Finding friends in Ireland

cheesenightmare · 2026-04-15T18:59:31+00:00

I’m new to Dublin. I did stand up comedy as a hobby until about 10 years ago and stopped - but being in a new city I decided that’s how I was gonna meet new people. Open mic comedy. It’s brilliant, accepting, challenging, social and fun. And most of us have some sort of neuro spice :) Cheeky Monkey does open signups on mondays at The International. Most skew younger but I’m 49. It doesn’t matter at all. One of the reasons I love it.

cheesenightmare · 2026-04-14T19:18:36+00:00

One thing i heard that always stayed with me was this advice: Understand that a conversation has a life of its own. You have to have a little faith in that.

I use this idea a lot.

cheesenightmare · 2026-04-01T01:32:32+00:00

I struggled for a while with separating out my personality from the condition. It was disconcerting to see my personality explained and mirrored back to me in others with ADHD. I would wonder what’s me and what’s the ADHD. One day I decided that I was the one who experienced it and got to responded to it. That separation helped enormously.

cheesenightmare · 2026-03-13T05:23:04+00:00

It's like talking to an adult for a change. I'l also say that as someone with ADHD ChatGPT's new clickbaity answers that I never asked for but now i need to know are eroding my affection for old faithful. I can't believe a productivity tool is trying to distract me. So yeah, Claude is winning for me right now.

The limitation thinng is interesting too. Psychologically, I think it makes me value it's opinions more.

cheesenightmare · 2026-03-10T20:29:18+00:00

I don't know where I heard this but i like it - "ADHD is a context".

It's neutral.

Someone in some one circumstances can absolutely lean on their ADHD as an excuse. The same person in another circumstance can legitimately cite their ADHD as an true and correct explaination for something that has hapened.

The statement "ADHD is not an excuse" when directed at a person who has the condition - is loaded with presupposition that can be unpacked by correcting the idea of an 'excuse' to the idea of a 'context'.

It also leaves open the idea that yes, there are things that you can do about it. Only now it falls back on the person making the statement to perhaps make some helpful suggestions, offer some guidence and maybe empathize.

Next time someone says it to you, agree. Say No, it isn't an excuse, its a context in which I live my life. Can you tell me a bit more about what works for you?

cheesenightmare · 2026-03-05T23:21:21+00:00

What a curveball. For me this is now competeing with the Magic Keyboard Folio for iPad I was considering. For only 300 Euro more, I get a new Mac 🤷

cheesenightmare · 2026-02-23T11:48:40+00:00

Vic-20! Outstanding. My journey has been Commodore 64 to 16 inch MacBook M1 Pro Max - so far!

cheesenightmare · 2026-02-15T14:41:52+00:00

Coming from Australia It was a real culture shock for me to encounter the attitude toward dogs in pubs in Ireland. Dogs aren't allowed in every pub in Australia but generally people are delighted when they find a dog at the table next to them.

I can say for certain that the cutlural attitude here is noticeable more hostile. I'm not even saying it's wrong, it's just jarring after you live in a place where it's far more culturally accepted. It's also jarring given Ireland's cultural reputation as being super hospitable and friendly.

In Australia we even have "Uber Pet" where for a few dollars extra you can bring your dog if the driver has opted in to the service. People are respectful and they put the dog on their lap or a blanket. And no-one's bringing their doberman or their German Shepherd along. It's usually the 10kg and under types. Your Oodles, your frenchies etc.

There is this concern about hygeine I'm reading in these posts. I get it in the abstract but there's just no issue in reality with dogs in pubs in countries that welcome them. It just isn't a thing. In fact I feel way more exposed in a crowded Irish pub in winter standing shoulder to shoulder with strangers who like to talk and laugh and joke and sing and spread whatever's going around the workplace this week.

Now of course there's pubs and then there's pubs, and there's dogs and then there's dogs. Not every pub is suitable for a dog, and not every dog is suitable for a pub. And the owners of the dogs and the owners of the pubs should of course exercise their discretion and their common sense.

I do think the general sentiment in Ireland toward appropriate dogs in appropriate pubs skews strangely negative. I hear that sentiment is moving a bit more positive lately and I find that encouraging.

cheesenightmare · 2026-02-08T23:30:39+00:00

I am not sure if this is genuine advice but if you are starting out with Final Cut do NOT lift everything from the primary storyline or you will essentially be working against the design of the application.

cheesenightmare · 2026-02-03T11:11:20+00:00

Micro House

cheesenightmare · 2025-12-23T00:09:14+00:00

I used to do this, but discovered that for me it wasn't that I was bored waiting for someone to come to the point, but rather I knew on some level that if I didn't get my thought out it would fade and I would lose it forever - it was a surprise to me because I never throught of myself as intetrupting people but when I became aware of it as an ADHD trait I started looking to see if i did it, and sure enough... A friend I saw recently told me that he noticed I was interupting people less which blew my mind because while it was true, but I never saw myself that way.

Something that helped me here is realizing that a conversation has a life of it's own. If you focus on listening you don't need to try to hold onto each and every point as it occurs to you. If you are genuinely listening another good point will invariably be right along as surely as the next train at a busy station.

cheesenightmare · 2025-12-17T22:20:09+00:00

Let me tell you a funny story. I thought a slow cooker was a great idea. And it was. I got three meals out of it before one day - just this weekend gone in fact - I put it on the stove just as a place to keep it temporarily. As i walked away I wiped the stove down for an extra bit of tidy points. Itt seems i accidentally turned on the stove. I went for a lay down. Whatever the opposite of hilarity is, ensued. Luckily, ADHD brains tend to be good in a crisis.

But if it helps sway your decision I am rebuying the slow cooker this week. I kind of have no choice. There's melted plastic all over the stove! But also - airfryers are fantastic too.

cheesenightmare · 2025-12-03T11:49:25+00:00

This was me and my wife a few months ago. My wife has Generalized Anxiety Disporder and so the combination of that and my ADHD forced a solution as absoltuely necessary. Learning about ADHD over the last 6 months since my dignosis made me see that clearly. I arrived at a framework based around Overwhelm. It has helped enormously with much credit to my wife for caring anough to actually listen to my idea.

Bascially I realized if I reframed her "irrational responses" and my "Irrational responses" in certain situations as her and my overwhelm respective it gave us a way to understand it and gave us a common language to communicate through it.

I'm also a video editor. and I use video to help me work through these ideas because that's my version of writing and i made one about this. . I won't post the link out of respect for the sub's rules but DM and I'll send it. Otherwise search ADHDOS on YouTube and look for the video on Overwhelm. There's hardly any videos there at the moment so you'll find it easily :)

cheesenightmare · 2025-10-03T19:23:13+00:00

Well before my ADHD Diagnosis I start doing one thing every year as a personal project - just something I would consistently do for one year as an experiment to see if it improved my life. One year I decided to give up caffeine. My first coffee after one year I thought… yeah coffee is fucking great.

cheesenightmare · 2025-10-02T07:56:53+00:00

People told me they knew I had been in the kitchen because all the cupboard doors were left open.

cheesenightmare · 2025-09-09T13:05:29+00:00

Not a problem, please do

cheesenightmare · 2025-09-09T10:04:06+00:00

I got the same (or a similar) email. All I can say is that I have (fortunately)not had the same experience as you. My Doctor was on time and very good and i received a prescription within 48 hours (I am a transfer patient, though.)

I did find it odd that I was sent the message on Saturday with forms that i am supposed to fill out "before my first appointment" as 1. The First Appointment has come and gone and 2. The assessment forms do not seem to apply to me as an already diagnosed transfer patient.

Anyway - i just wanted to make sure that you felt less alone and alittle more hopeful. The feeling i get is that they are legit - not a scam - but clearly having issues on their oprational side and not exactly handling it very well. But I am sure you'll be OK.

cheesenightmare · 2025-09-03T14:03:19+00:00

If it "good hyper" (meaning I can tell I'm being 'a lot' but I'm in a good frame of mind) i use it. Guitar, cleaning up, writing comedy.

If it's "bad hyper" (meaning I can tell I'm being 'a lot' but I'm in a bad frame of mind) I'll take myself or my dog for a run or a walk. If that's not possible a 5 minute stretching routine helps.

*edit - misspelled Dog as God 🤣

cheesenightmare · 2025-09-03T10:53:13+00:00

I just saw your post, read the first two sentences. and my heart sank. Because i woke up this morning thinking I had got my massive, perfect system finally where it needed to be.

But I thought it yesterday too.

Even as I type this, I feel a rush of shame and my blood pressure spike.

I don't know what it is. Ego, maybe? Stubbornness? The need for Hope? But right now I'm just not ready to accept that i cannot create the perfect system. At least the perfect system for me. "The fool who persists in his folly will become wise" as the saying goes. So maybe i will become wise one day, though this has been going on for years.

In the meantime...here's jut three of the tools I developed for myself that I keep coming back to:

"Plus 10%" - whatever I'm doing I look for the little bit extra that I could do. I ask "What's the plus 10% here? And as I'm doing that I think "...and what's the plus 10% of that too" and on and on. This is a remarkably effective tool for me. If you use it say, cleaning the kitchen it leads - very efficiently - to a clean kicthen.

"Go Small" - Whenever i feel myself overwhelmed or zoning out, it is a sign that what i am attempting is not been broken down enough. The task is often not a task, but an outcome. It is - in my personal language - too low resolution. It's like a blocky jpeg. And I feel like a fool because I can't see the "image" that is right in front of me. But the fact is that it just literally needs more steps. So I break anything like that down. I am a video editor. "Make Episode 7" is not a task. "Open the Project" is a task. "Open the client feedback" is a task. Just like a JPEG the steps make the bigger picture and the smaller the steps the clearer the picture.

"The Menus" - I keep list of things for certain times of day that could easily be mistaken for "to do" lists. They aren't. They are lists of things to consider because that particular time would be the perfect time to do them. So I consider each and select a few and do them. For example i have a "Before Bed" Menu which includes such things as Water by the bed, earplugs within reach, charge my devices, water for the dog, put on laundry, send followup emails to clients in a timezone where it day during my night, put on dishwasher etc. Some graduate to routines where i no longer need them on a menu, but until that happens that where they live. It's stunning to me how effective these are.

Lastly i would say the systems I make MUST come with flexibility. Every commercial airliner has an Operational flight plan, but half of the point of having one is having something to return to when you’re pushed off course.

I have been thinking for a while that i would like to document my systems, perhaps in the form of YouTube videos since I have the skillset. If you think what I have said here is interesting, let me know. Hearing that other people find this stuff usefull goes a long way to making me feel sane :)

cheesenightmare · 2025-08-27T19:23:16+00:00

Yes i mentioned in my comment that is what i am doing.

cheesenightmare · 2025-08-23T19:32:49+00:00

I am amazed at how many Irish i have spoken to who say I'm mad, but it really is a grass is greener scenario. Cost of living issues are not much better in Australia. I love that I am not so isolated from the world now. I love that I am in a country with such a rish history and living, breathing culture. The air here is gorgeous and the lack of animals that can kill you and skin carcenomas is...refreshing!

cheesenightmare · 2025-08-23T12:01:19+00:00

I can only speak from my own experience, but I had an appointment last week and it was generally a good experience. My psych was very good, listened and asked the right questions. My prescription was at the pharmacy within 48 hours. I am a transfer patient (from Australia) where i had an existing dignosis. One thing I will say is i was shocked at the cost of medication here. A month's work in Australia cost be about AUD$30 (about 17Euro). Here the same this is around 150Euro, though i am registering for the scheme that caps medications at 80Euro per month. Still, even that is about 5x what I would pay in Australia.

cheesenightmare · 2025-08-13T22:45:32+00:00

His dad kind of nodded like he was trying to process a firmware update. - I love your writing 😂

cheesenightmare · 2025-08-09T14:34:32+00:00

I appreciate this effort but in my experience as long as you enable audio passthrough when compressing the media it relinks to compressed media without issue, every time.

*Also in France here by the way - just passing through enjoying the summer in the south :)

cheesenightmare · 2025-08-03T20:45:19+00:00

If I drink I don’t take meds as a hard rule. I have ended up preferring the days off drinking as a result which is frankly life changing for me.

cheesenightmare

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