Work very much in progress..

(if you have the time please comment with any suggestions or comments or feedback pretty pretty please xx.... chapter 2 is a shitshow of ideas and not actually a structured chapter yet lol)

(untitled)

Working in the Dopamine Department is always a rush.

Each and every dopamine neurotransmitter constantly firing across synapses and running in and out of neural pathways making sure its human citizen is functioning.

There are three main sectors in the Dopamine Department; The Department of Reward & Motivation (the DRM), The Bureau of Attention & Focus (BAF) and The Division of Mood & Emotional Regulation (DM&E). And then, Overseeing this whole bloody fiasco, is me, Daphnia, the Secretary of Dopamine.

Now, when I took this particular job 34 years ago, I had only skimmed over the briefing paper on Genetics and Predispositions for my specific human citizen, and boy do I regret that now, let me tell you!

Anyway! It’s my job to make sure all my dopamine agents are going out to the right jobs and that they are working in the correctly sized teams for each specific release. And, to be fair, we started off pretty well.

Everyone was going out to the right place, with the right numbers, at the right time. We even managed to limit interdepartmental disagreements to a low rumble now and then.

But, and of course in life there is always a “but”, our citizen did experience some external turbulence so to say… Extended exposure to reoccurring domestic violence and some other authority related break downs in trust.

As a former on-field dopamine agent for the DM&E, I knew we were going to take a bit of a hit. The resulting cuts to departmental funding would mean we would need to take some of the agents working on the “Mood and Well-being Portfolio” which was not going to be ideal in the long run as that meant having less agents working on the core policies on positive emotions and general sense of optimism.

See this is where the whole thing started, this first funding cut. You know that feeling you get when you’re arch nemesis neighbour just so happens to park in your favourite spot? You know that broiling anger you feel as you gaze upon your street, with your spot stolen by that grating asshole? Yep, that was it- that was exactly how I felt about those fuckwits down at the Norepinephrine Arousal and Stress Command (ASC).

I guess I should probably fill you in on what our human citizen had experienced. Now don’t worry, I’m not going to sit here and play back the full show- it’s just way too long and I’d rather not relive it, it was shit enough sitting through it the first time, so I’ll just give you some basic insight…

Her grandmother was someone she loved. Her tiropitas, creamy pasticho and poorly appropriated “special rice” were on the weekly menu and our citizen loved that. As a toddler, her yiayia was, in some ways, as present as her own mother. Her parents were driven, with the kind of work ethic normally reserved for working class homes, so this meant her grandparents inherited a large portion of her childhood school day caretaking.

Even now, she can still hear moments from back then. Judge Judy playing her 2 o clock spot in her grandmothers lounge, her widowed grandmother stood over the burning stove, as she had been for much of the afternoon.

Her cousins, bickered with whines and sneaky slaps, fighting over whose turn it is to play snap with their father Steve. And while she might have briefly felt comfortable, that feeling was not accepted, she knew that any resemblance of serenity that she might snatch up now would soon enough be drowned out by the sounds of the violence. When she was in that house, uncertainty was the only certainty she had come to expect. Well, uncertainty and guilt.

(Ch2)

The Government of The Brain had an “on-the-fly” approach to its distribution of funding, which meant that each department would have to plead their case every time they felt the citizen was facing a situation where they could benefit from the departments expertise.

The goal of every brain government is for all its departments to work together in managing all the different human citizens responses in the healthiest way possible.

And as is with all governments, this is not often how things play out.

The General of the Norepinephrine Arousal And Stress Command was a guy called Nigel. We both started out on the same project, I don’t remember exactly what it was, but I do remember that we had our team meetings in the prefrontal cortex building. He would always have these carefully dot-pointed notes done in this blur of anxious cacography that only he could read.

While my office walls were coated with reminders of great achievements, beautiful wild horses and all my favourite bright colours, his office was decorated with step-by-step guides, carefully directing you to the nearest exist or how to check for signs of stroke. The only thing we both had up was each of our report cards from our graduating year- both spilling over with high distinctions, but I don’t think we shared the same reasons for hanging them.

So anyway, Nigel ran his team just like a drill sergeant fresh outta ’nam, marching out his soldier’s as soon as our citizen heard the first signs of war, and, at my direction, we poured out behind him desperately trying to provide her with adaptive responses to handle it all.

Her grandmother’s back yard had a small brick patio that joined the back door to the large grassy garden out back that was sprinkled with reminders of home, a reaching fig tree, small lemon tree and the kind of make shift veggie garden that was clearly built in keeping with the mentality of a poor villager.

It was on that patio that a big green plastic table sat, its emerald green chairs seemed to be patient in wait for their next turn to be used. Her memory of that table, in that silent wait, can only be recalled for a moment before the nostalgic tranquillity is raided by the sound of her uncle’s accosting voice making hard demands with her grandmother’s thrilling questions in response. It’s at that point that her mind goes blank for a moment.

Which is actually not blank for any good reason other than the fact that Nigel and I were all the way down at the temporal building and didn’t make it to the hippocampus in time to form the memory properly… so yep, our bad…

Anyway, as soon as her mind is able to pull the next moment from its files, the moment’s moved to. Not up or down in severity, but just across. The air now seems to smell of immediate threat.

The sounds have changed, less verbal now.

Yard slipper’s soles slap the paved patio, plastic is dragged along the red ceramic and then lifted above his head.

Her grandmother, still circling the large green plastic table, yells Greek spoken pleas of mercy. He launches the plastic green chair toward her. Our citizen, delayed by the stress, her decision to jump up and intervene came just a “click” past the moment that her uncle threw the chair, and thankfully, around the same time her grandmother ducked. She hears the crack and clatter of the green plastic chair as it connects with the patio bricks and then collapses, tired on the ground.

Her memory ends with nothing more than the abrasive sounds, an omnipresent force of tension and the heaviness of residual fear.

The Dopamine Department, hand in hand with the Norepinephrine Arousal and Stress Command, deployed on-field agents for active policy implementation and we had worked together as on as part of the brain’s immediate response to stress. So look, I’m a pretty driven impulse myself, but I like to feel good. So I actively try and seek out experiences that leaving me feeling on top of the world