What’s up, chat? Good to be back. Let’s see if I can summarize the past six months.
June: The Shift
Shortly after my last post, I felt a shift. Am I better? Am I happy? Second week of June 2024, it was like the cloud that had been raining on my parade for years had simply gone away.
Sudden and unnerving. Like, what the actual fuck. I had committed to the whole victim and martyr complexes, and then whatever was driving the pain just let off the gas pedal. Am I whole? Recovered? Seems so. Is this real life?
Um. What do? What do you do when chronic emotional pain vanishes?
July: Party Retirement
Had a mid midsummer.
Early and late summer were great for seeing my chosen family, but otherwise felt like a lot of disappointing nights out on the town. When an event doesn’t live up to its expectations, you have to recoup the energy from somewhere. You end up paying for it twice, both in the preparation and in recovering from the disappointment.
Since the dawn of time, I structured my week around working hard and partying hard, but it hasn’t been as fun lately. I had to reflect and reconcile how poorly I was investing my time. Sitting at the club, staring intently at the dance floor, and trying to will myself into having a good time. Like, am I not traumatized enough for clubbing anymore? Unexpected loss, and I’m not handling it well.
I carried on because of inertia and denial, but the truth shouted pretty loudly at me this summer. There seems to be no combination of DJs, clubs, or drinks that results in a fun weekend night anymore. The tool stopped working, and it appears to be beyond repair.
Thus, I have to make the transition to more wholesome activities during the week and the daylight hours. Weird, but also feels like it’s time. I’ll still go out to enjoy good music, but the weekly nightclub routine no longer sparks joy. Bittersweet.
August: Play Therapy
Now that I’m not spending so much time hungover, I have been catching up with Past Jon. Repaying debts. Fulfilling old promises.
I wish I could say I’ve been catching up on sleep. I’m so tired all the time, which must mean that I’m truly an adult. I thought I crossed that threshold the first time a retail store worker called me “Sir,” but I think this is a much stronger indicator.
Nah. Instead, I devoted a lot of free time to play. Not an expert, but one form of therapy for young children is through playtime since they don’t yet have the language or other skills to express themselves. Not sure what that says about me exactly, but I knew what I needed and I did it. Sometimes play meant researching the best products to solve menial problems around the home. Other times were spent in hobbies, like constructing new prototypes of original inventions to specific problems I face.
And no, it’s not the same as the average adult partaking in a hobby. I was reparenting myself. Paying back time to Past Jon who told himself that he’d put his own needs aside for the many needs of a dysfunctional family until everything quieted down. Summer ‘24 was Quiet Time.
After playing hard for the summer, I’m ready to go back to the snail’s pace of the average adult working full-time under capitalism. Now my new interest is in measuring sound quality and building my own hi-fi speakers, and I have much reading to do.
September: Drugs
I stopped vaping nicotine! It took about a year and more money than I care to admit, but I’m done. No more recharging batteries. No more visits to the vape store. No more messy refills.
I’m also wondering it’s time for me to revisit the ADHD meds. Briefly got switched to generic Vyvanse because of insurance, but noped out of that situation after two weeks of misery. I’m sure it would have been fine if I took the time to titrate my dosage, but the timing was not ideal. I hear the non-stimulants are doing wonderful things for people, and I’ve heard of one person’s story, whose symptoms sounded quite similar to mine, who’s taking a stimulant by day and non-stimulant by night. Back to the doctor’s office we go.
June-October: Cow Mode
June, I felt better. July started and ended with family. End of August also family. Sprinkle in some disappointing party nights. Played. Stopped vaping. So what did happened during that time to allow me to feel so much better? Cow Mode.
What is Cow Mode? I don’t know how the psychological literature refers to it, but in my experience, it’s when the anxious Squirrel Mode of the traumatized human brain runs out of energy and just relaxes. No, it’s not the same as the Anxiety character from “Inside Out 2.”
A psychological taxonomist classifying this zoomorphic neurological state might suggest that it should rather be labeled “Cow Moo-de,” but phonetically, that sounds more like Cow Mood. That doesn’t exactly work when referring to other states like Goblin Mode, a more active and self-indulgent phase. Cow Mode is mainly passive, with brain activity concentrated in the medulla oblongata for the purpose of chewing cuds and staring at objects.
One theory for this change is from the traumed brain recognizing genuine safety and releasing its anxiously-aroused energy, allowing the body to return to a relaxed state. The squirrel found a nut, returned to its shelter, and moo-tated into a cow.
A better theory would look at the muscle of the anxious brain simply running out of energy and collapsing, with the hope/blind faith that the Squirrel Mode built a safe enough environment into which the brain could safely come undone. It is a violent and sudden change.
My version of Cow Mode is the result of years of intense therapy, world-building, and narrative rewrites. It’s not the same as some guy plopping down on the couch after work and watching TV for hours. It isn’t an inspirational rags-to-riches undercow story reaching its triumphant climax. It is the reckoning of finding yourself in a corner and turning around to face whatever put you there. Not courageous, not shrinking away. Just a quiet, blank stare.
While Cow Mode started off as something that happened to me, it now seems like a skill I need to learn to invoke on command, regularly and in short spurts. On a dairy frequency.
Having said that, it also seems like my environment has been calm in a way for a few months, so beyond all hope, my characteristic anxiety powered down after much anticipation.
Well, up until yesterday.
November: Anxiety Returns
The emotional boundaries I patched together have crumbled, and now I suddenly find myself back in Squirrel Mode.
Sad to say that this development isn’t much of a shock. I’ve been fraying at the edges while finalizing several large projects simultaneously. Haven’t been 3D printing or modelling anything in almost a month when it used to be a daily activity. Several books patiently laying in wait for my return. Calendar looking fairly asocial lately.
On the bright side, it doesn’t feel like I’m clinically burned out. I’m generally coping a lot better than in similar situations in the past where I was severely burnt out, at least detecting the problem earlier than before. Exercising somewhat regularly. Climbing at the bouldering gym once a week for the past month or so, with a frequency of twice weekly within spitting distance. Sold my ebike and replaced it with a better one, so sneaking in some cycling before the freezing cold sets in. Booking my medical appointments in advance and attending them on time, generally. Say whaaaat?
And oh yeah, no nicotine to take off the edge either. 😐
I also wouldn’t say that I’m in the clear; I’m not not burned out. Still have lots of work to do in taking back space for myself and maintaining my boundaries. The difference this time around is that it’s easier to convince my anxiety that I’m allowed to take care of myself. My problems don’t seem so existential anymore. No moral panic. Maybe they never were. It always seemed like some huge injustice against me, but I can clearly see that I’m not alone. Just take a look at… *gestures broadly at everything*. Now I can view myself at a distance, with the perspective that the electric tofu inside the bowling ball-shaped bone enclosure (“bone-closure” for short) is getting zapped funny yet again. That is, my brain is always uncomfortable. Who has time to sort out all of its complaints? All I can do is to try my best to address the main few while conserving my limited resources for the other areas of my life. Anxiety is but one signal from my body. I can see what it’s going on about, and I am taking the appropriate actions. Next.
Wrap It Up
It’s been quite hard to sum up the last six months. If this anxiety sticks around for a bit, I may have to keep writing since it’s one of the few things that helps.
Not partying because it isn’t fun anymore. Catching up with old hobby projects and play time. Dropped the nicotine vape habit, but going to start investigating non-stimulant ADHD drugs.
Spent months in Cow Mode. The opposite of Squirrel Mode. Blankly staring at stuff. One part worn-out anxious brain, one part therapy skills, one part quieter environment.
Back in Squirrel Mode. Going to have to conserve my resources. Doesn’t feel like the end of the world like before.
Must learn how to animorph.