Just getting this off my chest because the number of people I can talk to about it right now is very small.

My mom got diagnosed with cancer a few days ago. Tumors in her breast(s?) and the cancer has made it into her lymph nodes and possibly her blood as well. None of us have much idea where that puts us right now and we won't know much more until her consult + surgery next week. It's gut-wrenchingly awful. The unknown of everything gnaws at you -- I don't wholesale trust what I read on the internet but it certainly doesn't seem great. I'm still in disbelief -- my mom is only in her mid sixties and she is extremely healthy. My mom is obviously scared but she is doing ok otherwise -- she is a fighter and my whole family is behind her and ready to support her however we can. This next block of time is going to be so hard on both of my parents it physically hurts to think about. I guess as we learn more information things will become easier to deal with because it certainly isn't easy right now. Lots of tears, but lots of video chat smiles and laughing too.

The saving grace has been knowing how much time I have been able to spend with my parents through the pandemic as they have been helping us out with childcare. My mom has loved being a grandma, getting to watch her eyes light up when she holds our daughter has been amazing and I just want so, so, so badly for her to be able to continue to watch her grow up and for my daughter to know her. If you have a mom in your life please give her an extra hug/ehug this mother's day for me.

Also, if anyone has any personal experience of battling or having people close to you battle cancer please feel free to share if you want to. Cancer fucking sucks.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about my own attention lately, and I'm curious to hear others' thoughts. I don't want to prime the thread, but I'll probably type up some of my own considerations in a comment later.

Any and all comments/experiences are welcome, especially those from people with ADHD or other similar conditions that impact executive functioning.

• Are you happy with your ability to manage your attention and focus?
• Do you feel like you're in control of your attention? Is it something you have to manage?
• Do you feel as if anything has changed over time?
• How would you describe your attention/focus to someone who experiences theirs in a different way from you?

Those are simply guiding questions to get the ball rolling, but I don't want to limit the conversation to just them. Really I'm interested in hearing anything anyone is wanting to share about their relationship with attention and focus.

(Also, how open are you to being dissuaded from it? I'm always open to new information, so if you're concerned about me embarrassing myself in public with these ideas, enlighten me, by all means.)

Two examples come to mind for me.

• Astrology. I don't think the positions of the stars have any actual bearing on people's destinies, but there are definite traits that seem common to the individual signs, across cultures and eras. Perhaps there's a natural cycle of some sort that affects our collective psychology or even biochemistry and we misattribute zodiac stereotypes because it happens to align with the celestial "movements"?

• Graphology. The notion that particular characteristics or tendencies could be expressed in something like handwriting doesn't sound unreasonable to me. Our minds physically express many things in our body language, and I could see how handwriting might essentially be an extension of that, or another translation.

Of course, this could just be self-selection and delusion, but these are likely complex issues and there's still quite a lot we do not understand.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

How would you all feel about a virtual film festival?

We nominate candidate films, documentaries or shorts, focusing on things ​rarely watched, but that might provoke an interesting discussion.

We watch candidate films over maybe a three week period, watching maybe 3 times as many films as we nominate.

Then discussion ensues.

My fiance is an artist who was laid off because he worked for a major employer in the entertainment industry that required him to be in contact with people.

So he's been unemployed for a long time now, but he has been trying to find work, but there isn't really anything available that uses his particular skills. So we invested in a digital art workstation (basically just bought a monitor with a digitizer built in to use a pen with) so that he could work on becoming an independant artist. But he's so bad at marketing and he spends so much time worrying about fine details that it takes him over a week to finish a single piece, so he hasn't had any success.

So if you combine this with a broken tooth that he hasn't been able to get taken care of because of a lapse in his dental insurance, he's not been in a good place.

I just bought a Mac and was looking for mac-native graphics programs (I sometimes work on marketing, so I need to do photo editing from time to time. Also I used to do photography as a hobby and want to get back into it), when I came across Serif's Affinity Designer Workbook. And I thought to myself that getting my fiance a training course in graphic design would allow him to shift gears into a segment where there is more work. It'll also give him a bit of a kick in the pants to get him moving and feeling better about himself.

I'm sure everyone knows there are millions of online training courses available right now, so I'm hoping someone might have any recommendations. I have some money saved up, so I don't mind paying a little bit extra if it'll result in better results. I'd prefer if it were a class that didn't rely on Adobe Illustrator if possible, but I know that it's the 'standard' and he'll probably have better luck if he has experience in it.

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.