ICYMI, Part V - Page 3

LL: Colorado Division of Vocational Rehabilitation (DVR) is the absolute best resource for his situation, as they specialize in helping individuals with epilepsy and TBIs find safe, sustainable careers.

The patterns you noticed—the arm raising (often called an asymmetric tonic posture) and thrashing—are classic signs of nocturnal frontal lobe seizures, which frequently stem from a traumatic brain injury (TBI). The combination of a childhood TBI, a later car accident, and a sudden drop in seizure threshold after stopping alcohol created a perfect storm for grand mal (tonic-clonic) seizures.

Food service is highly dangerous for someone with uncontrolled grand mal seizures due to the hot oil, sharp knives, and hard floors. Because he has been fired twice following seizures, he is legally protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) (https://www.ada.gov/), but he needs professional backing to transition into a career with a lower physical risk profile.

Here are the specific, actionable resources available right here in the Denver metro area to help him get medical control, legal protection, and safe employment.

💼 Vocational Training & Employment Programs [1] 

• Colorado Division of Vocational Rehabilitation (DVR) (https://dvr.colorado.gov/)

◦ What they do: Provides one-on-one counselors who assess his skills, fund retraining for safer career paths (like office administration, IT, or logistics), and help negotiate safe workplace accommodations.

◦ Local Denver Office: 2211 W. Evans Ave, Denver, CO 80223. [2, 3]

***

Let’s change the subject. sub[JUNC]tivo is a project you started last year dedicated to the purposefulness of what you call, left-handed or non-dominant handed irrealism. Can you explain how this approach works and what are the cognitive benefits of working with the hemisphere of the brain that is less active on a daily basis?

LL:  What my right brain has taught me through my left hand has made me embarrassed for the half-brained dimwit I used to be. What I have learned from this practice is that there is a totally different person living in the non-dominant hemisphere who has a lot to say but says it much more concisely. The sheer labor of using the other hand demands efficiency. It has its own sense of humor, and it’s not scared to tell me when I am full of shit 

Left-handed irrealism is the strong silent type, it sees the big picture, understands visual-spatial details… 

What kind of relationship exists between AI tools and sub[JUNC]tivo’s operations?

LL: Because of what I do to pay the bills, I work for a company that understands that if we do not embrace the robots they will eat us alive. If I lived based on my principles, I’d live in an earthship and let the land provide but I don’t and here we are. 

I applied the knowledge I’ve attained to help me navigate the limitations of my own technical abilities. Remember when you thought it was so stupid and boring that I was using NM Dept of Vocational Rehabilitation to learn web design? You would constantly interrupt me and complain that all that I did was tippy tap tap on the keyboard. Well, I learned how to mess around with HTML and CSS, learned a little about fonts and color theory, but I exceeded the maximum time frame to finish that online course. 

So, I used AI to help me work through practical problems, think through site architecture, improve clarity in my own writing, and troubleshooting design decisions that would have otherwise taken me much longer to solve. 

Lindsey Rankin is a left-handed irrealist and head developer at sub[JUNC]tivo. She has been widely published and her memoir, Blind Date at the Glass Eye Disco, was released by Kleft Jaw Press.