enLIghtenment 14 - Alex Partridge

Burnout is so tricky to avoid, navigate and overcome. 

It's also especially difficult to prognosticate. 

In the larger scheme of things...

The world will be split up and broken into two halves. 

The oppressors and the oppressed. 

Neither half will recognise nor validate the other's perspective. 

The oppressors will remain agnostic about the perpetual marginalisation of the oppressed. 

The oppressed will fail to find a voice clear and resounding enough to scream out loud: "this. is. enough." 

Some of us will die fighting the good fight. 

Some of us will die buying into the notion that good does not exist. That good does not have the power to change bad. 

Some of us will flit between the two. Gaining and losing hope. 

Soon enough, no amount of good will be enough to fight against the bad. 

All we'll see all around us is bad. We'll then buy into the notion that all good is dead. For good. 

Bad will take over, not like a slow decay anymore but a fast-spreading virus. 

Some of us will be gone by then. This'll all be irrelevant. 

Hopefully to a universe way into the future, in a galaxy light years ahead of us, on the way to where we'll get a chance to objectively look at everything we did. Examine our Earth lives closely and see how we fucked up and where. 

And then by the time we get to this new universe, hopefully we're so hyperaware of the way we fucked up earlier that all we're trying to do is unfuck things. 

That that becomes the nature of man the way the nature of man now is to fuck things up. 

Hopefully this is only one short pitstop in a long, much longer journey that actually means something. That actually leads to something good. 

In the larger scheme of things... 

And hopefully out there, if the world is broken into two similar halves, there's some strong force of justice present as a ubiquitous entity, like gravity, that prevails over everything no questions asked. 

Because at some point, things need to even out. If not here, somewhere else. If not now, some time soon. 

Otherwise, seriously... what's even the fucking point of all this? 

Think motherfucker, think

ADHD, autism & entrepreneurship

There's a video we shot a few days ago in which we interviewed an old colleague of mine, Vishi. Vishi is now a food entrepreneur, based out of Pune, and a few months ago he discovered his ADHD. 

In his interview, he spoke about the connection between entrepreneurship and neurodivergence. There was this one bit where he said that entrepreneurship has these lean years where you're not enjoying your work but you've got to stick it out anyway. 

That hit hard, especially with how the past month has been. Somehow I just went out of sync with our work a couple of full weeks in September, and lost track of why we'd been doing what we're doing, and what's the way forward. Couldn't manage to do much, just the regular BAU stuff... that too with some difficulty. 

I figured it could just be a meltdown. Or strong withdrawal from some SSRI + Clonazepam medication I took mid-September. But maybe it was neither... maybe just work things not coming through the way I had hoped they would. 

Anyway, it made me realize I want to read up more on meltdowns. I want more actually autistic accounts of the types of meltdowns and shutdowns that exist and that people have gone through. Maybe just a book titled meltdowns where each chapter is a different type of meltdown, or an anthology of meltdowns experienced by different people across the spectrum. 

But anyway, it passed. Then yesterday, I had the most productive day I've had in three weeks. Felt good. Also felt exhausted at the end of the day. Not the kind of exhausted where you're lost and you feel broken and done with things, but the kind where you've accomplished the day's purpose. 

Been regularly exercising throughout this period though, so that's a big plus. Now I've moved my exercise time to mornings, as soon as I wake up. Earlier I would do it in the evening, and if the day was too busy, I would just end up not doing it at all. 

Also started the sadness pack on Head space. Don't know why but it keeps me focused on the breath way more. Had a conversation with Eric Garcia, author of 'We're Not Broken,' and thoroughly enjoyed it. Going to do a long post on parts of the book I identified with and the TMMS conversation we are going to have with him. 

Seriously sometimes wish I was diagnosed earlier in life. Meh.