Did Patroclus ghostwrite this?

Email ppyajunebug@gmail.com asking for an invite to ToastieSlack and lo, one will come.

Freaking out is a sign you care enough to do it right. The only people I know who decided "hey, let's get a pet" and were 100% chill about the entire process had to return the cat to the shelter four days after adoption because their parents decided they didn't want to pay vet bills.

Also, I'm in a weird hole of shitty autism-plus-undiagnosed-anxiety-without-being-taught-any-ways-to-cope-with-either-of-them situation right now. I got diagnosed with autism when I was 16 but the only help I got was a 504 Plan (which accommodated nothing and was just to establish a paper trail), a shitty therapist who blamed all my problems on my autism, and a "social skills" group for people who were way "lower-functioning" (fuck that term) than I was. I have never been medicated for either autism or anxiety, nor have I had any CBT or other options to keep my brainweasels in check.

My lack of support structure bit me in the ass last semester and my academic scholarship to college is kind of fucked rn. (I got through finals with decent grades but didn't do an entire final essay because I kept having what I think now were panic attacks when I tried to start it, and I've been avoiding three online classes I'm technically enrolled in this summer.) I'm going to an appointment this Thursday to see if I have an actual anxiety disorder, and if I want to continue my degree I basically have to have an undiagnosed/unmedicated disorder I can point to as a reason why my GPA tanked. I do think I have an anxiety disorder and I do want to manage symptoms of both it and the shitty bits of my autism, but I don't know exactly what my motivations are for doing so. Do I want to get medication because it seems effective or because it will provide a convenient delineation of "pre-treatment GPA and post-treatment GPA" for grad schools? Are all therapists who work with patients with autism/anxiety as focused on their patients' disorders as my old one? How do I manage the negative effects of my autism without losing the bits that I like?

Please advise, I am at a loss and also haven't slept for a day and a half because

ToastieSlack is incredible and I am a heavy contributor, but you'ns, I missed the simple joy of a good Open Thread, where the comments never disappear and your fellow Toasties shower you with approving upvotes instead of emoji

They probably think it's exaggerated for the sake of drama and certainly don't relate it to their own situation any more than they relate to Les Mis or RENT. Hell, they probably relate more to RENT than "I Hope I Get It."

It's so much work to get the technical skills for even bit parts on Broadway and there are so few parts. Even with chorus members and swings, there can't be more than 500 people employed as singers/dancers/actors on Broadway in a given year. What do you do when musicals are all you know how to do and the casting calls aren't coming? (My actress cousin nannies, has 4 roommates in her Manhattan apartment, and does both off-Broadway and TV, but she wasn't a musical theater major.)

Either My Wonderful Drag Prom or What Abortions Should Be Like. They're both excellent pieces to go to when you have all the feelings but aren't quite sure what those feelings are or if they're because of the heteropatriarchy.

I think she wrote a queer Melania and I'm not sure how I feel about that tbh

Time to yell about your favorite books! Doesn't matter if they're of quality or not, doesn't matter if anyone else likes them. What do you love to read and what do those books make you feel?

I'm a just-about-grown adult who still adores Dealing With Dragons and will prob be rereading it until I die because it's just so sensible. All the characters are practical and the magic has reasonable limits, and the omniscient narration somehow still manages to feel as if it's being told by a brisk middle-aged lady of means who always knows which spell to cast and where to seat a dozen dragons at afternoon tea.