spoons vs the survival stack

[kradeelav]

spoons theory: p useful, genuinely glad it's entered mainstream-ish lingo as far as opening up the discussion on limited energy and chronic illnesses, something that's weirdly hard to talk about for various reasons. a bit hand-hold-y and twee but you gotta start from somewhere, you know?  one of the things i don't have issues with on the surface.

that being said it only covers a ... limited? amount of my experience and i strongly suspect for others who ... [chinhands] find themselves in chronically dependent lives. (it's the most truthful way i can describe it)

think of your brain as running a bunch of background processes (i love, love metaphors that link the body and brain as simply an infinitely more complex machine - gears and cogs that can rust or be overclocked or blinged out or you can talk about as temporarily broken without weird ass Baggage that others bring. given there's a good ... 5 or more pounds of metal and/or electronics in me, it's fun to bring it up when the discussion warrants it. : P ) 

anyway - let's say you wake up. the meatbag is such that you have a limited range of motion (joint flare-ups, arthritis, missing limbs, doesn't matter), so you need assistance to get to glasses, hearing aids, do the morning routine, clothes and sanitary shit. 

"survival stack" process is already running in the background, 'cause to do all of those things, you need: 

• working (medical/mechanical) aids
  
  • have they been charging correctly, has the power gone out, has one of them malfunctioned so you're suddenly shifted over to plan B for [whatever sense that aid replaces] (do you have the instant money to replace the thing and/or the time to do it and/or a backup already brought), have you forgotten to stick it where It Needs to Be, is it lost, is it one of those aids (like glasses) you need to have on and working to use the other aids-
• a human assistant
  • are they alive (sounds like a joke, but really, what if they had a stroke or such during the night? or less serious like food poisoning? family issues of their own?), are they happy (eg non-resentful; genuinely pleasant and trustworthy family member that's high on spoons/bandwidth and/or a paid caregiver that you trust and have had no issues paying), are they on time, in the same house as you (double edged sword as far as privacy vs quick access), what's the current power dynamic like (are they wanting something from you so there's a weird unspoken dance of being more aqusient than usual), this one... would naturally be wayyy more fraught if the assistant was notoriously unreliable or outright abusive (more likely than not by statistics) 
• meatbag cooperating with you
  
  • chronic pain levels stable, various random crap progressive stuff stable, you could even throw in shark week in here since it could necessitate sheets needing to be changed (which loops back into the human assistant part if you're unable to do such)

already the stack sort of negates ... quick random sleepovers or splurge on-a-whim airplane trips beyond the usual issues like time and money like most folks.  also let's say your job needs you in for an early morning meeting. then you throw in: 

• how well does your body/aids/assistant flexes to sudden Changes in schedule (huge) 
  
  • does shit need more time to charge, do you have backups, will you drain Goodwill Points(tm) from your assistant if you're surprised about this, do you have time to forwarn them, does their schedule work with yours...
• transportation
  
  •  do you have a driveable car (most likely no), is it a further ask on the assistant to drive, is public transportation even a thing (ahahahaahahaha, list at least five more things at minimum to Think About here for that, unless if you're weirdly enough in a very specific city or two with tons of elderly people who have actually stress tested the transportation as far as capabilities and safety), etc etc etc

and on for basically every new setting you find yourself in, all the way to bedtime. rinse and repeat.

this is ... probably the kind of thing that if i had more patience, would be mentioned in leiu of the 'it's not that simple' delaying/playing dense line i give to people who do the whole halfehartedly-woke thing about asking about your life but end up more annoying about unsolicited advice than helpful lol. ( mind, there are ways to be helpful! honestly just straight up asking 'can i help?' if you're in a position a) where it would make sense to help any other people - like a manager showing around an office for the first time or b) a good buddy that Sorta Groks Body Language) (i always, always had a privately-labeled designated 'person who won't be weird about minor asks' on each floor when i was at the HQ office, tbh) 

anyway you probably get the gist of it now in terms of ... inevitable mind drain the process always takes, and it's not even just energy as much as it can be that + nimble mind + fanatic about prep work + how much you've actively stress tested your surroundings + can roll with Weird Shit that pops up + brutally aware of how each "piece" needs to constantly work as an individual machine/program for you to exist.  

survival is always about use as a raw process.

Comments

[queenlua]

not much to add, but wanted to say this was an interesting read & got me thinking about stuff i hadn't considered before!

[kradeelav]

more than i hoped for a flailing of words! <3