<Insert Name; Will Edit Once Not Busy> {Hang-out Thread}

[Shoryu Magami]

@Pudding
Running really fucking low on food supplies myself -- I'll need to last the next several hours before I can go up the road.

@shylarah

>Fluid writing thing
Did you mean: stream of consciousness? I do that too -- or rather, I write as if I'm talking when it's for the purpose of a conversation.

shylarah

I've done this a lot in my writing, and arguably a lot of my 'wall of text' posts count as something similar, but in both cases I never really give the whole thing because my posts would be absolutely massive given how many thoughts go through my mind in a moment. This is particularly complex when writing my main character, since they're virtually a direct avatar of myself -- the same reason why I want to learn to perfectly replicate my speech patterns into text, something I don't currently do.

Oh dear. Whatever's up, you take care. *hugs*

shylarah

Cheers -- there's just a lot of shit for me to deal with, and a lot going on in my head as usual...

The notes in my brain are a bit like yours -- except several dozen topics. x.x And I'm with you, while I excelled at school up to my meltdown in high school, if I wasn't interested learning it is hard. Somehow I managed to be interested in just about anything, if it was for school, up until the aforementioned meltdown.

shylarah

Due to the very complicated and in-depth nature of my story, my notes are focused on a very wide number of topics actually... I never particularly 'excelled' at school - at least compared to my potential - because I never had a fair chance at education like most people -- as I've mentioned to a few people on this site now, I legitimately was denied true free will until well into my twenties, and even now I'm recovering from the damage that was done to me due to... for lack of a better term... brainwashing.

@tsukune

I developed the habit of multitasking due to my overly active brain. I can't stop it jumping from topic to topic, going all over the place, working on so many ideas at the same time. Having migraines and sleepless nights then became a norm in my life, until it got so bad that I had to see a doctor, and put all this under control or else my brain would literally get fried from overworking.

tsukune

I'm identical to this -- doctors were never able to help me though; in fact they just screwed up my life.

It's also partly due to me having a rather short attention span for most things unless it's something that greatly interests me enough to invest more time and effort into. Worse that I have little to no regards when it comes to time and schedule (not counting school because I can't be unreasonable and show up for class whenever I want to, yeah?).

tsukune

More or less same once again; however, in TAFE you can more or less choose whether or not to show up for classes, and during the very brief time in my life that I was given a fair chance at an education - before my life took another terrible turn and I had to leave again - I actually was more or less top of my class in all subjects at TAFE.

[tsukune]

<Snipped quote by tsukune>

More or less same once again; however, in TAFE you can more or less choose whether or not to show up for classes, and during the very brief time in my life that I was given a fair chance at an education - before my life took another terrible turn and I had to leave again - I actually was more or less top of my class in all subjects at TAFE.

@Shoryu Magami

I'm a full-time college student, so I can't not show up for classes unless I want to get an expulsion letter sent to my doorstep (and then my parents would freak out, and... well, there goes all the dramatic dramas). ^^;

[Shoryu Magami]

@tsukune
Yeah, that makes sense given your circumstances. On my end, I've been out of the formal education system for a very long time (though - as I've mentioned a few times now - you could argue I never had a true opportunity for education in the first place) -- the brief period of time I went to TAFE was mostly something I did just to prove I could, but then personal problems came up once again and I left.

[shylarah]

@tsukune Aha! Another multitasker with attention issues! *glomps* I get distracted so easily, and even if I can focus solely on one thing, I often get bored if I don't have a couple at once. Boredom is the biggest problem. I think my sleep issues are separate, thoguh I suppose an overactive imagination might exacerbate my troubles.

[Doc Doctor]

@Shoryu Magami

Whelp, I'll probably start sleazing around on this thread. Topic is education? Ugh. I think the educational system is broken. I mean, I go to college, but that doesn't mean I like it or approve of how they operate. They think busywork separates the wheat from the chaff, but all it really does it alienate those with certain types of imaginations, who can't stand the utter insignificance of topics that have absolutely no relevance to what said person finds interesting or important. It's an old argument, and one that most see as juvenile. The old, "why must I study the Pythagorean theorem if I'm not going to be a math teacher" shtick. Some authoritative figure utterly missing the point would say something grossly ignorant, such as, "math has a big effect on all our lives!"

Doesn't change the fact that I'm not going to be a fucking math teacher or construction worker, and neither is 98% of the people here.

[Shoryu Magami]

@shylarah
While I definitely have a very multitasking mind - to the point that when I play competitive games (such as fighting games), I'm never really paying attention completely - I don't so much have an issue with boredom so much as that I have way too many ideas coming into my mind for my project all at once, often from a very wide number of directions or sources. Though this is an issue I have with everything, my obsessive and perfectionist nature for my work makes it a lot worse in that regard (plus, y'know, technology hating me).

@Doc Doctor
Welcome to the thread.

Also, nicely worded there -- you've done a good job illustrating one of my gripes with the education system. To be fair, I don't think very highly of the workforce system either, especially since getting hired is more a matter of luck - or having the opportunity for work experience - rather than skill. There's so many people out there who're terrible at their jobs, and so many talented people who just can't 'fit into' the conventional working world. That being said, yeah, the education system is broken as all hell -- it's also overrated.

[shylarah]

@Doc Doctor The whole makework deal is so /so/ true. Yeah, you should have a basic grasp of fields like math and logic, and geography, and history, and so on. But c'mon, you don't need to be a rocket scientist for most jobs. That and you really need to make sure /every/ student is challenged, and made to think. You can't give them all the same work and expect them to meet the same level of success. Some people will have trouble and need help, and yes, there are tutors and stuff for this, or talking ot the teacher or whatever. But there's /also/ a group of people who find it simplistic and want a real challenge, and they are often overlooked.

It's even more fun when you're highly intelligent and on the spectrum of mental disability /too/. To the point where hoping to find a curriculum to suit your needs is nearly an exercise in futility. x.x

[Shoryu Magami]

@shylarah
You're describing me with a lot of what you just said there... Essentially, I'm what you just spoke about; however - unlike a lot of people in this era - in my days if you were born with a different 'wavelength' to other people you were not given a fair chance.

Not only did the schools I went to make no attempt to adapt to the way my thinking was beyond my peers, but counsellors ended up sticking me on medications that legitimately fucked up my mind in a way that could easily be considered brainwashing. I basically won't have a real life or future due to it, and that's not taking all of my physical health problems into account -- I don't know how long I have to live, to be honest with you.

[Doc Doctor]

@Shoryu Magami

I was put on Ritalin during most of my childhood. Fuck the bastards that prescribed that shit to me. Got a kid that isn't like the rest? jack 'em up on meds until they are zombified enough to not be different. I've never forgiven the assholes that did that to me.

[Shoryu Magami]

@Doc Doctor
Ritalin is one of the medications I'm referring to -- I completely relate to you. That drug is truly despicable.

[shylarah]

@Shoryu Magami @Doc Doctor Jeez, you guys too? I was put on ritalin in first grade, although I personally think it helped me a good bit. I've no idea what your specific issues are with the drug, and honestly I might just not know about them. And I /still/ didn't think like the others in many ways. I'm 28, so Shoryu, you're only a couple years my senior. No idea about the good Doctor. ^.^; To this day, I am still on medication. And I will point out that if my brain does not make the same chemicals that allow a person to function at their best, then artificially supplementing the missing chemicals is just as valid as taking a vitamin for iron or something. Or insulin. Yes, mental health is still a very young field, and a lot of it is uncertain and heavily influenced by the fact that our perceptions are subjective and vastly different, and thus flawed.

I was pretty lucky. My schools did care, at least to some extent, and while perhaps I was not challenged as I should have been, I was not completely stuck in a corner either. Back then we didn't know I had high-functioning autism; I don't know if autism was even recognized yet. I was simply hyper and wild, and disobedient, and often inattentive (even though that never affected my grades). I was smart enough to work my way of thinking to the same point as everyone else, and either meld the two views, or figure out how to convert one to the other. Like...borrowing for subtraction drove me nuts the way they wanted me to do it. I flip the numbers about slightly differently, and it works far better for me. Or with algebra and geometry, I would work out the proofs in my room on my own because while the book did usually explain it, I needed to grasp the reasoning behind a theorem to truly remember and utilize it. That got a lot harder with calculus. ^.^;;

My real difficulty, unfortunately, is that I am not socially adept at all, and my lines of reasoning are often very different. When it comes to opinion matters and drawing a line for things like what's okay to say and what's not, I do extremely poorly. Furthermore, since I was never really pushed as a child, I never developed real study habits, or self control, or discipline, or any of the tools that one needs to succeed in the world. I am legally disabled, and I will probably never be completely independent. I think I do pretty well, all things considered, and I'm pretty happy. There's lots of things I won't get to do, but that's always the case, I think, and maybe it's a matter of just not focusing on those things. No, I don't have a job that challenges me, that thrill of solving a difficult problem and getting paid to do so. I haven't taken any college classes because they're expensive and I worry a great deal that I won't be able to keep up with the work, that I'll fall apart and have wasted the money for no gain. There's a few issues that have left lasting trauma, and my possibilities are limited, but I /do/ enjoy what I have.

tl;dr I've always been pretty messed up and sure I wish things had gone differently, but I tend to be happy. Besides, the entire /world/ is messed up. -.-

[BrokenPromise]

@shylarah@Shoryu Magami@Doc Doctor

Really glad I went to school before the age of "pills fix everything!"

So apparently I was too stupid to attend regular classes. And by too stupid I mean that they tested me, I scored well above the average child, but didn't like to read. They told my mother that I was going to be left behind this year despite having such great test scores. Her response was something akin to "LOL NOPE!" and so my parents home schooled me.

Oh look, I'm on a forum dedicated to people who like to read and write.

Too true about doctors these days Mr Doc Doctor. I think part of the problem is that people actually like the idea of pill cure-alls. "It's nothing I can control. I cant eat better, I can't work out more. What I can do is eat a pill and get on with my life."

...That and some of these teachers are just too lazy. "Hey doc, wanna pump the kids full of some ADD controllers? They all scored kinda low, and I know it's not the lesson plan!"

[Shoryu Magami]

I actually went into some (definitely not all) of my gripes with the education and workforce systems in a post on this page of the 'bitchfest' thread.

@shylarah
Given that I'm thirty-three in literally five days from now, the age gap between us is actually identical to the age gap between me and @Ailyn Evensen (my fiancé, since @Doc Doctor might not know that even if you do). That said, I would imagine that the mental health field actually had plenty of room to develop between us -- you must also never forget that I'm from Australia and we're noticeably behind America in a lot of ways. With this in mind, it's entirely possible that you simply got lucky; however, Ritalin might very well have been more suitable for you since you've mentioned having attention problems (not to mention the hyper and wild tendencies) -- I didn't have attention 'problems' (apart from the whole 'being flooded by so many thoughts that my body can't keep up with my mind' thing)... I was legitimately able to tell - as a youth (I've always been wise beyond my years -- when I was a kid people thought my mother was a teacher because I was like a philosopher even as a child) - that everything they were teaching me in school would never actually be helpful for me, especially since I had a lot of other difficulties in my life even as a child that were more important than focusing on education, so I didn't focus in my classes due to that.

Apparently that meant I was behind the other kids mentally, not in front of them. They even put me on glasses (read: I didn't need glasses, and very quickly stopped using them, but they started causing severe headaches in the brief time I was wearing them) before they started drugging me up. I despise the mental health industry for the same reason I despise a lot of science -- too many superficial assholes and morons like to take subjective fields and consider them objective.

My schools made no efforts to help me outside of sending me to counsellors and doctors who legitimately ruined any chance of me having a normal life. In some ways, I was a test subject -- a lot of people have insulted me for playing the occasional character who was the guinea pig of some cruel experiment, claiming I'm just trying to be 'edgy', but what those fools don't realize is I actually completely relate to those characters. People in this era have better treatment for mental health issues, and also for physical ailments, but in order for those things to reach that level... sacrifices were needed in order to experiment -- I am an example of that trial and error. My entire life was ruined so these fields could move forward. My conditions - both physical and mental (I'm not going into them in detail for now) - were not understood at all in my days nor were they even believed to exist, so I just got tossed onto the ADD bandwagon like every poor sap in my era.

Not only did Ritalin - just one of the medications I was on - completely mess up my mind and legitimately rob me of the ability to think freely for over twenty years, but a lot of people don't actually know that Ritalin screws with people's hormones -- take one guess why my adolescence was destroyed when I hit puberty. Even before then I had basically no capacity to think freely whenever the drugs were affecting me, and the social stigma I experienced from being 'one of those crazy kids' made it even worse. I've been traumatized in a lot of ways I don't even plan to go into to avoid making this post excessively long, and I've pretty much had to just overcome it all on sheer force of willpower and with my understanding of psychology.

I've always been smart enough to handle myself, but my ability to thrive at a field is almost entirely dependant on whether or not it interests me -- when I'm passionate about something I'll master it very quickly and have a level of understanding and insight into it that far surpasses people with more 'experience' than me, but I'm pretty much hopeless with fields that don't interest me because I won't take the time to think about them at all. As for being socially adept -- I'm not the type who's socially awkward, but I really don't care what other people think at all and I'm incredibly forthright (a bad thing in an era where almost everyone is a coward hiding behind a mask), though since Ritalin robbed me of my ability to express myself this detail only became a problem for me when the drugs weren't working (or when I tossed them in the toilet). You mentioned that you weren't challenged at school -- I was supressed my entire life; in fact, if you were to think of me as the exact polar opposite extreme of the genius who was 'nurtured and groomed for success their entire life' you wouldn't actually be all that far off.

@BrokenPromise
Yeah, unfortunately the whole 'fix it with medication' mentality bleeds over into every field -- people use drugs as a crutch for so many things in this era when nine out of ten times there's a far healthier solution that just takes a bit of effort. This statement about drugs isn't even limited to medications either.

[shylarah]

@Shoryu Magami @BrokenPromise

Ah, you're...wait, your profile says...I don't know how I turned 3 into 5, but whatever. You're actually a couple years older than I initially thought. ^.^;;

Yeah, ADHD was actually my first diagnosis. Though I'm not sure why anti-hyper drugs would help someone if they're not...y'know, hyper. Not learning is different from not paying attention, but I guess I'm expecting loonies to make sense, so... ^.^;;

Puberty was /awful/ for me, and while I did have a lot of the stuff hit a bit later, between my hormones and the various meds (not ritalin at that point, but I was on some group of things), I was just a chemical melting pot, and actually nearly destroyed my life and the lives of my family. NOt in the suicidal sense, either.

People never commented much on my parents, but I got the "you're brilliant" stuff and "thirteen going on thirty", etc a /lot/. Straight A+s, 99th percentile on all standardized tests, all the advanced classes, and so on. In fact, I met my first really close friend, who I am still close to after almost twenty years and living two states over and not talking all that much when we're not actually together, I met her at the award ceremony for some four-hour standardized test in second grade, and I don't think it was one the school required. It might have been for some gifted program, since I think TAG class started in second or third grade, but I can't be sure. I was first for our age group, she was third (second was a guy so he didn't count). One of the biggest regrets I have, when I actually think about it, is that I was always told I could do anything, and that I had the brains to be amazing, and now...I'm not even average. I'm still bright, but the vague dreams I had of changing the world, making some amazing discovery or revolutionizing some field, those are almost certainly never going to happen. And maybe they wouldn't have anyhow, but I feel that I never got a chance to try. I mean, I didn't know what field I was going to go into, but I knew I wanted to go to college and earn a doctorate, yet I've never even taken a college course save for AP highschool stuff. It sounds like you didn't get a chance to try either, and that really, /really/ sucks. *hug*

[Shoryu Magami]

@shylarah
Yeah... almost thirty-three here, and you and Ailyn are both twenty-eight.

Seriously, Ritalin was supposed to make me focus but all it did was supress the very 'wavelength' within me that gave me the power to excel -- I basically spent my entire life on a limiter of sort that more or less stifled my ability to express myself and use the full capacity of my mind. I also don't react well to medications in general so it had a lot of side effects, including - but not limited to - hallucinations. Prior to being medicated, my problems at school were all due to feeling like it was a waste of time (which, honestly, it was) together with a lot of social alienation due to how different I was.

Sorry to hear puberty went badly for you, but I'm glad you got through it all. On my end, it actually did make me suicidal... very suicidal. I never acted on it because I'm an incredibly strong person, but thoughts of death have lingered over me like a wraith most of my life. When my father (one of the only two family members who understood me at all really) died in a house fire, shortly after I turned seventeen, it only made things worse.

I should make a point that the comment I mentioned about people thinking my mother was a teacher due to how clever I was is something that I've only heard from her, not something I personally remember -- I have very few memories of anyone actually encouraging me in my youth because everyone was too busy talking about how I needed to be 'fixed' because of what was 'wrong' with me. That being said, a lot of people have definitely made a point of how intelligent I am. To illustrate how I was as a child -- when I was five I knew the scientific names of every single dinosaur and could recite them on the fly, solely because as a kid they interested me (I'm not interested in dinosaurs anymore and haven't been for many years, resulting in me forgetting everything I used to know about them). This of, obviously, just one example.

Really, I can't say anything positive about my achievements at school because I usually only did above average -- I was being supressed and held back by so many factors both physically and mentally that there was no hope of me ever excelling in my grades in general. I honestly was denied an opportunity for a real chance at education or a future before my life at school even truly started, so I know all too well the pain of reflecting on my life and realizing my story is one of nothing but lost potential. In many senses, that's another reason I do my story -- 'Guardian Ascension' is my last chance to really raise a banner and show the world what's in my mind and what I can do for this world.

Either way, your empathy is appreciated.

[shylarah]

@Shoryu Magami I do know that feeling. There've been a couple meds in my long history of various things that made me either not /down/ but not up either (I'm usually /very/ up), or that I had very little creativity while taking. I talked to my doc right away and got off those quick. I'm miserable when I can't write or draw or create. *nodding* It's a horrendous feeling. Don't think I ever did anything like all the dinosaurs, but I did tend to have a high retention rate for random facts. Aside from subatomic particles, I don't think I ever had a narrow focus like that. Although I did impress a scientist at a Fermilab open house with my knowledge of neutrinos and quarks, which there'd just been a few breakthroughs with. He said I should come back when I'd graduated college. ^.^;;

[Shoryu Magami]

@shylarah
Yeah, see... that's definitely a way we differ -- I saw all of the damage being done to me by the various medications I was tossed on throughout my life, but no one ever bothered listening to me or showed willingness to take me off them. They just assumed they knew better and any faults for the problems in my life had to be mine. Ultimately I never got a chance to get off the drugs until I moved in with my dad (he immediately took me off of them), but for the next several years I had to repair the damage and trauma -- I've literally spent the last several years piecing a broken mind back together after I was forcibly put into a shell and silenced my whole life.

Those responsible for putting me on the meds might've meant well, but holy shit did they fuck up my life and hold me back. I don't hate them or anything, but I'll never let others make another decision for me -- not that I 'chose' to let them in the past or anything, since it was all forced on me. I've overcome my past, but it doesn't mean my future wasn't ruined.

Dinosaurs was an example (a very out of date example), but yeah... as I mentioned previously, I'm a very extreme likes and dislikes person -- whatever I have an interest or focus on is where all of my insight and wisdom goes into, so I end up excelling very easily at anything that I'm fascinated by and then everything else doesn't even show up on my mental radar in terms of attention. Science, for example, doesn't interest me at all (meaning I'll only learn a scientific detail if I need it for my project), though I do enjoy metaphysics. I'm far more interested in the more deep and philosophical aspects of the world -- how things in the empirical world work is irrelevant to me. I think people spent too much time focusing on the material, neglecting the mental and spiritual aspects of themselves, and ultimately falling into weakness due to it -- as I've said before when speaking of nihilism... there are harsh consequences.

[Shoryu Magami]

For all you hang-out thread goers, we're still looking for three or four more people to join the next game, so take a look if you've got time.

[Shoryu Magami]

>Checks for currently active hang-out thread people.

@NekoMizu@shylarah@carla6677
How goes, you guys?

[carla6677]

@Shoryu Magami I am turning invisible