[Patreon]: ‘Everybody Gets One’: The PARC Diaries, Day-1-Freebie.
[Content Warnings: References to/discussion of: Depression, Anxiety, Hospitalisation, Low Mood, Disability, Systems-Fatigue, ? Querying Trauma. Future ones won’t be as heavy - I’m front and back-loading a LOT into this one!]
Dedicated to all who have helped me through the roughest month of my entire life.
And my sweet baby boy Butters, see below for the look of PURE love.
This is going to a rough one, but in the end - it’s a story about love and self-compassion.
Two words my faux-bogan, nerdy, skittish, neurotic, rage-filled Aussie-male bloke ass rolled his eyes at a million, million times.
Until the very next time enforced it.
Love is a force. Love always prevails over hate in the end. History and media - dictators, empires, entire economic models, tyrants, strife, our seemingly eternal 2026-woes.
Anicca, friends: Impermanence.
Entropy always wins.
but Cat-Glory is fur-ever.
Fur Meine Butters. I love you, son.
₍^. .^₎⟆ 𖾕𖾝꙼ᩚ𛲕𖾟
PRELUDE - DAY-8 HELL, PRE-FUNNY PHOTOS?
Goddamnit, Green Day were right after all with that consarnit-song o’ theirs.
Be [ Loving ]. Be [ Different].
(Strengths-cards, not a new slogan. Although…)
#LauraWasRight. As women are often wont to be around us slavish adherents to stupidity (the entire male gender, especially Australian men. Even neurodivergent nerds, apparently. ‘specially Social Workers engaging in brutally unhealthy levels of camouflaging, masking and burnout).
I should’ve been cooked in a Prevention and Recovery Facility somewhere, years ago. At least a good couple.
We laughed on the couch in the brief, scary period I fled to the Bellarine Peninsula to escape [elsewhere-situation which will not be discussed in any capacity on this blog/podcast - don’t ask, but a hairy one and still tenuous/fragile]. “YoU’Ve GoTtA LaUgH” amirite, peers?
Anyway - so many years of the poor thing (both our seven-year relationship and subsequent cohabitation as mates trying to scrape/scour the rental markets to get outskies, part of the reason I’m here is my transition back to Melbourne), she just laughs at my pissed-off insistence that the kind-natured inpatient consultant psychiatrist at NPU made:
“Much like how you’re saying you believe the [medicinal] cannabis to be the final “blast-cap”, as you say… now it’s known THC and you don’t mix to instigate psychotic episodes (YEAH NAH DURRR YA-THINK DOC?! I AIN’T TOUCHIN’ IT EVER AGAIN). Maybe entertain the fact that this treatment-resistant depression and anxiety might be constantly ‘blasted’ by the interference of social media on your sensitive neurodivergent brain.”
Fuckers. Loveable fuckers, both of ‘em.
Instant relief, by the way. But a LOT to confront, both at once and all the time. Harrowing silence. Deeper processing. A monk-like me I haven’t seen since my early 20’s, a fractured and difficult period where nonetheless Muh Values felt more intact. Muh Deepest Values, actually. Chewing and eating shame for breakfast, speed-running neurodivergent schemas, etc.Damn you both if I end up making some odiously-twee Prince Ea coded stuff on Youtube. Both legends.
Kindness abounds around us, folks, even in the jaws of defea(tism).
Good always wins in the end. Nothing is permanent. Everything is fleeting. Hippy shi’ like that.
I’ve been doing silly journals in front of a little Buddha for like a week, okay? Shut up.
Today’s No-ADHD-Meds Writing-Assist Album:
Jesu (UK) - Infinity (Digital Deluxe Edition) (2004) - Post-Metal/Industrial/Sludge:
Favourite Bit: 27 mins in (LONG single track). Oh Justin, sniff. THE FEELS right there.
Yesterday’s Blacksound Records LP purchases (on a shoestring budget, thank GOD they were both cheap - thanks for the CD-run, Dean!):
And, finally… I actually begin. Yep.
This is just the Preview. Mind you, “Everybody gets one (Tell ‘em Peter)!”. You’ll have to head over to our Patreon via this link or below, to catch the rest of the series in full.
It’s been a while, Inner-Strength Check. Sorry but also very much not-sorry ‘bout that, honestly.
Kind of uhhh, lost my mind a bit there. A lot.
I am heretofore functionally fucked, so globally rooted, that I can’t even pretend to keep up with the voracious amount I always knew was required to steer the ship. We’re going ancom, or anarcho-something: All staffers are now considered Contributors (Photogs’ choices if they want to dive in), and it’s my hope we’ll together inject a bit of variation back into the blog alongside what’s a biggest shared special-interest for a huge chunk o’ the team: Music.
Plenty of Tabletop/Hobby/Wellbeing stuff also planned. That’s future. It’s Day 8. Time for muh-reflections, I guess.
Sigh.
See here for a bit of a pre-emptive “Ah shit, I can feel my body and mind backsliding - this finna be a rough one!” precursor from fellow staffer Dean Underhill’s comfy spare bed. Taken just prior to (finally) being admitted into the facility, after an extremely talk-about-it-with-my-psychologist-when-not-destitute series of occurrences. Pack that up and lead it away from here.
Here’s that crusty schmuck, still pretty fried from being released both on high-dose medications that can perpetuate/instigate psychosis and mania in vulnerable persons (auDHD, susceptible to everything), lamenting the crash about to come:
By the way, ol’ mate Deano, ak.a. Muscle Wizard (to quote current campaign-DM sharer and incredible legwork-giver to bring The Swamp of Oblivion in The Elemental Plane of Earth - Mark Douglas. Thanks, brother. <3)?!
Absolute goddamned legend.
Biggest of thanks to Dean, Tina & Fam; Laura, Tim, Fran & Fam; Elissa and Mark, and everyone who helped house me whilst I’d fallen through a severe psychiatric systems-gap that precipitated me burning almost everything.
Including all of this.
And yet, with the trappings of working as an educator in today’s neoliberal world, Deano has taken lion’s share of (besides our trippy as hell, Kalmah-coded side adventure via Mark) a 5th Edition ‘Least It’s Not On Fake MMO Beyond DnD campaign for our group since late 2018 (!). It’s the only social engagement I’ve kept any kind of similar commitment to outside of work and seeing friends at gigs in the time since.
The explosive viscera of poor young Nazuul Tarmikos’ cleric-friend, both fresh from the clergy of Helm’s Hold, was a blood-spattering display of how much more brutally fucking extreme-metal you can make a TTRPG experience.
Also, if fellow ISC staffer/logo designer and artiste, RPG designer Elodie Orlando is reading this?
U’garthloc is in safe hands. Best NPC that we tacked on from an arena fight as comedy-Ront 2.0 (with less property damage and… going into real estate?!).
Oh, ‘Dead Nazuuls’ is a WIP for a 5th Edition thing our illustrious leader and I may do together. Energy pending [0%. Even this is a bedraggdled struggle, and I usually fly on the typing, as you’ve seen (reining that in).]
TOO LONG DIDN’T READ (AGAIN LOL):
Thanks for reflavouring the whole system for me, Dean-o.
I went in expecting eye-roll inducing high-powered/high-magicka - I copped old-school Mork Borg brutality amidst incredible narrative flair, and a group that can RP an entire 8hr session without an encounter.
The best RPG group ever, alongside my own (oh, my beloveds, Forbidden Lands restarts once I’m secure & housed with internet, promise!). Huge inspiration to bring narrative richness to combat and scene-setting, especially. Everyone else running 5e? Giddy up. This dude’s the master. Danke schoen, sensei.
Sigh. So. PARC, huh?
See here for more information on the Prevention and Recovery Centre model, where to access this brilliant step-up/step-down consumer-led wedge between Total Calamity (acute/inpatient) and readjusting to life - or indeed, a rest needed to prevent said Calamity. HUGELY recommend the former, by the way.
Victorians, look into it. It is a blessed way of running a mental health residential facility, and indeed the most appropriate means of inpatient (sub-acute/come-and-go is also nice) care.
Brilliant staff, consumer-led, strengths-based and with an internal culture gearing us back to participating in ADLs and other meaningful things as co-residents just trying to Prevent and/or Recover (feels like both today, christ.)
One of many new LPs I’m catching up to, after a brief stint of insanity and refractory near-nutsoness. Perfect for right now. Nice one, Chat Pile!
Addressing my recent departure from social media:
I can’t. It’s too traumatic.
I legitimately have a very-much-new-and-deffo-not-GAD anxiety reaction deep in my stomach when opening Instagram. I'd gone through and deleted a lot of gossip-seeking or even more inflammatory/rouse-him-up style posting, and that was rough. I learnt a big lesson in that week about being an autistic man: Everyone has their breaking point where respect is now not freely doled out, neither is trust - both must be earned. Boundaries. Trauma? Etc.
Of note and announced on our social media: I’m also rescinding the figurehead role at ISC, put myself on indefinite medical leave and now tinkering back-of-house off social media to try and upskill our team.
We’ll speak more to that later, but effectively I’ll take an honest L and admit I trip-wired the place top-to-bottom to only ever be the ticking, nascent time-bomb that is a foolhardy neurodivergent perfectionist (self-standards, not the tidiness one).
That whole autistic/ADHD/low self-esteem form of unconsciously saving cognitive resources by way of “I’ll do it, easier that way, less balls to juggle.”
Yeah, Brady….? That right, mate?
Nah. Life ended up crushing those balls into goddamn shiny diamonds, such is the pressure.
When life gives you…. crushing pressure at 1000’s of degree Celsius miles underneath the Earth? somethin’-somethin’:
Follow my journey on the ‘step-down’ from literally being lost and mad in the community (won’t touch heavily on this; those CW’s are just me being auDHD-thorough for a brief moment), through to the relieving, confronting, affirming, frustrating, sociable, dynamic, peer-led experience that is this man’s stay in a very schmick and friendly sub-residential mental health facility in Melbourne.
I’m tired, depressed, swatting away mountains of residual resentment, chewing on shame nightly in a hyperbaric chamber of donkey-punch emotions. BAM. Bam. Bam. Shame, shame, shame, guilt, guilt, guilt. Taking it on the chin. Real hard. This emotional jaw is slowly upgrading from Glass to Daedric, one long-unconfronted thought at a time.
In the stillness without social media, I wasn’t ready for the incredible leverage that silence brought. I also wasn’t ready for ?~20yrs+ of suppressed noise to scream at me like it did.
We won’t be focusing on the screams. We’re documenting them, but from here on in, I choose to be different. I choose to incorporate more evidence-based models and trauma-informed awareness around my blabbing. Today as intro being a particularly jilted, lengthy exception.
[YOU’LL BE RELIEVED TO KNOW THE MAJORITY OF THE SERIES IS EFFECTIVELY AN ART GALLERY OF RANDOM PICS AND COOL STUFF/SILLY DRAWINGS. NOT THESE BIBLICAL-TEXT LENGTH - AAAA-]
First ever laptop Battle-Sticker graciously provided by Michael Ormando of local merchandising operation The Doom Reaper Vault:
Also, Slime Dimension!
The PARC Diaries represents a shift in me and, by extension, my content.
‘Hobbies. Riffs. Mental Health’.
You’ll see some diarised journalling through this series - note that I WILL be touching on these heavy themes, but with more a mindset to close these off with strengths-based/less brain-draining gnarliness for you guys to be left with afterwards.
Really, if I’m to re-enter the mental health domain in our blog-dojo? It’s got to be
I started ISC as my own personal ventilation-shaft, a brutal inferno through which to channel suppressed rage. Rage from a neurodivergent who absolutely would qualify for some kind of Dependent-traits Cluster B throw-together, sure.
It’s been an exercise in independence, mental fortitude (even if feeling lack-thereof, it IS there - strategies, time and reality show us thus) and trying to forge a new trust in myself. Possibly for the first time in many, many years.
Ceremonially burning/discarding this after the series, but hot DAMN if this sketchbook ain’t holding hella space right now!
Admission and accountability time continues.
For years, I have been chasing the dopamine-dragon. It’s an easy muse, literally, with a never-ending deluge of music that is fantastic and constantly barraging our besieged Gmail inbox.
Hundreds, thousands of thousands of emails, posts on the blog/social media etc. Autism and ADHD had me uniquely and utterly jacked on the lean-in with our Music-focused additional entourage… and it burned me.
I get why Overdrive Music Magazine wasn’t picked up after Sebastian reported some brutal cyber-destruction. Thanks Mr. Graham in advance for your permission to post archival reviews from Overdrive. Mine and fellow OMM alumni/SICK Sliknita doomgaze-drummer Hamza Siddiqi’s prior works will be among some of the random, no-announcement, no-context dead drops that I’m deliberately littering and flowering across Patreon and here in spurts. I get why Steve Jenkins went in hard with good intentions and whilst we had another great gig going there, Insert Review Here folded under self-reported pressures from the man himself.
This is basically voluntary, aside from our generous members (whom even at my mighty $21/month take are keeping the site-lights on. Thank you, Riff Nerds!).Patreon subscribers, particularly Riff-Nerds, will get the complete version of these posts.
That ain’t a call-to-action.
I’m not Joe Rogan, I’m just a bumbling fool. But I’m a fool returning to his original vision, and carefully tempering vitriol. Typing by thinking with my head, not my mouth, and I think only folks with cognitive/executive dysfunction issues like ADHD might get that.
Although - there’s another insight to be shared from Day 8. The biomedical model of psychiatry and I aren’t great friends (trauma-buddies, if anything rn), so I’ll be utilising strengths and consumer-led evidence where I can here. When I can… think, or do anything, really.
All I can really do at this juncture is try. Thank you for allowing me your reading time for the effort.
Look upon my bumblings, ye mighty, and… wonder why they let this neurodivergent clown into the space when Mr. Lacks Stable Accom rocks up with THE geekiest entry yet here. Surely? It’s got to be up there.
EVERYBODY GETS ONE:
PARC DAY 1: ‘Lentil Shits and Costco Pizza-Farts’:
PHOTO-DUMP!*
*there was a lot of dumping after that damn lentil shepherds’ pie…
Can’t be giving away location. But here goes a whole buttload of…. RPGs, board games, music gear and random stuff hoiked outta the house at speed [let’s not go there].
Lug all the games. All the board games. All the stuff. No ADHD meds…. huff-huff-huff dice rolling off trolley, PARC staff and co-residents looking on warily/bemused
Phew. First clean-my-room no-ADHD meds style job in a minute.
God, that was impossible WITH the Vyvanse. Ph-ew.
Bugs Bunny voice: “Nyeeeeeeeeeee-what’s-up-Doc? It’s beanbag time!”. Chillin’, sorta.
[ Brackets for Strengths-Cards Used]. ADHD’s clapped out at the moment, but all of us this things’ nigh incurably beastly upstairs. Thanks for literally giving me legs rn, ADHD! I’m sorry about so many years of enmity.
But also, STAY IN LINE. GOOD DOG-ALIEN.
Some extra lore in the Patreon-only gallery post, that’s for sure.
Some ‘Everybody Gets One’ Extras:
End of Day 1/Day 2 Addendum Video:
RANDOM GRATUITOUS BUTTERS SHOT!
MORE AVAILABLE ON PATREON, MEOW-MEOW!
SWEET BOI BRUSHIES. I dislike seeing my own face in video form, but I like my boy.
Wander/yarn/slightly elevated blab explaining change of ISC MH model (i.e. to a more strengths-focused approach):
LUCY TUCCI!
INTERNATIONAL CATS, LET’S GO TUCCI:
Some Bellarine Peninsula vibes, to tie it all off
(St. Leonards’, former home & current home of the raddest Chicken Schnitty burgers ever):
It’s good to be back.
As Always,
Peace, Love and Grindcore - Brady.