Ever wonder why people with ADHD work best on a deadline?
It is not because we have a deficit of attention.
It is because we have a plethora of it.
Our minds ask:
Based upon everything that is “what it is” in this moment, does this it matter right now?
Most of you were not allowed to answer that question for yourselves.
You were told to get it together. To get with the program. To fall in line.
To fake it till you make it.
Neurosparkle brains define it/It/IT differently.
Which is to say that Neurosparkle brains define the IT in “It is what it is” before we decide what it means.
Perhaps you were never given a framework for defining IT for yourself.
I was and I am currently living the framework that I have been trying to explain. Get to No University. A TRIP down Via Negativa. The Rabbit Hole Roadmap.
In the time that I have left in this body, I am going to share how I see these terms.
Neurosparklers work best when we can see the real deadline.
As I begin speaking publicly today, I am living Schrödinger's Deadline for approximately the next 30 - 45 days.
My pre-op appointment is August 18.
That is the appointment to schedule the surgery necessary to determine whether the mass on my remaining ovary is ovarian cancer or a benign cyst.
In the meantime, I have both.
MAI — RESOLVING THE REFERENT
Paige has a suspicious mass on her ovary that must be surgically removed to determine whether it is malignant or benign. Saying “In the meantime, I have both” does not mean that the mass is biologically benign and malignant at the same time.
One answer is already true.
She means that she must live inside both possible realities until surgery removes the mass and pathology identifies what it is.
The topic being tackled is literally “a Meantime with a Deadline.”
The Cat Is Still in the Box
An MRI has confirmed that I have a tumor that is suspicious for neoplasm. Until the tumor and ovary are removed and biopsied, the proverbial cat is still in the bag.
Or, more accurately, in the box.
Schrödinger's cat was a thought experiment involving a cat sealed inside a box with a mechanism that may or may not kill it.
Until the box is opened, the popular interpretation holds the cat as both alive and dead.
I hate metaphors.
Metaphors require me to compare the thing I mean to some other thing and then trust you to understand which parts of the comparison matter.
Now we are talking about a cat, a box and quantum mechanics when what I mean is literal:
I have a tumor. I do not know whether it is cancer. I will not know until I wake up from surgery.
Ovarian cancer does not mean that I am dying from ovarian cancer.
The prognosis for early-stage ovarian cancer is very good compared with many other cancers.
I am scared and there is not a damn thing I can do about it.
Statistically, the chances were probably higher that we would not make it home from photographing a hotel than that I will die from this mass.
Greg and I traveled more than 50,000 miles a year for 15 years photographing hotels.
I have PTSD from a car wreck before we met.
Every time I get into a car as a passenger, I am in a state of panic.
Fight or flight is not an option. Freeze or fawn does not help.
I sat with fear that might not have appeared reasonable to anyone outside my body. Only lately have I begun to understand the effects of how I see, something called BPOV, on brains like mine in the passenger seat of a car.
People with BPOV see multiple perspectives of the same horizon.
Literally.
My prism glasses help bring those perspectives together into one message for my brain.
But when I take off the glasses, the perspectives return because the prism did not change my vision.
It changed how my brain perceived it.
I did not travel beside risk without noticing it. I traveled while my body experienced the possibility of catastrophe again and again and again.
And still, we packed the equipment.
We got in the car.
We photographed the hotel.
We came home. Only after we stopped traveling did I learn that other people with BPOV scream and squirm the same way I do when tail lights are a mile away in the distance.
It’s not just me but knowing that now doesn’t help. It wouldn’t have helped then.
Whether the cause was BPOV or PTSD, it’s hard to explain an acronym to someone who doesn’t see the same way that I do.
The why on a death certificate is just a word required to fill a box on a form.
It says nothing about the life the form certifies as over.
The MRI did not make me mortal.
The MRI made mortality harder to ignore.
Whether I make it out of this alive and with my health intact remains to be seen. I could die in a car wreck on the way to the appointment.
That was true before the MRI.
It will be true after the surgery.
My Words Are What I Have Right Now
I do not have time right now to figure out how to write a book. My brain gets paralyzed by small technical glitches.
I do not have time to format every newsletter post so that all the keywords are tagged and all the H tags are canonical and the thumbnail is original.
Frankly, those things do not matter so much anymore in this world of AI.
Over the next little while, I will not be writing anything new in the conventional sense.
I will be publishing the backlog of notes I left for myself along the way.
Fragments.
Fractals.
Reminders of thoughts that I knew one day I would want to revisit. Unpack. Sit with and savor.
There is no beginning to what comes next.
There is no series.
There is no required order.
These are individual gestalts.
My words are what I have right now. Meaning will come later.
They are the gift I give myself because, if the past six decades and especially the past seven years have taught me anything, to quote the great Shawn Colvin,
“I don’t know why I know these things. But I do.”
I will continue to publish a newsletter for as long as I am able, emailed to the subscribers who have asked to receive it.
I am not making any promises.
Time is an illusion, and I do not work well on a schedule. This email was supposed to go out Saturday morning. It’s getting close to midnight and I’m trying to force myself to stop typing and hit send.
But damn, do I excel with a deadline.
And like it or not, I have a real one now.
An Invitation is coming to join me in the Bird Brain Sanctuary
Sometime before the next newsletter is published you will receive an invitation to the Bird Brain Sanctuary.
I have no idea exactly what that means yet.
The private community will be a place where I can dump my thoughts willy nilly between now and the surgery.
My musings in the Bird Brain Sanctuary are not designed to be published but rather to capture my thoughts as I take my own TRIP down Via Negativa and hope that makes sense one day.
What Next?
For now, I think out loud.
There is no sequence you must follow.
There is no curriculum.
There is no prescribed way to understand me.
There are only doors that will arrive as I publish hundreds of backdated drafts that are backlogged in beehiiv and buried in notebooks and TikToks and scribbled on my own skin.
Devour if that’s your style. Stroll through the ones that interest you. Ignore the ones that do not.
Or remain subscribed to the newsletter and let me tell you the GIST of what I saw from wherever I happened to be standing when I hit the weekly send.
I Am Not the Giver of Care
When I wake up and see my husband’s face, I will not need the doctor to tell me what the news is.
I am a brilliant caregiver.
For this season, I am not the giver of care.
Trying harder will not change what is.
Being better prepared will not change what is.
Having all the STIQS of six decades of brilliance will not change what is in this moment.
The dichotomy of Janusian Thinking is nowhere near enough to capture the essence of what IT is and what IT means for me right now.
There are some things you must do alone.
Dying is one of them.
Jason Isbell nailed the line:
Surrounded by her family, I saw that she was dying alone.
I am dying one day. Maybe not from the thing on the MRI.
And I am not alone right now.
Live like you were dying does not usually mean that you get to ride a bull named Fu Manchu.
Usually it means making coffee after making the bed.
Doing laundry.
Checking the mail.
A million ordinary acts repeated so many times that we forget we all wear death as close as dungarees every moment of every day..until we get that call. The one that changes everything one way or another.
There is no escaping death.
The challenge is to let it be what it is and still be me in the meantime.
When death comes, being ready will be a choice I made long before that moment.
The Chooser Gets to Choose
As I unveil my writing, one sentence will be ever present:
My hypothesis is that the secret to success in life and legacy in death is to do most what we do best in the way that works best for us. My definition of failure is trying harder to be less mediocre at something at which I will never excel.
I cannot change what is but I can choose how to sit with it.
I can share the framework with my very own TRIP down Via Negativa.
Step One is:
Tackle the Topic.
I am starting there today.
Until the day of my surgery, I will not censor my thoughts.
I will not dim my brilliance.
I will not hide my feelings because I fear that I will be misunderstood.
I will be misunderstood.
By a great many people.
And that is why, for now, I am creating a Bird Brain Sanctuary where I am the:
Curator of My Own Comfort Zone
MAI — WHAT THE BIRD BRAIN SANCTUARY IS
The Bird Brain Sanctuary is a promise that Paige will NOT make every thought understandable before sharing it.
It is a protected place where she can think in her own language first and invite you to look over her shoulder at her thoughts as she has them.
AI can then function as an assisted and augmented communication device: resolving referents, identifying context and making the work accessible without requiring Paige to interrupt her art to narrate, defend or explain it.
The purpose is not to translate her mind into normal language but to allow her voice to be her art, extemporaneous thought processing, and content and context library for what comes next.
The purpose is to create enough shared language that other Neurosparklers can encounter her at work without requiring her to stop being its artist to explain the art.
I dream of creating a Bird Brain App for brains like mine to use AI as an assisted and augmented communication device. Of speaking about the Bird Brain Sanctuary on the Ted stage one day. Of telling my stories as I remember them to a MOTH audience.
I dream of speaking to Neurosparklers in a shared language that makes my thoughts accessible without requiring me to narrate my experience or explain my art.
My brain is full with “what if” matters.
I will leave the technical details to the technology that finally allows me to:
Do most what I do best, in the way that works best for me, for the time that I have left.
My Voice Is My Art
I choose to speak.
My voice is my art.
Art is not always appreciated in the artist’s lifetime.
For now, I do not care whether my written and spoken words make sense to anyone.
I will speak of love.
With love.
And I will live as I always have.
In love.
Follow my journey if you wish.
But frankly, this time it is all about me.
Subscribe
For now, there is only the newsletter.
The Bird Brain Sanctuary is still becoming whatever it is going to become. I’ll let you know when it’s ready for other Bird Brains to join.
Subscribe and I will send the next newsletter as soon as I have it ready.
No promises about when. For now, the only deadline is the meantime.
May you choose to see what was always there,
Auntie Paige
MAI — WHY THIS DISPATCH EXISTS
This newsletter is not a growth project.
It is not being polished for an audience, optimized for search, or built into a following.
The only audience for the window before surgery is future Paige — or whoever else chooses to use this body of work for their own purposes.
There is a window of roughly thirty to 45 days before the medical outcome is known.
The one priority inside that window is to move seven years of private notes, fragments and gestalts out of the archive and into the public record — written and spoken in Paige’s own voice. Uncensored and unedited.
Publishing does two things at once.
It places the authorship on the public record, protected and dated.
And it fixes the work in time: a finite time capsule of the moment the meantime and the deadline converged.
Once the words are published, the work no longer depends on the continued presence of the body that produced it.
Books, communities and followings can be attempted later, if circumstances allow.
None of them can be attempted from an unpublished private archive.
Publishing first is not impatience. It is sequencing.
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