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Hey Reader,

A fun feature of having an AuDHD brain is object permanence issues.

If I can’t see it, it shortly ceases to be. It’s why we tend to lose things a lot, get lost, and — you know — upset our friends and family and clients and acquaintances by forgetting they actually exist.

This upsets me too, because I love my friends and family and clients and acquaintances very much indeed, and when something happens to remind me that they exist, I feel so much guilt it can splatter me.

My life is scaffolded by weird little structures and coping mechanisms and lists and rituals to help me with stuff that normal people apparently just breeze through with ease, which is baffling to me.

The newest one is probably one of my favourites, though. My friend, who is also an AuDHDer, decided we were going to do a Wednesday Waffle.

It’s a thing these dudes on Instagram do, and we’ve adopted it.

Every Wednesday, we record a short little video — just 2 minutes or so — about what we’ve been up to this week. Anything exciting or boring, how we’re feeling, what we’ve got coming up. Stuff we want to share, or talk about, or need help with.

(At the moment, I’m obsessed with my vegetable garden, so my waffles are very vegetable based with what most might consider an unjustified level of excitement but screw you growing vegetables is EXTREMELY EXCITING. Especially when you get to eat your first tomato. YUM.)

Then we send it to a select group of people.

For me, it’s currently 4 people I’m not very good at keeping in touch with or whom I don’t see very often because they live far away (in one case on an entirely different continent).

I’m terrible at WhatsApp and phone calls fill me with dread (they tend to contain only bad news) and although I write letters and postcards, everyone else is bloody lazy and I rarely get one back. (Huff)

So a Wednesday Waffle it is.

I thought I’d share that with you, in case you wanted to waffle at people on Wednesdays too, and receive a waffle in return. It’s really delightful.

Do you know what else is delightful?

The people in my Creative Playground. It’s my favourite part of the day — grab a cup of mushroom chai, open laptop, say good morning to my delightful members, and then we write in the daily Power Hour.

I’m writing this right now in a Power Hour, in fact.

Would you like to come join us?

You can try out the Creative Playground for a week for just £1 — and if it’s not for you, you don't have to stick around! No stress.

But I hope you do stick around. I started the Creative Playground in 2020 and some of my founding members are still here, which is super cool.

Check it out and join up here — I have space for 3 new faces in July, then I’m closing the doors again until Autumn.

Time for the Friday Goodie Bag — I’ve found these delights for you:

“A heart of gold and a pen1s of diamonds” <- hahaha

Have you read any romantasy? I have. Sarah J Maas’s Throne of Glass series. It’s entertaining and awful in the most fun way, and it’s extremely tropey, and Lizzie Logan has written a piece satirising it called I’m Every Romantasy Novel Heroine and it’s so accurate.

Mesearch: valuable or tat?

The personal essay has been around for centuries, (probably) invented and definitely popularised by Michel de Montaigne in the 1500s. But what about the personal essay as serious academic research — autoethnography? Does it have value?

Critics dismiss it as “unscientific”, “academic narcissism” and “diary-writing for the over-educated.”

I disagree; it’s a different form of writing, thinking, and discussion, and it’s as valid as any other, as long as we understand it’s one person’s experiences and point of view.

Anyway, here’s a little taster article about “mesearch” to get you started thinking about it.

Eggy Pop by Little Alex Horne

I bloody love Alex Horne’s comedy — he’s not just the creator of Task Master, he’s also an extremely inventive comedian in his own right. (Did you know TM originated at the Edinburgh Fringe a long time ago?)

I hadn’t seen his bit Eggy Pop, though, until Joy Borman shared it with me this week.

Screw your 15-minute meals that actually take an hour, Jamie Oliver — I’ll take Alex Horne’s 60-second cooking anytime.

The menopause monologue in Fleabag

Thanks to my friend Jocelyn Brady for sending me Fleabag’s menopause scene which is a brilliant use of storytelling and comedy to make a serious point. This is why art matters, friend. The idea is to shift a viewpoint, show us the world in a new way, get us thinking, and get us talking.

And it’s funny.

This fascinating history of “fck”

One of my favourite podcasts is The Allusionist, which is all about words and language and how we use it and how they change. At the moment, they’re doing a series of episodes on “four letter words” and this episode is all about the word “fuck” and it’s long and interesting history.

It’s a verb, a noun, an exclamation, an entire sentence, a modifier, an intensifier… is there anything this word cannot do?

Also check out the previous episode which was all about “serving c……” and is equally fascinating.

What I’m reading

Currently butt-cheek deep in book 4 of The Expanse series, which is called Cibola Burn. It’s got mixed reviews, and some say it’s the weakest of the series. I certainly didn’t enjoy the televised version as much as I did the previous ones, but I’m enjoying the book fine so far!

Also still reading Louis Grenier’s Stand the F*ck Out because I read non-fiction slowly. It’s great! Grab a copy!

What I’m writing

Currently creating a challenge that you might be interested in joining. Watch this space.

Word of the week

My word of the week is “discombobulated” because that is how I felt this morning because I got up late.

It’s a good word to say. Try it.

Quote of the week

(pssst I think you can also make a living, but that’s not always the point)

Have a wonderful weekend, and create something fun!

TTFN,

Vicky

p.s. And finally, something important and urgent

Our government has made an appalling overreach of power this week, proscribing non-violent protest group Palestine Action as a “terrorist organisation”. This is horrifying for a number of reasons, not least because opinions in the UK overwhelmingly want our government to stop funding genocide, but also because it’s a huge crackdown on free speech and freedom to protest worthy of a fascist government.

​This article in The Guardian is a good place to start reading about this.

What can we do? Write to our MPs. They work for us. I’m lucky enough to have Ellie Chowns as my MP, who is very outspoken about defunding genocide and generally about issues that keep all people safe. She’s amazing. But even if your MP is fuelled by hate, they still have to listen to you because you are their constituent.

On that note: if you have a voice and you can use it to speak up for those who cannot speak up for themselves, I urge you to do so. For most of us — definitely for me — the worst that could happen is that I’ll feel uncomfortable or that someone might yell at me.

That’s a price I’ll happily pay to do what I feel is right.