This week in cognitive overhead

[kiya]

The last week has been [gif of flaming dumpster floating down a flooded street]. I haven't been doing public talking about it particularly because of a fair amount of "not my story" and "don't want to say things until I know how it's going" but a) we are unimpressed with various local supposed authorities' capacity to handle covid cases b) we are cautiously hopeful that things will be okay for the afflicted party and c) artan was in quarantine for basically the week because of close exposure to said afflicted party.

Stress levels have been high all around, both in terms of "a family member (though not someone who lives here) is in danger", "the household routines are all disrupted and the children are agitated by being unable to hug a parent who is quarantining", "there is very little practical that most people can do other than support the most affected party", and so on. I have resorted to things like "For lack of anything directly helpful to do I will make tea".

Long ago I used to routinely say to brooksmoses that I wanted a problem I could hit and it is very difficult to punch viruses.

The practical upshot of this is that I have done much, much more driving this week than usual, because I have been doing all the conveyance of AR to school and back again. (Usually artan does the mornings and I do the afternoons, but obvs quarantines.) Also I had a church group meeting Wednesday evening, in addition to assorted minor errands.

And this has made clear to me (not that I was unaware, but very clear) that driving is the "oh, this is a normal no big deal thing for people" task that consumes the most cognitive overhead and underscores that brains consume vast amounts of blood sugar and energy to accomplish tasks. It's not just that I got home from the morning dropoff and went back to bed for two, two and a half hours after (that's just a sleep cycles thing honestly), but also I can feel my capacity to think fritzing out. K asked me my opinion on something earlier today and I don't remember what it was but I do remember staring at him and feeling the processes of my cognition grind like I was trying to change gears at speed without using the clutch.

If I drive too much it makes me terribly, terribly thick.

In any case people are trending towards health maybe, the local tests have all come back negative hooray for vaccines and masking, and I have broken to the tiny people who really like religious education that we are not doing church in person this week because they don't have church school yet and also mama needs to fucking sleep this off and not do any substantial driving. (I am honestly not sure how much they like RE and how much they like that we go out for lunch after; we had a lot of pizzas on the town common last spring.)


Also I started writing this post like eight hours ago and ... forgot. To finish it. Until now. Because I do not have a working brain.


Oh, add to that for the hilarity - that is how the week was and somewhere in the middle of that I sold the story mentioned in previous entry and you must understand that my reaction to doing this thing involved about ten minutes of shattered laughing because having that dropped into the middle of [gestures upwards and I didn't even mention all of it] was just. Just. Too much.

Comments

[artan]

I think our town dumpster fire permit expired when the siding permit closed, sadly.

[graydon]

I have arranged my entire life around not needing to drive.

Much sympathy on the cognitive overhead.

[elf]

Long commutes and lack of public transit is very much part of how the capitalist elite stays in power. It is exhausting to start your day with an hour or more of operating life-threatening heavy machinery. And you can work after that, but after work and ANOTHER long trip in a metal box that will KILL YOU AND EVERYONE YOU CARE ABOUT if you're not paying attention ALL THE TIME...

You don't have the energy to protest, or figure out where the holes in the system are, or contact someone who does have the energy to make changes, or even figure out which of the 3,000 local candidates is actually trying to get stuff done that would make life better for you.

...We have also been coping with a lot of things with tea. I regularly get tea from Adagio. I like their Warm Hugs, Bone Daddy, and Peach Bellini.

[mindways]

...this comment revealed a parallel between "driving" and "the pandemic" that had not previously occured to me - that constant sense of needing to pay attention to risk, with a keen awareness that a single small slip could have dire consequences - perhaps for you, but perhaps for someone else you just happened to be near.

[elf]

Hypervigilance is a trick humans learned to survive emergencies. It's also useful for athletes. It's horrible to maintain for days or months on end. That's how you wind up with CPTSD.

My current big annoyance with COVID is how little it appears in mainstream media - there's a whole lot of pretending it either doesn't exist, or it's like a localized extreme flu outbreak that will be contained and gone in a year.

[thomasyan]

My company sent gingerbread house kits to anyone interested. One clever party added green food coloring to the icing and turned their house into an open dumpster with 2020 on the side and lit a candle (? my memory is fuzzy) inside for a fire. So very appropriate.

Sympathies on your dumpster fire.

[jenett]

Why did I not see this when you posted it?

I find driving so weirdly cognitively draining (and I honestly do wonder if it's soemething on the thyroid stuff: I saw a significant drop in my ability to cope with driving when it hit, especially with anything that involved more than nominal traffic sequencing (like having to figure out when to do left turns at moderately busy intersections: I only have one each way on my commute right now, and it's very helpful. The rest have lights.)

[lizvogel]

Sympathies on your local difficulties. (Realized I should start with that.)

I quite like driving, actually; I find it relaxing, especially if I'm by myself and therefore can turn the music up as loud as I want.

However, I'm right there with you on the cognitive overhead maxing-out. Indeed, this comment is late to the party because for the past several weeks, I've been operating on the "I'm dealing with this thing because it's actively on fire, anything less doesn't even register" method. When questions like what to have for dinner result in deer-in-headlights paralysis, you know your stress levels have gotten out of hand.