Your parents may be wonderful and loving people, but they are not mental health specialists. Games and social media are not the cause of your ADHD or your language disorder.

Too much social media or games are not good for you because they generally only show you the best and sometimes the worst sides of humanity. It is very natural to compare yourself to what you see there. They are not real life. Nobody is successful or happy all of the time. Nobody is good at every subject. Some of the brightest people I’ve ever met have terrible life skills, and it’s okay to be bad at stuff. That’s part of being human. The things we see on social media are more like single frames of a movie. Video games, broadly speaking, allow the player to stop and resume with no consequences. Real life has no pause button or quests that will be available when you’re ready and you feel like it. Real life is what happens between those frames and during those pauses, even now as you read this.

You now know you have ADHD and a language disorder. That’s a great first step because it helps you understand why you feel the way you do. If you want to change how you feel, you need to take the next step: get treatment for your problems. I speak from experience when I say untreated ADHD can affect the trajectory of your life in ways you do not realize. DO NOT IGNORE IT. It will not go away or get better on its own. You must act. This is the way to fix your life, to find a way to enjoy life. If you’re already getting treatment, then step three is Do. Do cool shit. Do make mistakes and learn from them. Do fun things, do hard things, do self care things. Do take a moment to appreciate your milestones, your victories however small or great, and then…keep doing.

You do not need to be better than other people. Just be the best version of you that you can be.

Rest when you are tired, but never give up. Perseverance is perhaps the most powerful tool we have.

But not so shy that you wouldn’t get naked on a beach, take a photo, and post it to the internet. I don’t think you know what that word means.

Sometime around the mid 2010s, I worked at one of Goodwill’s busiest locations in the country. So busy we got calls almost every day complaining about the giant fucking traffic snake of donors blocking streets as they all lined up in their suburban safety bubbles to dump their literal garbage into our blue bins.

Absolute shitbox of a store. Run down, dirty, and always a mess. Especially the shoes and toys section. I already hated retail customers but that really sealed the deal. Just a bunch of broke ass motherfucking customers making broke ass workers days even harder. Two of my full-time coworkers were homeless. Those were just the ones I knew about because I worked by their side every day. Despite our poverty wages and grinding hours, I worked with some genuinely good people who cared about each other. It felt like we were all clinging to each other as we drowned in the rising tide that lifts all boats. None of us had so much as a life raft to rest in. Treading water while we gasped between waves of desperation.

Brian, I know you’ll never see this but I hope you’re still alive and got the help you needed. Daniel, you are far too intelligent and capable to waste your life there. I hope you got out.

A few times I had to visit the allegedly original Goodwill store. You might think if there’s one store corporate cares about enough to put a bit of polish on, it would be that one. But no. It looked like the most dystopian shopping experience imaginable. Crumbling architecture, merchandise strewn all over as if the customers were in a fight for their lives, and just like my store, workers who looked ragged, tired, and barely holding it together inside. And there worked at least one young woman with Down Syndrome who I reckon was making about a third of my not-even-close-to-livable wage of $10/hr. I was starting to suspect this Goodwill place isn’t in the business of good will. Then I visited the Training and Education Center which also serves as their corporate HQ in Seattle.

It was modern. Spacious. Clean. Safe. Nobody looked poor or unhappy. Any illusions I might have held about Goodwill were entirely shattered beyond any doubt.

I’ll never shop or donate there again and I’ll take every opportunity to tell anyone who will listen why they should stop patronizing the most for-profit nonprofit I’ve ever worked for.

Fuck you, Goodwill. Fuck you forever.

Non-millenial here, also watching my payments skyrocket by 440%. Can’t get loans with my excellent credit score because my debt to income ratio is super high. At this point it would cost me less to tank my credit, go into default, and be garnished since my credit score is meaningless anyway.

I voted for them, too. The failure to stop Trump is, in my opinion, squarely Biden’s fault. He put no pressure on Garland and the USAG did nothing and said nothing of value the entire time. I don’t blame Harris as much but I do think she should’ve pushed for a primary instead of just taking the reins. And as a former prosecutor she also should’ve put the squeeze on Garland. He represents just one of several important failure points but it’s a damn big one.

All this hemming and hawing by Dems to avoid looking like they’re using the justice system as a political tool despite knowing their opponent has done the same during his last term and has openly stated he will turn it up to 11 if he gets back in. And here we are, watching that weaponization happen every day.

“I actually like having the kids around,” he said, adding that although they were unfamiliar with the “nuances” of Social Security, he was trying to get them to be more thoughtful. “They’re thinking about work differently.”

I respect that this guy is walking a fine line. I think he should speak his mind (I can tell he is trying to be diplomatic here) since he’s going to be replaced anyway. But to say the above is just willful self-delusion. Dudek, you know damn well those kids are paid not to think at all. They’re there to wreck shit.

Are you overreacting? No. Start spiking trees if you want to save them.

Perhaps one of the Super Dorks will help us.

Removed by mod