I have a great setup in my home office. To my front is my Command Center: curved monitor, ham radios, microphone—my connection to the world and my trading terminal. Behind me, I have a dedicated desk for model building. It’s clean, it looks amazing, and it currently holds a half-finished Bandai AT-ST.
But here’s the intellectually honest truth: I hate that desk.
Physically, it is ten feet away. I could reach it in three steps. But mentally, it might as well be on the surface of Mars. When I sit there, I don’t feel right. I feel exposed, unsafe, and anxious. Why?
1. The Cognitive Tether
When you have a “Rusted System,” your brain spends a massive amount of energy just mapping your surroundings. My main desk is fully “cached” in my memory. I know where every button, wire, and water bottle is. Moving to the hobby desk forces my brain to load a new environment, and frankly, I don’t have the RAM to spare.
2. The “Turtle Shell” Command Center
My main desk is my armor. It’s where I have my “Success Signals”—my trading wins, my blog posts, and my connection to Chris and Sarah.
- The Command Center: Face forward, everything in reach, total control.
- The Hobby Desk: Back turned to the room, isolated from my “tools,” and facing a project that represents “stuff I haven’t finished.”
In the Parkinson’s brain, the Amygdala (the fight-or-flight center) is often set to a hair-trigger. Sitting with my back to the door at a desk that provides no “data” makes my system hit the panic button.
3. Safe Zone Tethering
We talk about “Small Wins” like cleaning the office, but those wins usually happen within the “Safe Zone.” Venturing ten feet away to build a Star Wars model is an Extravehicular Activity (EVA). Without my monitor and my “anchor” tech, I feel like an astronaut whose oxygen line just got a kink in it.
The Diagnosis
If you’re a fellow “Parky” and you find yourself living your entire life in one specific chair, stop beating yourself up. You aren’t being “lazy” or “weird.” You are Tethering.
Your brain is protecting its limited resources by staying where it knows the rules. The 10-foot abyss is real, and the only way to cross it is when the “Internal Weather” is perfect—low anxiety, high dopamine, and a clear “Go” signal.
Until then, the AT-ST stays on the moon, and I stay in the Command Center.
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