Time Drawn: June 2009
There are some days I just can’t get two brain cells to rub together. This week has been full of such days.
There’s a small variety of reasons why I can’t concentrate. The heat’s the big one, so’s my body chemistry getting off for a variety of reasons (feminine reasons, mainly). And my social energy is still running really low, and it’s draining off my physical energy. Maybe one or two small other reasons, but they all add up to my being unable to concentrate on one thing for long.
…Perhaps I should explain some of those further. I do have some odd quirks that have lead to a few Sharayah-specific terms.
Well, the heat’s not a specific term. That one’s pretty self-explanatory. The only way it’s unusual is that for whatever reason my brain doesn’t want to fully function when the weather goes above 70 degrees. Which, alas, is about five months of the year here. I really need to move somewhere cool enough that I don’t lose half the year to brain-melting…
As for my body chemistry, I seem to have a better grasp on what my body needs than most people. I can tell when my pH balance is off, for instance, and can fix it by drinking some lemonade to get more acid in my diet or the like. It’s tough to explain (sort of like describing sight to a blind person, really), but I’m getting input from my bloodstream that tells me when something is off, and lets me fix it fairly easily. I inherited this from my Dad, who does the same thing. I’m not sure if it’s an odd genetic quirk or if everyone has this ability but never uses it.
Social energy is another one that’s a bit tough to explain. It comes from me being both highly introverted and social phobic. Introverts have their energy drained from being around people, and need alone time to bring it back. And suppressing my social phobia enough to interact with people in the first place also drains energy. It’s a separate energy source from physical energy. I can be fully rested but if my social energy is drained, I still won’t be able to force myself to interact with people. It acts like a separate store of energy that’s drained by socialization and restored by alone time (with stuff like video games and reading recharging it faster).
It’s not fully separate, though. If my social energy is drained from too much socializing (and even just being in the same room as someone drains it, if slowly), and I still need to use it, it starts pulling from other sources of energy, such as physical and mental. As a result, I get major negative reactions from using a source of energy for a different sort of job. If it’s my mental energy that’s mainly getting drained, I get depressed, sometimes severely. If it’s my physical energy, I start feeling icky and just can’t force myself to do anything physical. Which is the form that’s been hitting this last week.
These drawbacks are actually rather logical. If I’m feeling too off physically, I’ll rest, which will both restore my physical energy the standard way, and help restore my social energy by giving me a lot of alone time. And if I’m depressed, I’m not in the mood to interact with anyone and spend my time playing internet games or something low-brain-power, which restores those two energies quickly.
Still, quickly is a relative term. I can get out of the drawback stage fairly quickly, but rebuilding my reserves of social energy so I have it to use when dealing with them there human people can take months. Especially if I have other things draining my energy stores. Like the heat, and that irritating monthly occurrence we women have to deal with. Which leads to weeks where the operative term is “blah”.
