You hit on so many good things here, Nic. I completely stopped wearing makeup over the last couple of years (dry eye makes mascara not fun) and even though I was a minimalist anyway, I don't miss it at all. I have friends who spend a ton of money on all of these serums and lotions and do the glazed doughnut face thing and it doesn't do anything. If using products makes you feel good, awesome; I love that for you, genuinely. But it's totally unnecessary. Genetics will determine how you age, and smoking, and weight gain or loss. That's about it. I have completely decoupled from diet culture and anti-aging culture and it feels so awesome to be free and at home in my own skin.
Re: navigating Medicare. I have so been there. Unpaid labor and untold patience with bureaucracy. Feed it what it needs, hope for the best, repeat, repeat, repeat.
Re: being able to work - I have two young adults with autism/auDHD who are either unemployed or under-employed, and trying to get any sort of benefits for people who have high IQs and "look normal" in our current disability system is a fucking nightmare. Social Security disability staff and even the judges at appeal hearings can be so cruel - our attorney said some judges are dead set against giving people benefits. So that's great. We got lucky for her appeal and got a "kind" judge and my kid was still humiliated and wrecked after her hearing, convinced she's not going to win. You have to appeal two, three times to get any disability benefits at all. I'm working on a book about it, because it's so fucked and it needs fixing and words are how I make sense of things.
I appreciate your words here and am grateful you're still writing. It's always good to see you in my inbox.
You hit on so many good things here, Nic. I completely stopped wearing makeup over the last couple of years (dry eye makes mascara not fun) and even though I was a minimalist anyway, I don't miss it at all. I have friends who spend a ton of money on all of these serums and lotions and do the glazed doughnut face thing and it doesn't do anything. If using products makes you feel good, awesome; I love that for you, genuinely. But it's totally unnecessary. Genetics will determine how you age, and smoking, and weight gain or loss. That's about it. I have completely decoupled from diet culture and anti-aging culture and it feels so awesome to be free and at home in my own skin.
Re: navigating Medicare. I have so been there. Unpaid labor and untold patience with bureaucracy. Feed it what it needs, hope for the best, repeat, repeat, repeat.
Re: being able to work - I have two young adults with autism/auDHD who are either unemployed or under-employed, and trying to get any sort of benefits for people who have high IQs and "look normal" in our current disability system is a fucking nightmare. Social Security disability staff and even the judges at appeal hearings can be so cruel - our attorney said some judges are dead set against giving people benefits. So that's great. We got lucky for her appeal and got a "kind" judge and my kid was still humiliated and wrecked after her hearing, convinced she's not going to win. You have to appeal two, three times to get any disability benefits at all. I'm working on a book about it, because it's so fucked and it needs fixing and words are how I make sense of things.
I appreciate your words here and am grateful you're still writing. It's always good to see you in my inbox.