I sat in my union’s webinar yesterday evening listening about neurodivergency in work life.

I sat in my union’s webinar yesterday evening listening about neurodivergency in work life. A couple of things I kept thinking about:

- I wondered about how sad in a way it is that there was no aspect of history, I think (and have heard from seniors) that before extremely massive media that created illusions on the bounds of normalcy it was more common that people behaved differently, and that was ”the normal”, whereas now it’s a situation of shame, diagnosis, and much more homogenetic work cultures (dang I wish there was more early 20th c working class literature on this for me to read on now) although ofc some things were probably worse, but even further down in history Everyone Was Needed so people just had to get things done with all kinds of people.

- It’s very possible that I sometimes get lost in games for hours because they provide me with cognitive offloading space, and I hadn’t thought of the space or service that kind of experience gives me from a design standpoint before yesterday, prompting me to wonder if these systems are created by designers with similar tendencies, or if this is a coincidence (especially thinking about my Crusader Kings 30 hour marathon over a Christmas holiday in order to rinse work out of my mind which was the most extreme case of it.) (Also there is a line between functional cognitive offloading and then just effing off into fairyland without a second thought.)

- It’s only late capitalistic work life that is hostile to everyone’s brain hygiene with cognitively harmful spaces, routines, practices, etc. It’s hard to be an advocate for good and healthy work practices when The Line Goes Up means saving on mental health.