On Mana-Burn, Slack, and Sticky States

It's a  long one this time people, so as usual, either "sorry" or "you're  welcome." Don't feel like you need to read the whole thing. This has  been a thought dump partly for my own sense of expression, but also as a  way to make myself more understood by those who do want to read about  what I've learnt about myself. Finally, it's also a call for advice and  support



According  to Richard himself, and most of the people close to him, Aphex Twin  spent most of the 90's on 2hrs of sleep per night, and he turned out  pretty OK. Although I also know that at times he's whipped himself into a  creative fever/mania that must inevitably take a lot from those around  him. On the other hand, we have to agree that SOPHIE operated and  benefitted from a similar playbook. Sadly, she then ended up out of care  and without a co-pilot one time too many, when she really needed  someone around to keep herself safe. She flew too close to the Moon and  fell to her death. I know she didn't try to make it a poetic death, and I  don't want to read too much into it, but I feel the poignancy and the  sadness of SOPHIE'S passing very freshly this week. Her death haunts me  at least as much as her music has. Anyone can be a DJ Mehdi. I've known  that for a while. I don't lose sleep about the roof caving in on me any  more. But I do lose sleep over how not to become another SOPHIE/Josh  Homme/Amy Winehouse.

before  I go on, I want to Walk Back these comparisons to such Giants,  especially since I don't even really make art or anything creative. I'm  just a poor little mid-30's bean who finally has the capacity to be as  productive as they want, in at least most spheres of life. I've gone  from feeling there was about a 2.5/20 chance of me being OK and happy in  life, to ~19/20 most probable chance of happiness, over the course of  the past 8 years. Unfortunately, I think we're all seeing the parallels  right now between myself and my Idols. More to the point, I think we're  all quite anxious to find a Care Plan that works to give me the support  and the life I want, without burning out those closest to me. I don't  want to concern anyone here. I'm not planning on shooting for 2hrs of  REM every night. But I would like to be able to accidentally have an  occasional High-Mana-Burn weekend while also not falling apart and  pushing myself into a depressive Monday (this can be especially bad if I  then lack the agency to fix it there and the whole week is lost. Rare  these days, since it costs me my precious Production Days).

I  know the easy answer here is "sleep more on Sunday night, you idiot."  Believe me, I did try this time. I usually do try. I think the better  version of this answer is "start down-regulating your energy level at  midday on Sunday so you can sleep on Sunday night." I used this strategy  after the last 3-day music festival I went to, and it worked really  well. It does rely on self control though, which is notoriously a  boot-strapping problem. i.e. If I have the self-control to do the things  that grant me self-control, then I don't have a problem. It's when I  miss a night of sleep and have lost the agency I need to fix the system  that I really start to worry.

My  two main states: good self-care and dangerous self-immolation are  powerful attractor states in a dynamic system (for me, anyway; others  might feel more internal smoothness). To use an excellent term I  discovered recently, both the high-self-care and zero-self-care states  are metastable. That is, once entering a state, they both have a  significant amount of "stickiness." Once I'm low on willpower and sleep,  it becomes harder and harder to fix my willpower and sleep levels. All  the levers to affect this involve willpower - hard to make myself run,  hard to make myself sleep on time. But I will say that medication has  been a silver bullet at times for breaking out of the zero-willpower  state. Unfortunately, amphetamines are also the silver bullets that  allow me to be the Aphex Twin Predator, who sees creative futures and  then creates them on 2-4hrs of sleep a night.




Back  in my biochem undergrad days, I used to despair if I lost my  Benthusiasm before week 7 of the trimester. Once gone, my energy and  agency couldn't really be renewed until a big feel-bad, a break, and a  Clean Start in a new study period. In other words, when I was losing  willpower and positivity, I always knew how bad things were about to  get: Suicidally Bad. This was exacerbated by being in a very emotionally  difficult relationship at the time, where I wasn't Allowed to fail  anything. But failing at things - and especially things important to me -  was a tragic constant in my life, hence my first and only attempt to  Leave, fuelled by my relative certainty that my life would never be easy  or fulfilling.



But  that _constant became a Variable the day I learned I could self  medicate once every couple of weeks for $6 a pop. I didn't need that  capacity always; I was just happy to have a Silver Bullet for  assignments I told myself I wanted to do, but then could never do  without significant chemical intervention. And it didn't take much  (5-10mg always did the trick) to break out of my Sticky-Down states and  take things in a positive direction again. So there's some advice for us  all: if medication would allow you to escape bad Sticky States, you  should definitely get on that. I think I would have finished uni 3 years  earlier with medication, and not felt like a piece of shit for the  entirety of my 20's, had I taken more seriously the possibility that  maybe not everyone is Like This, and that maybe hitting the Try Harder  Button was never actually going to get me further without habits and  medication to make that possible.

That  was the other thing that was so scary about my 20's: if I did  everything perfectly, maintained all my budgets, exercise trackers, and  assignment trackers, things *might* be ok for a month. I cannot stress  how bad this was. Even when I was pulling out all the stops and using  all my best tech, I still got stuck in low-willpower weeks. I still  failed to submit assignments. And I always knew those times were coming  around again. I accepted it because I thought I was a moral failure for  choosing not to have the willpower I could so easily have [I take it as a  given that anyone reading this far already knows or strongly suspects  that I have had a formal ADHD diagnosis since early 2021].



But  these metastable Sticky States aren't all bad news. The silver lining  is that Good States are also metastable. There are events that, if I was  on the knife's edge of juuuust being OK or not OK, would push me into a  better or a bad place. I'm so thoroughly and stably in the good place  that I can deal with 2 weeks of rain, no running, being locked in  hospital, and ripping out a canular in the ambulance in a way that would  have broken my willpower-pump-tech if it had happened to me 5 years  ago! It's genuinely amazing to realise how stable my life is now. For  this new and very welcome stability, I want to thank each and every one  of my co-pilots who slows and stabilises me. You know who you are, and I  owe you all my life. I do not say this lightly. You Humble me. You Love  me. You Accept me. And you do so in ways that I cannot Humble, Love, or  Accept myself. But you ARE teaching me your ways, whether you know it  or not. To Verbify one of my Giants: thank you, Co-Pilots, for being the  reasons that I have been able to Aphex Twin, rather than getting  entranced by danger and following the tragic SOPHIE Path.



Please  know that I have made an ally of the stickiness. I run as hard as I  can, as often as I can, because even though I don't need it now, I'm  investing in a metaphorical mental stability account. I'm running from  the Demons that would suck me back into the metastable self-immolation  state. I save so much away, because I know the times come by often when  I'll need to make withdrawals - sometimes big ones. As I alluded to  above, I recently had a brief stay in hospital, and there are a lot of  people dear to me who still don't know if I'll be ok. I can't make any  promises, but please know that my own internal estimates for  long-term-okayness-and-fulfillment still have not dropped below  18/20 at any point. I'm sorry it's been so scary, but I do genuinely  want to grow stronger. I do want to get better at bringing Order to my  inner and outer empires, instead of letting them be Reigned by The  Chaos. And I want you to know I'm succeeding. A key part of this Growing  Stronger has been accepting that I shouldn't Carry Teams, even when I  know I can and like the feeling. I need to sit in the backseat of my own  car more often. I need to see cool things my friends are working on  while someone more qualified and stable than me drives me to the Safe  House.

This  brings me to the other key part of my Stack: Maintaining enough Slack so  that I can stay well above the dangerous Sticky places. Upon  reflection, there are so many different resources that all have their  own Slack, and that contribute to my Slack_Prime. Surprisingly, running  and sleeping are the Big Two. Those alone have proven even more  important than financial Slack, which was a surprising realisation. When  thinking of all your buffers to try and make Slack and stability core  parts of your life, make sure you're not just thinking about time and  money. BE CREATIVE WITH YOUR Slack-Stack.  I can almost guarantee you've intuitively discovered and used some  mechanisms to protect your precious Slack without even knowing it.  Consider investments in your mental health such as exercise, therapy and  (possibly) meds to be important in giving you a specific kind of mental  health Slack. I'd also like to hear about what you do to to build,  protect, and integrate Slack into your life. I'm sure I'm only  scratching the surface of the intentional forms of Slack I could have.



And  another reminder for myself and others: just because you're enjoying  every second of it, does not mean that an activity or mindset you've  entered isn't drawing massive amounts of energy without you noticing.  That's actually the only reason I ever end up low energy these days; I  enjoy being borderline-manic, and I enjoy burning the new-found energy  so much that I occasionally Redline for too long. Oftentimes this  happens on a Monday or Tuesday, then I end up burning my Slack and  myself before I'm even halfway through the week. So maybe another  solution here is something along the lines of making Energy-Burn more  legible? Maybe forcing myself to check in 3 times a day to observe  whether I need to up-regulate or down-regulate would help? But this  suffers from the Control Premium problem. We always think the answer is  to exert more speed, precision, and control, if there exist ways to do  so (and there are always Ways and Means). What I've been trying to do  over the last year - at the same time as trying to build myself to the  Richard D. Apex of potential - is to try and find ways to enter useful  mental stances that are slower, and that let me rest and restore energy.  While we're here, what works for you? I'm actively asking for solutions  here, so please don't worry about whether it'll be useful or welcome to  anyone but yourself. Please feel free to submit a comment anonymously,  or in my inbox, should it be personal. I would greatly appreciate  hearing about anything that's worked for you, and that seems relevant.



And  to reassure you again a little more, you don't need to worry about me.  It wasn't a permanently damaging event in the same way many of my  failures in life have been. I had a high energy-draw week without  noticing, because I wanted to make sure that someone else's return to  work was as positive as I could make it. I then struggled to come down,  and had a Friday through Wednesday when I was thoroughly  Institutionalised (it wasn't good for me. Better Care Plan for next time  incoming). 10 years ago, an event like this would have gone on longer  and probably ruined a semester of work AND study. All things considered,  I'm tentatively back to my ”P(Good_Life) = 19/20" state, and that on  its own is miraculous and warrants celebration. So here's to progress.  To Acceptance. To Loving myself. I learnt it all from watching you.