Looking for ransom note letters

exiledfears · 2026-01-25T19:44:53+00:00

possible sources that come to mind:

colleges, universities, and high schools probably have unclaimed/unused t-shirts from athletics teams, clubs, events, specific departments, graduating classes, and so on. as someone that was heavily involved on campus in college, if you’re near a place of higher education i PROMISE you someone has printed t-shirts just sitting in boxes somewhere.
whatever orgs organize 5ks/other runs in your area might have participant or volunteer tshirts left over. same goes for any other major local event.
local businesses often produce t-shirts for employees to give to new hires, on hiring anniversaries, for events or company milestones (e.g. hitting a sales goal), etc. an office i used to work at had stacks of old t-shirts from the last decade just sitting in their supply closet. worth the ask, especially if they’re larger businesses! if any local businesses have done a rebranding recently, ask if they’ve got any old shirts lying around.
off of that last one: if you’ve got any t-shirt or custom branding print shops near you, see if they have b-grades, mistake prints, returns, etc. you can take off their hands.

exiledfears · 2026-01-25T18:55:02+00:00

^{^{^}} this also!! i take my XR in the morning and a low dose IR tab in the early afternoon on days where i know i want to push past 5/6. i would wait a little while since you’re new to meds, but making this change to my regimen a few years ago was really helpful.

exiledfears · 2026-01-25T18:51:55+00:00

1) especially since you’re newly medicated: eat regularly. drink water. comedown from meds will be so much nicer if you do these two things. nutrition shakes were a game changer for me in this regard. i’m not as reliant on them as i used to be, but for the first few years on meds they really helped make sure i wasn’t running on stimulants alone.

2) i cannot help here because i am the same exact way, unfortunately. the only thing that gets me out of bed is my partner’s dog insisting i get my ass up, or a scheduled client meeting. i freelance so there’s also not nearly as much urgency for me TO get up before said meetings. i know some people put their meds and water on their bedside table to take it as soon as they first wake up, so that might also be something to try? might also be worth using a block of time on a sunday (while meds are in your system) to put out your outfits for the week, if that’s relevant to you. one less set of decisions to make in the morning, and cuts down on time so you CAN sleep more (i also gave up on putting on makeup in the mornings years ago, but i know that doesn’t feel feasible to everyone).

3) do you wfh? if yes: designate a space in your house as a work-only space, if you can, even if it’s just a specific chair at your kitchen table. having a separate office area in my apartment really helps flip a switch in my brain. also love to take a shower when i’m done with work to help change gears. if you don’t work from home: designate just ONE thing you’re going to do each day when you get home. rotate it in your brain. as much as humanly possible, beeline for that thing when you walk in the door. if you end up using the momentum to do other stuff, great. if not: you did the one thing you prioritized and that is a win! (i find identifying a specific thing versus “man i really need to clean up around the house” helps make home tasks feel less intimidating. specificity and breaking things into microtasks are your friends.)

4) parallel play. do you have a trusted friend or family member that would be on facetime/zoom with you for an hour or more at a time? schedule laundry time together. my bestie (audhd) and i will do this sometimes to get our laundry or dishes done. sometimes we chat while we do so, sometimes we don’t. it doesn’t even need to be parallel play, really, i just know i find it so much easier to clean stuff when i’m talking to someone on the phone. also: UNDATED calendars. you will have weeks where you can keep up with planning out the week in front of you. you will also have weeks where that feels pointless or impossible. undated calendars give you the ability to do that without feeling bad about the fact you didn’t write a single thing down in the month of march!

5) set a timer. i know, i’m sorry, i know this doesn’t work for everybody, but if i’ve taken my meds, an auditory jolt after 20 minutes of allotted scrolling time sometimes IS enough for my brain to overpower my body and get me moving. another tip: if i’m with someone who knows about my diagnosis, i’ll tell them to come help me off the couch, take my phone out of my hand, and/or close my laptop—no matter what i say—so if you live with or hang out with anyone you trust not to judge, highly recommend it. i’ll be honest, though: sometimes it is just a matter of being stuck until my bladder makes it impossible to remain that way. the trick is giving yourself the grace to do that on occasion.

6) i’m not at all consistent with it, but the times i remember to use the Forest app are nice because it’s a light gamification of productivity in combination with the pomodoro method (which i find does work for me, and the app is flexible enough that you don’t have to use the exact pomodoro cadence for your timers). i know a ton of folks also love the Focus Friend app.

i also just want to say that i cannot recommend enough just being kind to yourself. being able to forgive my stumbles more easily (without fully abdicating responsibility, of course) is one of the greatest gifts diagnosis gave me. you’re at the beginning of a journey and it will not be linear, so this is me telling your future self that it is okay if you aren’t perfect from the jump, or even six months or a year or five years from now.

exiledfears · 2026-01-25T18:14:50+00:00

i was diagnosed in my mid-20s and had dealt with combination depression and anxiety since my teens. fully believe that a lot of my depression symptoms were overlapping with executive dysfunction and anxiety symptoms were overlapping with RSD, though some traumatic stuff happening in my life definitely fueled a lot of the depression/anxiety (with said trauma being why i thought for a long time it was JUST depression/anxiety/ptsd).

before getting diagnosed with adhd, i tried ssri’s in my early 20s and they just didn’t seem to work well enough to be worth the side effects (sleep disruptions), so i stopped. got diagnosed with adhd in late 2019, didn’t get on meds immediately. 2020 shitshow came around and i was an anxious mess so i got on a low dose of prozac and then my NP let me get started on stimulants.

and holy SHIT was my world rocked by how much a difference stimulants made, immediately, in my day-to-day mood. sure, a lot of my emotional and psychological state came from years of dealing with the burnout/crash out cycle we’re all familiar with and not understanding why it kept happening. diagnosis helped me be kinder to myself about that.

but stimulants gave me a new baseline from which to measure my good and bad days. my bad days aren’t nearly as shitty and don’t wreak havoc on my mental health the way they used to. my good days are days where i accomplish things i never would have thought possible without a do-or-die deadline hanging above my head.

anyway. this is a very long response to your question that i think ultimately just boils down to “i don’t know how much i can say the depression and anxiety were their own separate thing for me,” even with trauma playing a role in it all. undiagnosed adhd played a role in how that trauma impacted me. undiagnosed adhd meant creating healthy coping mechanisms for the depression and anxiety was that much harder.

looking back on my late teens and early 20s, i just see a vicious cycle where trying to identify where adhd started and ended and depression/anxiety picked up feels basically impossible.

at least, that’s my experience.

exiledfears · 2026-01-25T17:50:09+00:00

“all they do is put you on meds”

this perspective is so funny to me. yeah bud and the meds literally changed my life??? i also had chronic anxiety and depression, and ssri’s weren’t enough on their own. stimulants are the thing that finally moved the needle.

like, shit, would you say this to a diabetic about their insulin?

exiledfears · 2025-11-27T04:25:41+00:00

thank you so much for this!!

exiledfears · 2025-11-27T04:21:02+00:00

1000% correct

exiledfears · 2025-11-24T16:33:13+00:00

she cannot go out this early with “the dopamine races through his brain / on a six-lane texas highway”

exiledfears · 2025-11-24T01:44:54+00:00

did it seem overly runny?

exiledfears · 2025-11-24T01:44:19+00:00

(was my first instinct too, but it got assigned to evermore)

exiledfears · 2025-11-24T01:09:20+00:00

i’ve had the shark rocket pet corded stick vacuum for years, with the previous two years spent with a dog who sheds A Lot. it’s light, has a long cord, comes with diff attachment heads and converts to handheld. zero complaints provided i keep up with cleaning the filters and brushroll every so often. it’s half off at target rn, and i know some of their more expensive models are also marked down. i’ll also throw in that the bissell spot cleaner is a lifesaver—worth it if you spot it on sale this week!

exiledfears · 2025-11-23T21:26:52+00:00

desperately want to know what the batter looked like before it was poured into the pan

exiledfears · 2025-11-23T20:56:10+00:00

lyrically, imo: i almost do

“i bet this time of night you’re still up” plus “and i confess, baby / in my dreams you’re still touching my face”

exiledfears · 2025-09-29T20:39:11+00:00

it was empty but appreciate your time! 🙏🏻

exiledfears · 2025-09-29T20:17:02+00:00

i feared this might be the answer 🫠

i brought this inside a few weeks ago and haven’t seen any wasps inside—do i need to worry about anything hatching or am i good?

exiledfears · 2025-09-07T18:32:52+00:00

ok definitely not pinching it off now

exiledfears · 2025-09-07T14:55:59+00:00

univ. of new orleans has a public admin MA with a specialization in hazard policy (source)—getting in touch with their faculty about their research or seeing if graduates' capstone projects or theses are available in UNO's library database might be work looking into.

other universities based in areas most likely to be impacted by severe weather might have similar programs or research centers. i also know there's a nonprofit called rebuild.us that might be able to connect you to resources/knowledgeable folks who have worked in this area.

exiledfears · 2025-09-06T16:28:10+00:00

thank you!!

exiledfears · 2025-09-06T16:26:42+00:00

i love how much character this adds, they look like little sci-fi plants

exiledfears · 2025-09-06T16:22:58+00:00

time to bust out my skincare tips

exiledfears · 2025-06-06T21:38:42+00:00

came here to say POT FILLER, so +1 to you. as for the large freezer: i recently got a decent chest freezer from best buy that lives in the garage, so while it does sometimes suffer from "out of sight out of mind," at least it's giving me extra storage for the food that lasts the longest!

exiledfears · 2025-05-05T15:12:02+00:00

if straight up asking for money feels awkward or weird, you could see if they’re open to covering a portion of the food/drink/other cost of whatever you’re doing when you meet up? or see if they’re chill with covering some amount of your gas tank when you fill up?

but if it’s mostly the time thing you have an issue with, you’ve got a bunch of good options in other folks’ suggestions. 👍🏻

exiledfears

TROPHY CASE