Unhinged and adrift
A curated list of things from this week
Unusually, I’m going to somewhat freestyle today’s post, and what you see below is - like the film 1917 - written in one scene, no cuts or edits. It will at least be an experiment.
This week has felt especially unhinged, not so much that my boat has had its tether ropes undone, but more that a death ray fired from an alien spaceship has obliterated them. However, this week I have learned the following:
Penguin is from the welsh for white head
I wish I hadn’t done an economics degree
Also, we have a guide dog puppy at the moment (well, precisely as I write this, he has actually gone home to his normal owners), and as such, I’ve taken to wandering around the garden with him as dawn breaks. As he does his morning ablutions, I stare into the distance (it’s only polite after all), and in this process, I’ve begun to notice that there tends to be an owl flying around the fields behind our house. So I wrote this:
I wonder if there is an owl called Clive
Who works at an office from 9-5
He's in the lottery syndicate
Hoping for a big win
So he can jack it all in
To swoop and soar and listen for mice
And sit on fence posts, not giving two hoots
But sometimes giving two hoots.
(subscript: what is the UK’s most common owl? The teat owl)
I’d also like to take the opportunity to talk about a thing called Rejection Sensitivity Disphoria. I'll stream my brain to escape from googling for the diagnostic description.
RSD is something which is common amongst people with ADHD. It is a feeling of absolute crushing catastrophe on sensing, anticipating, or actually being rejected. It is also common for people with ADHD to be people pleasers, and for those it hits hard. For me, I have a weird relationship with it as - I think as an AuDHD trait - I’m not a people pleaser (at all) but weirdly feel RSD very keenly. All I can say is: being rejected hurts, in ways that cut deep.
This - I think - is why I always used to do things like ring people who hadn’t been successful in getting a job they’d applied for. I didn’t know it, but I suspect I was trying to lessen the pain a bit - which is perhaps a bit futile, but I hope helped some people.
Also, at my real job (alas, substack subs don't allow me to do this full time….yet), we’ve been testing an app to help people with hidden disabilities. Almost universally, people have said, “Apart from anything, it’s nice people have seen me and tried to help”. It made me think of the RSD avoiding phone call. Life is about being seen, no?
Anyway, in other news, other good things:
I did some vibe coding. You should give it a whirl.
I put a load of my books (I am something of a book hoader) in the village phone box library
I fixed the puncture on my brompton
When ecologists are studying animal populations, some animals work out “hey, if I go in that trap, I get a meal then can go to sleep safely without being eaten by anything” - and they do it repeatedly, thus messing up the data. These guys are my spirit animal
Anyway, I’ve now run out of steam.
Be bold, be brave. Be yourself
Peace out
Michael