This morning I spend time thinking about reorientation of daily life - in particular reading and writing, whether offline or on here etc - for the long haul.

This year has been a rollercoaster ride and if I want to stay on top of things, then the intensity of info consumption
/

the intensity of one's exposure to the events in the now as well as digestion of info & data must now be modulated for resilience in the long haul. Routines need to shift from Urgency mode to Emergency mode. Yes, there are crises but now we're in it for a sustained duration.

/

For instance, my life partner has worked every single weekend since the 1st of March and we're now on the 4th of July. This is not sustainable practice for the balance of the year. Today we ask, do we take July off, the way Finnish residents do each year, and let the world turn?

Or, does the intensity of the initial period when the pandemic shock hit and life was upturned in response to lockdowns and work from home and all kinds of systemic responses to this mega disruption continue unabated for an unknowable period of time?

The system will buckle under this intensity and pressure without reconfiguration.

So, I began with my own work.

I realized I want to pursue two parallel lines of work. The methodology involved in my PhD; and, theory on disruption of locus of agency from Global North to South.

If I am to do this, theoretically and with empirical evidence, then I must change the pace and the rhythm of the days to build in time windows for walks, various zenlike household chores, and some leisure time.

Work and Non Work have context collapsed with digitalization.

Coming back to the concept of July in Finland, I am reminded of the English language section (now defunct) of Helsingin Sanomat - a major newspaper - who would put up 'website closed for July' sign every year with note that yes, there must be news in July, but holidays came first

This year, that kind of withdrawal into the forest might not be viable nor feasible given the hair trigger equilibrium the rest of the world is maintaining in order to contain the virus and its long term destructive effects on the public health systems and societies.

So another way to approach this need for recuperation and recovery balancing the urgency and immediacy might be to think of things in terms of the balance of energies (chi) and thus ye olde Yin Yang diagram

This is not table of contents attempting to balance the R&R with the workload. By taking the lens of chi instead of numerical metric, one can then approach the day attempting to balance the energetic investment made. If your first half is intense, then the balance should not be.

This might also end up being on a weekly basis if there is a deadline or reason for full 8 to 10 hours of concentrated reading and writing and thinking.

Given the experience of the past 4 months, I am inclined to cushion myself heavily going forward, on a 1:3 balance ratio.

And that might be the summer vacation. In Autumn, how school reopens depends on so many factors as yet to be revealed.

Given the way I get immersed in threads, particularly analytical or lit review, I probably won't put a timer on my brain.

Otoh, figuring this out liberating

There is no more guilt of OMG the world is burning and I must stand at the front of the fires.

Its now, yes, there are parts of the world that are burning, but I seem to have put them out near me and can now put things down and disappear for a walk in the forest.

The Urgency of the Timeless Immediacy has now transformed into the Ongoing Emergency due to Recovery and Rebuilding needs. The first 6 months are for long term strategic planning and visualization of one's own preferred version of the emerging future.

In parallel to the daily tasks of upholding your world, you can now shift attention to thinking about what kind of future daily life you want to experience.

At the very least, for the balance of 2020 during which global systems will remain under pressures of various kinds.

One huge contextual relief for me, during the time I spent pondering all this, is to begin to separate my IRL experience from the dominant narratives purveyed in digital content in english language.

I ate out at a buffet this week for the first time in 6 months.

My residence jurisdiction has managed their journey through the past 4 months of pandemic rather well. There is heavy caution regarding a second wave in the Autumn but everyone is preparing to curb that shock as much as possible based on the lessons learnt in the spring.

For a variety of cultural reasons, we managed to contain the spread of the virus without masks being imposed as law. Engineering design changes also played a part - the ventilation systems were boosted, even replaced, in many places, and the flow patterns of air were changed.

In the real world, I realized, my feet were standing on a ground that wasn't shaking anymore. We have arrived at a measure of stability. We can take a break from firefighting. The fires that consumed our mental bandwidth were burning very far away from our real world body.

OMG

So essentially I had to rewire the adrenalin surge - the fight or flight circuit, as its often called - to distinguish between what the real world around me was telling me - its safe to come out of the house now, versus what my brain feeds were telling me - the world is burning!!

And, part of that effort is the one begun last week to distinguish inflammatory and outrage inducing content, nowadays programmable by AI content engines, within my regular information flows (when was the last time I did African news?) and begin to mute them.

This was also implemented for the targeted trolling and ongoing harassment of voices of colour I'd mentioned yesterday. Whenever we'd tried blocking the trolls they saw it as a red flag to hack their way through back into the system. However, muting doesn't flag them at all.

"what if we could discover a way to insulate the target from the digital attacks?"

since yesterday, the non stop litany of insults & swear words of misogynist violence that is my content browsing experience has begun to show gaps.

Hate crimes online are our immediate forecast

For those of us deemed as Other by the self identified wizards who run the digital pipes around the world, there is expected to be an additional cognitive load of 25 - 30% just dealing with the neo nazi transformation of the key dissemination platforms for content on the internet

As you transform your daily routines from Urgent to Ongoing Emergency, also consider your content consumption in granular detail for its impact on your mental health and wellbeing. This is part of the insulation & cushioning for increasing resilience for the long haul.

Why I believe we will have to keep our awareness awake, even during R&R, is because a very fragile and immature superpower is feeling humiliated on the world stage.

As the world's vulnerable populations, we will be in the line of fire.

Passport holders will sell their souls for retaining the worth of a passport feeling the shock of a raised barrier to freely travel the planet for the very first time.

As a lifelong third world passport holder, I have long separated my sense of self worth from the that of my passport.

This however will make a target for normativization on USian internet. I've experienced it in American community websites, where my thoughts and feelings are forced to conform with American PoC's views. Unlike them, I've never been a 2nd class citizen of my own passport country.

To be honest, in my passport country, I'm from the oppressive upper castes (to my eternal shame, I'm 1% in context of the subcontinent) and I'm recognizing the cost of the time I spend consuming english language content on fighting the efforts to be reconditioned into 2nd class.

This means that there's a greater effort required for the simple reading and writing routine that began this thread.

Gird for endurance and a marathon rather than a sprint.