#compartmentalization

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/14/compartments/#flow

If there's one FAQ I get Q'ed most F'ly, it's this: "How do you get so much done?" The short answer is, "I write when I'm anxious (which is how I came to write nine books during lockdown)." The long answer is more complicated.

The first complication to understand is that I have lifelong, degenerating chronic pain that makes me hurt from the base of my skull to the soles of my feet – my whole posterior chain. On a good day, it hurts. On a bad day, it hurts so bad that it's all I can think about.

Unless…I work. If I can find my way into a creative project, the rest of the world just kind of fades back, including my physical body. Sometimes I can get there through entertainment, too – a really good book or movie, say, but more often I find myself squirming and needing to get up and stretch or use a theragun after a couple hours in a movie theater seat, even the kind that reclines. A good conversation can do it, too, and is better than a movie or a book. The challenge and engagement of an intense conversation – preferably one with a chewy, productive and interesting disagreement – can take me out of things.

There's a degree to which ignoring my body is the right thing to do. I've come to understand a lot of my pain as being a phantom, a pathological failure of my nervous system to terminate a pain signal after it fires. Instead of fading away, my pain messages bounce back and forth, getting amplified rather than attenuated, until all my nerves are screaming at me. Where pain has no physiological correlate – in other words, where the ache is just an ache, without a strain or a tear or a bruise – it makes sense to ignore it. It's actually healthy to ignore it, because paying attention to pain is one of the things that can amplify it (though not always).

But this only gets me so far, because some of my pain does have a physiological correlate. My biomechanics suck, thanks to congenital hip defects that screwed up the way I walked and sat and lay and moved for most of my life, until eventually my wonky hips wore out and I swapped 'em for a titanium set. By that point, it was too late, because I'd made a mess of my posterior chain, all the way from my skull to my feet, and years of diligent physio, swimming, yoga, occupational therapy and physiotherapy have barely made a dent. So when I sit or stand or lie down, I'm always straining something, and I really do need to get up and move around and stretch and whatnot, or sure as hell I will pay the price later. So if I get too distracted, then I start ignoring the pain I need to be paying attention to, and that's at least as bad as paying attention to the pain I should be ignoring.

Which brings me to anxiety. These are anxious times. I don't know anyone who feels good right now. Particularly this week, as the Strait of Epstein emergency gets progressively worse, and there's this January 2020 sense of the crisis on the horizon, hitting one country after another. Last week, Australia got its last shipment of fossil fuels. This week, restaurants in India are all shuttered because of gas rationing. People who understand these things better than I do tell me that even if Trump strokes out tonight and Hegseth overdoes the autoerotic asphyxiation, it'll be months, possibly years, before things get back to "normal" ("normal!").

Any time I think about this stuff for even a few minutes, I start to feel that covid-a-comin', early-2020 feeling, only it's worse this time around, because I literally couldn't imagine what covid would mean when it got here, and now I know.

When I start to feel those feelings, I can just sit down and start thinking with my fingers, working on a book or a blog-post. Or working on an illustration to go with one of these posts, which is the most delicious distraction, leaving me with just enough capacity to mull over the structure of the argument that will accompany it.

I don’t have the time or support currently to handle them.

So, I’ll go back to not feeling them for a couple months.

It’s not healthy.

But it’s all I can do to make the next few months manageable.

I have to in part… stop feeling.

Let my pain go.

Let my family’s actions go.

And just move forward.

☝️☝️☝️ THIS MY DEAR ANON SIMPLY THIS ☝️☝️☝️

For starters I am really honored that you liked my analysis and that you saw exactly what I wanted to convey with that potential of Odysseus and that part of his character that everyone seems to forget; his religious nature and how he is literally living his life in the religious piousness

And I couldn't have said it better myself! Yes he does push his emotions down, suppresses them even, when gods speak. When gods demand, humans should shut the fuck up and respond accordingly, that seems to be Odysseus's motto in life. The gods demanded Iphigenia, the gods should have Iphigenia, no matter how bad Odysseus might feel or not feel so his emotions of sorrow or regret come second before his need to obey the gods. Then the gods demanded that they stop attacking the walls of Troy? Odysseus would turn the heel around and run! It doesn't matter if Diomedes is there. If he chooses to disobey the gods is his problem and his choice. Circe demands this price to set his men free? Yeah he would sell his body to get it. Calypso had to have him in order to secure his survival? Yeah Odysseus would do it. The gods demand from him to do a trip to the ends of the world to repent his hubris? Odysseus will damn well be on a new ship and sail there or walk there for all the world is concerned he has to see that thing through no matter what.

This is why he did what he did in the times before or during the war. This is why he chose to stay behind for retribution sacrifices to the gods and why he came back for Agamemnon even if he desired nothing else than go home with his fleet but is also this blind faith that has him being beloved by the gods like Athena or Zeus.

However like it happens with someone who has way too much religious zeal obviously the results can be catastrophic to yourself and to others in a practical manner. I mean Odysseus too paid the price for he was always hated secretly by his peers for his behavior to please the gods because in the eyes of everyone he did it just to get glory or just because he is who he is. Odysseus might have had some ulterior motive about himself or the others but it seems that his religious beliefs play a huge part in the way he conducts himself in regards to the interactions he has with others which is another reason why I am sad that I do not see more people talk about it or representing in their stories and work or that makes me happy when more people see the potential of!!!

As for the last part I am actually very intrigued by this interpretation indeed!!!! And if I am allowed an addition, it is also why he is desperate. He is paying the price, he is pleasing the goddess...and yet he cannot escape. As you said he remains stagnant. Unlike his case with Circe where he receives her trust and her knowledge and later her help with Calypso he just receives his survival for another day. The price he pays will not get him anywhere and that is definitely NOT a good thing for his already crumbling psyche indeed and it COULD be another reason why death seems his only way out at that point.

Because nothing he used to go by in his life works anymore

His piousness was stained by hubris. His decisions to please the gods did nothing for him (or so it seemed to him) and his unpleasant sacrifices brought the fate upon him. He is desperate and he is alone. If I dare use the parallel "he opened his legs for her" and has nothing in return out of his situation. And he has no way out. His brains, his wisdom, his tactics or even his schemes are not doing anything for him and neither are his prayers or his sacrifices and attempts to please this goddess work! It DEFINITELY has a lot of potential as a line of thought and adds even more confusion to his already confused mind!

One box

Managed to fit all my books.

Some I’ve finished,

Most I haven’t even started.

Each one I put away,

I feel the weight on my shoulders lift,

Bit by bit.

The second

Had my trinkets,

Gifts from friends.

Ones that stayed,

And ones that didn’t.

Nonetheless, it never mattered to me

Who came and went.

I still cherish each one.

The third has my companions,

Ones that I wept into

During the lonely nights.

Ones that’ve seen it all,

Good and bad,

So they have a special place.

The fourth has my memories.

Papers with faded ink,

Written by people who’ve long since

Forgotten me.

Pictures of people—

Some bring a smile to my face,

Most I no longer know.

And books of my suffering.

I wish to seal this box the fastest,

And I do.

It sits behind the others,

For it is the smallest one amongst them.

I brush off the thought and look around

At the room I dared to call my own.

My walls feel bare,

Despite the messy imprints of where

My passion once hung.

My bed feels empty,

For my companions have already been

Safely tucked away,

Save for the ones I cannot do a night without.

I decide to stop at the fourth box,

As I felt sleep begin to make its way

Behind my eyes.

I take one last look around,

And I sigh—

One of relief.

As if

The pressure

That has been choking me out

Was finally lifted.

And suddenly the sight of my bare room

Felt less like the loneliness

I desperately wanted to cover up

And more like the escape

I always longed for.

I lay back down on my bed.

Sleep begins to embrace me,

But silly thoughts keep me

From melting into it.

"It’s quite funny."

"You know,

There was a time that I thought

This would be the room that imprisoned me,

The room I would rot in,

Or the one I would take my life in."

"No,

That’s not really funny…”

My thoughts start to drift.

Perhaps this room

Wasn’t as great as I used to think it was.

There were more bad memories

Than happy ones.

I think back on what memories I had here.

None bring a smile to my face.

This was the room

I drew my own blood in,

Night after night of this horrible addiction.

This was also the room

That shrunk at night,

That gave me horrible visions

Of even worse scenarios.

Worst of all,

Shameful as it is to admit,

This was the room

I had planned my own death in.

Pen to paper,

Knife in hand,

I had planned my own end.

Then sobbed,

As my own guilt and cowardice saved me.

I snap back into the present as something—

Perhaps another trick of my mind—

Moves in the corner of my eye.

I look around again,

And I laugh.

Because they won’t ever know

That just at the very back

Of the second drawer

Of the cabinet I had just emptied out

Sat a small envelope,

With paper written in neat writing,

And hands too steady

For someone who always trembled.

A letter.

One that told of everything—

Of my joy,

My sorrow,

My anger,

My pain,

And my gratitude.

One that was a testament to my end.

I sit in silence as my thoughts blur.

Then I laugh again,

Because it isn’t funny.

It really isn’t funny.

I’m just relieved

I’ll never have to come back.

And for the first time

I fall into sleep's embrace

Without any horrible visions.

——————————————————————————————————————————

Was too lazy too lazy to use italics so you, yes, YOU the reader can decide where the stress is

Anyways have fun with this one! I didn't use much flowery language nor did I bother hiding it behind a metaphor