Figuring out what life means to oneself is a big task, one which most people never really get around to finishing. One can just follow the well-trodden path in front of one, feeling okay about the whole deal. To then vanish without much of a trace, never having affected the world much.
For me such a thing has never worked. To me the world has always been filled with possibilities, infinite things to learn and endless ways to improve everything for everyone. All it takes is a little bit of elbow grease and a big imagination.
That's kind of how I ended up starting this new project this year, called the Internet of Plants [1]. Originally just a cute little project to automatically water single plants, it has since drawn in a number of people beyond myself, with the scope expanding to high-density indoor farming, using LED lighting and automated irrigation as well as hydroponics.
This project is now on the verge of setting up its first small-scale growing operation, using about five square meters of shelf space with the goal to grow everything from lettuce and herbs to strawberries, passion fruit and more. Long-term we want to look at reducing costs sufficiently to make it possible to economically grow staple foods like rice.
The reasoning behind this is that if high-density indoor farming were to become cheap enough, it'd mean that food production could move close to where people live, valuable farm land could be freed up and returned to nature, even as food transportation, insecticide and herbicide all become rare sights, with massive benefits to the environment.
With each indoor farming operation being a completely isolated and sterile environment, there would be no run-off of fertiliser and the like into the environment, and crops could be grown anywhere, any time, with minimal loss and other compromises.
What excites me about this project is that it is both very taxing on those working on it - combining fundamental R&D, biology, physics, engineering, electronics and many more disciplines into a single project - yet the potential pay-offs are likely to be massive.
Over the coming years we could slowly begin to change the world economy, resolve many causes of food scarcity and related issues, while providing the technology and documentation for it as a fully open project. Truly, it's not meant to make a buck off anyone, only to make the world a better place. Not just for ourselves, or me alone, but for everyone.
To protect the environment, give countless people a better, healthier life and ensure that humanity's future on this planet for the coming centuries has been ensured, while putting a stop to countless destructive practices, such as the environmental destruction of habitats for the creation of farmland.
To me, this is the kind of project that truly excites me. Something that has meaning far beyond me, a hackerspace, a company or the next board meeting. This is what I want to do with my life. These are the kind of projects that I want to work on, together with other like-minded individuals.
The sad thing there is that as the preceding blog posts over the past years have made abundantly clear, I cannot see a clear path to this future. Many times I have thought that I was close to a break-through that would get me out of my current predicament and get me that quiet, peaceful life in which I can focus on making this future a reality. Instead I am still forced to fight for my life, fearful of slumlords and yet another knock on the door from police officers or others to either misguidedly 'help' me or inflict more suffering.
I cannot really think of any future this way. Not when my mind is frozen in fear just thinking about what horrors tomorrow might bring. I could have gotten any of those jobs this year and things would have been different, but for some reason I didn't. Maybe it's that I am intersex or that I have PTSD that makes companies afraid of hiring me. Maybe it's just that my way of thinking is too different and unsuitable for just focusing on developing the next iPhone or cloud-based webservice, soon to be forgotten or never even relevant to most of the world's population.
Hopefully I can still find the path forward from here to that future. I think it would be cool, and I hope others agree with me on this. Though my one success this year was to get hired by Hackaday to write articles for them [2], it's sadly not the kind of job that easily pays all of the bills each month.
Perhaps such kind of (remote) jobs are the things that suit me best: jobs which require a lot of independence, responsibility and ability to wing things successfully. I just haven't figured out yet how to turn this realisation into a path forward.
As always, help is more than welcome.
Maya
[1] http://www.nyantronics.com/iop.php
[2] https://hackaday.com/author/mayaposch/
Monday 26 November 2018
Tuesday 20 November 2018
Mental healthcare: madness within and without
A major part of me is still this five-year old child, lying curled up in that dark room, sobbing to themselves as the harsh, loud voices of those adults resonate in their ears. As the sensation of their hands groping, grasping and pulling on their body doesn't seem to want to fade.
It'll always be my fault. I'll always feel that I am the problem, that I just have to make things more difficult than they should be. How could I deny such an obvious fact?
Childhood abuse trauma is still special kind of madness. Left unacknowledged and untreated, it comes to define one's very existence as a child, as a teenager and finally as an adult. It means feeling unable to establish an emotional connection with others, as well as a general inability to rely upon and trust others.
It means struggling with a lack of self-esteem and of being overly critical of oneself. Of feeling that those adults back then were right to blame it on us, on somehow being responsible for the horrors that they inflicted upon us.
In my own situation, I wasn't aware of what had happened to be for the longest time. Not consciously, at least. It was always there, affecting my behaviour and life from right after those childhood events until the memories began flooding back, decades later.
It's horrible to see how much those events have changed me as a person, and affected my life. From turning that happy, carefree child into this withdrawn, quiet child who wouldn't even let their own mother touch or hug them, to the young adult and finally adult who simply could not get over what had happened. Who would remain stuck in that dark room, crying and feeling too terrified to move, let alone leave that room.
The events that happened after the initial traumatic events served to feed and reinforce it. From getting bullied during most of my time at school, to later having doctors and psychologists try to make me believe that I had to be transgender, or simply crazy, dismissing my intersex condition as an infantile fantasy.
Finally living together with an abusive flatmate for months with things totally spinning out of control at the end and losing all of my money and possessions. Months of being told how everything was my fault, how I wasn't doing enough and was weak and incompetent.
Then years of dealing with slumlords after moving to Germany, having them play the 'justice' system like a fiddle to make my life hell and drive me ever closer to either accepting homelessness or seeking to commit suicide once more. Of course everything is always my fault. It's pointless for me to hope for a better life, as me being alive makes things by definition worse. Such happy thought processes.
That last situation leading to me ending up at the psychiatric hospital for a few days recently. Not that this was the first encounter with mental healthcare, of course. I had seen plenty of this back in the Netherlands already, and had just stopped seeing my regular psychotherapist after one and a half years of weekly appointments, on account of this therapist constantly retriggering severe post-traumatic stress disorder triggers without seemingly understanding what was happening.
I'll be the first to admit that there's this madness inside my head that I keep struggling with, every day, with the darkness trying to claim my every thought and action. Some days there's too much darkness, because of other people's actions. Not because I want to feel like that.
Being at this closed, high-priority psychiatric ward was... a different kind of madness. While there, I was stripped of my identity, of any freedom and choice, while limited to this one, shared room and shared facilities. Shared with others who were struggling with their own madness and darkness.
There was the bossy woman, who seemed to be living some kind of fantasy, the tall guy who seemed to be mostly trapped inside his own head, always talking to himself and sometimes screaming for hours during the night. The girl with whom I shared the room had this massive burn on her left hand. It seemed like she could no longer use that hand, and was completely withdrawn into herself.
There were others. Each different. Each making me want to get away from that place. To return to the outside world, with the people whom I felt are more like me. Who show me the brighter parts of life. Not these shambling wrecks of human beings, who through no fault of their own are kept inside what is essentially a prison, where they are surrounded by the madness of others. Slowly forgetting what it is like outside, in society.
I am glad that I am no longer in that psychiatric hospital. For now. I hope I won't ever have to return there. But there are people here, outside the hospital's walls, who bring darkness. Who make one feel that life is about suffering and loss. That life maybe is too hard, that one cannot do it. That's it all too much, too painful.
I want to get away from this darkness. To get away from this current slumlord, to get that job, follow my dreams and ambitions, make more friends and hang out with the friends I have. To feel alive and happy.
Yet I fear that all there will be for me is the darkness of that silent room, with five-year old me lying on the floor. Alone, sobbing. Right before I give up for good.
I wish I could see the light.
Maya
It'll always be my fault. I'll always feel that I am the problem, that I just have to make things more difficult than they should be. How could I deny such an obvious fact?
Childhood abuse trauma is still special kind of madness. Left unacknowledged and untreated, it comes to define one's very existence as a child, as a teenager and finally as an adult. It means feeling unable to establish an emotional connection with others, as well as a general inability to rely upon and trust others.
It means struggling with a lack of self-esteem and of being overly critical of oneself. Of feeling that those adults back then were right to blame it on us, on somehow being responsible for the horrors that they inflicted upon us.
In my own situation, I wasn't aware of what had happened to be for the longest time. Not consciously, at least. It was always there, affecting my behaviour and life from right after those childhood events until the memories began flooding back, decades later.
It's horrible to see how much those events have changed me as a person, and affected my life. From turning that happy, carefree child into this withdrawn, quiet child who wouldn't even let their own mother touch or hug them, to the young adult and finally adult who simply could not get over what had happened. Who would remain stuck in that dark room, crying and feeling too terrified to move, let alone leave that room.
The events that happened after the initial traumatic events served to feed and reinforce it. From getting bullied during most of my time at school, to later having doctors and psychologists try to make me believe that I had to be transgender, or simply crazy, dismissing my intersex condition as an infantile fantasy.
Finally living together with an abusive flatmate for months with things totally spinning out of control at the end and losing all of my money and possessions. Months of being told how everything was my fault, how I wasn't doing enough and was weak and incompetent.
Then years of dealing with slumlords after moving to Germany, having them play the 'justice' system like a fiddle to make my life hell and drive me ever closer to either accepting homelessness or seeking to commit suicide once more. Of course everything is always my fault. It's pointless for me to hope for a better life, as me being alive makes things by definition worse. Such happy thought processes.
That last situation leading to me ending up at the psychiatric hospital for a few days recently. Not that this was the first encounter with mental healthcare, of course. I had seen plenty of this back in the Netherlands already, and had just stopped seeing my regular psychotherapist after one and a half years of weekly appointments, on account of this therapist constantly retriggering severe post-traumatic stress disorder triggers without seemingly understanding what was happening.
I'll be the first to admit that there's this madness inside my head that I keep struggling with, every day, with the darkness trying to claim my every thought and action. Some days there's too much darkness, because of other people's actions. Not because I want to feel like that.
Being at this closed, high-priority psychiatric ward was... a different kind of madness. While there, I was stripped of my identity, of any freedom and choice, while limited to this one, shared room and shared facilities. Shared with others who were struggling with their own madness and darkness.
There was the bossy woman, who seemed to be living some kind of fantasy, the tall guy who seemed to be mostly trapped inside his own head, always talking to himself and sometimes screaming for hours during the night. The girl with whom I shared the room had this massive burn on her left hand. It seemed like she could no longer use that hand, and was completely withdrawn into herself.
There were others. Each different. Each making me want to get away from that place. To return to the outside world, with the people whom I felt are more like me. Who show me the brighter parts of life. Not these shambling wrecks of human beings, who through no fault of their own are kept inside what is essentially a prison, where they are surrounded by the madness of others. Slowly forgetting what it is like outside, in society.
I am glad that I am no longer in that psychiatric hospital. For now. I hope I won't ever have to return there. But there are people here, outside the hospital's walls, who bring darkness. Who make one feel that life is about suffering and loss. That life maybe is too hard, that one cannot do it. That's it all too much, too painful.
I want to get away from this darkness. To get away from this current slumlord, to get that job, follow my dreams and ambitions, make more friends and hang out with the friends I have. To feel alive and happy.
Yet I fear that all there will be for me is the darkness of that silent room, with five-year old me lying on the floor. Alone, sobbing. Right before I give up for good.
I wish I could see the light.
Maya
Monday 12 November 2018
Depression: the not so cute version of procrastination
A couple of days ago I watched this TED Talk video on procrastination. It covered the fine balance between the responsible side of one's ego and the part that is more interested in having a good time, the 'monkey'. Most of the talk was about how important it is to keep the monkey restrained, lest one ends up spending hours watching fun videos or browsing Wikipedia.
This made me think about how this all works for me. Those many days spent just aimlessly clicking around on the internet, working up the motivation to do anything, was that the monkey having fun instead of facing up to the obligations in life?
The thing there is that I did not and still do not have fun while fighting against this procrastination. It's more of a struggle, trying to get myself to a point where I can do anything at all, while feeling the weight of my existence and all that I'm failing at threatening to crush me.
The ironic thing there is that I have never been the type to procrastinate. As a child and teenager I was always working on big projects with seemingly endless energy. Then, starting with my parents divorcing and moving around the country that all began to change.
I still tried to continue projects within the limitations of losing access to the farm's resources and space, but as the pressure to resume studying or get a job increased, I abandoned most projects in favour of self-improvement projects, from driving lessons to figuring out my next steps in life. This mostly resulted in me slipping into a bad depression.
Cut off from the environment where I grew up, without any clear goals in life or how to start feeling happy again, I simply drifted along for a while until finding out about being intersex. To me that seemed like the key to solving a lot of issues and questions I had about myself. I would get medical help, get answers, maybe surgery or something, and things would work out.
Fourteen years later I still don't really have answers, and have many more questions than those with which I started. Worse, because of the treatment by doctors and psychologists, I now have severe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). This is like depression times a thousand.
How does one keep motivated when one is beset by depression? When the expectation is that no matter what one does, it will just backfire? That everything which one attempts or does is futile? When one feels as if there's no point to one's existence, and it'd have been much better if one had never been born?
No monkey there, more like this black monster that sits on one's shoulder, discouraging and harassing one. Why even start that task when you know it's futile, or won't work anyway? Or maybe it's just that you know that you are incapable of doing it, or will just screw it up, or others will do a much better job, regardless of how many times you managed to pull off that same task with great success.
It's still procrastination, but unlike monkey-based procrastination here forcing and nudging the affected person will not help. Instead counteracting the black monster will have the best effect, by giving the person back their self-worth, their sense of reality and with it their reason to live.
It's not that we do not want to, it's more that we physically cannot, unless someone else gives us that little push and assists us so that we can get away from the black monster and with it the feeling of being incapacitated.
Maya
This made me think about how this all works for me. Those many days spent just aimlessly clicking around on the internet, working up the motivation to do anything, was that the monkey having fun instead of facing up to the obligations in life?
The thing there is that I did not and still do not have fun while fighting against this procrastination. It's more of a struggle, trying to get myself to a point where I can do anything at all, while feeling the weight of my existence and all that I'm failing at threatening to crush me.
The ironic thing there is that I have never been the type to procrastinate. As a child and teenager I was always working on big projects with seemingly endless energy. Then, starting with my parents divorcing and moving around the country that all began to change.
I still tried to continue projects within the limitations of losing access to the farm's resources and space, but as the pressure to resume studying or get a job increased, I abandoned most projects in favour of self-improvement projects, from driving lessons to figuring out my next steps in life. This mostly resulted in me slipping into a bad depression.
Cut off from the environment where I grew up, without any clear goals in life or how to start feeling happy again, I simply drifted along for a while until finding out about being intersex. To me that seemed like the key to solving a lot of issues and questions I had about myself. I would get medical help, get answers, maybe surgery or something, and things would work out.
Fourteen years later I still don't really have answers, and have many more questions than those with which I started. Worse, because of the treatment by doctors and psychologists, I now have severe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). This is like depression times a thousand.
How does one keep motivated when one is beset by depression? When the expectation is that no matter what one does, it will just backfire? That everything which one attempts or does is futile? When one feels as if there's no point to one's existence, and it'd have been much better if one had never been born?
No monkey there, more like this black monster that sits on one's shoulder, discouraging and harassing one. Why even start that task when you know it's futile, or won't work anyway? Or maybe it's just that you know that you are incapable of doing it, or will just screw it up, or others will do a much better job, regardless of how many times you managed to pull off that same task with great success.
It's still procrastination, but unlike monkey-based procrastination here forcing and nudging the affected person will not help. Instead counteracting the black monster will have the best effect, by giving the person back their self-worth, their sense of reality and with it their reason to live.
It's not that we do not want to, it's more that we physically cannot, unless someone else gives us that little push and assists us so that we can get away from the black monster and with it the feeling of being incapacitated.
Maya
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