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I see a bad moon rising,
I see trouble on the way.
Don’t go out tonight, ‘cuz it may just take your life.
There’s a bad moon on the rise.

The results of the 2024 election devastated me. I have voted in presidential elections before, and sometimes my candidate didn’t win. That is always disappointing, but this was more than that. This election took away any and all hope I had for this country.

This especially hits hard for a neurodivergent, or anyone else with a “disability.” (Some conditions are labeled as disabilities that really shouldn’t be, but in this context that isn’t important.) There is an image from 2016 showing future president Trump openly mocking a disabled journalist. (I’ve mirrored it below.) I don’t think I need to elaborate on what that says. For an ablest like Trump, people with physical disabilities, and those of us who who fall on the neurodivergent spectrum, are little more than a joke and a nuisance. His cult tends to follow suit, and currently they hold most of the reins. The next two years, at least, are going to be difficult.

I wanted to expand more on how this second election of Trump might affect the lives of neurodivergent people, through the changes he wants to impose. But when tried to write it I became so upset that I had an emotional meltdown. The topic filled me with so much hopelessness, anger, and frustrated rage that I found myself largely incapable of discussing it.

So I’ll look at that emotional reaction instead.

There are many accounts of how neurodivergent people have difficulty regulating their emotions. A stressful situation, for example, may compel us to run from the situation. Over excitement may cause us to start acting frantic, or suddenly need to go somewhere quiet. Something very sad or traumatic may cause us to go into a prolonged crying fit. Or worse, cause us to completely shut down.

What causes this? A psychiatrist or psychologist could probably give a comprehensive explanation, and if any of those are reading this I would like to hear it. But speaking only for myself, it’s like having to push something through a hole that is simply too small. Some actions create such a strong emotional response that the body isn’t able to contain it. A good analogy might be a typical household appliance being hit by a bolt of lightning: it’s going to stop working. Some of us develop “surge protectors” to protect and guard against such events. But those only go so far.

For me, the comprehensive set of events surrounding Trump’s second election were a blatant display of injustice, cruelty and hypocrisy that I didn’t think was humanly possible. When trying to write about it, I was unable to contain my emotions. I was trying to deal with them by writing things down. I had some luck on that front, and I might be able to continue later. But at the time, the torrent was fast, loud, and unrelenting. At one point I banged my head against the wall and made a rather impressive divot. Since my mood was adversely effecting my wife and daughter, (even the cat was disturbed), I ended up isolating myself and taking a short nap.

I’m remembering a problem my father used to have when the topic of his parent’s divorce came up. He was incapable of discussing it, or even really talking about it. He would usually get defensive and verbally aggressive, or he would silently close down. But he could never, ever discuss the effect the divorce had on him. Even when we tried to get him to break the issue into small, manageable parts, that didn’t help. He was unable to break it into small pieces. That issue was, for him, one large, unbreakable sphere of pure stone that would not and could not be broken.

Again, a professional would have a more comprehensive take on this. But my amateur observation is that there is more than one emotion in play when these log jams occur. Unfortunately, the various emotions are tied to one another and are tangled and interconnected like a jumble of hyperactive worms. Any attempt to isolate one facet of the issue ends up pulling many others into play before progress can be made. Different layers and undertones are always demanding attention, and in a way that can not be ignored, postponed, or regulated. The whole wriggling emotional mess has to be dealt with in its entirety, or not dealt with at all.

So, what do we do? I’ve been told that for neurodivergents, and in fact anyone with mental health issues, this type of emotional overload isn’t uncommon. Heck, I know some neurotypicals who have reactions on this scale. It may take them longer to reach a breaking point, but it still happens. Some of us deal with it better than others, and many of us have developed coping methods. I’ve had to start developing new coping methods, because the ones I used to use don’t seem to work as well as they used to.

Writing things down is one way. I often end up with a bullet list of key observations or points. Referring back to that ball of worms, as soon as I describe one worm I need to describe another one, and another, and another, and so on until my pencil breaks or I get writer’s cramp. But sometimes it helps. In a way, the emotional problem has been broken into smaller more manageable parts. Or at the very least, some major issues have been identified, and can be addressed when in a better headspace.

Meditation and breathing exercises, which I touched on in an earlier article, are another approach. The key here is to free yourself of distractions, especially ones that remind you of the offending issues. If you can do this, and spend a few minutes doing the Four-Seven-Eight breathing method, at the very least your pulse will return to normal.

I recently learned of another method, from an actual therapist. It involves drawing and tracing a figure-eight pattern on a piece of paper or tablet. After drawing the figure-eight, spend a certain amount of time slowly tracing the pattern, constantly keeping your eyes focused on your writing instrument or stylus. Use a timer if one is available, or, follow a set number of laps around the pattern.

In each of these examples, the two halves of the brain are being forced to work together, in a slow, repetitive task. When we go into an emotional meltdown, the mind has gone into a type of fight-or-flight pattern. The goes into a frenzy, ready to go berserk combating whatever it is that caused the reaction. Or, it goes into a cold, calculating pattern that can generate some pretty gruesome ideas and even worse actions. It depends on which half of the brain takes control; neither one is good for us. Using one of these three approaches will force the mind out of such a pattern. The combination of visual tracking, motor skills, and time awareness, serves as a sort of soft reset for the brain. This makes it possible to think clearly again.

Emotional meltdowns are difficult to live through, and can easily do serious damage to our lives and the lives of those around us. So if you find yourself falling into an emotional torrent, try to take a breath and pause. Try one of the techniques described above, or if you have of another method that works for you, use that. But above all, don’t fall too deep into the darkness. It can be very difficult to crawl out of later, and rarely does anything to solve the core issues. It’s important to keep a level head, especially in these chaotic times.

Stay safe, everyone.

For all of you neurodivergents out there, do you ever have moments of emotional overload? Does the current state of affairs in the United States fill you with anxiety, or any other strong emotion? And if so, how do you handle it?

Images from Shutterstock and Pinterest.

New Horizons

Artist depiction.

Today in space exploration…

January 19, 2006, saw the launch of the New Horizons probe. It was the first probe in a program called New Frontiers, that was designed to explore various aspects of the outer solar system. New Horizons is also among the fastest artificial objects ever made, and is the fifth human made object to achieve escape velocity from the solar system.

The primary objective for New Horizons was the enigmatic dwarf planet, Pluto, and it’s frozen companion, Charon. In this respect, New Horizons picked up where the Voyager program left off. Pluto and other objects beyond the orbit of Neptune weren’t included in the Voyager program, though I remember hopeful talk on this point. The Voyager probes made frequent use of gravity assisted slingshot maneuvers around the outer planets to reach their next target. It’s likely that Pluto just wasn’t in a location where a slingshot off one of the ice giants (Uranus or Neptune) would be effective. So, Pluto ultimately had to wait for a dedicated mission.

Pluto

New Horizons was launched at 2:00pm EST (19:00 UTC) from Cape Canaveral, on a rapid trajectory toward the outer solar system. It cleared the Earth-Moon system a mere nine hours after launch. Its first stop was Jupiter, where it received a gravity assisted speed boost from the gas giant, to hasten its journey to the outer solar system.

Charon

New Horizons completed it’s slingshot maneuver around Jupiter on September 4, 2006. While in the Jovian system, the probe took several readings and photographs of Jupiter and its moons, mostly to answer questions raised by previous missions. At the speed it was going it couldn’t do a lot of research, but since it was in the area, why not take a quick look?

Infrared closeup of Jupiter

After barnstorming Jupiter, the probe went into sleep mode for the bulk of its journey. On January 4 of 2015, the first clear images of Pluto were being relayed, and the probe was fully awakened by mission control. At the same time, New Horizons was receiving navigational support from the Hubble telescope back at Earth. Pluto was found to have not one, but a total of five moons. All of them are very small, and along with Pluto they perform a complex square dance around one another. I suspect navigating through such a place would be a nightmare!

The direct flyby of Pluto and its companions occurred in July of 2015, and provided not only excellent photographs of the distant world, but extensive information about atmosphere and geology. Scientists were also provided with insights into the early ages of the solar system, and the nature of the interstellar void. NASA scientists considered all of the primary and secondary objectives, and most of the tertiary objectives, of the Pluto flyby to be a success. The information gathered by New Horizons is still being analyzed today, almost ten year later.

There was a contingency for additional targets for New Horizons, if circumstances permitted. The Kuiper belt is the collective name for a torrid (doughnut) shaped cloud of materials orbiting beyond the orbit of Neptune. There was hope that New Horizons could do a flyby of one of these objects, after visiting Pluto. Again with some help from the Hubble telescope, such a target was located. The Kuiper belt object 486958-Arrokoth was visited by New Horizons on January 1 of 2019, providing even more insight into the nature of the interstellar void, and the various materials within the Kuiper belt.

486958-Arrokoth

Controllers predict that the onboard power cells will allow New Horizons to continue operating until the early 2030’s, so an additional flyby of a Kuiper belt object may be possible. Both the Hubble telescope and the Webb telescope have periodically searched for a suitable and reachable targets. But at this writing, such a target hasn’t been found.

Currently, the craft is collecting data on deep space radiation, heliophysical data, and other characteristics of the Kuiper belt. It has also been conducting long-range observations of two nearby stars, Proxima Centauri and Wolf 359. Most of its instruments are currently in sleep mode, but if a suitable flyby target is located, they can be restarted. New Horizons will exit the Kuiper belt some time in 2028. At that point it will join Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 in the interstellar void. It should be noted that the two Voyager probes still occasionally send back data, decades after they were expected to shut down. We may continue to hear from New Horizons for many years to come.

Several follow-up missions for the exploration of Pluto have been suggested. While such a mission has not yet been scheduled, the most popular plan under consideration is modeled on the highly successful Cassini-Huygens mission that visited Saturn. It involves a “mother probe” settling into an orbit around Pluto or Charon, and then use the gravity of those two bodies to bounce around the planetoid cluster visiting points of interest. Small drones, or even a lander, would be dispatched along the way.

I suspect distant Pluto and it’s posse of tiny moons still have many stories to tell.

All images are from Wikipedia and Wikipedia Commons.

Circadian two-step

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Early to bed and early to rise… makes a neurodivergent irritable as hell!

On Sunday (January 5) I was presented with a unique opportunity. A heavy winter storm was approaching the area, so to be safe, my workplace announced it would be closed on Monday (January 6). But in order to make sure everyone gets their forty hours of work this week, everyone would be working ten hour days for Tuesday through Friday. I wasn’t very happy about this, but there wasn’t much I could do beyond complain. And that wasn’t likely to get any useful results, so I didn’t bother.

However, since I had absolutely no schedule for Monday, I decided to do an experiment and let my body go to bed when it was ready to, and get up when it was ready. My mind seems to be most productive, and most focused, between the hours of 4pm and 9pm. And I have often joked that if left to my own devices I would stay up until the wee hours of the morning, sleep until around noon, and work my job from mid-afternoon until mid to late evening.

I ended up turning out the light around 3:00am last night, and got up around 11:30am today. It would seem that my circadian rhythm is that of a night owl, which didn’t surprise me in the least. I became a night owl in college, and have largely remained one ever since.

A quick internet search pulled up a number of studies that connect ADHD (and other neurodivergent conditions) with circadian rhythms that don’t neatly align with the rise and fall of the sun. Many of them correlate to chemical patterns in the brain and nervous systems that effect sleep patterns. People with ADHD, for example, often stay up later than most, often because it’s difficult for their minds to quiet down until the body is completely exhausted. Some more severe conditions can lead to insomnia, or at the other extreme, narcolepsy. Lisa and I sometimes joke that we have trouble falling asleep because “our brain won’t shut up.” Chemistry in action!

But does this correlation between late-leaning circadian rhythms and neurodivergency suggest a causation? That’s an interesting question, and is a subject of ongoing research. I tried to come up with an explanation, but none of my ideas held together. Conventional wisdom says that one can train their circadian rhythms to conform to one schedule or another by strictly adhering to a specific time schedule for a prolonged period of time. Many people have been able to achieve this, especially those who work at night. But this has not been my personal experience. I generally get up at 5:30am to be at work for 7:00am, and most of the time I have little difficulty. But when the weekend arrives, and I am temporarily free of the timetable, I instantly revert to staying up very late (on Friday and Saturday) and sleeping late (on Saturday and Sunday). One would think that after several months of this strict weekday schedule, my body would remain on that schedule all the time. Instead, if given the opportunity, my body instantly snaps back to the “night owl” schedule I had back in college. I am therefore inclined to think that neurodivergency does have a causation effect on the circadian cycle, but I suspect it would be difficult to demonstrate.

I’m going to leave that to the psychiatrists, neurophysicists, and other experts on the workings of the brain.

Because of my night owl tendencies, I have considered moving to the second shift at my workplace. It would be more in line with my apparent circadian rhythms, and one day I may make such a switch. However, such a change would cause schedule conflicts with almost every other aspect of my life, and of society in general. One problem that I have noticed is that contemporary society, especially in the United States, is designed around “morning people.” This is the result of historical patterns based on agricultural schedules. Getting up early is imperative when you work on a farm, and for a long time that was the overwhelming majority of the nation’s population. That’s not the case anymore, but the pattern remains. When I try to schedule an appointment or official visit, the first suggested times are invariably early in the day. For someone who is naturally a night person, this is annoying. I often have to push for a later time, and sometimes I meet resistance. It’s not something that makes me overly angry or upset, but I do find it irritating. Like a mosquito bite.

This upcoming work week is likely to be difficult for me. I’ll have to be at work at 5:00am, and work until 3:30pm. Getting into work that early, and then putting in a ten hour day, is going to be a challenge. I suspect my whole metabolism, and not just my circadian rhythms, will be very unhappy by Friday afternoon.

What do you readers think about this? If you are part of the neurodivergent crowd, are you a night owl? Or an afternoon cruiser? Have you been able to train your circadian rhythms to follow something different than their natural inclination?

Image from Shutterstock.

Danger: 2025

More on the overhaul, and what the future may hold.

To quote a famous frog, “Looks like we’ve come to the end of another one!”

As I said earlier, I’m giving this site a complete overhaul. Why? Because I want to level up my blog game. I know that I have said, many times, that I was going to make this blog more active. And so far I have generally failed to do so. But once again I am going to make the attempt. But this time something is different. This year I feel that I’m in a different head-space. I actually feel that I can make a difference, however small, and more importantly I feel that I must try. I just have to keep with it. I’ve been setting up a schedule for posting and editing, and so far I think I can work with it. Why am I in a different head-space this year? There are several possible factors, but that absolute dumpster fire of an election in November was probably the final push. A lot of things in this world need to change.

What is changing on this site? Again, most of the changes will be invisible to visitors, as they are focused on web maintenance, enabling RSS features, and security issues. One thing that has been mentioned to me has been the insecure nature of the site. My first task was to speak with my internet service provider, Ionos, and rectify this. The site now has a secure certificate to keep black hats at a distance.

I have also worked out a few kinks related to the RSS feed, so that folks who use this feature should find it a smoother ride. Near the bottom of the meta tag area in the sidebar, are the options “entries feed” and “comments feed.” Those are the RSS links, and tests have gone well. I will confess that I don’t fully understand how RSS feeds work, as I’ve never made much use of them. But that’s my problem.

I’ve enabled some sharing options for those who like to share stuff on Facebook, Pinterest, and the like. The icons appear at the bottom of each post, right above the index keywords. My own use of social media is sporadic, so I’ve only enabled a few of the major ones. I suspect I’ll be tinkering with this one a bit. If someone brings a specific platform to my attention, I’ll look into it.

The next thing I’m going to look into is finding some sponsors. I recently read some articles by professional blogger Taylor Stanford about how to do things like this. She apparently has managed to turn her blog into a thriving business that pulls in several thousand dollars a month. That’s very encouraging, and it would be nice. But realistically, my aspirations are far more modest. I’ll consider this effort successful it I’m able to offset the costs of maintaining the web presence and email service my family uses. Which isn’t that expensive, all things considered. We’ll see how that goes.

Now, regarding the content of this site. I still want to address issues that relate to neurodivergent folks, more now than ever. The more I scoot around the net, the more I read about people who are part of this misunderstood club. If I can be of some help to these folks, and/or the people in their lives, that would be great.

My current plan is to make the neurodivergent stuff the main attraction, but I will also include some lighter stuff. News related to my family, especially places we visit, will certainly show up. I find those fun to write, especially if the location is esoteric and not well known. I will also have the occasional foray into computer stuff, some more space exploration tidbits, and perhaps even some contraptions from my infamous Erector set.

What I will not include, if I can help it, is political stuff. I don’t feel that political ranting is appropriate for this site any more. In recent years politics has forced itself to the front and center of many people’s lives, and it’s not pleasant! I won’t be adding to the glut of web-based political commentary, at least not here, unless the topic relates directly to neurodivergency. I’ve archived the bulk of my political essays, so if you go looking for one you aren’t likely to find it. I’ll restore them if they are requested, but otherwise they are staying in deep storage. I may have also found a different forum for political ranting, should it ever be necessary for me to do so.

In closing, I have to say that my outlook for 2025 is very guarded. Some frightening changes are approaching, and you probably know what I’m referring to. Namely, a certain “project.” I won’t go into specifics. But I’m very concerned about the effects it may have on those of us who see the world through a slightly different lens.

There are dangerous roads ahead.

The header image came from Shutterstock, though I tweaked it within an inch of its life.