My Experience with Cleanliness

I’m a disorganized person, a partially recovered hoarder, and I’m disabled. This adds up to some very unsavoury environments I’ve created around myself but in recent years I’ve made progress in leaps and bounds. Still, my apartment is rarely clean and when it is, it’s often short lived. But no longer am I sleeping on …

Leaving Behind Bad Behaviours

Negative reinforcement won’t work, not really. The key is in the positive. Be compassionate toward yourself because we will fail and it’s important that we fall onto a soft surface. These so-called ‘bad behaviours’ are simply actions that hinder you or clash with your ethics and values. If you want to be better you must …

5 Ways to Recuperate and Still Be Productive

I have ADHD along with several other neurological and psychiatric disorders which has meant I require more rest breaks during tasks, need to identify obstacles, and learn to prioritize. Understanding our own personal needs is a crucial step in increasing our productivity as we can’t accommodate problems we haven’t familiarized ourselves with.  For myself, I …

You and Your Mental Illness Don’t Exist Alone in an Empty Room

Often it feels as though we are alone in our mind, facing off against our disorders. We feel isolated. Maybe we feel doomed to follow the missteps of our parents, or that we’re missing out on life, or held back in a race everyone else is close to winning, I have moments like these every …

Disabled Motivation: Prioritization

In the chaotic storm of tasks, responsibilities, wants, and needs, having to also cope with disability can make navigating day to day life extraneous. Words like ‘organization’ and ‘prioritization’ can feel synonymous with the work we’re weighed down by, but we can use these concepts to first sort through the chaos and make this work …

Good to Be Bad: Making Art

Are you afraid to create ‘bad’ art? The answer for myself is invariably yes, as is the answer to the question of failing or underwhelming, but it’s an incomplete response. Yes, I’m afraid, and I understand why I am, and why ‘bad’ art is important. Being aware of the whats and whys brings about a …

Disabled Motivation: Obstacles

Routines of everyday life are often riddled with roadblocks for people with disabilities. The range of obstacles is as vast as every person’s individual journey but there are basic systems of overcoming that can aid everyone. We as humans are diverse but connected in many ways, aspects of my life have been lived by many …

Disability and Time Perception: Hour Gone By

Beginning in many ways; curled in my lovers arms, painting freely, heightened anxiety, thinking of a horrific memory, somehow I slip from the time stream. An hour passes. To me I have been drug through days or maybe only caught a couple seconds, I’ve detached from the normal experience of time. How I relate my …

Disability and Time Perception: Productivity

Rebellion and victory, questioning the purpose of my current moment. I’ve always rebelled against the concept of a quantifiable moment in time, now instead I defy myself— my perceptions of my capabilities. What time is capable of, what the worth of the present moment is, it’s worth it for me to look deeper than experiences …