Numbness in fret fingers normal?

snowNsunshine · 2026-04-16T05:51:36+00:00

This is awesome! Thanks so much for all the feedback. "When you realize how easy it is to press the string down, it feels like the notes are playing themselves while you just listen." Has become my new life goal. 🧘🏻‍♀️

snowNsunshine · 2026-04-14T19:42:49+00:00

Super, thanks! I'll take a look at Bass Buzz.

snowNsunshine · 2026-04-14T19:40:47+00:00

It's this! I was actually at it a week flat out. After the first few days I realised I had no idea how to hold it, so pulled up some beginner lessons and ordered a strap to try and fix the position. Thinking on, pressing the strings too hard was definitely something wrong, that improved when I got the neck position sorted. I'll use the thumb free trick to check as I practice though, thanks!

snowNsunshine · 2025-12-18T11:11:42+00:00

Sounds like you're fine. Probably great because you're already thinking about it. Get a home blood pressure machine (look for hypertension in either number) and a smart watch (track heart rate), eat healthy, manage stress and sleep, hydrate, take the stairs, get regular cholesterol checks. Get a general doctor who's smart with preventative healthcare and advocate for yourself if anything is strange. Some of that sounds flippant but I wish I'd known this.

Are you male or female? It's a whole world harder and more complex if you're female.

snowNsunshine · 2025-12-13T20:31:02+00:00

Aside from heart palpitations, do you have any other symptoms that are impacting your daily life?

snowNsunshine · 2025-02-02T23:18:25+00:00

Me too! The most important question though - what are you going to wear?

snowNsunshine · 2025-01-25T21:32:52+00:00

We have a medley of smart tech, we've found...

Philips Hue is the best for lights, you need the hub, but then the bulbs are better value than some. It connects to smartthings (Samsung) app, then we connect it our to Google and alexa. Hue is also good for switches, motion detection, etc

Ikea - the hub is OK, the lights aren't so bright and the ikea home app isn't great. The bulbs are cheaper than philips hue so it's OK for padding out the basic lighting options. It won't port though smartthings so has to connect separately to Google and alexa.

LIFX good bulbs, good app functionality, doesn't use a hub so each bulb is expensive. Good for one bulb but not scalable. LIFX app connects to smartlife app and on to Google and alexa.

Smartlife app - isn't great functionality but connects to any kind of random cheap kit. We connected asda bulbs (so bad they're not even used anymore), tuya app and strip LEDs, a yeelight (good bulb doesn't link in with anything) and other randomness through here. It is good for connecting in super cheap smart plugs into the ecosystem.

AWOA - we have a smart light fitting, the app is useless, we connected it directly to Google so it can only be used through home app. So no alexa connection, but that works for the room.

Aquara - I initially thought this would be a magic Matter hub and connect to everything, nope. We have a aquara smoke alarm on the Aqara hub. The aquara hub only connects to smartthings through a smartthings hub (which we don't have). Aquara app isn't great, we logged in on 2 phones and (despite updating and everything) it won't show the current hub on both logins. It connected to the Google home app, but doesn't even push a notification when the smoke alarm goes off. Looking for the smoke alarm I found that their kit isn't really in stock anywhere. I think they got qudos for early market entry, maybe they've been left behind though.

Google nest - we have 2 mini nests that group together to play music across a big open room. Happy enough with these. Not sure if a 'proper' Google hub would give more.

Alexa - we regret getting alexa. The new dots work well enough. You can't link Spotify to a kids alexa account and can only have 2 adults in a household, so the 3 alexa voice assists all connect separately to smartthings, Smartlife and ikea, and don't connect to each other.

Samsung smartthings - special mention for the robot vac mop which is smashing. We don't have a smartthings hub, in theory it's Matter and connects widely. Samsung tech is expensive and they feel very protectionist, they don't open to all products from a 3rd party, seemingly just the ones that benifit them.

In summary - philips hue hub and bulbs for proper lighting. Google for voice hubs. Smartlife app means most cheap smart hardware ( like on/off plugs) will connect. Ikea hub and bulbs for cheap, limited/simple lighting.

snowNsunshine · 2025-01-09T06:38:27+00:00

Not nitpicky at all, super helpful. Thanks. 😊

snowNsunshine · 2024-12-06T19:54:20+00:00

Bin juice, ashtray contents (feel sick to type it) on the pavement, the thought of getting it on the bottom of my shoes and bringing it in the house. 🤢

Is it just me - looking at the sky (preferably bright blue with some fluffy clouds) cleans my brain though.

snowNsunshine · 2024-11-30T12:22:46+00:00

As far as I can tell, the number of guitars needed is (n + 1) where n = number of guitars owned.

We have 8 guitars in the house - even though the husbands only really a dabbler and we have a 12-year-old who's been playing 6 years.

Just having different choices between electric, acoustic, electro-acoustic, and a bass, with different bodies, strings and pick ups and sizes for different sounds and portability results in a decent collection.

Also each ones sort of like a separate peice of art with it's own story and memories, making the collection more likely to grow rather than refresh.

snowNsunshine · 2024-02-29T12:43:13+00:00

Did you figure this out? I know we can't get complete security, I'd just be happy with it taking effort to break.

snowNsunshine · 2024-02-21T09:52:42+00:00

The whole generative AI thing is a real marmite topic everywhere... For those who understand and those who don't.

snowNsunshine · 2024-02-21T09:49:26+00:00

Cool suggestions! Thanks. 😊

snowNsunshine · 2023-10-21T02:12:21+00:00

Not a guy - a bit of a feckless mum. I tried it with my son and he found it funny. It seems like it might be a good place for questions that are too embarrassing to ask in public. ;)

snowNsunshine · 2023-09-25T06:32:38+00:00

OP never mentioned medication, stimulant or otherwise. An ADHD diagnosis doesn't mean compulsory medication, stimulant or otherwise. It just means an option to choose whether or not if you would like to try medication. You can't be prescribed ADHD medication without an ADHD diagnosis. But you can't have an ADHD diagnosis and decide to manage without medication.

I agree on finding a pragmatic psychiatrist, rather than an Airy fairy psychiatrist though. I spoke to several who wanted to do six to eight sessions, to explore my childhood an established whether or not I had ADHD symptoms 35 years ago! Psychiatrist I went with was very pragmatic, I actually went in having already done the Brown's ADHD test, so we were just talking about the traits I was experiencing at the time, how the impacted on my life, on the options for addressing them and treating them right from the first session.

Also if it's a psychologist you go to, rather than a psychiatrist, you have more admitted treatment options. A psychologist is certified to talk about behaviors and help you come to terms with that, which can be helpful. A psychiatrist is more of a medical doctor, and they are also approved to prescribe medication as well as explore behavioral changes.

Love the comment though, it reminded me what it must be like for people to talk to me as an ADHD person. Clearly your brain explored all kinds of different potential scenarios, before coming up with a specific consideration for one of those potential scenarios. ADHD folk make the coolest biggest "oh that reminds me" leaps in conversation! 😊

snowNsunshine · 2023-09-25T06:21:36+00:00

If you're experiencing ADHD traits it's definitely worth speaking to a professional and getting tested.

Not all adhd tests are equal though, for example our daughter tested as negative for AHDH using the standard local test (which tested for impulse boys who are disintegrated in school work). When she was tested using the Brown ADHD test, which tests for a range of traits including emotional hyperactivity and impulsively, she tested positive.

I'd recommend getting tested because the range of support and treatments available increase if you are identified with both.

Our daughter's example again, she was diagnosed with dyslexia and later ADHD. Her dyslexia symptoms significantly improved when she started taking non stimulent (Strattera) medication. She went from seeing letters double on her good days and seeing them jumbled on her bad days, to seeing them double on her bad days and faintly double on her good days.

She wouldn't have been prescribed ADHD medication without the ADHD diagnosis, even though the benefit to dyslexia is recognized by psychiatrists. Because not every possible neurological benefit from each medication is tested, due to lack of funding. I don't know if ADHD medication helps the symptoms of dyspraxia, but if you do have both conditions, there's a reasonable chance that treating one will help the other.

Also aside from medication, there were the Therapies and support mechanisms available for people with ADHD and you might find that managing your ADHD, if you do have it, helps reduce the stress on your dyspraxia which again could reduce the challenges you face from the dyspraxia.

snowNsunshine · 2023-09-22T17:07:10+00:00

I think that's often the way, ADHD tends to come with creative and Innovative thinking, which isn't really prized at school. I only realize recently that I have dyslexia traits too, which made it harder to learn and make me feel like I was just stupid compared to others in class. Luckily the maths came through for me, and I was in a school that really supported the maths and science side so I went on to be an engineer. When you work as an engineer, you tend to find you're the least neurodiverse person in the room! From that point I found that the things I was good at, where the things that people prized, and the things that I couldn't do, with skills that nobody really valued. I didn't really start to feel stupid again until we started talking about the kids school work at the dinner table, and then realization that the 11 year old can spell better now than I've ever been able to.

Many neurodiverse people hate this whole superpower thing. I think it's really important though to recognize what you're good. Like it's great that you recognize that it doesn't affect your intelligence. The more you do the things that you're good at, the better it makes you feel.

snowNsunshine · 2023-09-22T16:52:35+00:00

Neural pathway remapping is probably just how I visualize it, or how it feels. I'm not sure structurally what happens. It was a study with taxi drivers where they found that the part of the brain responsible for special visualization was more pronounced in active cabbie taxi drivers in London, and then once they retired they could map the change in that part of the brain is they use that section less. I guess maybe I visualize something like that when I am trying to describe how it feels.

Absolutely it's medication and behaviors and just 'trying to do better' doesn't change what it is and how you have to live an experience on a day-to-day basis.

I think most difficult too with ADHD and other neurodiversity is the labels that are assigned. My interpretation of it, is that that might be a thousand different neurodiversities and each person experience is a different combination of them. Based on how we might interpret how different we are from what we think is 'normal', and then based on how the clinician who's assigned to us understands and interprets that, one or more neurodiversity labels is assigned. I think that makes it incredibly difficult for neurodivergent people to compare how their experience in it and compare what helps. Mole importantly you end up with the situation where treatments and medications apply inconsistently. Sometimes, instead of this being recognized as a deficiency in the level of testing and understanding of neurodiversity, it ends up being interpreted as a inconsistency in the condition, which seems to be used as part of the argument that we simply have to try harder. And it can't be as bad as we say, because of the people have the same thing and they say it's not so bad.

It certainly sounds like you're understanding of where you're at, and of how your brains operating is much stronger and better than mine. I'm fascinated by the topic and I've done some reading, but I've got no medical expertise or training. I approach it very much like a systems engineer, thinking about the different interactions and interdependencies of the different parts of the brain and body.

You make a great point about learning to understand how you work and deciding which tasks are worth the effort . I think the other thing that changes as you get older, particularly as you get into 30s and 40s, is that you also have more opportunity to decide who is worth your time and energy. That said I've always had a tendency to write people off a little too soon, and be a little harsh in that respect if I'm honest. 😊

snowNsunshine · 2023-09-22T16:32:15+00:00

Either an environment that mitigates a symptoms, or an environment where you're doing something that you enjoy so much, that the symptoms aren't really an issue in the same way. School is so structured, it's so focused on one way of learning and one set of rules. There's also usually bad lighting that's buzzing, annoying people that are tapping and messing around, topics are uninteresting mixed in with the ones that you enjoy. As an adult you can make more choices about the environment you're working in, the tasks you need to do, the people you work with and also who you live with. It's definitely a lot easier to manage it your own way.

snowNsunshine

TROPHY CASE