The Productive Pessimist

  "Remember; January is still  winter! It's unnatural to be making changes and starting things! The world is telling us to be cosy in bed and rest!" I've been seeing this a lot in the past few days, when it hasn't been present in past years as an anti-New Year's Resolution; previously, the counter to "new year, new me" was simply "Hey, if you don't want to make any resolutions or changes, that's cool, you can look back on the things you're proud of, and want to carry on doing." I'm much more in favour of the latter position than the former. The former position, that we just can't possibly be expected to do anything at this time of year , and people are literally being abusive sadists for expecting us to manage basic adult responsibilities "because still winter! Waaaahhhh!!!" Yes, January 1st is an arbitrary date to start a year. But so is February 2nd, March 31st, or the fifty-nevernth of July. Not ...

  Life being stressful isn't  an illness.  That's entirely correct. But "life being stressful" also  isn't acceptable to employers, either. It's not going to be the case, in the UK, in 2025, that if people "just stop going to doctors and claiming mental health issues and getting signed off because life is a bit hard, then we wouldn't be spending so much on welfare!" . "People don't like you" . "You're impacting your colleagues' morale" . "It's unfair of you to make your colleagues worry about you by being clearly upset" . "You can't talk about feeling burnt out when there are people dealing with far higher workloads than you - everyone is burnt out, but we have to keep going" . "If you aren't happy to be here, f-k off and get a different job" . "I'm sick of you coming in here looking like you want to k*ll yourself - why don't you just f-king do it, so the rest ...

Recently, an article was circulated through the UK media about "neurological issues affecting Gen Z", which were 'blamed' on "excessive reliance on noise-cancelling headphones". These 'neurological issues' are actually known as Auditory Processing Disorder, or APD. What Is APD? Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) is a difficulty in the brain being able to distinguish background noise from speech, but with hearing tests returning "normal" results. This is a tricky issue, because some people in the early stages of hearing loss will struggle in exactly this way, however their hearing test may come back as in a 'normal range'. As with all medicine, sometimes doctors fail to pick something up that could be managed or may be part of a wider issue. However, where this is relevant to neurodiversity is that these issues combined with a normal result hearing test, are a hallmark for Auditory Processing Disorder (APD). APD can occur for a va...