no happy medium for work
Article on the wellness culture and overwork:
We’re working longer hours than ever before, and as our employment conditions continue to worsen, they’re simply repackaged into a new version of normal in an effort to make the truly pathological state of many of our workplaces appear acceptable. And despite the fact that the very best evidence we have about the causes of work stress and burnout point to factors present in the workplace rather than in us, the stress reduction industry and the helping professions’ focus on individual self-care strategies is at an all-time high.
An intractable problem for me has been never getting over my closest friend from college dropping out of my life due to me being low status. It’s strange how most of the thoughts of things in my past have lost their teeth (ability to harm me) but this one hasn’t. I can’t work 70 hours a week like John. And because of this I’m relegated to spotty consulting that doesn’t “count” as work with John or anyone else who is working full time (which supposedly means 40 hours per week but in practice means 60 or 70).
All the bullshit and cognitive tricks in the world won’t make this go away. Of course it is the strongest when I’m doing work that doesn’t “count” as work because it isn’t in an office.
time heals some wounds
but infects others
poetry
pneumatic!
there was go in my ego
and once it deflated
i stopped!
bipolar is a hurricane
but parts of mania
are the quiet and peace
of the eye of the storm
(couldn’t make religion work
despite it being shoved down my throat)
i wasn’t able
to get square thoughts
to fit into round holes
in my brain
the gospel is fresh water
to those who are being redeemed
and salt water
to those who are perishing
God is like a porcupine
try to pursue him while his back is turned to you
and you will hurt
intense
I think what scares religious people about mental illness is the experiences of it are so much more intense than religion itself. Both positive and negative. It doesn’t matter if you are trying to pray your way out of it or are supine shaking your fist at God, the experience itself is intense and takes you the same places either way. Religion likes to insert itself into everything trying to be front and center like a narcissistic teen, “it’s all about me“. But mental illness overpowers it. So much so that the only way religion puts it self back front and center is by rebranding mental illness as some sort of “spiritual warfare”. Of course the treatment is just more prayer which results in a death spiral, priming yourself for some kind of experience of God which never comes (or when it does it’s really mania). Drinking salt water my friend.
side effects
This may sound strange but I wish prayer had side effects. Even if they were negative. I say this because sometimes the placebo response only kicks on when one starts experiencing the side effects of a medication.
Shaving and Socializing
I don’t mind shaving. I do not have facial hair, I have wires growing out of my face. So when I shave most of the time I’m not actually shaving, I’m just playing a tug ‘u war with hair. So I’m not really shaving most of the time, I’m just fighting and scraping, which I do not like. Same goes for socializing. Yes, socializing is often draining for me but usually worth it. What isn’t worth it is when I’m in a group and the people treat me/us like we’re invisible. I actually don’t consider this a social situation, I tend to call it nocializing. Of course these kind of situations (which I experienced just last weekend at a volunteering fundraiser) eat away at my morale.
A lot of people are not comfortable with my “in vivo” definitions (ie. a social situation being one where one has opportunity to socialize, and shaving being the actual act rather than scraping and getting nothing). But I’m a big fan of Jean-Paul Sartre, existence precedes essence. All this platonic bullshit we have to put up with in our supposedly “postmodern” world is just bewildering.
Driving Manually
Amazing Reddit comment on what being on the spectrum is like.
dumping ground
I went to church today because it was Easter. Going to any rejecting place makes me depressed, especially church. I have come to view God as a dumping ground, people who can’t afford expensive mental health treatments that have actually been scientifically proven to help shove religion down your throat. It’s cheap! And it makes extravagant promises. They figure, this guy doesn’t have any real friends, let’s get him an imaginary one. The problem is it doesn’t work for me and a lot of people. But when it doesn’t work we shoulder the blame. We didn’t have enough faith or joy or were “sinning” too much. It really calls into question the efficacy of a treatment when personal attacks are used against those upon whom it fails.
eye opening
If Google with high altitude balloons and Facebook with high altitude drones do succeed in giving the entire developing world internet access some governments will do everything in their power to suppress it. Governments aren’t too keen on free flow of information so I’m sure there will be censorship at some level (I think at least Facebook’s plan internet is beamed to cell towers where the traffic could be monitored).
The other problem I see is HD quality video of how fucked up the Gaza Strip is isn’t going to put a smile on Israel’s face. I think it would be plausible that the Palestinian territories could have their internet jammed or banned.
frosty windows
In the indigent clinic where I go to see psychiatrists (before I lost mine) and social workers they have rooms that are semi private. They are well lit and have frosted windows. The idea is give the patient a certain amount of privacy while still making the patient’s silhouette visible to the people outside. In this way if the patient were to start acting violent people on the outside would know right away and take the appropriate action.
suffering choice in a field
Pretend you are in a field. This is a big field, one that people come and fly kites on. Now imagine three people you know are there. You can see one just at the edge of the horizon and they can see the other person you know at the edge of their horizon in the opposite direction from where you are. The person in the middle can see both people but the person on either end can only see the person in the middle.
Those of us who suffer a decent amount are like the person in the middle. Having suffered gives us the ability to put ourselves in the shoes of the person furthest out (who suffered more than us). However the person furthest in just can’t empathize with the person furthest out’s suffering at all (represented here by them unable to see her).
The point is, the person with the intermediate amount of suffering gets to make a choice. They can romanticize their suffering to make the person furthest in comfortable. However they are at disadvantage to do this not just because it requires romanticizing their own suffering but because they can put themselves in the shoes of the person furthest out (whose suffering is so bad it’s impossible to romanticize).
I myself am in the middle and I have always refused to romanticize suffering. I spend many years in pretty serious eye pain, am bipolar 1, and have some visual impairment. I know people with much worse chronic pain than me and know people with worse mental illness than me. I can somewhat put myself in their shoes and when I do I see no silver lining on their cloud. As society tempts me to romanticize my suffering (for the sake of making people who haven’t suffered feel comfortable with it) I won’t do it. Not just for me, for those who have suffered exponentially more.