Overlap

Chapter 33: Creative Mode

<12/08/2010 - 12:31 | Saffrin Middle School (Gym), Austell, GA, USA>

After my second UAD attack, Lumina and I developed an action plan to counter the effects of them coming on. It didn't happen as often as every day, but they came on strong over the time frame of the next 4 weeks, as well as becoming frequent. Each time the UAD would start up, the symptoms of which were always so similar. I would get too bored for too long, and in many cases get bored so quickly and easily of things I planned on working with, causing the situation to become much worse. In the last span of the month since, I've had nine additional UAD attacks, despite the advice I took.

Since it was so bizarre and unusual, Lumina and I stuck to calling these rage attacks UAD attacks instead. In a sense, UAD would stand for Uncontrollable Aggression and Debilitation. The aggression comes first and isn't controllable past the point of no return. Once that's over with, I become partially or fully debilitated for a period of time. Thus; UAD attack.

The good news is that I began to quickly understand the properties of a UAD attack far better after having nine more attacks, this last one totaling eleven. It turns out the trigger for these really is boredom, and based on what I remember each time, it causes some kind of mental rampancy effect in my chain of thoughts. It's as if they go out of control or something. I haven't proven whether this is accelerated ADD at work or not, but the factor I care most about is preventing them from happening in the first place. In addition to such news, the actual intensity of each attack is a bit less and limited compared to number one and two. The debilitation of pins, needles, and energy loss is at a point now where I won't pass out or have to be nursed back to health; I can just recover given two hours.

The bad news is that I can't seem to stop them from happening, else I would only have a record of two instead of eleven. It's not exactly a constant threat either. There would be moments where I'm sure I was bored, but think nothing of it. I don't know what causes myself to go into UAD mode exactly, but it seems to be prominent whenever I'm in a work mood. By work mood, I simply mean a mood in which I really desire to work on something mentally stimulating; creative mode as I call it. The problem with UAD is that it comes at me in several different phases, with the first phase always being the most problematic.

Phase one of a UAD attack starts off so small and subtle. I simply desire as much mental strain as possible. Playing games such as Solar Empire, where a player has to control many various factors all at once is a good example of what my brain is looking for, and if I can cater to that sensation in time, even when UAD starts, it will end without anything bad happening to me, provided I keep it up for most of the day. However, there are specific issues with this. Even at school, I've been trying to start up new personal projects to work on when I run out of schoolwork to do, even going so far as to take a personal laptop to class, but even with all my effort, phase one of UAD has this strange effect of sudden death on me. If the task I try to focus on isn't interesting enough, then I will get bored of it before I can even start. Once that happens, this effect gets amplified. Everywhere I turn, no matter how much fun I had doing any task previously, my desire to work on it will become diminished, keeping me locked perpetually in phase one of UAD. The only counter for this is for me to find something to do that I have not even thought to work on before, which isn't easy.

If I stay in phase one of UAD mode for more than forty consecutive minutes, then phase two will launch. There is a little wiggle room for this though. I might find something to do for ten minutes and become bored, which leaves my remaining time to phase two at about 35 minutes rather than another 40, with some complicated variables. But when phase two lunches, that's when I begin to notice a potent anger building inside of me. I really do become angry and upset simply for not having something mentally stimulating to do. The anger actually starts only ten minutes into phase one of UAD, but by phase two, it reaches a threshold. There is some kind of point of no return, where my anger reaches a critical level that draws out the rest of the attack in a way I can no longer reverse, only because I cannot control my anger anymore.