Hey Don’t Cry. Trees Grow Out Of The Ground.

Mental Crop Rotation

When farmers grow the same crop too many years in a row, it can leave their soil depleted of minerals and other nutrients that are vital to the health of their fields.

To avoid this, farmers will often alternate the crops that they grow because some plants will use up different minerals (such as nitrogen) while other plants replenish those minerals. This process is known as “crop rotation.”

So the next time you find that you need to step away from a project to work on something else for a while, don’t beat yourself up for “quitting” that project. Give yourself permission to practice “mental crop rotation” to maintain a healthy brain field.

Because I’ve found that when that unnecessary guilt and pressure are removed from the process, a good mental crop rotation can help you feel more energized and invigorated than ever once you’re ready to rotate back to that project.

This makes me realize that my family has a bit of a unique thing. On one side of my family, peoples legal names and their casual names are different. From birth. My grandparents just decided that they wouldn’t use the legal (first) names they themselves had given their children. And I don’t mean they shortened the names, the casual names stand on their own. Some* of my cousins are in the same situation. It’s not a big deal, so I didn’t realize that most people don’t do this.

On other side of my family, some* people have a double name but just the first part. Which is not that unusual, I guess. Though one slightly chanced it, so it’s more to their liking, and another uses two (nearly identical) names, their original and a variant for their international friends.

I had also a cis family friend that changed their casual name in their 50′s. And I know of someone who thought their name was too childish, when becoming a teenager. 

So yes! Don’t let your legal name keep you from using a name you’re comfortable with. You don’t have to feel uneasy when people call you. My examples are about first names, but the same goes for last names. Legal names are for legal documents, not much more. When you’re not doing paperwork use something you actually like!

* I recently realized that I don’t know the legal names of all my cousins, just the names they go by. So, ‘some’ might actually be ‘all’.

People take names and especially surnames so damn seriously and act like they’re written in stone but the big secret here is they’re all fake, it’s all made up. David Tennant picked out his name at 16 because his real name was barred from the actor’s union he joined on account of their No Doubles Allowed rule, and he wound up naming himself after Neil Tennant from the Pet Shop Boys of all things, and now many years later his whole family carries on that same made-up name he committed to as a teenager. All names are made up and fake as hell, call yourself whatever feels right.

When I realized pre-packaged food was for me, my entire outlook on life changed.

Let me explain.

I remember walking through the grocery store with my mother as a teen and her making a bitter comment about how everything had more packaging now. De-shelled hard boiled eggs in plastic, cut fruit, pre-portioned salads, all of it was "laziness" to her. She insisted people were getting lazier to the point where if my brother ate pizza from the fridge, she would chastise him for not heating it. She would say "you deserve warm pizza" as a way of saying you should do something the "right way" because it's worth doing.

This isn't because my mother had no concept of people with disabilities, she is disabled herself. However, in raising me, she taught me to hide that disability, to try to be on everyone else's level so we aren't seen as weaker. That laziness is worse than being disabled and there's simply no excuse for taking shortcuts. I don't think she intended to teach me this, but her own internalized ableism was so loud.

When I became an adult, I realized I hated cooking. The prep was tedious, I almost always have dishes in the sink, there's cleanup after, my back hurts, my eyes burn, it's too hot and in the beginning, I got overwhelmed to the point of crying. Leftovers were almost never eaten becuase heating them up (the "correct" way to eat them) was an extra step that made me not want to put the effort in. I thought I was lazy and felt ashamed when I wanted something to eat but couldn't bring myself to make it.

At some point, I finally said "I'm tired. I don't care how much packaging it is, I don't care how lazy it is, I'm going to get meal kits."

It was life-changing. Dinner takes 30 minutes to make. Everything is portioned. The directions are clear. I don't hate it anymore. I want salads in bags. I want eggs that don't take three steps to eat. It's not laziness, it's accessible! I don't have to make a meal, I can eat the raw vegetables, have pasta with butter, eat a granola bar! There's no right way to feed myself!

I made things SO HARD on myself because I wasn't acknowledging my disability or my depression and they didn't need to be hard! I didn't need to go around the store saying "is that really necessary?" Because it IS necessary for me! It's brilliant! It's so helpful!

Accessibility takes so many forms and overcoming internalized guilt for not being able-bodied or mentally well enough to handle tasks other handle easily is incredibly freeing. Obviously I'm lucky to be in the position to have this option avaliable to me, but I kept myself from it for far too long.

I do deserve warm pizza. I can have it delivered.

The Woolly mice

I had to draw them

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I really think one of the best things we can do as people is just get more comfortable with embarrassment. Yes, it's an unpleasant emotion, but we gotta learn to let it pass over us and move on. The longer I'm alive the more clear it is to me how much harm we do just because we're embarrassed. How many parents punish their kids needlessly and/or super severely just because the parent feels embarrassed by the child's harmless behavior? We have to recognize that being embarrassed does not entitle us to harm others. Alongside this though, we have an obligation to each other to lower the stakes of embarrassment. Offer grace to each other. Stop filming people in public. Stop making fun of harmless cringe.

I saw a post the other day about how difficult mindfulness meditation can be, especially for people who are neurodivergent, and OP was frustrated that their therapist never recommended anything else. There are many opportunities to bring mindfulness, focus, and intention to activities you already like! Learning about flow state has been a real eye-opener for me.

Medium

MS Word is Using You to Train AI

How to turn off AI-scraping from your Word documents

Microsoft Office, like many companies in recent months, has slyly turned on an “opt-out” feature that scrapes your Word and Excel documents to train its internal AI systems. This setting is turned on by default, and you have to manually uncheck a box in order to opt out.

If you are a writer who uses MS Word to write any proprietary content (blog posts, novels, or any work you intend to protect with copyright and/or sell), you’re going to want to turn this feature off immediately.How to Turn off Word’s AI Access To Your Content

I won’t beat around the bush. Microsoft Office doesn’t make it easy to opt out of this new AI privacy agreement, as the feature is hidden through a series of popup menus in your settings:On a Windows computer, follow these steps to turn off “Connected Experiences”:

File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > Privacy Options > Privacy Settings > Optional Connected Experiences > Uncheck box: “Turn on optional connected experiences”