ratboy

In my last post I got SO MANY awesome suggestions for exercise routines and videos to help me ease back into being active. One that was suggested is Hybrid Calisthenics, which I think is an awesome start with achievable goals to get me into a consistent routine with my ADHD ass.

It's all based on bodyweight so you can do the exercises at home, the instructor shows you really in depth modifications to make the exercises easier or harder, and he breaks it up into (imo) very doable chunks - 2 different exercises, 6 days a week. I feel like knowing that it'll be such a short amount of time will be motivating, and if I don't do anything else for the rest of the day, I still will have gotten SOMETHING in. He also gives a goal number of reps, so that once you're hitting that number with good form and you aren't dying, you know you should move on to a harder variation.

I did the first day today, and my arms are already sore after a couple hours. So, I think I'm gonna post daily updates on this post as lil updates for myself and I think it could be cool if other people want to try it out and post progress as well! Could possibly be a good motivator!

Anyway, here are links to the youtube video and website with the program:

Hybrid Calisthenics Beginners video
Hybrid Calisthenics Webpage

For the past couple of years I've been extremely sedentary and I am definitely noticing how that's taking a toll on my body. I think I had imbalances and such before but now they are glaringly obvious; one shoulder higher than the other, one hip/glute is tighter than the other, same with calves, etc etc it goes on and on. I wanna try to address this stuff, so if anyone has any pointers or resources that they find helpful for mobility/strength/flexibility that would be dope.

I hereby decree that Tuesday and Wednesday are to be renamed Beansday

There are many people who have been posting about wanting to mobilize and become more engaged in mutual aid and organizing in my local subreddit. People are starting to become more desperate and are waking up to the fact that marches and solidarity protests and voting only do so much and they want real change. But many are probably Dems/Liberals who are just coming around to this since Trump won the election. So they have hardly any political consciousness whatsoever and some may still be turned off by the words "anarchism" and "communism". Though I think more people may be sympathetic to anarchism than ML, Lenin is still bad and scary to them I'm sure. Even Marx.

The discourse has actually been kind of sympathetic to alternative politics in forms of upvotes and such, so I am compiling a list of mutual aid groups locally and nationally that are doing on the ground, tangible work besides electoralism and I want to gather very digestible reads/podcasts/etc. to put into this resource list.

I am looking for Democratic Socialism resources, Anarchism, Socialist, Communist, Trans liberation, Indigenous liberation, abolition, organizing, stories about apolitical-represented sources regarding mutual aid, analysis of how Democrats & Republics go hand in hand etc. etc. ANYTHING to push people left, regardless of how milquetoast it may be. Whatever started to de-worm your brain that's perhaps a notch left of Bernie. Extra points for resources that are more focused on examples of organizing as opposed to strictly theory based stuff.

If there are particular episodes of more radical podcasts to listen to, all the better. I think ideal texts and such would be where the author critiques their own beliefs and finds faults in them, but can argue the benefits of it as well.

A couple ideas I have as of this morning are:

• People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
• The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein
• Second Thought Podcast (Haven't really listened but it seems like a decent primer. Specific episode recs welcome)
• Blowback (So dense but riddled with primary sources and relatively unbiased)
• People's Guide to Capital (by Hadas Thier, quick and more focused on labor solidarity than revolution)
• Why Marx Was Right (by Terry Eagleton. Haven't read but was what pushed Breht from RevLeft to claim himself a communist)
• Possibly Dessalines' essays on github

Fuck having remembered this song and knowing it's 15 years old is making me have an existential crisis. I am afraid of getting old

So good tho

I just really don't know how to feel or what to do or how to figure this out for myself so if anyone else has been in my shoes I'd really love some advice

[For context I'm in my 30's]

Sooooo growing up I knew that trans people existed, and I knew about androgyny which I was very fond of, but it wasn't up until my mid 20's that I had learned about genderfluidity or nonbinary identities. Once I heard it described, it just clicked with me and immediately I felt that that is what I was, nonbinary. This was around the time that gay marriage became legal in California, so really these terms were not widely used at all outside of queer communities. As a very young child most of my interests aligned with my gender assigned at birth, but even into 2nd and 3rd grade it was very obvious that I was more interested in hobbies and things typical of the opposite gender, and this has remained static. The things I liked, the ways I dressed for the most part, my choice in friends, my sexuality, the way I talk and kinda move around the world was more reflective, in my mind, of the "opposite gender". There were characteristics, however, that up until learning that I could be a third, secret gender (lol), were in alignment with my AGAB, so I never identified as anything but.

Now I have identified as nonbinary/agender/transmasc nonbinary for close to 15 years, but over the past few years I've been feeling like I am really not actually anything other than cisgender. Being misgendered by others still REALLY bothers me...But due to my experiences in the world and how I've always been perceived, I really do resonate with the experiences of my AGAB, especially when it comes to experiences of gender based violence. I feel like in my brain I slip and call myself my AGAB more now than I used to. I'm in relationships with people where it looks like a straight relationship. I don't really belong to any queer community, so I'm used to people constantly misgendering me, and it just feels like I'm always perceived as my AGAB even when gendered correctly.

I don't take hormones, I've never had any type of gender affirming surgeries, and I generally don't want to change my body. I have body dysmorphia, but that I think is more due to societal expectations of what my body is supposed to look like/chronic verbal abuse focused on my body. I have thought about hormones, I have wondered or wanted my body to align with my gender more but never to the point of feeling that I need to change it. But at this point, I feel like I should resign myself to just being cis. ADMIT to being cis....and I just feel like a fraud. I still bristle against the idea, but I just feel like I'm faking it, and have been faking it because no one else sees me as what I want to be seen as....But that's the thing, do I just WANT to be seen as someone else, or NEED to be? What's the difference? I feel like I would NEED to take hormones, or want/need surgery to really ACTUALLY be who I feel I am...Especially since I've had more and more thoughts that feel cis??? Is the only way I can describe it. I feel like my identity is not much more than a choice of pronoun, and I just feel like I'm cosplaying or something....So I don't really know what the fuck I am or how to figure it out. It's just one more thing to perseverate about and I wish I could just not think about it. But I don't know how to get there.

I wish I could figure it what's wrong with me. Am I rapid-cycling bipolar? Is it ADHD? Is it autism? I'll go days, maybe even a week or more feeling like I have barely any energy at all, it'll be hard to do much more than a quick chore or two. Fatigued, unmotivated, energy drinks don't really work. And then all if a sudden boom, awake at 7am, energy drinks kick my ass. Yesterday I was doing chores/projects from 11am to 1am. Couldn't fall asleep til around 3am, and now I'm up naturally at 8am, with energy to go. Towards the end of the night I got hyperfixated on making pretty excel spreadsheet templates so that might be why I was up so late. I'm also spending hundreds of dollars on things all at once which I normally never do... But they are all practical and I'm tired of not having things that make my life nicer/easier.

I was way more scattered than usual yesterday, bouncing around like a pinball, but my baseline is pretty forgetful/ scattered, it was just on overdrive yesterday. I wish I could harness this energy all the time for things like work, socializing, or hobbies so that I could make them a normal part of my life. I've even been able to/WANT to play video games! I can never get myself to do that even, which is relatively low effort so I feel like thats a decent marker of a shift in baseline. This nay be hypomania, but I'm not getting the confidence/inflated sense of self esteem which I need so badly.

What fucking gives?

PS here are some examples from my mood tracker of where I'm normally at, first graph from 2023 (i stopped tracking for a long time)and third is from this month(the green lines to the right are just the past couple of days that I'm talking about:

I am not a nerd(respectful), but I would like to know how you'd set up your phone. I'd like to start leaning into more opensource/privacy minded apps and such to avoid having as much of my data harvested. I'm still going to use apps like Instagram which are obviously horrible but I figure trying to do better in other areas is better than nothing.

• what to delete
• what apps are a must (calendar, maps, app store etc)
• vpns?
• keyboards?
• email besides proton? Is there a way to have my emails from Google forward to this address?
• everything needs to connect to Google accounts is there a way around this?

And yes any other advice on making your phone functional/fast/anonymous/aesthetically pleasing is welcomed thankkkkks

What does it feel like for you when you've used any ADHD medications? I have looked at a bunch of posts but I feel like there are never good answers for this. I have heard that they can help NT people with focus and such, or that y'all build up a tolerance after a bit. And then I hear for people with ADHD, that the first couple of times you take the meds, or if the dose is too high, that you'll feel speedy/high.

I've been trialing meds with my psychiatrist for a while and I feel like I don't even know if I have ADHD because of all this conflicting info and how I feel on them. I know it can take a lot of trying different types and doses but I just doubt my diagnosis I guess.

TL;DR: What do stimulants feel like for you've taken them semi-regularly?

Lol. Lmao even

The current General Megathread reminded me of this band. From the Wikipedia page about them:

"Although the band itself was not overtly political, original and early members were known to participate in various political organizations and movements amidst the volatile daigaku funsō and Anpo protests of the time, with the band as a whole reportedly performing in the occupied Kyoto University auditorium while it was held by students during a protest in 1969, this event being known as the "Barricades A Go-Go concert". The band also performed at political concerts around Japan, including a Kyoto University concert on Gozan no Okuribi protesting the construction of the Sanrizuka airport.

In 1970, after having performed with the band since 1967, original bassist Moriaki Wakabayashi assisted in the hijacking of Japan Airlines Flight 351 orchestrated by the Communist League's "Red Army Faction." He was known to be engaged in political activity by the rest of the band, but Wakabayshi himself claimed the band never really talked about politics amongst themselves. Mizutani is cited in Susumu Kurosawa's book "Psychedelia in Japan" as saying "Sometimes we hold a guitar, sometimes we hold protests, variety is good, but protest songs are a bore."Wakabayashi and Julian Cope both claim Mizutani attended political rallies with a black helmet, implying he was an anarchist."

Came on the YouTube algorithm this morning. Very chill but still has that jungle BPM to help keep me moving while getting ready for the day. I'm really selective about my EDM nowadays so it's always nice to find something I enjoy.

Reminds me of my old renegade rave days on the beach