it’s hard to believe you’ve made any positive impact on the world. But it’s pretty easy to believe you’ve made a sock. Look at it. There it is. Put it on, now your foot’s warm.
Checkmate, nihilism.
This is a powerful positive message..
I’m literally reading a book right now (Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski) that says this is scientifically sound.
There have been studies done on rats and dogs where they develop learned helplessness in the animals by giving them impossible tasks. Eventually the animals stop trying, even when the task stops being impossible. (I.e. put a rat in a maze with cheese it can’t get to until it develops learned helplessness, then put the cheese somewhere it can get to it and it won’t even try.) But once they show the animals they CAN do something - i.e. physically moving the rat to the cheese - the learned helplessness goes away.
No one can move you to your cheese for you, but the book says DOING something - which they define as “anything that isn’t nothing” can help. Make a food. Work in the garden. Clean a thing. Do a favor for a friend. Call your elected officials.
Knit a sock.
If you feel overwhelmed by existential despair, do something. It doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be anything that isn’t nothing.
This is really good advice for ADHD people because when executive dysfunction gets bad it’s easy to fall into this pattern of thinking. Do just one thing. It doesn’t have to be your homework, or a chore. It can be something small, it can be something you enjoy. But do just one thing to remind yourself that you can.
This is what “humans want to be productive” really means
We want to make things. We want to do something and at the end of the process see that something has changed. We want physical proof that we did something. We want to be able to point at something and say “I made this”. We want to be creators
eve was going “jonathan! it’s late at night jonathan! you can go 5 over the speed limit jonathan!” and kept just like riffing and i eventually went “OH. you are talking to your doordash driver. i thought you were pretending to be dracula” and he started laughing so hard he gave himself a tummy ache.
hiiii i love you hehehe you have noooo idea who this is hehehehe :3c
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