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[slfcare]

afterthought: this is also something I have to force myself to do even to this day! I can get so in my head about my speech impediment in particular, the way my mouth muscles move, the way I sound and the way people continue to see me as less or even sad because of it (I think every disabled person knows The Look or the tight smile people can give you), but I know that if I put too much energy into worrying about it, I’ll just make myself feel upset and hesitant about speaking altogether. So, I just try not to think about it. Literally direct my thoughts elsewhere. Even if it feels weird and insincere, you have to continue making that choice over and over again about everything that doesn’t serve you, because you can’t change it.

how, if ever, have you gotten over EVERYTHING being embarrassing?

oh, I remember this so vividly. It used to be terrible when I was a teenager. Wearing sunglasses? Embarrassing. Walking past people? Embarrassing. Standing up in class when every one else was still seated? Wearing headphones? Waiting at the busstop? Talking a little too loud, too much or too little? All super duper Embarrassing. Then I got out of high school, entered a new era, and one day just realised how utterly exhausted I was. This had surpassed being considerate of those around me or conscious about how I presented myself to others - this was just tiring. I was constantly fighting myself in my head and bullying myself. Do you know how much energy it takes to overthink every little thing like that? Alllll the time? Embarrassment is fully inside of your head. It helped to think of it as a conversation I was having with myself and to be annoyed at that conversation. Like when I started thinking something would be embarrassing again, I heaved the biggest sigh and told myself, "Ohhhh my goshhhh shut up!!!! I don't have the energy for this!!!" and pushed through. Which takes a lot of practise. In short: Usually I'm all about being gentle with and nice to yourself, but in this case I'd say it's okay to tell yourself to just shut up until it sticks lol.

[slfcare]

life tip is writing things you want down in a notebook or on a piece of paper so that you can actually look back and realize how far you’ve come every once in a while. manifest friends through a fictional story about the person you want to be. make a five-year-plan on a random page in a notebook you often use. keep your wishlist with you at all times on a little piece of paper to cross things off and be more appreciative overall. physical reminders (literally) carry so much weight and you’ll start noticing it.

[slfcare]

how, if ever, have you gotten over EVERYTHING being embarrassing?

oh, I remember this so vividly. It used to be terrible when I was a teenager. Wearing sunglasses? Embarrassing. Walking past people? Embarrassing. Standing up in class when every one else was still seated? Wearing headphones? Waiting at the busstop? Talking a little too loud, too much or too little? All super duper Embarrassing. Then I got out of high school, entered a new era, and one day just realised how utterly exhausted I was. This had surpassed being considerate of those around me or conscious about how I presented myself to others - this was just tiring. I was constantly fighting myself in my head and bullying myself. Do you know how much energy it takes to overthink every little thing like that? Alllll the time? Embarrassment is fully inside of your head. It helped to think of it as a conversation I was having with myself and to be annoyed at that conversation. Like when I started thinking something would be embarrassing again, I heaved the biggest sigh and told myself, "Ohhhh my goshhhh shut up!!!! I don't have the energy for this!!!" and pushed through. Which takes a lot of practise. In short: Usually I'm all about being gentle with and nice to yourself, but in this case I'd say it's okay to tell yourself to just shut up until it sticks lol.

[slfcare]

Hi dear, I hope you are well. I have been reading your blog, I feel tired of everything, I can not think correctly in this moment. I just want to say thank you very much.

Hi angel, you're so welcome / always welcome here. We all have those days. Things'll get better, I hereby pinky-promise ☝️ (<- pretend this is a pinky emoji) <3

[slfcare]

you think you're inflicting yourself upon the world like an injury when you're really just existing within it. you enter every room with the subconscious idea that you're the least valuable person there, when in truth you're just as capable as the next person and they're not inherently above you. you see your mistakes as unforgivable sins, when just like anyone else, you're allowed to move on from them. that step up (or away) from self-deprecation is not this grand amount of unshakeable self-love; it's neutrality. you don't have to believe that you're untouchable and amazing with 0 doubt: you have to recognise that you're not as terrible as you think you are.

[slfcare]

also, let it be known that I once struggled so much in school that I got a 0% on a math test in high school (I was behind by literal months), had to retake an entire year and went from the highest national education level to a lower one. I remember thinking that was it for me and I'd ruined my life. I was a seventeen-year-old child. That's the thing about failing: you can do it again and again and again, and things can still be okay. You'll be in the greatest depths you have ever known, and still be able to rise to new heights. The scary thing, and simultaneously the best thing, is that you just never know.

[slfcare]

i graduated w my bs in comp sci a few weeks ago and bc of doing the degree in 3 years instead of 4, i never got the chance to get actual work experience so im making projects to hopefully convince companies to hire me anyway. how did you plan out your website, especially w learning new tools?? did u just go into it and figure it out as u went or did you have a dev map

Congratulations!!!

I did learn as I went. That’s also something I had to do during my internship, because from week one, I was a part of a team that programmed in languages that I had zero experience in, and they really wanted me to show initiative. Back then I did a CodeAcademy course for the duration of the first week, then slowly integrated in the dev environment of the actual project. They gave me increasingly difficult tickets as I went.

At first this really freaked me out, but it was the best way to learn. Literally starting. The 3D model was a result of one weekend where I committed to learning as much about Blender and 3D physics as I could, then it went smoothly from there. Building the authentication system was combing through some documentation and then following an in-depth YouTube tutorial. For each bug I encountered, I gave myself a certain amount of time to dedicate to fixing it, spread out over several days usually.

I think it’ll just be intimidating to approach it as somewhat of a grand plan, with all these things you must master. I’d figure out what the project is, and then learn from large (like a brandnew framework) to small (like a certain package or library - I also used Framer Motion, for example, which has a small learning curve).

Hope this makes sense!

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as someone also pursuing a ba of science for compsci, i’m curious to know how you figured out what you wanted to do with it? i’m having a hard time narrowing down/envisioning something realistic.

I always knew I wanted to do my own project. I'm not sure what kind of rules are tied to your graduation, but we could go ahead and find a company that had a project for us or come up with something ourselves. At this time I was an intern at my current workplace and I brought my idea up with them. They expressed a lot of interest and were willing to keep me on as an intern even as I pursued my own project. This one was obviously very personal, as I have cerebral palsy, but that's also what I've found my examinators and my workplace really appreciated. I stood pretty firm in wanting to create this specific thing. I think that's also how I've managed to get it pretty far in the semester I had. ALSO, my company is known for taking on creative projects, and since I'd done some during my internship with them, I wanted to continue with that streak, as it was in the vein of the kind of work they do. Since I wanted to challenge myself, I went for a 3D site. I really recommend going for something that just makes you go, "Woah, that would be so cool," and then do your research and figure out what you can do in advance. I knew learning how to do the 3D stuff would take very long, so as soon as I got the idea, I just started messing with Blender. Don't limit yourself before you've started - start taking steps and the unrealistic will start to take shape, closer to something realistic. If you want to chat about this, send me a message anytime!

[slfcare]

tocomehome looks amazing so far! i understand the focus is on physically disabled people, but do you have any plans to add resources for people with sensory disabilities and/or adhd-havers in the future? i could get a lot of use out of it if so! thank you for creating it either way!

Thank you!! I have a lot of wild plans when it comes to expanding it to a real, finished site, including this. I would love to open the tocomehome.com Discord for anyone to join, as it has served as the central hub for communication about its development. I think that would be a great place to discuss this because I'm really wanting to talk to actual people and make decisions together, instead of doing it the way I think is best when I know nothing about it. That's also the way I've gone about this thesis. Literally every feature and design choice has been made by myself AND my test users from Tumblr dot com. The company that has guided me on a technical level (and that has hired me fulltime!) luckily offers their software engineers time and resources to pursue passion projects, so it's definitely not over yet! I've also presented the site to the entire company and they're super positive about where it could go. Do you think you'd like to be involved in the site's expansion? I'm gonna need ADHD-experts, sensory disability experts etc. in the future, and I'd love to make the Discord a place for the development, as well as just a place to chat and get together.

[slfcare]

I GOT MY BACHELOR'S OF SCIENCE DEGREE TODAY WITH A PERFECT SCORE FOR MY THESIS! A few months ago I asked you guys who'd be willing to be a test user for my graduation project, which was for my thesis, and with a small group of you I've basically done a bunch of interviews, exercises and brainstorms, which resulted in this (Desktop) site: tocomehome.com!

It's a community for disabled young people to find mobility aids for home use. The thing is; every tool is recommended by a real disabled person, who can add a reason why they think the tool is helpful as well as share links for purchasing. You can follow users with your disability, react to their reviews, save your favourite items to a wishlist and recommend handy tools yourself. It's still very much a prototype, hence why there's no mobile version yet, but I wanted to share it. I'm also officially a software engineer now - I accepted a job offer. :D Proof that life keeps on moving forward. Carrying you on its back, if it must.

[slfcare]

On the topic of negative emotions or feelings being physical, I've always struggled with this strange pang in my chest and left arm whenever I'm sad (I don't mean to make this a medical consult, just wanted to share my experience) that hardly goes away when I try to go the 'okay, what's going on?' route and maybe it's because I grew up in a really emotionally neglectful environment, but... Yeah, that post is a great reminder.

I have the same chest pang when I'm really nervous and stressed at the same time, which I honestly also struggle with quite a bit. I think it helps when I slow down by talking to someone about what I'm nervous and stressed about in a safe environment, as well as when someone else can ground me by just giving me a hug or something. But I hate hate the feeling and I'm also very much still in the process of finding out what it all means and what helps, which might take a while unfortunately..

[slfcare]

If negative emotions and feelings are very physical to you (heart starts pounding when you're nervous, palms get clammy when you're stressed, eyelid gets twitchy when angry), it might be time to prescribe new meanings to them. Instead of thinking, "Oh, my palms are clammy again, everything is terrible," treat it as an indicator of what you should do to relieve yourself of some of that stress: "Oh, my palms are clammy again, I should talk to someone and make a new plan." Your feelings are not hindrances— they don't have to be!—, they're indicators of what is happening inside of you, and guidelines to how you should proceed.

[slfcare]

you can spend your life trying to be somebody you’re not, or you can spend your life growing comfortable in who you are.

[slfcare]

logging in to share some good news which is that I got offered a full-time job by my internship company 🥹🥹🥹 and I took it 🥹🥹🥹 (I'm still very much losing sleep over this website I'm building for my graduation, though - my deadline is in less than 2 weeks - I'll share it with all of you when it's done <3) I had to tell you because I also told you when I graduated high school, went to Indonesia for my first internship, chose tech as a very terrified girl in college, got my first job offer (a part-time summer job programming for a research institute) and when this very company hired me as an intern a year ago! At this point you can follow me growing up like a red thread on this blog. Anyways, it's midnight and I meant for this to be a short message, but it feels strangely symbolic and I feel overly emotional about this blog existing because of how sad I used to be, and it now being a happy place where I can share happy news like this. It'll get better for you, too.

[slfcare]

the very first step of getting over your fears is to have them. just like the first step to getting better is being worse than you wish you were, and the first step to becoming who you want to be is being who you are. don’t let your shame back you into a corner. you can only grow from here.

[slfcare]

ten questions to ask yourself, discuss with your closest friends or journal about:

↝ what does your admiration look like? is it free of jealousy?

↝ where do you feel your emotions, physically within you? does your anger live in your hands or your gut? is your sadness light or heavy?

↝ what do you feel holds you back from taking the steps you know you should be taking but aren’t?

↝ is there something that has happened recently which is still bothering you? why do you think this is? what do you wish happened instead?

↝ what kind of media have you been consuming lately, and how has it really been affecting you?

↝ are you where you hoped you’d be a year ago? are you okay with that?

↝ what areas of your life need a deep-clean? your literal closet? your social life? your habits? your attitude? your camera roll?

↝ where are you headed in the next few months? how do you wish you could adjust your course?

↝ what is something you want to be more honest about?

↝ what moves you?

[slfcare]

i so dont mean to ruin the mood or anything but

how do you survive and stay relatively positive when the world is getting worse and worse every passing second? would love to know 😭

I honestly think it’s really about bringing it all back to yourself in the here and now every once in a while. Don’t get me wrong, do stay updated with everything going on in the world, but be careful not to stray too far away from you.

It’s okay to create and participate in online spaces that are not about current events. It’s okay to put your phone away when you feel stressed out. It’s okay to focus on just your everyday responsibilities, no matter how mundane they are. It’s okay to not read the news for a day and instead take extra care of yourself, take things one at a time and keep yourself busy.

It’s okay to recognize when you’re starting to spiral, and instead say—hold on. There’s laundry to do and a dishwasher to unload and I should text my friends.

Everything seems to be falling apart at once and this gets magnified to an extreme when all you’re able to consume online is how screwed we are, to the point where not consuming the bad news feels like denying it. But that’s not the way to deal with it. Don’t let your feelings of helplessness make you isolate yourself in a bubble of fear and despair. Keep talking to people, keep hoping for better days, keep taking care of yourself and reflecting + evaluating how you’re feeling and what you can do about it in the moment. Keep putting energy and intention(!!!) into the mundane and keep moving forward.

This may not be directly applicable to staying positive, necessarily, but keeping yourself away from the opposite (getting lost in negativity instead) is the next best thing, and you can do better from there. Sometimes hope is really just about holding on to the things that don’t hurt you.