I just came across the idea of treating inattentive ADHD as being similar in nature to erectile dysfunction

It was a video on Instagram that I now can't find again, but the gist of it was...

yelling at yourself for not being aroused by a task doesn't help you perform no amount of "well I really want to be into this and in theory I should be" will create the conditions needed to get the thing to work

it's not something you can make happen directly

drawing from the erectile dysfunction analogy, two strategies then come to mind

one of the most valuable things about doing this social media thing is that you start to see how some minority of people will always insist on focusing on the negative, even within the good

at which point, life gets much easier, because you just say "oh, look, there they go!" where before you may worry that you are not seeing the bigger picture and that things might really be bad, actually...

it becomes clear that:
- where you focus your time and attention within the bigger picture is a choice
- good things can seem threatening to some people

I just did an anger release thing as part of the @artofaccomp Master Class

five minutes of fully expressing anger (swearing, screaming) in a safe, small group container

it was interesting that there was a clear switch half way through from performance to 'okay this real now'' @artofaccomp I was concerned I'd go into it a little British-ly, like "oh my I'm so frightfully angry, rawr" type thing

fortunately my experiences doing similar things helped me sink right into it

what made this way more powerful was bringing in real narrative

michaelashcroft.org/blog/the-coura…

I feel like there's been a lot of "jobs are bad and you should quit" energy on the timeline lately

so here are some reasons jobs are good and what I miss about having one

1) working with smart, engaged people on shared projects, bouncing ideas around and helping each other 2) you can have significantly more power/impact/reach as part of an organisation than you can on your own

knowing that the work you do is an important part of a system larger than yourself can be really satisfying and motivating

isn’t it incredible that houses have pipes that carry clean water in and dirty water out and all you have to do is open a tap or push a button?

and that the networks that do this are built and operated by people and they run perfectly basically all the time? and there’s an entirely different set of pipes that carry the gaseous remains of simple marine organisms that died millions of years ago and we burn that that to cook with, heat rooms and heat the water we get from the other pipes?

and people built those pipes and they work

I am going to try to recreate and adapt @beauhaan's block-based outliner Zettelkasten approach for @tana_inc and will comment on my thoughts and approach in this thread

if this sounds incredibly tedious to you, do go ahead and mute this thread @beauhaan @tana_inc first thing to say is that when I went through Beau's Roam Book Club I found his way of thinking accessible and compelling

I've read around the whole Zettelkasten space in an amateurish way and I find it somewhat dry and 'not relevant to me', but Beau's style grabbed me

okay I have been reflecting and it seems I have been overcomplicating things regarding my 'online home(s)'

two websites, two mailing lists, two defunct but still active substacks

which all resulted in less clarity about what to write and where

a new plan is required to get back into the flow of regular writing and to minimise risk of over-complication, I am going to go back to substack and write one (1) regular newsletter, which will be the hub for my new writing

in the background I will revamp my personal website to serve as a central hub

I am about ready to throw in the towel and just accept that I have some kind of ambiguous ongoing chronic health issue

endless fatigue, poor digestion, cognitive power is not what it should be

of course these are the kinds of generic symptoms that lead to wild goose chases going to be doing a bunch more tests around gut microbiome, blood tests, heavy metal stuff and see what comes up

maybe do some kind of full on elimination diet?

who knows

very difficult to get more than a couple of hours of work done a day though unfortunately

I'm going to try to explain Alexander Technique using an idea from computer science: functions

I am not a dev so forgive any mistakes

a function is a separate chunk of reusable code that is called from the main program, does something, then the main program continues what Alexander Technique reveals is that humans have functions

lots and lots of functions and of various complexity

for example, one human function is "sit down", which itself likely calls a bunch of other functions, but let's not worry about that for now

indulge me

have you already or are you considering establishing a presence on Mastodon? I couldn't figure out how to get on mastodon.social so I'm here for now

@m_ashcroft@c.im

putting my "Chief Risk Officer" hat on for a moment

turns out I am quite reliant on Twitter's existence

Expanding Awareness and Thinking Out Loud are newsletters with no way for people to discover without other platforms

so I should grow one of YouTube, LinkedIn or Instagram🤔 LinkedIn still fills me with a strong aversion, and I've never actually used it for any 'content' - all those 'followers' are actually connections I picked up over my previous 10 year career

it's probably the closest equivalent to Twitter: content + algo, but I'm not thrilled

okay I'm going to talk about Universal Love Said The Cactus Person as a "what is Alexander Technique?" device

here's my summary of the core "get out of the car" idea that I use in my course

these 'roads' represent habitual patterns of doing and being after a chat with @tasshinfogleman we realised that these accumulated habitual patterns may also be related to the Samskaras in Buddhist thought

anyway, each 'road' represents of, let's say behaviour, that's already familiar — you've gone down this road before and know it

wondering if I should name my company something flashy so that I can claim to be CEO of it

🖐 CEO of Michael Ashcroft Ltd
👉 CEO of AwarenessX I need to feed the demons of linkedin *something* before they come for my soul

You can incline yourself incredibly strongly towards whatever you want (intention), just do so in a way that you could put it down and change direction at any moment (non-fixation)

https://twitter.com/nickcammarata/status/1571727334750683137

next up: you won’t BELIEVE where your hip joints really are

https://twitter.com/m_ashcroft/status/1541551047793074179

hint: much further down and inside than you think

last call!

course price is going up tomorrow because sales tax

https://twitter.com/m_ashcroft/status/1540338604207226880

assuming technical stuff works behind the scenes of course

time for an Alexander Technique game on UNSCRUNCHING

as a little experiment, I'd like you to 'scrunch' yourself

consciously tighten a bunch of muscles in your face, neck, shoulders, back, wherever, and hold for a couple of moments get a sense of what you're doing to add all this tension to your body and then — in a single moment, all at once — simply choose to stop doing it

unscrunch yourself

I invite you to repeat this experiment a few times, paying attention to the 'move' you make when you unscrunch

this is going to sound maximally unhinged, but i think...

aliveness = unscrunchedness + couldness ( + ??? yet to come)

notes and experiments on 'unscrunchedness' to come, fear not, good people

and you can read about couldness here

expandingawareness.org/blog/couldness… feel like my twitter style is getting more @nosilverv by the day

i write in a quiet corner of the internet about seemingly arcane things like awareness, aliveness and agency

but this is all in service of wanting to help a generation of people navigate, contribute and feel fully alive in a rapidly changing world that needs them at their best i am not fucking around here

it may not be clear yet how my stuff relates to giving people the skills they need to change the world in new, positive and important ways

but it will

in my experience these are people who have themselves learned how to unwind the tension that they used to hold habitually

https://twitter.com/RichDecibels/status/1541067654965903360

one addendum is I assume Rich is talking about this such that it's a good thing and that's also what I'm pointing to

i.e. not actively broadcasting a signal that gets you to unwind tension if it's actually *unsafe* to do so

that would be something else i can't entirely imagine

i want to commit to using either Roam or Logseq because the absence of committing means i’m not using either if people have Thoughts and want to convince me please feel free, I want your takes