*Transcendental *Logic

Two days ago — Aug. 26 — was the anniversary of the passing of the 19th Amendment, the one that gave women the right to vote. If you’ve never read the story of Alice Paul, the Silent Sentinels and the amazing and harrowing protests that led to that amendment’s passage, I strongly suggest it! (They made a film about it, too, called Iron Jawed Angels — the pic is from it.)

And this is not Personal Mental Health Awareness Week, but I’m declaring it anyway: Take some time to learn your own mind and its quirks — what sets you off and how to combat the effects of negativity — so that you can survive weeks like I’ve had with maximum grace and minimum medication!

…In all seriousness, if you don’t make a habit of surveying your brain and learning its strengths and weaknesses, please do, for your sake and your loved ones’. You pay attention if you have a bum knee, don’t you? And perfect mental health is about as common as perfect physical health.

As I often explain in real life, I haven’t gone fifteen years without taking psychotropic drugs for my depression by simply "not being depressed" (I love how many people think that’s possible–again, can you just "not have a bum knee"?), but by learning as much as humanly possible about what my situation is and how to handle it. …You might be amazed at what you don’t know, too. For instance, I never realized I was claustrophobic until I made an active effort to figure out why I felt so disoriented and uncomfortable in certain situations!

—–

On the flipside, what are your superpowers? Come on, everybody has some. I have abnormally good luck with words. I know people who have no body odor, who can’t get lost in the woods, and who can spot the smallest detail at great distance in spite of wearing glasses for normal seeing! It’s fun to figure out, not only where you’re amazing, but where the people you know are, too. And it promotes gratitude, which is a darn useful thing to have around for Mental Health Week, too.

Hey world!  I’m so brainfried that even work doesn’t expect me to be working right now!  That’s quite an accomplishment, I think.  Thank various banks and title companies for royally screwing up my attempt to buy The House, possibly irreparably.

::*bangs head on desk for a while*::

So, I wasn’t planning on a polyphasic update for a little while, since you all know how hashed and random my schedule got/gets/is due to massive stress overload and whatnot — but, it turns out I have something to report after all.  I’ve actually been doing remarkably well this last two weeks with getting my schedule back on-track, and I thought I’d share that.  It turns out that the most valuable things to do have been:

*  Take extra naps, rather than longer naps.  This is hard since I’m only oversleeping due to stress and wanting to hide from the world, but it turns out that I can motivate myself to get up for an hour (and usually stay up for two) if I promise myself an extra nap.  I often can’t sleep for the extra nap, but I do get to hide in the blankets or car for another 20 minutes, and that’s worth something.

*  Limit snuggle-time.  I get this powerful urge to snuggle with my boy before I go to work in the morning, when he’s still sleeping (and, remember, there’s not a lot else for me to do).  If I nap at all at this time, I’m going to oversleep or hit snooze and end up running late for work; it’s a guarantee.  But I can set an alarm for ten minutes, which isn’t enough time for me to fall asleep (between naps), and get my snuggles in without penalty.

*  Take shorter naps / watch for best nap-length.  Don’t know why, but lately my ideal nap has gone from 23 minutes to 21 (or rather, from 22 to 20 — that’s 21 on the timer, since it takes a minute to settle in).  I’ll sleep to 23 if I set the timer for it, but I’ll feel groggier on waking.  Just goes to show that it’s a good idea to keep an eye on yourself while polyphasic, no matter how long you’ve been doing it and especially when life-circumstances go wonky.

*  Make damn sure to exercise.  I don’t feel like it (or much of anything) lately, so it’s a challenge, but if you’re me, such challenges are relatively easily resolveable by making them interesting.  So rather than abandon my usual routine altogether, I’m switching it around frantically, trying to keep it fresh and able to convince me to get up and move at least once a day.  Knowing six different taiji forms and a yoga routine has really helped…!

*  Be forgiving, and don’t give up.  Even when I deliberately throw an alarm across the room and go back to bed for two hours grumbling curses upon all of humanity, I try to let it go and move forward.  This is actually a piece of general advice-for-depressives that I’ve picked up over the years:  Don’t dwell on mistakes, because it just pulls you further under.  A bout of major depression can mean that you spend half a day or more in bed (or crying in the closet or whatever), but when that passes, you can either drop it and get up to salvage what’s left, or spend the next half a day hating yourself for wasting the first half.  But it turns out that this little brainhack is great for poly-schedules too — when I screw up, I just forget about it and keep going as though nothing happened, unless it’s to make some obvious adjustment to my naps so that I continue to get them about every 4-5 hours.  (I try to move only one nap whenever possible and get right back on my normal schedule asap.)  And even then, I forbid myself to think about the adjustments in terms of failures. 

(It’s funny — forbidding oneself from thinking negatively is notoriously difficult for people like me, but when it comes to sleep I can do it.  I think my brain is rather used to being bossed around about sleep!)

…So, all that, and this morning I realized that I’m actually back to making hardly any mistakes at all for the last couple days.  I feel like a zombie emotionally, but that’s understandable since I was running on empty last week and at the moment there’s still no end to this ordeal in sight.  But at least I’m not tired, and once again, being able to take frequent breaks for naps, and having extra time to myself to just zone out on a movie or sink into a book, have all been real sanity-savers.

Also, thanks to everyone who answered the poll about the future direction of this site — the vote was evenly split between "Just polyphasic stuff" and "Freaking everything", so I’ll aim for half and half.  ;)

By "It", of course, I mean what Timothy Leary adroitly referred to as The Robot, and what others have called the Shell, the Form, the Meat, the Carrier, and even, in very boring conversations, the Body.

How to get it up?

I don’t mean wake it up — there, I’m way past having any problems.  I wake up ahead of my alarm(s) about 85% of the time now.  But actually getting out of bed is a big problem — even for naps, I’m routinely snagging "five more minutes", and it’s irritating as hell.  Half the time I’m not even tired, or don’t even fall back to sleep — the last time, I laid in bed wide awake through two snooze-alarms, and then fell asleep again.  Good frakking grief!

The reasons for it are psychological — I’m quite sure of that and, as I’ve mentioned, it’s by far not the only psychohiccuping going on at the moment — so maybe the answer has to be psychological as well.  To be honest, I don’t care if the answer’s culinary, as long as there is one and I figure it out.  I’m sick of being scattered, routine-wise, and tired of being tired, even if I’m not tired very often.  (I’m tired more than I should be; I think that’s what’s getting me:  Normative exhaustion.  ;)

So, ideas are welcome.  I’m going to brainstorm myself a list of possible answers this weekend, holiday crap allowing.  (Speaking of the holidays, if you missed the South Park Easter special, you should seriously consider un-missing it (if, of course, you have that special variety of humor that appreciates SP).  It was…astonishing.  Is anybody but me amazed that that show is still bringing Teh Funny and still completely uncompromising, after all this time??)

I shouldn’t act like this is such a hard issue — it’s not, assuming some basic things that I don’t have going for me.  Take my difficulty formulating a simple wake-up routine as a comment on my lifestyle, please, and not on Everyman as a schedule.  These problems are difficult to solve because of my living circumstances, that’s all.  For most people that I’ve talked to, the issue of a wake-up routine is pretty easy; if you have even a room to go to that affords a little privacy, it’s pretty simple.  I just don’t — yet.  (My recent attempts to buy a house could still succeed, and all this will be moot!)

Happy Weird Semi-Christian Holiday With Egg-Laying Bunnies, all!

Getting ready to upgrade Wordpress in hopes that it fixes the d4mn “Internal Server Error” that everybody’s sick of. (The error, if you don’t know, doesn’t mean that whatever you just did didn’t work. In fact, it seems to always have worked, in spite of the big error page. I would get, not just an error, but a nonsensical error. That’s what I get for choosing to name the site what I did.)

Anyway, if things break on Sunday night, that’s why. Sorry in advance! ;)

In other news, it’s time for me to knuckle down and report that things aren’t going so well here, sleep-wise. I expect that to change, but as it stands, the last several weeks have been each sloppier than the last. This is the second weekend in a row that I’ve overslept both days, and on Friday night I slept eight hours. That marks the second time in a month that I’ve slept eight hours in one night. I do much better during the week, but not as well as I could and should: During most days, one of the following happens: a) I fall asleep up to an hour early at night; b) I sleep up to an hour too long in the morning, or c) I miss a nap. I don’t feel much effect from it; I’m not tired all the time, but I am tired about once a day, like really tired. That’s not good enough for me though; I’m supposed to be giving this a good go for posterity n’ shit, and it’s just not acceptable (to me anyway) for me to fail from lack of willpower.

To be frankly honest, the problem isn’t based in sleep. I do, for those of you blessedly ignorant up till now, have a bit of a, er, major depressive disorder thingy. Had it since I was very young; maybe wiring difficulties, or, to flatter me, sane-girl-in-an-insane-world complex. Anyway, hard work, willpower and, admittedly, poverty, have kept me drug-free for ten years now, and I like it better this way — except that it’s not always a smooth ride. It’s emphatically not just sleep that I’ve been screwing up lately, in other words. The only thing I actually seem to be keeping my grip on is Tai Chi…but that’s neither here nor there. Suffice to say, I know what’s up, and it’ll be over eventually, probably soon. I’m almost 100% positive that one my Happy Fatty Acid or whatever gets properly regulated again, things will straighten out. No worries.

So no more of that needs to be inflicted on you, but at least with that much I can add that, if posting gets a bit irregular for a little while, I’m not dead. Or a ghost, like in Serial Experiments Lain.

That’s my absolute favorite weird anime, though. If you haven’t tried it, I highly recommend. Here’s why I love it, from the Wikipedia article:

Serial Experiments Lain deals directly with the definition of Reality, which makes its complex plot difficult to summarize.^[4] The story is primarily based on the assumption that everything flows from human thought, memory, and consciousness.^[5][6] Therefore, events on screen can be considered hallucinations of Lain, of other protagonists, or of Lain fabricating the hallucinations of others.^[6] Story misdirection is central to the plotline;^[7] even the offscreen voices or narrations’ information cannot be considered truthful.^[8] The series consists of a cross-reflection of philosophical themes instead of the traditional linear events depiction: episodes are called “layers“.

All that and it’s absolutely beautiful, too.

Anyway, enough digression, pleasant though it was. I’ll get my crap together, though when I do my posting level may actually go down, I think, as there are a lot of other things I should be doing more of as well. (Like working on the book, if I’m still going to write one.) Things will even out in the end, have no fear. The Blogger Gods are strong here. ;)

Okay, off to upgrade. Cross your fingers! Your good intentions don’t give a crap about physics, and will have no difficulty at all travelling back in time to influence how this upgrade is about to go!

First of all, sorry about the delay — I’ve been working on trying to get polling up for the site (I adore polls), and not having much success. Hopefully said success will be forthcoming. ;)

In other news, I’ve said before that I’m not a fan of general moral principles, especially the type known (technically) as a hypothetical imperative or (colloquially) as a Commandment or “moral” in the rule-based sense. I tend towards particularism, or trying to make the right decision one decision at a time; it’s much less complicated. (For instance, if lying is the right thing to do in this situation, I don’t have to get all tangled over the fact that I’d previously ascribed to an artificial guideline that restricts me from lying while still demanding that I do the right thing.)

However, I’ve recently been beaten, by a better arguer than I, into admitting that some moral principles are a given — well, I would have admitted that on my own, but specifically that it makes sense to put some principles into words and follow them, commandment-style. This is not because they have value as action-determiners in the moment, as in the “lying” example above, but rather because it makes sense to have positive generalities to fix one’s attention on.

That’s what won the argument, really — I can’t argue with the appeal that the focus and quality of our attention has a huge effect on everything we do. I’ve seen it too up-close, because I used to be one of those people with a horrible attitude about most things, and I’ve been reformed, not by niceity or the stick-and-carrot of society, but by the glaring difference in efficiency between the good-attitude and bad-attitude approach. Adopting the latter is like smearing yourself with napalm before a fire-fight. No matter how traditional or normal the act is, or how badass you think it makes you, it’s just not working in your favor, no matter how you look at it.

So, this Sage who beat me in this latest argument pointed out that an excellent way, not only to improve and prosper as a human, but to cultivate and maintain a good, smart, alert, happy mood, is to have a few trusted principles that one can mentally refer to as often as possible, not just as guide-posts but as, for lack of a neater metaphor, tuning-forks. And I’ll be damned if I can see a single thing wrong with that idea.

Conceding defeat, then, I sat down and came up with the five moral principles that I consider the most worthy and useful for this endeavor. Here’s what I’ve got. (Feel free to comment / tell me yours; it is an open forum here, and these are meant to be pragmatic and good, not sacred and inarguable.)

Let’s call them “Devotional Imperatives”, because I like how it sounds.

1. Acceptance. Not number one by accident. Out of everything one can do in this world, I think accepting what is is probably the hardest, most important thing, and the best guarantor of happiness. Believe in a Deity or don’t, but wherever you think it came from, don’t fight what is; that’s just stupid. (A corollary of this is to know/recognize what is.; and a secondary one is “you must know what is before you can change it”.)
2. Bet High. When there’s a positive option and a negative option (or several of each, or whatever), and it doesn’t matter at the moment which you believe is true, always believe the more positive thing. Both optimism and pessimism tend to flavor whatever you’re doing; pessimism’s taste is rarely worth the limited protection it may provide you (and it may be protecting you from a valuable lesson anyway). Also, more generally, remember that your thoughts and motivations are flavoring everything this way, so be aware of them and adjust where appropriate.
3. Try First, Fail Later. In most cases, trying and failing carries no more risk of loss than not trying at all, or only negligibly more. Just because something’s likely to fail isn’t a good enough reason to not try it. Don’t overvalue your time so much that you never spend any. Or rather, if you’re going to calculate in time-spent, make sure to include the positive gain of having tried something along with the negative of having “wasted” time if it doesn’t work. “If it’s worth doing,” as people have said, “It’s worth doing poorly.” (Anything at all is worth doing well, right?)
4. See Beauty. Beautiful things have a way of being invisible if they’re not looked for, like those stupid stereographic pictures from the 90’s. This means that whether your life is populated by beautiful things or not is almost entirely up to you, which makes it morally indefensible to not stop and [smell the roses, breathe the night air, smile at the sunset, admire the pretty rock]. At least, it’s definitely morally indefensible to bitch about how ugly your life is if you don’t bother with those simple, free, painless appreciations. They’re all a lot of lives have in the way of beauty, and with open enough eyes, they’re probably all most lives need.
5. Don’t Sicken Yourself. Look, even if there is a God, it’s still you, not him/her, who has to live in your head, and fall asleep and wake up (and live and die) as you. Whatever decision is before you, if one of your available choices would make you disgusted with yourself, just don’t do it. No amount of material or other gain is worth wanting to throw up every time you look in the mirror.

-PD