Hyperbolic Inertia: Emotional Dissonance

Yay, math and big words! I’ve already scared some of you away. I hope you actually stay though. I had this thought this morning while I was trying to accomplish fifteen things to get to my “I need to do this”… thing.

(See, I’m not so dry and educational after all! Mouth gibberish is what I’m best at.)

Anyway, I’m washing my resin molds (still unfinished on the counter) while I unload the dishwasher (unsuccessfully) on my way to the shower (which I still haven’t done) and it hits me: This can really dampen someone’s spirits if they had set solid resolutions/goals/aspirations for January. Especially if they haven’t recognized their neuro-divergent tendencies. The normies call it, “getting distracted” when it’s just how some of us live our every day lives…. every single day.

The problem with Hyperbolic Inertia is that you’re doing a WHOLE FUCKING LOT to stay the same. To accomplish the bare fucking minimal in your lives. My original goal today?

Take Shower > Put on make up > Fix Twitch Overlays so they aren’t SO Christmas or VERY Halloween > Load up Grounded, Stream!

When I walked in from dropping the kids off of school, the guilt set in that I haven’t sent off books that my friend paid for months ago. She’s a resin maker (amongst other things). Since I can’t afford to buy any of her art, so I decided to give her my molds for support instead. I still haven’t sent off Christmas presents to out of state family… so… that’s how it is right now.

I made a shitty diagram, the internet loves bad diagrams, right? A visual, if you will, of how I visualize this state of mind:

For those that know real math and are familiar with the Y axis you’re probably itchy right now looking at this but bare with me. Real math aside, the blue lines represent your typical every day things that your brain is perfectly okay with accomplishing.

The center, the Origin, 0,0, whatever you wanna call it, would be where you’d cross over to something new or something outside of your usual day. Something that feels like a chore, or difficult or your brain just doesn’t wanna do it.

The red dot would be the point of pivot, the moment you decide to do something else instead to procrastinate against the chore you want/need to accomplish. Instead of taking a shower I got all of the resin molds out of the garage to wash them. That would be my point of pivot. The curve would be me sitting down to write this blog instead of taking a shower. My brain organized what is a priority in this situation because my guilt of not blogging yesterday was stronger than anticipated.

The Dismal Void, or teal area, would be a compromise situation. You didn’t do the thing but you found a way to get it accomplished anyway. Maybe I package the things I need to send off but convince my husband to take them to the post office, that kind of thing. These chores are my obligation though, so I haven’t done that. I have no desire to do that. A non-neurodivergent person may often fall into this void without issue, they could even thrive in this delegation of obligations. (Yo, middle managers, whats up???) Maybe you’re even amazing at this in your professional life but in your personal life you can’t bring yourself to ask for help… from anyone… for any reason. This could tie in some outside traumas that are surfacing in your functionality of every day life.

Once you unpack these specific areas you can start to work with the coping mechanisms that work for you or experimenting with tools your therapist has given you. (By ‘therapist’ I mean TikTok… But if you have a therapist I’m super jealous.)

Visualizing a problem as a mathematical aquation can disassociate the problem at hand enough for you to approach ‘The Thing’ without hesitation. The whole, “You wouldn’t talk to a friend so negatively, so why be so mean to yourself?” kind of thing.

If you’re struggling with motivation and getting things done just know that you are not alone in this. We can only take it one day at a time, one struggle at a time, one situation at a time. You got this. As a motivational poster once told me: Good things don’t come easy.