five things: seeing birds, wrong on the internet, task initiation, writing tgcf, dealing with things

[sophia_sol]

one

amazing to think that when I got into birds a few years ago, I had to work hard to train my eyes to learn to notice and see birds. and it was so effective that now I genuinely have trouble believing how oblivious I was to the birds around me for all the years of my life before that!

I am now that xkcd comic about experts overestimating what the average person knows, lol


two

sometimes people are Wrong on the internet and you have to step away without engaging in trying to argue with them about it and it's just like. I'm so strong and powerful actually, for succeeding at that.


three

reading endless useless articles with the same three pieces of advice on how to handle task initiation when you have adhd is ALMOST the same thing as initiating the task you need to do, right???


four

writing tgcf fic just has endless space for exploring Gender and it's so good


five

sometimes you just gotta sew 1.5 alteration projects and then reread a known-fave fic about it*

*it being "your feelings"

Comments

[china_shop]

two: Hee! (Was it me?)

three: I think so!

five: that sounds like a very satisfying use of time. <3

[sophia_sol]

two: it was absolutely not you! <3 (it was someone on tumblr having DEEPLY incorrect opinions, at length, about a character I care a great deal about)

three: excellent glad to hear it

five: YES!!!

[china_shop]

> (it was someone on tumblr having DEEPLY incorrect opinions, at length, about a character I care a great deal about)

Oh no, that is one of the worst "wrong on the internet"s! Particularly since getting into fights about it is so doomed and pointless.

<3 <3 <3

[geraineon]

it's a super power to just let things pass

(i am still learning)

[sophia_sol]

it's an ongoing process to learn this one!!!

[lokifan]

two: genuinely you are though!

[sophia_sol]

THANK YOU

[marginaliana]

Re: two - genuine gold star!

[sophia_sol]

thank you!!!

[pauraque]

1. Since I grew up birding, I have no memory of learning this and it feels like a basic sensory function to me. I am intellectually aware that a lot of people don't notice birds, but I can't really imagine what it would be like. But it's also fascinating that it's something that can fairly quickly be picked up in adulthood, which is not the case for all perceptual skills! I wonder what else we (me, you, everyone) are not noticing that we could learn to notice very easily if we were aware of our sensory deficit.

2. Go you! I am also proud of myself for learning to walk away from people who are wrong on the internet. It's made my life a lot less stressful.

[sophia_sol]

1. wow it would be so cool to grow up with that! I grew up in a family where paying attention to license plates and what state/province they came from is extremely normal and I still always notice this, which I gather most people don't. But I'm also very aware of perceptual skills I don't have, like identifying car brands and car types. I know people who can glance at a car and immediately know what it is, and to me it just looks like a car, because I haven't developed the eyes to know what's relevant to notice about it. I also think regularly about "plant blindness", where to many people today, plants are just an indifferentiated mass of random green. I don't know a lot of plant ID off the top of my head but I HAVE trained my eyes to see specifics in plants, so I can easily tell one plant from another even if I don't know the names of them.

2. thank you! and congrats to you as well! it's a very important skill, and one I'm still working on tbh.

[pauraque]

Ahh, those are good examples! Especially the cars, because that's one I am very much blind to. I don't see the field marks that car people are looking for to tell one car from another except in the broadest categories. If I tried to describe a car I saw to a car person they would have to be very patient with me.

[sophia_sol]

hahaha yes exactly! I don't know the field marks to pay attention to, and would have NO idea how to describe a car in a useful way! I definitely notice this with the way other people come to me with birds they saw to ask for ID, with the kinds of things they do or don't notice. Some are just bird-adjacent enough to be able to provide useful details but some....oh boy! It's a fun challenge though, trying to distill the essence of the bird from the description someone's able to give me.

[pauraque]

And then sometimes people hit on exactly the right thing to convey the essence of the bird. There was a recent one on r/whatsthisbird where someone posted a pencil sketch of a vague American football shape with legs, and the Green Heron ID came in about five seconds. OP was astonished!

[sophia_sol]

lolll yes, sometimes the true essence of the bird just shines through! I recently had one from someone on mastodon, where the person said they saw the bird walking upside-down, down a trunk of a tree, and I was like. Right! given where you're located there are exactly three species of bird it could be and it WILL be one of those three! (they didn't understand at first how serious I was about it HAVING to be one of those three, though. but like. a bird needs very specially adapted feet to be able to do that! it's going to be a black-and-white warbler or some kind of nuthatch! I'm very confident they saw a black-and-white warbler but I'm not sure they believed me lol.)

[pauraque]

That's funny because very recently I was walking with sdk and she saw a bird I missed, and said it had an all white face and was walking directly down a tree trunk. I pulled up White-breasted Nuthatch on my phone and asked if that was the bird, and she said yes, definitely, and I had to explain that my ID was really not impressive because her description had eliminated every bird but one!

[sophia_sol]

lollll yes that is a pretty easy ID!

[chestnut_pod]

I genuinely have trouble believing how oblivious I was to the birds around me for all the years of my life before that! -- I was just saying the exact same thing to my dad! The world is so much fuller!

[sophia_sol]

yes -- it's so mind-expandingly wonderful! everywhere I look, there are things to be amazed at and delighted by!