I’m currently preparing for an English test, which I need for an application for a Master’s program! That’s why I write in English today – and because I deliberately don’t just run DeepL on a German essay, this one will certainly be poorly-written with some mistakes. I apologize in advance 🙂

What am I doing as I write this? Well, Apocalyptica takes me away for a far-fetched sound algorithm flowing through my neural net. Spiders crawling by – is my neural net full of neural spiders? There can be only one. One spider beyond each cellar door. Cellar door, undoubtedly the best-sounding English word. Suddenly people’s taste for metal music make sense to me. But enough neuro-arachnology dadaism. More on human brains and their emergent properties now! (What doesn’t that encompass, I ask you?).

Here is a drawing I made:

I find it interesting that the “inner child” seems to be a thing for many people. I don’t quite swim with the current here and read stuff, maybe me and my inner child have sorted things out already. Currently I am more interested in letting my inner adult develop and do things, because it might not have had the stage for so long yet. Take emails, for example. I am so proud when I send professional emails and get professional responses. It’s exciting to see how I’m passing as an adult. Because it feels like passing, like being an impostor, and I really identify with Randall Munroes Comics here! (Like this one or this one. I think we really share some traits). Is this just a common thing for geeks? Could also be an ADHD thing, as I heard from a lot of ADHD folks that they don’t feel adult at all. Maybe we’ll stay in a perpetual Pippi Longstocking/ Axolotl state and just embrace all the confusing bureaucracy with our association-machine powered creativity! I hope this isn’t just the medication talking, but I’m so happy to have a brain like this.

ADHD brains might be in fact less “adult” than neurotypical brains. There are some studies which show maturation deficits in ADHD children, and this was the case with me too (they saw this in my EEG somehow). From my subjective experience it makes total sense. It explains why moving into my own apartment was such a bad experience; or why I had to keep strict routines for housework which I otherwise couldn’t accomplish. It explains being ace (sort of) and being very sensitive (sort of) and my imaginary friends (or maybe it doesn’t). Yeah, building theories about personality again, aren’t we? (Everybody can do this, my sceptical mind keeps reminding me).

I suspect that because life is comparatively hard for most neurotypical adults and isn’t so hard for neurotypical kids, that most people would like to be treated as a child now and then – from others, or from themselves (Because curiously we have a relationship with ourselves as if we were two. This is very odd). And without having read any of these self-help books my thought on this is: Well, how is that surprising? Also, you are free to build yourself an oasis of irrationality and harmless fantasies, as people do when doing RPG or reading, for example, because we have been doing this all the time.
Seriously, I envy children because they can be children and don’t have any responsibility and get a lot of attention. They can daydream and play without having to think of their to-do-lists in almost every waking moment which mostly ruins getting lost in flow-states (for me at last, because I forget everything if I let go of time and duties and stuff and just focus on what I do, and I’m afraid of forgetting everything). I might me not very mature about this (ha ha) but well yeah I envy children.

That’s why I made this little drawing. I try to accept a little more my new state of maturity (I know I’m late with this, I’m almost twenty-five) and to see it not only as the harsh place full of formulas and insurances and being met with neoliberal cold stares. When there’s a difficult moment and the brain network representing the inner adult just calls in sick, there will be someone who’s meeting you with understanding. That’s what I anticipate, that’s what makes me worrying less.

I don’t know if this piece of writing is inspiring to anyone or is even pleasant to read. Sometimes I worry about this: Am I making the world better with my eccentric blog posts? Aren’t there other people with more knowledge who should do all that writing instead of me?

But here we are. Breathing. Did you know the rotation speed of the Earth changes slightly now and then and sometimes nobody knows why?