thoughts of an indigenous nursing student

I’ll be volunteering for cleanup and food distribution in-between classes.

The rain has ceased for now but recovery will take a long time. People have lost their homes and many are still without power. Crops have been lost and more will rot in the standing water. And we can only hope we aren’t hit by another storm soon.

HNL Alert, the official notification system for the city and county of Honolulu

Report residential home damage: http://www.honolulu.gov/homedamage — please note this is not an application for services, but to gather data

Call 2-1-1 for information on relief options.

Board of Water Supply (BWS) storm notices - “All water users on the North Shore from Mokulēʻia to Turtle Bay are asked to boil any water pulled from the tap prior to consumption as a precaution.”

Hawaiʻi Food Bank - Emergency Assistance and Resources. Can also call 808-836-3600 for updates on distributions or if you have questions.

you have to be kinder to people who are slow processors.

you have to be kinder to people who don't understand your jokes.

you have to be kinder to people who forget important dates.

you have to be kinder to people with cognitive decline.

you have to be kinder to people who were always this way, too.

"Sorry, I don't mean to offend--"

Which of course, I brace for hell, since he is around 60, and i am a gangly cryptid that people usually struggle only to find the right slur to apply to. But i dutifully keep my work voice and go "nah nah, don't worry, what can I do?"

He hits me with "Are you--uh, I've been saying 'thank you ma'am' but are you... okay with that? What should I call you?"

And i live in a small conservative pocket within one of the most liberal states in the US, so my experience in public is varied. People have guessed, they've gone with she, he. they, they've awkwardly avoided it, but no stranger had ever asked me.

So i panicked and chuckled. This felt kind of like walking into a fake tumblr post. I said "Oh, you can call me whatever you want, its fine."

Any cis person would probably sound a little insulted. i knew i was confirming some kind of gender fuckery, but giving him the out that he didn't have to change anything. Fucker kindly smiles though, and like. Pounces. Asks, much more confidently, "But would you prefer sir? What are your pronouns?"

He's on script now, I'm astral projecting to a different plane where i'm a bug on a well lit microscope and my throat's a little tight all the sudden. I say, "Oh. I uh--I use they/them."

I use they or he, but 'they' is the language curveball. I know this, which is why i usually just let people use whatever. He nods, and I choke out (because its been a bad bad day, autoimmune flare pain on top of record high patient numbers) "Thanks. No one... has ever asked me. Have a good day."

He told me the same, I booked it, because the dim room was hiding watery eyes but not for much longer. Got it together in a nearby closet (ha) and moved on.

Came back later on in the evening because I had promised to visit when his wife was there earlier in the day. She's sweet, he's sweet, I do my usual spiel, he avoids any 'ma'am' studiously, but on me going to head out again, hits the dilemma of having no polite substitute for 'ma'am' or 'sir' that isnt gendered in some subtle way, and he's fucking trying, but this is not second nature obviously.

So what comes out is "Have a wonderful night, Them!"

Beaming, proud, right next to his extremely confused wife, who he seems to have not outted me to (nice) who now thinks he's probably having a stroke (funny, but not nice lmao)

Your brain is an incredibly energy-intensive organ. It makes up approximately 2% of your total body mass, but at rest it's using 22% of your total energy intake. The only thing that uses the same percentage of energy is all of your skeletal muscle (which is about 40% of your total body mass), with the liver (about 2.6% of your total mass) close behind at 21% (Aragon et al, 2017).

And that's how much energy it's using at rest.

That's the baseline.

So if you're doing lots of intellectual labour, your brain - which already has disproportionately huge energy demand - is going to use even more energy to keep up with the work. That's why you feel so wiped/drained/like you're out of spell slots after high intellectual demand - because your brain is an organ, and you've just done a lot of high-energy work with a high-energy organ.