Just start it

I have been struggling with getting started a lot more than I ever realized. This difficulty spans the gamut from not being able to get out of bed in the morning, to not being able to start certain tasks during the day, to not being able to initiate conversations, to not being able to get things done around the house.

Nowhere is this more visible, than the last area — my house and property are full of things that need to be done. Little things, mostly, that I haven’t been able to start.

Something pretty amazing has been happening, lately. After years of having things languishing “in the wings” — not keeping my lawn cleared of ground cover, not clearing out leaves and debris from around my house, little broken things not being fixed — I have started tackling them one at a time. And I’m realizing that the things that have stumped me for so long — years, in fact — are actually not that difficult, once I get started.

Once I get started… that’s the thing that has stumped me for a long, long time. I got hurt less than 2 years after I moved into my house, which was terrible timing (not that timing a TBI can ever be good), because I had a bunch of necessary projects planned that depended heavily on my ability to keep employed and productive.

Of course, that changed when I fell in 2004, and over the years, I have not been able to even start a lot of the issues that have been staring me in the face since then. The problems with my hard, the broken things that need to be fixed, the disorganized piles of papers and magazines that are still lying around the house, the fluctuating collections of crap that I can’t seem to organize on a regular basis. Every several years, I have a big initiative to clean something up. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t. And the net result is more chaos that I need to navigate on a daily basis.

Which doesn’t help much. Sure, at the time, it’s a short-term solution, but in the long-term, it adds up. Not so great.

Lately, though, I have been starting things in a whole new way. I’ve realized over the past months, that when I take my sweet time to do things, they do not get done. In order to be at my test, I need to have intensity of focus and work in short bursts of energy, followed by extended rest periods. It’s really how I am. The slow, methodical step-by-step approach opens me up to way too much distraction, and I typically do not get things done as well as when I work quickly with 100% focus on what is just in front of me.

I have tended to put pressure on myself to go slow and steady, thinking through things one at a time, so I wouldn’t screw them up. And I needed to be that way for a long time. Now, however, I feel that I’ve been so slow and deliberate about things, that I have a lot of things pretty much figured out — with respect to regular everyday activities. I’ve trained myself to do a lot of really basic stuff with almost the same fluidity that I could do them before. It’s been painstaking and really grueling at times, but I’ve made great progress.

But the one thing that has gotten me kicked into gear even moreso, is getting in the habit of just rolling with things when they go wrong. When things turn out different from how I anticipated and planned and wanted and needed, in the past, I have panicked and dug my heels in. But now that I know how to do my 90-second clearing, where I can take the edge off my adrenaline/stress rush and get myself calmed down again so I can think… I have a lot more range and flexibility. Surprises don’t need to throw me for a loop anymore. Sometimes they do, but I know how to stop that downward slide and keep myself from the edge of the abyss.

So, when things don’t turn out the way I want/plan them to, it’s not this huge catastrophe anymore. It’s just an annoyance keeping me one step away from where I need to go. I slow down my breathing, settle my mind, and I get back into things. Knowing that I can do this makes it possible for me to approach things that used to send me over the edge with anxiety. Because I know that no matter how much I may be surprised, I’ll be able to move forward and keep going till I figure things out.

So, now I can just start things. And see how they turn out.

And that’s progress.

I’m supposed to start working in 20 minutes…

1-2-3 Puuull..!

The good part is, I am working from home today. Sweet silence. No distractions. I can actually focus on one thing at a time without being constantly interrupted by people who do not want to actually do their own work, but expect me to do it for them.

My spouse is a late riser, so there will be no sign of them till noontime, which leaves me almost 4 hours of quiet productivity.

I’m actively rethinking my job search approach for the future. I have been thinking that I need to find a job with an established company that gives me a place to go each day. But in fact, what I really need is a remote job, where I can work for a set amount of hours, and then lie down and take a nap when I need to. Or I can travel and work remotely from wherever I am. The whole commuting to work – working 9 hours – commuting home thing, to and from a place where I’m chained to the galley bench with all the other worker bees just isn’t working for me. I am exhausted. Depleted. And I miss those hours I spend in the car each day.

So, either I find a job that’s remote, so I can come and go as I please and get things done on my own time in my own way, or I find something that is close to home, so I don’t have to waste all that time each day. I think the former makes much more sense to me — especially because of the fatigue thing, not being able to rest when I need to, and gradually becoming more and more exhausted.

My neuropsych tells me I should not be taking naps during the day. But if I don’t, I am so depleted that I can’t get to sleep in a good way. I get so tired, I am too tired to get to sleep.

So, it’s time to start looking around online for remote work. There are plenty of telecommute jobs out there. I just need to find them.

Onward.

Weekend break : Food and travel and doing

This was like my weekend break – more fun than it looks like

I took a break this past weekend. Actually, I worked my ass off around the house, and I didn’t have my nap, either day, and I didn’t get a couple of of important things done that I *had* to do (oh, well…)

But I still took a break. I took a break from the crazy confusion, the frantic ad-libbing, the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants improvisation that wipes me out and depletes me and makes me feel worse than ever by the end of the day.

To be honest, I am pretty fried. I’ve been fried since Saturday morning, actually… I was in really rough shape — Woozy and out of it and really confused and off balance. Forgetting things left and right. Having to double back and do things over and over and over, till I actually do them correctly. Literally not knowing where I was or what I was supposed to be doing… till I stopped and took a breath and looked around, and then — oh, yeah — then I remembered. But in slow motion. Everything in    v e r y   s l o w   m o t i o n… Crazy.

Feeling all weekend like I was being dragged behind a horse with my foot jammed in the stirrup, and there’s no end in sight to the gallop. I woke up feeling sick and tired, Saturday  morning, and I’m still feeling sick and tired. The main difference is that this sick and tired is a whole lot less stressed than I was on Saturday morning, 48 hours ago.

Because I took care of business. I made my lists. I mean, I was brutal to myself this weekend. No Mercy. NO DISTRACTIONS. NONE.  ZIP. NADA. ZILCH. Not Even Going There. I had a lot to do, and the whole lot was a confusing mass of must-do’s, to-do’s, better-do’s, and what-not, some of the things more mandatory than others, but all of them feeling mission-critical.

Yeah, mission-critical. Whatever. I got my notebook out with my to-do list in it, and I sat down each morning, yesterday and today, with my special pen that I always use when I am writing Something Important, and I waded through my lists, culling the things that could wait, and making damn’ sure that I did the things that Couldn’t Wait. I felt like a blithering idiot, needing to write down each step:

• Go to the post office
• Check whether mail has come
• Pay box fee
• Go to the bank
• Deposit one check in one account
• Deposit the other check in the other account
• Go food shopping and buy [insert items here, grouped by the section of the store where they are located]
• Eat lunch
• Take the trash to the dump

… and so on, but I did it. Because if I didn’t write it down exactly the way I needed to do it, it wasn’t going to get done. I was going to get pulled in a million little directions by a million little distractions. And I needed to get things done.

I took that to-do-list notebook with me everywhere, and I checked in with it every few hours, to make sure I was still on track and not wandering off into never-never land.

And you know what? It worked. As fried as I was, as sick, as confused, as turned around and impulsive as I was, I soldiered through. And by the close of Saturday night I had completed the last of the Ultra Critical items that Must Be Done, and I could finally wind down the evening with some hot tea and a glass of cold water. And some Advil, of course.

Not that the weekend wasn’t without mishaps. I jumped the gun and ordered a $30 replacement battery for my cordless drill before I thought to check the Home Depot website, where they actually had the exact same battery for $9.97. That’s an expensive mistake. I can’t afford to just spend $30 at the drop of a hat. But I can’t cancel the first order. Screw it. I’ll justify it because I’m supporting a local business instead of a massive big-box chain store, so I’m fine with spending that $30 (almost). I went ahead and ordered a second battery at the great price, and now I’ll have two batteries that hold a charge, instead of one little weak one that peters out after I drill a couple of holes in some plywood.

It took me forever to get going in the mornings. I couldn’t settle down and get myself in the right direction for hours. I was incredibly distractable, both mornings, going in circles at top speed. Crazy. But when I reined myself in and got myself back on track, it was okay going.

Get that list together. Check that list.

Right now, it probably doesn’t sound much like a weekend break. But it was — with my lists. Sitting down and figuring out what I was going to do – and when – and then just going through the steps of doing it all, one piece at a time, really took the pressure off. It let me stop thinking about what I was going to do, and let me focus on the things I was doing, when I was doing them.

Trying to figure out what to do next is a big problem for me, and it’s a huge time and energy suck. I can literally run in circles, trying to get things done — and getting nothing done at all. It’s also a big source of stress for me, because I can get caught up in the logistics and trying to figure things out and trying to think through what’s next – what’s next – what’s going to be next after that.  Caught up and confused. Crazy. And then I end the day feeling like crap because I got nothing done that I intended to.

Fortunately – and thanks to my lists – I managed to get a bunch of stuff done around the house that I’ve been meaning to do for years. I did a bunch of work in the yard, clearing out a ton of weeds and invasive plants that have been wreaking havoc with my grass for years,  but I never got around to addressing. I also cleaned out my garage and gave it a good sweeping-out, which it has also been needing for years, but hasn’t happened. Till yesterday. I worked in my basement, rearranged things that needed rearranging, managed to hook up my web cam on my computer, fiddled a little bit with video, moved some files around on computers, did some research, and got just about everything important checked off my list.

Amazing. Pretty fantastic.

So, what’s with the food and travel? Well, this weekend I was flying solo. My spouse was traveling for work, and I had the house to myself. I also had the kitchen to myself, and I was able to experiment a little with the meals I made. Friday night’s experiment was pretty much a disaster. It didn’t taste bad, but the house smelled terrible all night, and I was concerned it might still smell bad by Monday. I aired the place out on Saturday, so that helped. I also decided to try my hand at making barbecue pork in a slow cooker. On our recent trip to see family, my sister-in-law made pork and onions in her crock pot, and it was amazing. I couldn’t remember what all she’d put in it, other than pork and onions, so I looked up some slow cooker recipes, combined some of the simpler ones that sounded good, and by 8 o’clock Saturday night, I had a killer batch of pork BBQ that was out of this world. I mean, it was good. Very sweet and mellow with just a hint of tang. I bought the cheapest ingredients I could find — it was an experiment after all — and I kept it super simple. But the end result was nothing short of phenomenal, and I dined on that all weekend.

And the travel? Well, both Saturday and Sunday nights, Anthony Bourdain was on CNN (in between the tornado alerts from the network), exploring regions to the north and mid-east. So, two nights in a row, I got to see parts of the world I may never get to see in person. And I got to see the food. The chances of me ever going to any of those places is slim-to-none, so I’m happy to let him go there with a camera crew and bring back his impressions. He seems to be one of those guys who just goes to soak it all in, enjoy it, and let the experiences affect him – be that positive or negative. He just is, in the midst of all that crazy doing and happening and activity. Sure, he does along with folks, but what strikes me the most about him is that he just IS.

And when I watch him just BE in the places where he is, talking to folks, exploring, taking it all in — and eating — I get to do that, too. I get into the spirit of his adventures and get to watch how he does it. It’s a good model for me, because that’s the kind of spirit I want to bring to my own work and life, and watching someone just be open to what happens, and then talk about how it is for them, reminds me that it’s possible to be that way — even when I am dog-tired and in pain and am running out of ideas about how to be in the world.

Not that I want to make myself into Anthony Bourdain. I’ve got my own ways, my own personality, my own take on things. It’s the spirit of his work that speaks to me, and that’s what I look for.

… Not to mention, learning about amazing new foods… most of which I may ever make, but some of which are giving me ideas.

Anyway, after a very full and productive weekend, I am feeling a little better, but I’m still feeling sick and woozy. So what — I’ve got to get on with my day. The thing with me, these days, is to not let feeling bad hold me back. I might be dizzy, confused, disoriented, distractable, forgetful, and have almost no impulse control, but I have my ways of dealing with it:

• dizzy : take it slow, keep one hand on a stable surface at all times, don’t make any sudden moves, and think about what I’m going to do before I do it
• confused : make notes about what I need to do, keep refining my list, striking off the unnecessary things, and using post-it notes to remind me of what I’m doing
• disoriented : again, use the notes, and don’t get too bent out of shape about being so disoriented
• distractable : keep things simple, keep one task in mind at all times, repeat to myself — out loud and silently — what I’m doing and why I’m doing it
• forgetful : see disoriented and distractable above
• almost no impulse control : take it easy, and when I screw up (which I often do), just take a deep breath, think about what I should really be doing, and do that, if I can.

It’s not fun and pleasant, and if I think too much about it, it’s pretty depressing, but in the face of all of the above, I can still get on with my life and be productive and effective. It might take me twice as long as I’d like, and it might make me nuts at times, but it can be done. And in the end, I’ve got something amazing to show for it.

I now have a clean garage and a mowed yard, and a lot more hope and peace of mind. Not bad for a weekend’s work.

The up-side of frontal lobe damage

Apparently, frontal lobe damage affects how we process “negative” information –

Pollyanna Had Brain Damage! Study Claims Faulty Brain Wiring Sparks Unrealistic Optimism

You might be a “glass half empty” person or a “glass half full” person, but if you’re a “glass is half full even if it’s empty” person, your brain may be a tad off kilter.

That’s the conclusion of a neuroimaging study published in the peer-reviewed journal, Nature Neuroscience.  Researchers at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL (University College London) wanted to find out what’s going on in the brains of people who remain optimistic even when every bit of evidence argues for a less rosy perspective.

Check out the Forbes article for more >>.

It begins with the body

If the body is stressed, and you don’t do something about it, the mind is going to suffer.

People love to separate “mind and body” as though the two could ever be separated. Many intellectually developed people I know — who are high-level professionals and leaders in their fields — are quite antagonistic towards their bodies. They don’t seem comfortable living in them. And when I try to explain how my state of body affects my state of mind, their eyes glaze over.

Or they congratulate me on figuring out something for myself, appearing to think that it’s my own special little trick I have for making myself feel better in the face of life’s existential onslaught.

So, I don’t go into it with them. I save my body-mind pep talk for people who get it and don’t need to be convinced.

By far — and I mean FAR — the most helpful thing in my TBI recovery has been learning ways to calm down my system and just not Feel Bad. I firmly believe that TBI puts us in a state of perpetual stress, and just as a gazillion sub-concussive hits take a toll on football players, the gazillion little “micro-traumas” of everyday living with TBI also takes a toll. If anything, I think the buildup of stress over many years of dealing with the confusion and frustration of TBI had an equal (maybe even even greater) effect on me as the injuries proper.

That build-up of stress made it harder to think, harder to feel, harder to learn… it just made everything harder, which in return held me back … and contributed to my overall sense of disconnection and confusion and frustration. A vicious circle that was a feedback loop from hell.

Things are different now, though. Fortunately. And not just from fortune, but by design. I almost happened upon helpful tips by accident, piecing things together from various sources, and trying just about anything that didn’t seem too dangerous or counter-productive. I was open to just about everything, really, if there was a chance it would help. I learned a lot of things by trial and error, and a lot of the time, I didn’t realize what I’d learned until later. Much later. And then, I was often so busy trying to deal with a new situation, that I couldn’t fully appreciate what a difference it had made in my life.

I’m appreciating it now. All of it. It’s been amazing, and it continues to be.

Oh, hell – Just learning to relax, and learning how to Feel Good on a purely physical level has made a tremendous difference in my life. All the logistics and daily tips and tricks are useful and needed, of course. But just the simple ability to feel good, to relax, to let myself settle down after the day and just BE… this is probably the most helpful thing of all.

Speaking of settling down after the day, I need to do exactly that. I’ve had a really long and tiring day, and I need to take a load off. I have a lot I want to get done tomorrow, and I need to start early. So, I’m going to finish up early and hit the hay.

And that’s real progress for me.

DO try this at home

I’ve discovered something pretty cool. It’s sort of kind of changed my life for the better. It’s simple and it’s similar to things I have done for myself before, but it’s more specific.

I know I’m being cryptic. It’s been a long week, and it’s only Wednesday. I’m also exhausted — couldn’t sleep past 4 a.m. today, and I’ve had a lot going on. Crazy.

Anyway, here’s the magical new discovery — using rollers to stretch my back and massage my spine and work my usually tight back and leg muscles into some sort of flexibility.

I got the idea from the MELT Method (Google it, if you want to know more – I’m too tired to explain) only I use a rolled-up yoga mat as well as one of those plastic water noodles. I lie down with the roller along my spine and I balance on it and rock back and forth a little bit to hit all the pressure points along my spine, then I turn it sideways and lie across it perpendicular, and position it in different ways so I can crack my back in different places.

Holy moly, can I feel a difference. It’s like the lights have come on. Pretty amazing.

The only problem is, now I’m all jazzed up and energized, so I push myself even harder, and I end up probably in worse shape than if I were just this cramped, curled-up ball of tension.

Yah, well, whatever. I feel good mentally and spiritually, and even my pain is the good kind — the kind that comes from working things out and loosening up and letting your body get used to it.

With any luck, I can call it an early night and hit the hay soon.

One can hope…

 

Sleep Timing Disorders and LIGHT

Reblogged from ADD . . . and-so-much-more:

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Obeying the Laws of Photobiology

by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC
Part II of a three-part article in the Sleep Series
Click HERE for Part I

Keep in mind:

Time cues are what keep our body clocks aligned with the rest of our 24 hour world.

In order for our sleep-wake timing to cooperate with our planet's day/night cycle, our biological clock seems to need…

Read more… 2,360 more words

Very true. Light seems to be designed to wake us up and get us moving. I have light-blocking curtains in my bedroom, which has done wonders for my sleeping patterns. Now, if can can figure out a way to get to bed at a decent hour, instead of whiling away the hours watching mindless television...

Venting Emotions After Trauma Predicts Worse Outcomes

Found a very interesting bit of reading about the benefits of “venting” – it’s not nearly as good for us as we think it is.

We’ve all been there…

After suffering a traumatic experience, ‘common sense’ has it that immediately ‘venting’ or ‘letting off steam’ by talking about the experience helps protect against future psychological problems. But is this really true?

That’s the question Dr Mark Seery from the University of Buffalo and colleagues ask in a study that examined how people coped with the aftermath of the ’9/11′ terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.

The answer to this question is particularly pressing now as the recent earthquake in China has left huge numbers both physically and psychologically traumatised. The Chinese government clearly thinks that psychological intervention is useful as they have launched their biggest ever programme of counselling for those affected.

Yet the new research, to be published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, suggests that talking about thoughts and feelings after a trauma may not help. Worse, it may be psychologically damaging (Seery et al., 2008).

Read the rest here >>

Noisy Surroundings Take Toll on Short-term Memory

Noise… what a pain in the neck

I guess it’s not just me… More interesting reading…

Have you ever noticed how tiresome it can be to follow a conversation at a noisy party? Rest assured: this is not necessarily due to bad hearing – although that might make things worse. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig have found that adverse listening situations are difficult for the brain, partly because they draw on the same, limited resources supporting our short-term memory. The new findings are particularly relevant to understanding the cognitive consequences of hearing damage, a condition that affects an increasing number of people.

Whether we are engaged in small talk or trying to memorise a telephone number – it is our short-term memory that ensures we don’t lose track. But what if the very same memory gets additionally taxed because the words to be remembered are hard to understand? This is suggested by a new study conducted by Jonas Obleser and his team at the Max Planck Research Group “Auditory Cognition”

Read the rest here >>

Calling it a day

It’s been a full day, with its share of unexpected “wrinkles”.

It’s been a good day – beautiful weather, and some increasing clarity on the direction I am taking with my life.

It’s been a long day, even though it “only” started at 6 a.m., and it’s not even 12 hours later.

One of the really good things about it, is how good I am feeling right now – how good I have been feeling all day. The mud is clearing from my perspectives, and I have more resolve than ever.

Also, all my stretching and 90-second breaks are really helping a great day. In fact, they are helping so much that I can actually tell that I am tired.

Way tired.

Bone tired.

Dog tired.

In the past, I would always push through – have some coffee, eat a candy bar, get bent out of shape over something – until I was too wired to feel anything.

Today, I am relaxed enough to know that I need to lie down for a nap for about an hour, before I’m going to be good for anything.

I didn’t get everything done today that I was intending to, but I can spend some time later working on things. The nice part about having a definite timeframe to move on, and a definite idea of where I’m going, is that I suddenly have a ton of energy for figuring things out and finishing up projects that have been in the wings for a long, long time, that I haven’t been able to get done.

So, with this final 2-month push, I’ll kick it and make some tracks. Make some progress. And really shape my future the way I am hoping to.

With plenty of breaks in between. To breathe. To settle. To balance. To regain my composure and head back into the fray.

On-ward.