Here Is A Skill That Many Of Us Are Going To Need For Survival: How To Tell If Someone Is Offering To

It's very endearing to me how many people are willing to keep an eye on a video feed so they can push a button and let a fish in the Netherlands get to the other side of a dam.

I think something a lot of other people can relate to is the way that you get so conditioned to discomfort that you stop registering it.

I remember sitting at the table with my family, eating dinner as a child. I’d try to eat, because of course I was hungry. But sometimes the flavor or texture was so repugnant that it moved into a category of Not Food.

“Two more bites before you can leave the table.”

“I can’t,” I’d say, trying to explain the impossibility.

But because I was a child they heard, “I won’t,” and made me sit at the table. I’d sit in dull agonized silence, bored and hungry for hours until bedtime when they’d give up. I’d hate myself for not eating and my parents for forcing me to sit there. The few forcefeeding moments ended in vomit.

They’d say, “If you don’t eat this you can’t eat a snack later,” and I moved past trying to communicate my discomfort into accepting that I’d just be hungry.

That state of affairs didn’t last, because my parents realized nothing could force me to eat so they catered to my palate, worrying they’d starve me. But the message stuck. If you can’t do anything about a situation, just accept the suffering.

A few years later my mother called me off the playground to ask, “Are you limping?”

I shrugged. My feet had hurt for a long time, but that was just the way things were now. My mom pulled my socks and shoes off and gasped. The soles of my feet were covered in huge painful planters warts.

“Why didn’t you say anything?!” She demanded but I could only shrug at her. I’d learned a long time ago that saying things about my discomfort didn’t matter, so now I had no words. Sometimes things hurt and sometimes they don’t. I simply accepted and did my best.

Now as an adult trying to learn to improve my own conditions can be hard. If I make food that I can’t eat I’ll force myself to sit at the counter still, full of guilt and self loathing, trying to will myself to eat it.

At first I needed my betrothed to gently take it away to present me with something I could eat. Now on my own I can usually admit that it’s not happening before too long and get something else, but I still feel guilty.

Laying in bed at night waiting for my betrothed to finish getting ready I let out a huge sigh of relief when they turned the lights off.

“Why didn’t you turn them off if they bothered you?” they asked the first time it happened.

“I didn’t even know it was bothering me until it was gone.”

Assessing my physical state now to see if I can improve it is something I’m still relearning but I’m relieved to finally have the space and support to do it.

Compliment them. That person you think has their shit together and wouldn't need it or want to hear it. They do. They absolutely do. Their shit is dispersed. I promise you. It is a shambles.

I've had someone tell me to my face that they would compliment me, but for the fact that I already know this or that about myself. Huh???? No. Sorry.

No I don't. In my weaker moments I become an ungrateful mud monkey that has never once internalized a compliment

I adore being told you like me or something I've done. It sustains me, and in my weaker moments when I forget that life is good and happy, you might catch me before I fall.

You ever had someone catch you like that? You can do it too. The ones that catch you have been you in that moment before and know they will be again.

this is gonna sound like a shitpost but the best advice i have if youre consistently coming off wrong is to start talking like an elcor

you will feel like a dumdum at first, but once you get used to it youll realize that telling people what kind of thing you're about to say ahead of time flattens their anxiety a huge amount

ive been starting every question with "question:" for awhile now and i almost never get people reading too much into what i mean anymore

it seems super dumb, but "what are your plans tomorrow?" gets people asking me what i have planned despite me obviously being in the process of figuring that out, whereas "question: what are your plans tomorrow?" gets me a quick rundown of their schedule, followed by "why?"

it also makes it really easy to work tone indicators into your verbal speech. if you're always saying "question: [your question here]?" then no one blinks when you say "genuine question: [question that could read as sarcastic]?"

it also gets you out of your own way for any types of things you struggle to say. "can you make sure to do the dishes before you go to bed?" feels like an argument waiting to happen, but "request: can you make sure to do the dishes before you go to bed?" gets the words flowing on a neutral word while making it clear that you're not looking for a fight

so yeah. suggestion: talk like an elcor

Daily "avoiding hopelessness" checklist

Hey, friends. I know I've been really struggling to look towards the future with any kind of hope, so here are some little things I've been trying to do every day that might help you, too.

Accept that your productivity might look weird right now. Don't expect yourself to act as if nothing is wrong.

Make art. I try to write something every day, even if I don't really feel like it, and I've found that once I get into it, I'm grateful I did.

Do something to plan for the future. Doesn't have to be big. Even getting some ice cream you know future you will thank you for counts.

Eat. Even if you're not hungry. I keep skipping meals because I don't feel like eating, and then I force myself to make something and realize I was absolutely starving.

Clean up one thing in your space. If doing all the dishes and sweeping the floors and putting away laundry all feel too overwhelming, try just doing one of those things.

Lean on your online and offline communities. I live in a county that voted trump by a margin of eighty percent. My world feels scary and hostile right now, and it's my communities that are helping me feel hopeful.

Try to find one thing that feels normal. One thing that feels safe and normal and helps you feel a bit more grounded. My local grocery store just got their shipment of chocolate oranges in for the season. That's my thing.

Try to find one thing to look forward to, no matter how small. My thing is checking my ao3 inbox for comments on my fics.

Love you all <3

things that you should be able to check out from public libraries:

power and hand tools. drills hammers wrenches what have you

exercise equipment. yoga mats weights running trackers

specialty cooking tools. blenders steamers heavy duty pots

specialty cleaning supplies. carpet cleaners window washers steam mops

Just a short video of my card weaving in progress

Light Cues

From the "find what works" department of my life...

I was telling my prescribing psychiatrist about this and he really loved it, and it occurred to me I'm not sure I've ever talked about it on here, but I've started using light cues instead of alarms for some things.

I don't use a lot of alarms regularly throughout the day (I don't need one to wake up unless I'm getting up at an unusual time, for example) but I use them for one-off stuff like "time to start getting ready to go out" or "today you have a doctor's appointment". I found after a while that with an alarm for a regular repeating task, there comes a point where I just silence it and forget to do the thing. Like, I have almost all notifications on my phone turned off and it's still muscle memory for me, as it is for many people, to have my phone beep for attention and just silence it unthinkingly. So I started using lighting cues.

It's evolved a lot, starting with the end of the workday. The lighting in my bedroom is all floor lamps; the one over my work desk is on a smart switch, which plugs into the wall and then the lamp plugs into the switch. I set the switch to turn the lamp on at 8am just before I start work, and off at 4:30pm to remind me to stop work, which I don't always remember to do. The light suddenly going out makes that corner unpleasantly dim, and it's more work to turn it back on (open phone, open app, fin the right switch) than it is to stop work for the day.

Then I thought, this is so irritating it must be useful for other things. So I set it to go off from noon to 12:03pm. It's more of a pain in the ass to turn it back on than it is to get up, go to the kitchen, and do what I'm supposed to do at noon anyway: take my second Adderall dose. And the light is back on by the time I get back.

But I was running into the problem of taking the dose on an empty stomach as you're supposed to, but not having eaten since breakfast at like 5am. And now I'm in the kitchen. Having forgotten to eat my Early Lunch at 10:30. But the Adderall needs like 20 minutes to kick in before I eat, and by the I'm back at work, and then I wonder why I eat my body weight in pasta at 5pm.

So I set a light cue for 10:30 to remind me to take a break and eat. But I don't want to use the same cue for everything. The lamp on the other end of the bedroom doesn't have a smart switch but it does have a smart bulb, which is even more flexible, so at 10:30am it dims to 50% (irritating) and turns deep blue (doubly irritating). I leave the room, go eat lunch, and usually come back to sit on the bed with the cats for a few minutes. I don't mind the dim blue light when I'm on the bed -- I just can't work with it that way. So at 11 the light goes back to full white brightness and I get my cue to go back to work.

I have various other cues -- the living room lamps go off and the LED string on the headboard in the bedroom goes on low and red to indicate it's bedtime, and the LEDs go off a little later to remind me NO, it is BEDTIME NOW.

Obviously a lot of this is only possible with either analog daily timers or smart bulbs/switches, and those can be cost-prohibitive for some while others don't like having their lighting on the internet. But it's all switches and bulbs that I can remove easily, and they've come down a great deal in price -- mine are all Kasa brand so they're controlled from a single app, and I've found them extremely helpful.

Plus sometimes at night I put all the lights to deep blue and pretend I'm underwater and that's fun.

Sad Bastard Expectations

It's 2025, and we're sadder than ever!

Maybe it's time for a Sad Bastard Cookbook sequel? Maybe a spin-off for parents of small children? Maybe both?

I'm new here. What's a Sad Bastard Cookbook?

Glad you asked! We wrote a cookbook full of judgement-free recipes you can make when you're suffering from mental illness, physical disability, poverty, or anything else late-stage capitalism throws up that makes basic self-care feel impossible. Some of the recipes were our own, some we collected from the community.

The ebook is free--you can download a copy here if you wanna check it out.

I'm a community! Or at least, a Person! Can I contribute my recipe for survival food?

YES PLEASE.

If you have a survival recipe that you make for yourself, or to feed a baby, toddler, or small child, please share that recipe here.

I’m a fan of the original Sad Bastard Cookbook—when will the new ones be here?

We really have no idea. We’re in the very early planning and writing stages of the two projects, but when we have more information, you’ll probably see it here first!