Reaching out… reaching in…

Something in me wants like crazy to reach out, to make contact, to connect with another human being on a level that has absolutely nothing to do with anything we know about each other. Not our strengths, not our weaknesses, not our issues, not even our victories.

Something in me craves the kind of connection you can only get with total, utter strangers… the kinds of people I feel most comfortable around, who know nothing about me and will never learn anything more about me, than what the moments we share have to offer.

There’s something clean in that, something pure. Something unadulterated and untarnished. There’s something divine. Utterly, inexpressibly divine.

A weird beetle is flying around my room. It’s been warm, the past few days, and the bugs are coming out again. Grass is growing again, despite the late date. This bug has been in my study for the past day or so, buzzing around, climbing on my curtains, inching closer to one of the three lamps I have on to light my workspace… to light my way.

In some ways, I feel closer to that beetle than I do to many people. It’s an ugly thing, really. Not very attractive, and sort of prehistoric looking. There are lots of them around my place during the spring and late fall. They gross out my spouse, who can’t stand dealing with them, but there are so many of them around, you can’t avoid them. But every encounter I have with them is pure and clean and straightforward: You are in my home. You will not find anything interesting to eat in this place. You should not be in my study or my bathroom or my hallway. You need to go outside, and I am going to take you there. Now.

End of contract. End of story. And no one has been hurt in the process.

How unlike my human exchanges.

I had a very probing session with my psychotherapist today. I suspect they think that I am making up my issues to “game” the system and get money out of someone. I suspect they think that I’m misleading my employer and overstating my abilities, because I need the paycheck. I suspect they can’t quite believe that someone with my history of head injuries can possibly be as functional as I am. I haven’t even told them about the other two from my early childhood that I remembered recently.

My session brought up issues that I have frankly not dealt with, about how I relate to my immediate family. The holidays are upon us, so what better subject for a shrink session? And now I am feeling sick, because the impact of some Very Bad Things that have happened since my fall in 2004 never really sank in.

Until now.

This, I suppose, is the price of increased awareness — increased awareness and sensitivity to all the crap that tends to fly about. Disturbance and distress and falling ill with nervous exhaustion. There we have it.

Part of me wants to crawl back in my cave and not sweat the big stuff that goes on. Part of me wants to go back to pretending that everything is just fine, and that my options in life are unlimited. Part of me wants to go back to not being therapized on a weekly basis. Part of me wants to just get on with my life. But then, there are Very Bad Things that need to be dealt with.

So, I guess I’ll just deal with them. Like all the other crap that comes across my path.

I’ll just deal with it. All of it. And make sure I get enough sleep and take my B vitamins.

Don’t forget the B vitamins.

My solution for TBI/PTSD rage

Anger (or out-and-out rage) is one of the places where my TBIs and PTSD intersect to cause real problems. I’ve been having some rage issues, lately. Getting worked up over little things — getting angry over nothing, really. Just getting angry. Temper, temper…

In the moment, my anger — my rage — seems completely justified. I feel with every cell in my being that I am entitled to be outraged. I am entitled to be angry. I validate my emotional experience, and I end up spiraling down into a deepening pit of anger, resentment, and acting out. Yelling. Making a fuss. Putting up a stink. And getting aggressive with whomever happens to be offending me at the moment.

This is not good. I’ve done it with police officers, and I’m lucky I didn’t get cited. Or arrested. I’ve done it with family members, and it’s cost me plenty, in terms of peace of mind and my relationships. I’ve done it with co-workers, and it strained our connections to the point of breaking.

Not good.

But lately, I’ve been able to pull myself out of my downward spiral before it gets too much of a hold on me. I’ve started doing some basic things that stop the progression of rage before it picks up so much speed it’s like a runaway freight train.

First, I recognize that I’m angry, and I am convinced that I’m right about being angry. This might not seem like a big thing, but I have trouble figuring out how I’m feeling sometimes, and anger is one of those emotions that I don’t always identify well. It just feels like a rush of energy — and while everyone around me knows I’m pissed off, I usually can’t tell what’s going on with me until it’s progressed to a really problematic point. I recognize that I’m angry, and I remember that I need to not let myself get carried away.

Second, I step away. I take a time-out and just walk away. I stop myself from saying what I’m about to say, no matter how badly I want to say it. I tell myself, I’ll give it some thought and figure out how to say it exactly the way I want to say it. I tell myself… anything … just to extract myself from the situation. I step away, telling myself I’ll come back when I’m better able to express myself.

Third, I take some deep breaths.  This helps stimulate my parasympathetic nervous system, which is the part of the nervous system that chills you out. The sympathetic nervous system is what gets you worked up to respond to a crisis situation — and when I get really angry, it’s often because I think and feel like I’m in a crisis situation, and my body is getting all geared up for fight or flight (more often fight). I consciously take some deep breaths to get my parasympathetic nervous system to chill out.

Fourth, I seek out some kind of tactile stimulation. I need to get out of my head, which is spinning out of control, and just give myself a different point of focus. My head is going so madly, at this point, that I cannot even think straight, so I seek out some kind of physical sensation to get my mind off the madness. I press the side of my face against the cold side of a door that leads to the outside. I pick up something rough and rub my fingers along it. I jingle change in my pocket. Or I find something heavy and hold it. The physical sensation, along with the deep breathing, gets my mind off the crazy cycle it was in, just a minute ago, and it lets me focus on a single point — the feel of the cold door against my cheek or the feel of quarters and nickels and dimes juggling among my fingers. Tactile stimulation, like looking at a flame of a candle while meditating, helps me center and get my mind off that crazy downward cycle.

Fifth, I remind myself that my body and brain are playing tricks on me. I am probably not getting angry for the reasons I think I am — it’s my body that’s getting all worked up into a fight/flight/freeze state, and my mind is interpreting that as a real sign of DANGER. And I’m probably starting to panic a little, too. As a matter of fact, when I take an objective look at things, the rage that’s building inside of me might not even be real rage, rather a response to a hyperactive sympathetic nervous system response. It could very well be my body tricking my mind into thinking the wrong things. And I need to remember that I get to choose how I interpret my life. My mind gets to decide how I’m going to think about things, how I’m going to react. And my well-intentioned body, which thinks it needs help, is just misleading my brain into thinking that I have to do something about whatever it is that’s getting to me. When I remind myself that this is a physiological process that’s taking place, I am able to relax… and the anger subsides.

The thing I have to remember, when all this is coming down, is that It Is Not Worth It. No matter how justified my rage seems to be. No matter how entitled I am to be angry. No matter how wronged I may have  been. It is not worth it, to get so tweaked over things. When I go off on an anger “binge” I end up feeling really hungover and dumb and numb afterwards, which just makes my life more difficult, once it’s passed.

I’m no doctor, but I suspect that it may be connected with the mechanics of panic/anxiety… all that post-traumatic stress stewing in a pot, and my TBI brain being unable to sort it all out in a timely fashion… My processing speed is slower than I’d like, and by the time I figure out what’s going on, the damage is often done.

So, I do my best to recognize when I’m getting angry, I step away, I take some deep breaths and try to relax, and I do something that gets my body’s attention — like feeling something cold or rough or tactile in some way. And I remind myself that my brain and body are playing tricks on me again. They’ve done it before… and they’ll do it again.

Quick – before the snow flies

I’ve had an increasingly pronounced sense of urgency about getting my affairs in order. Could be it’s the end-of-the-year rush, or maybe it’s this sense of immanent change, or perhaps it’s the realization that my life is changing — yet again — but this time it’s changing for the better, and I need to be more mindful of how I manage my resources and energy.

Since I began my neuropsych testing and evaluation, over a year ago, I’ve been acclimating myself to the idea that disaster is not necessarily a given in my life. I’ve realized that the head injuries I’ve experienced, the mild traumatic brain injuries I’ve incurred over the course of my life (beginning in early childhood), have played a direct role in the course of my life. I’ve also realized that with the knowledge of how my brain functions (or fails to function), I can devise strategies to offset the after-effects of MTBI, and plan alternative strategies. And with the proper amount of mindfulness, I can follow through with them in a certain what that can — and does — help me head problems off at the pass before they become the kinds of catastrophes I’ve coped with my entire life.

Yes, I now have tools to help me make my way in the world. And I need to get my act together, to match the level of my mindfulness-augmented competence.

So, I spent the weekend cleaning and moving. Saturday morning, I cleaned my study. Finally. It’s been on my to-do list for months, now. The last time I cleaned it, two years ago, the space felt truly amazing. I just loved being in my study (where before I had dreaded it). But it’s gone slowly downhill over the past few years, which I knew I needed to fix. So, I worked on that consciously on Saturday morning. And while I didn’t complete the task (which took over a week, last time I did it in in 2007), I did make a sizeable dent. And it’s a deeper sort of cleaning now, than I have ever performed in any of my study spaces.

I really focused on doing it mindfully — cleared out a whole bunch of old files, filled several grocery bags with paper to be recycled, dumped old damaged items that needed to be “liberated” a long time ago, and the proceeded to rearrange the contents of my closet. I still have a ways to go. I’m probably about 10% along the path. But the point is, I started it. (And I continued this morning, cleaning out one of my over-stuffed, disorganized filing cabinet drawers.)

Saturday afternoon, I moved leaves. Raked. Used the leaf blower/vac mulcher. Moved 7 large tarps’ worth of material off the front lawn. I may need to make another pass before the snow starts to fall, but if I don’t, at least I’ve made enough of a dent to protect the grass from the effects of acidic leaves over the winter months. I also moved summer items from outside to inside, and I also fixed the dryer duct, which had  become too clogged for the dryer to work properly.

I should have fixed the dryer duct years ago, but that was one of the things that fell off my plate, after I fell down the stairs 5 years ago. You wouldn’t think that hitting your head on a bunch of steps would completely derail your life, but after that fall, I stopped paying attention to the list of things that needed to be done. I’d had a list I was working with — we’d only been in the house two years, up to that point, and the series of things I was planning to do over the coming years was starting to become more manageable and less clogged. Then I fell, and I stopped working on the list. I’ve been working hard to get back, ever since I realized, about a year ago, how badly I’d let things fall by the wayside.

Now my life consists of a whole lot of remedial stuff. Recover stuff. Rehab stuff. Life as rehab. Each and every mindful minute of paying attention to what I’m doing — and why.

Every now and then, I also get the chance to help someone else out with their list, which is what I did on Sunday. A friend of the family is breaking up with their partner of 7 years, and they needed to move some furniture and reconfigure their living space.

My spouse and I drove out to their place and helped them get a number of large, heavy items out of their living room, as well as from upstairs to downstairs. When we got there, they were looking pretty ragged and depressed and overwhelmed. But by the time we left, they were a whole lot more relaxed and up, and they had their home office set up and connected, so they could get their act together. I’m glad we could help. And it felt great — after several months of regular exercise — to be able to lift and carry the sorts of heavy furniture we were wrangling. Recliners, with all that steel, are NOT light items to move. And trying to angle stuff through two narrow doorways was not the easiest thing. But we did it. And it was good.

This friend of ours (I’ll call them C) has been struggling with getting ahead and staying that way, for as long as we’ve known them.  They make progress, and then they make poor choices and slide back… Interestingly, back in high school and college, C played team sports — the kinds of team sports that frequently result in head injury. In fact, they told my spouse onetime that they had been hit in the head a lot, so their memory wasn’t the best. But whenever I bring up the topic if TBI  — with reference to myself, as I’ve told them about my history — they shut down and stop listening.

The other interesting (and a little tragic) piece of C’s story is that their ex-partner of 7 years was in a car accident within the last year, and they took to the bed with overwhemling fatigue, irritability, wild mood swings… and more. It sounded an awful lot like things were with me, when I had whiplash in the past. Their change in personality was eerily familiar to me.

I tried to talk to C a few times about the possibility of MTBI playing a role in the relationship’s degeneration. I said nothing about C’s athletic history, but I focused on the car accident. But C couldn’t hear it. They just blocked it all out. They refused to admit that there had been a real change, or that the change was physical and neurological, rather than psycho-spiritual. C is very much into “energy medicine” and thinks about health in terms of karma and past lives and energy. They think they can address substantive issues with affirmations and intention.

Which is a shame, because they might have been able to get some relief and/or come up with some alternative strategies, by addressing the physical and neurological after-effects of that car accident, and developed real-world coping mechanisms, rather than realinging their chakras.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am a strong believer in chakras and energies and intention and affirmations. But I’m also a firm believer in the power of the brain’s neurology to wreak havoc with one’s life. I know the domain of the brain can be very scary for people — especially people who don’t have good insurance and/or can’t get decent medical care — but by leaving out that very important aspect of our overall health, problematic situations can escalate and become even worse, on down the line.

Unaddressed TBI issues can literally cost you your job, your home, your marriage… and more. Especially if folks avoid dealing with them up front.

TBI — even “mild” traumatic brain injury — isn’t the sort of thing you can necessarily wish away or “clear with intention”. I’m sure there are people out there who are very capable mind-over-matter practitioners, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s prudent to give the brain its due and not just brush off a brain injury as something that time alone will heal. Brain injures don’t just go away. And left unaddressed, they can cost you a lot that means the world to you.

I’ve experienced that myself… And I spent most of yesterday moving heavy things with someone who is experiencing it, as well. My aching back and joints can attest to it.

Well, at least we got things moved while the weather was still nice. And for all the hard work over the weekend, it feels great to be this functional again, after years of ennui and inertia and neglect. I feel like I’m really starting to get back in the game, in many ways. My life and my attitude and my outlook is very different than it was, before things fell apart in 2004-2005. But I feel like my life force is returning — and it’s actually good for something.

By the time winter comes, this year, I might just be ready for it.

Concussions: What To Look For When Your Athletes Suffer A Head Injury

Great post over at Varsity Parenting

Head injuries are serious business – we’re talking about the brain here! Every athlete will respond differently from a blow to the head and some cases can be much more serious than others. Sometimes progressive symptoms can appear hours after the injury occurs.

If one of my athletes suffers a head injury during a practice or game, first I’ll rule out any immediate dangers that would require a trip to the Emergency Room. If it’s safe for the athlete to go home it’s important that they are monitored closely until I have a chance to see them in the training room the next day – here’s where mom and dad come in.

Read more here…

A good sturdy kick in the behind

Every now and then, I need a good strong boot in the butt. Not a gentle reminder, not a tender prompt, but a real impact that stings at the start, but ultimately turns out to be the lesson I needed — a lesson that I either “get” and live my life better in the aftermath… or if I don’t get it, I sink like a rock.

I have fortunately had the good sense to go back to reading the Give Back Orlando materials on Self-Therapy for Head Injury – Teaching Yourself to Prevent Head-Injured Moments. I had told my diagnostic neuropsych about the materials, and they said they thought it’s “good science” and is consistent with what both of us believe — that just because you’ve had a head injury does not mean you have to settle for a marginal life limited by your issues. There are things you can do to offset or compensate for or heal the issues you’ve got. A head injury does not have to be the end of the story.

And after I told my neuropsych about the material, it reminded me that I have not gone back to it lately, and I have not in fact read the whole way through the material. It was embarrassing to admit it, but I’m going to put that embarrassment to good use, and remedy the situation.

I have not been nearly enough focused on my recovery, of late. I have not made it a priority. And, in fact, after reading the section on priorities: CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: SETTING MY PRIORITIES in the Advanced Section, I realized that I need to do something about this. I’ve still got a long way to go to make this somewhat leaky boat of my life seaworthy again. I have made tremendous progress, over the past years — especially since my fall in 2004 — and especially in the past 6-8 months. But I still have a long way to go, to keep the screwed-up automatic responses of my “alternative” brain from messing up my life.

I have a lifetime of bad habits that came out of injuries to address. I may not fix them all, and I may never even discover them all, but by God, I’m going to at least take a shot at doing the best I can to overcome them, turn my thinking around, and live the life I know I’m meant to live.

There is a lot at stake with me. Personally and professionally. I’ve started a new job, which is a gateway to better paying work that suits me better than the production-type work I’ve done for the past 20 years. I’ve become very good at following instructions from other people, and I excel at doing what I’m told. That’s come from a lifetime of hard work and deliberate refinement. My ability to follow explicit directions has been a reliable meal-ticket. It’s bought me a house and two cars and made me far more functional that someone with my history of head injury “should” be.

But now I need to bump it up a notch and see where else my abilities can take me. I have considerable capabilities, in addition to my limitations. I have a raft of strengths that are just sitting around waiting to be used, while my relative weaknesses play havoc with my daily life. I spend so much time managing the cognitive-behavioral challenges I have, that I rarely get/take the time to focus on building my strengths.

And I have languished.  For over 40 years, I’ve settled for less than I was capable of having/doing/being, because of the corrosive effects of those invisible challenges. What a shame and a waste. I have let my talents and abilities sit on the back burner, while I’ve put out fires flashing up all around me. I have not focused fully on developing my strong suits, because the weakling aspects of my person have monopolized my attention to the point of distraction, dissipation, and inertia.

Good grief.

But I really can’t spend any more time, right now, bemoaning that. The time I spent worrying about what’s gone before, is time I don’t have to spend on thinking about what’s yet to come. And I need to think about the future. I have issues, I know that. I have had difficulties in the past. I know that, all too well.

I have spent the past year and a half examining the parts of my life that have gotten totally hosed — specifically by TBI. The whole point of doing this, is not to feel bad about it, to beat myself up, and back away from life. The point of doing this, has been to identify the things that need to be fixed, and then come up with a way of fixing them.

Or compensating for them.

Or avoiding the stuff that just can’t be fixed.

Now I have tools and support to address the issues I know I have. And that’s what I’ll do.

So, what needs fixing? This morning, I’m focused on my long-time bad habit of not following through on what I promise to do. For a lot of different reasons, I tend to commit to things, and then I don’t complete the things I say I’ll do. I get sidetracked. Distracted. Confused. And I back away from the job, going off to do something else, instead of buckling down and doing what I said I would.

It’s one thing, if I do this with myself — I’ve done it all my life, with countless personal projects planned and started and then never completed. But I’ve also done it with people beyond the confines of my head. Ever since I was a kid, failure to complete was a huge issue with me. And it’s dogged me into my adulthood.

And now that pattern needs to change.

So, I’m changing it. Deliberately. Intentionally. With real resolve and commitment.

One of the things I’ve been looking at, is why I lose the fire. Why do I start things so enthusiastically, and then lose my enthusiasm? There are a number of reasons, but the main one seems to be that in the midst of all the details, I lose sight of the Big Picture. I lose track of what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. I forget the whole purpose behind it. I forget the reasons I got excited to begin with. I lose track of where the details fit in terms of the overall project. And I get lost.

Then I walk away. I lose sight of my Priorities, which inform the Big Picture of my life.

From the GBO Material:

Summary: Good decisions are made in accord with your personal priorities.

The decisions you regret making are the ones that conflict with your priorities.

The head injury makes it easy to overlook them. By bringing your priority list up to date and using it actively to guide your decisions, you can take better control of your life and make sure that the decisions are guided by your needs.

The Issue: Planning depends on having a clear sense of what’s important to you. You can’t make decisions about what you are going to do, or how you are going to spend your money, or which opportunities you are going to take and which you are going to let go, unless you know what your priorities are. Knowing priorities is something an adult normally does automatically, but it doesn’t work automatically after a head injury. After a head injury, too many decisions are impulsive. They are made to pursue something that is interesting at the time, but without thinking about how the higher priorities will be impacted. For example, survivors get mad at the boss and blow him off, losing the job. Only later do they realize how important the job was to them. If they had only thought about their priorities at the time, they might still have that job.

Yes, too many of my decisions are impulsive. I don’t hold myself firmly enough to a set plan of action. I make my notes and plan my activities, but then I get pulled off in all sorts of different directions by distractions and entertaining sidelines. I start out researching something necessary, then I get intrigued by an experiment I want to try, and I get sucked into that for hours. Eventually, I resurface and realize I’m so far behind, I’ll never get the important things done that needed to be done that day.

And I get down on myself, feel bad, beat myself up, tell myself, “You did it again…” and that takes a toll on what little self-confidence I started with. Slowly but surely, one small failure after another has chipped away at my self-confidence, undermining my belief that I can get things done. Bit by bit, I’ve allowed this to erode my sense of capability… it’s a wonder I ever start anything.

But I do start. I start again. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. I start again. I take another shot. I don’t give up. For whatever reason. There is still a part of me that hopes, still a part of me that’s willing to try. I’m not sure why or how, but that’s not for me to question.

The missing piece is not the starting of things. It’s the continuing. It’s the completing. Tying up loose ends is the temperamental problem-child of my productivity repertoire.

Now, I’ve started again — this time with a new job. And this time I really don’t want to make the same mistakes I’ve made in other places. This time, I need to complete. I need to continue until I complete. I need to clearly and succinctly identify what needs to be done, and I need to do it. This is not optional. This is essential. It’s not up for discussion. I absolutely positively need to make sure I follow up on what I say I’m going to do it, and come hell or high water, by God, I have to get the job done.

That means controlling my impulses. That means mastering my distractions. That means keeping the Big Picture in mind and not losing sight of my promises. That means re-prioritizing my life — clarifying my priorities, to begin with. It means reminding myself daily of what I want, what I need, and what I have to do to get where I’m going.

I am by nature a very disciplined person. I have principles, and I have good intentions, and all I really want to do with my life is help others and reduce the quotient of human suffering in the world. The problem is not with me and my character. The problem is with how my brain works, and how it works against me.

That being said, I’m putting together my toolbox for dealing with all this … complexity

Again, from GBO:

The whole process of thinking about priorities has to be different after a head injury. Before, you probably automatically threw out unrealistic goals. Now you automatically accept unrealistic goals, and you can be realistic only by carefully looking at each goal and judging whether it will work or not. For example, a patient who was highly successful in going to college, getting top grades, and planning a career, was totally unsuccessful in setting goals for romantic relationships. He wanted a really hot, young woman, while he was now middle-aged, physically disabled, and relatively poor. He had gone without a date for 12 years because the women he met who matched up with his priorities would not date him, and the ones who would date him did not match his priorities.

If your priorities are unrealistic (especially if they are based on what your old self could do), then your life will be an exercise in frustration and failure. The only way to lead a successful life is to make sure that you ask yourself to do only those things you are really capable of doing. I cannot begin to properly explain how hard this is to do. It takes even the best recovered people years to reset their priorities so that they are truly realistic. To get there, you need to think about it often, and work on it regularly. But the reward for getting your priorities straight is sweet: Your life begins to make sense again.

Even after you have adjusted your priorities, it doesn’t guarantee that you will use them. Every time you make an important decision, your priorities control your decision process only after you make yourself stop and think about them.  . . .

I need to develop realistic goals. The type of goals that take into consideration not only the abilities I have, but how much time in the day I have. I need to let go of unrealistic expectations and goals and focus on the ones that make sense for me.

That means doing things like jettisoning a lot of the little projects I have sitting around in the wings. If they don’t immediately serve my Overall Goal of paying my mortgage and all my other bills, they have to go away. If they don’t serve my Important Goal of keeping my job and doing well professionally, then they have to go away. If they just serve to distract me from my discomfort, like a recreational drug of some kind, then I have to live my life without them. I don’t drink and smoke. Why would I dissipate my energies and wear myself out on little projects that serve no purpose other than to pass the time and get my mind off my troubles?

Focus… Focus in… That’s what I’m about, now. It’s what I have to be about. I can’t afford to screw around anymore. I’ve found work I love to do, that I can excel at, and now I need to make doing it a top priority. I realize more and more, each day, that my neurology mucks up my life in countless little ways that add up to big problems. And I need to make my ongoing recovery an even bigger priority. First things first. Figure out what matters. Ditch the rest. Be honest, be brutal, be effective, and in the process get my life back to a state that actually makes sense to me.

Onward.

Muscle doesn’t build itself

I was talking to my therapist the other week, trying to describe to them the pain that I’m in on a regular basis. They were (understandably) concerned, and I found it difficult to relate the information objectively without alarming them.

I hate when I alarm people, simply by being and living the way I do. I’m not trying to shock them, but when folks become acquainted with my interior life, yes, it can be shocking.

Anyway, they recommended plenty of exercise (which I’m doing), and they suggested physical therapy might be useful.

Now, I can’t imagine that anyone is going to offer me physical therapy that can help my situation. What exercises could I possibly do, to address the myofascial all-over pain that wreaks havoc with my sanity? What specific routines could anyone recommend to ease the aching scream in my joints and the connecting points in my lower back, hips, knees, elbows… you name it…?

It’s not that I dispute it can be addresed — this pain, I mean — it’s just that I’m skeptical of the ability of others to prescribe a suitable solution for me. I’m just not that easy. Or easily explained. Besides, the pain tends to travel. Where is it today? Only today will tell.

What I do not dispute is the benefit of exercise. Daily. Routinely. As part of my waking-up ritual. I get up, and the first thing I do, is get on that exercise bike. Then I stretch. Then I lift. Not a lot of weight, but enough to notice it’s there. Enough to make my muscles burn in a good way, get my heart pumping and my skin sweating. Enough to remind me how far I’ve come, and how far I have to go.

One of the things my therapist mentioned was that physical therapy can help the knees. This I know. You help the knees — joints which can’t be helped directly — by strengthening the muscles around them. You don’t fix the joint. You fix what’s around it, what’s supporting it, what’s holding it together.

And it works. It took physical therapists years and years to figure that one out, and now we can all benefit.

From where I’m sitting, the rest of me benefits in the same way. The weak and crackly shoulders I have, the weak and crackly back I have, the weak and complaining legs I have — hips, knees, ankles — are all improved when I strengthen the muscles around them. Even my neck, which is a wreck, most of the time — pain and stiffness and the third vertebra from the top turning out to be pushed out of place every time I pay close attention to it — is helped by a good dose of concentrated lifting. In fact, when I was doing a lot of heavy weights, back about 10 years ago (and pretty much built of solid muscle, thank you very much), my neck always felt better when I did 70 lbs worth of shrugs.

You should have seen the looks on the faces of the other cubicle dwellers I worked out with, when I walked over and grabbed two 35-lb dumbells off the rack and started shrugging away. Priceless. But it worked like a charm. By the end of three sets of 12, my neck felt 200% better than it had before. And the benefits lasted for days. And the same was true of the rest of my body. I always felt so much better when I lifted regularly. And one of the things I resent losing the most, after my last fall in 2004, was the ability to go to the gym and work out without overwhelm or anxiety. I miss it. I still miss being able to go out and work out. But for now I’m doing what I can in the privacy of my own home.

I do what I can to build muscle. And it doesn’t get built on its own. It takes work and concentration and dedication to a greater cause. It takes persistence that defies logic and human resolve. It takes tenacity and a small dose of fear of what might happen if I don’t do it. Muscle doesn’t get built on its own. But when you do build it, it works for you.

Sometimes you gotta give a whole lot, before you can expect to get anything (no matter how small) in return.

I guess this is what I’m doing with my life, these days –giving a lot to get something back. Building up the proverbial muscle around the weak spots in my life — building up routines and strategies and techniques and tactics, to support the weak parts of my brain, the parts that got broken, the parts that won’t be fixed, no matter how determined I am. I’m re-routing around the burned-out shells of my old domains. I’m blazing trails through the jungle, to skirt the blown-up bridges in my neural network. I’m carving out new pathways in uncharted territory, and I’m moving what deadfall I can from the paths I must tread.

A blown-out knee, in and of itself, cannot be strengthened. It’s just bone and cartilage and connective sinews. But the muscle around it can — and should — be strengthened, and function can be restored to the leg and the body. A broken brain, in and of itself, may or may not heal. The neural connections that get shredded, are frayed for good, and nothing can return them to their original pristine state. But there are other ways of connecting disparate regions, and there are plenty of strategies and techniques available to get from Point A to Point Z in fine style.

I can sit around and bemoan my fate as an mtbi survivor with a whole truckload of residual issues… I can feel sorry for myself and worry about whether I’ll ever get back exactly the capabilities I had before… or I can take the focus off specifics and focus more fully on results — achieving the same sorts of things I did before, but now through different means.

A lot is possible, if we consider alternatives. But the alternatives won’t come out of the woodwork and make themselves known to us without our direct involvement. And we’ll never find out what does and does not work for us, if we sit around waiting for someone else to tell us what our next steps are.

It was a real struggle for me to get out of bed this morning, and I resented most of my workout with a begrudging resignation. But I did what needed to be done, and by the time I was finished, I felt ten times better than when I started. Day by day, bit by bit, I make headway and I find my way further down the path I wish to tread. Work doesn’t do itself. Workouts don’t do themselves. Muscle doesn’t build itself.

That’s all on me. And I’m glad of it.

Building my cognitive-behavioral exoskeleton

MTBI can do a lot of damage, in terms of shredding your existing skills and long-accustomed habits. It can really undermine your thinking and judgment, so that you never even realize you need to do things differently than you did before. And it requires that you force your brain (and sometimes body) to push harder and harder, even when every indication around (and inside) you is saying, “Let up… let up…”

This can be very confounding. I encounter — all the time — people who are keen on “taking it easy” and doing things “with ease and grace”. They think this is a sign of superior evolution. They think this is a sign of superior character, as though it means they are more “plugged in with the Universe”. They don’t want to have to expend the effort to get things done. They want Spirit/YHWH/God/Creator to do it for them. They don’t want to take a chance and extend themselves, because they are convinced that a Higher Power is more capable than they, and they believe they should just “get out of the way” and let that Higher Power take charge of their lives.

That may be fine for them, but that mindset drives me nuts. First of all, it absolves them of any responsibility for their actions. If things mess up, they can say it was “God’s will” or part of a “higher plan”. If things get really messed up, they can say they just need to be more “in tune with Spirit”.  I have a bunch of friends who are convinced that they are “channels” for Divine Inspiration, and that’s how they should live… just floating along on a tide of holy impulse. And their lives are a shambles. Objectively speaking, they are constantly marinating in a brine of their individual dramas and traumas. It’s just one thing after another, and all the while, they keep expecting Spirit/YHWH/God/Creator to fix all the messes they’ve helped create.

It’s very frustrating to watch this willful disregard of basic cause and effect, but I suppose everybody’s got their stuff.

Now, it’s one thing, if these people (some of whom are very dear to me) are content to live their lives that way, but when they expect me to do the same — and they judge me as being less “evolved” if I do things differently — it’s a little too much to take, sometimes. I don’t do well with living my life from a distance. I don’t do well with telling myself that I’m just floating along on the divine breeze, waiting for some wonderful opportunity to arise to save me from my own creations. I need to be involved in my own life. I need to be invested. I need to put some effort into my life. I need the exertion. It’s good for my spirit. It’s good for my morale. And it bolsters my self-esteem, as well.

Anyway, even if I wanted to just float along, I couldn’t. I’d sink like a rock. I’m not being hard on myself — this is my observation from years of experience. I can’t just ramble about, taking things as they come. I need structure and discipline to keep on track, to keep out of trouble, to keep my head on straight. I can’t just be open to inspiration and follow whatever impulse comes to mind. My mind is full of countless impulses, every hour of every day, and if I followed each and every one, I’d be so far out in left field, I’d never find my way back. I have had sufficient damage done to the fragile connections in my cerebral matter, that the routes that neural information takes have been permanently re-routed into the darkest woods and jungles of my brain. All those injuries over the years didn’t just wash out a few bridges — they blew them up. And they slashed and burned the jungle all around, and dug huge trenches across the neural byways I “should” be able to access.

As my diagnostic neuropsych says, “I am not neurologically intact.”

So that kind of disqualifies me for just winging it in my life. I tried for years to “go with the flow”, and I ended up flit-flitting about like a dried oak leaf on the wild October wind. I got nowhere. I can’t live like that, and I know it for sure, now that I’m intentionally trying to get myself in some kind of order. My brain is different. It has been formed differently than others. It has been formed differently than it was supposed to.

I can’t change that. But I can change how I do things. I can change how I think about things. I can change by facing up to basic facts. As in:

• My thinking process is not a fluid one, anymore. In fact, I’m not sure it ever was — for real, that is. I’ve consistently found that when I’ve been the most certain about things, was the time when I needed most to double-check.

• If I don’t extend myself to get where I’m going, I can end up sidelining myself with one minor failure after another. One by one, the screw-ups add up, and I end up just giving up, out of exhaustion and/or ex-/implosion… and I can end up even farther behind than when I started.

• It’s like nothing internal is working the way it’s supposed to, and the standard-issue ways of thinking and doing just don’t seem to hold up.

• My brain is different from other folks. It just is. It doesn’t have to be a BAD thing. It just is.

On bad days, it’s pretty easy for me to get down on myself. I feel broken and damaged and useless, some days — usually when I’m overtired and haven’t been taking care of myself. But on good days, I can see past all that wretchedness and just get on with it.

Part of my getting on with it is thinking about how we MTBI survivors can compensate for our difficulties… how we create and use tools to get ourselves back on track — and stay there. There are lots of people who have this kind of injury, and some of them/us figure out what tools work best for us, and we make a point of using them. These exterior tools act as supports (or substitutes) for our weakened internal systems. We use planners and notebooks and stickie notes. We use self-assessment forms and how-to books and motivational materials. We use prayer and reflection ane meditation and journaling. We use exercise and brain games. We use crossword puzzles and little daily challenges we come up with by ourselves.

Some of us — and I’m one such person — use our lives as our rehab. Not all of us can afford rehab (in terms of time or money), and not all of us can even get access to it (seeing as our injuries tend to be subtle and the folks who actually know what to do about them are few and far between). But we have one thing we can use to learn and live and learn some more — life. The school of hard knocks.

I use everything I encounter to further my recovery. I have to. I don’t want to be homeless. I don’t want to be stuck in underemployment. I don’t want to fade away to nothing. And that’s what could easily happen, if I let up. My friends who are into “ease and grace” don’t get this. But then, they’re embroiled in their own dramas, so they don’t really see what’s going on with me. Even my therapist encourages me to “take it easy” a lot more than I’m comfortable doing. (They’ve only known me for about seven months, so they don’t have a full appreciation of all the crap I have to deal with, so I’ll cut them a break.)

It stands to reason that others can’t tell what difficulties I have. After all, I’ve made it my personal mission to not let my injuries A) show to others, B) impact my ability to function in the present, and C) hold me back from my dreams. I may be unrealistic, and I may be just dreaming, but I’m going to hold to that, no matter what. I can’t let this stop me. None of it – the series of falls, the car accidents, the sports concussions, the attack… None of it is going to stop me, if I have anything to say about it. I just have to keep at it, till I find a way to work through/past/around my issues.

And to do that, I use tools. I keep notes. I write in my journal. I blog. I have even been able to read with comprehension for extended periods, lately, which was beyond my reach for a number of years. I keep lists of things I need to do. I come up with ways of jogging my memory. I play games that improve my thinking. I focus on doing good work, and doing well at the good work I’m involved in. I bring a tremendous amount of mindfulness to the things I care about, and I’m constantly looking for ways to improve. To someone with less restlessness and less nervous energy, it would be an exhausting prospect to life this way. But I have a seemingly endless stream of energy that emanates from a simmering sense of panic, and a constantly restless mind, so  I have to do something with it.

Some might recommend medication to take the edge off. But that, dear reader, would probably land me in hot water. Without my edge, I fade away to a blob of ineffectual whatever-ness.

I build myself tools. I use spreadsheets to track my progress. I downloaded the (free and incredibly helpful) Getting Things Done Wiki and installed it on my laptop to track my projects and make sure I don’t forget what I’m supposed to be working on. I have even built myself a little daily activity tracking tool that I use to see if any of my issues are getting in my way. It not only lets me track my issues, but it also helps me learn the database technologies I need to know for my professional work.

I am constantly thinking about where I’m at, what I’m doing, why I’m doing it. I am rarely at rest, and when I am, it is for the express purpose of regaining my strength so I can go back at my issues with all my might and deal directly with them. I am at times not the most organized with my self-rehab, but I’m making progress. And I track what I’m doing, to make sure I’m not getting too far afield. And I check in with my neuropsychs on a weekly basis.

I also use external props to keep me in line. I build exercise and nutrition into my daily routine, so I have no choice but do do them — if I break my routine, I’m lost. The anxiety level is just too high. I commit myself to meetings that require me to be in a certain place at a certain time, so I have to keep on schedule. I work a 9-5 job that forces me to be on-time and deliver what I promise. I surround myself with people who have very high standards, and I hold myself to them. As I go about my daily activities, I do it with the orientation of recovery. Rehabilitation. Life is full of rehab opportunities, if you take the time — and make the point — to notice.

In many ways, my external tool-making and structure-seeking is like being a hermit crab finding and using shells cast off by other creatures for their survival. I don’t have the kind of inner resources I’d like to keep myself on track, and I don’t have the innate ability/desire to adhere to the kinds of standards I know are essential for regular adult functioning. I’ve been trying, since I was a little kid, to be the kind of person I want to be, and it’s rarely turned out well when I was running on my own steam.

So, I put myself in external situations and engage in the kinds of activities that require me to stay on track and adhere to the kinds of standards I aspire to. I seek out the company of people who are where I want to be — or are on the same track that I want to be on. And I “make like them” — I do my utmost to match them, their behaviors, their activities. And it works. I do a damned good impression of the person I want to be — even when deep down inside, I’m having a hell of a time adhering to my own standards.

The gap between who I want to be/what I want to do with my life, and how I actually am and what I actually accomplish is, at times, a vast chasm. I have so many weak spots that feel utterly intractable — and I need to do something about them. So, I use the outside world to provide the impetus and stimulation I require to be the person I know I can be, and to accomplish the things I long to do. I use the supports I can get, and I use whatever tools I have on hand. I fashion the world around me in a way that supports my vision of who I can be and what I can accomplish in my life. and I just keep going, layering on more and more experiential “shellack” that supports my hopes and dreams and vision.

Dear reader, if you only knew how different my fondest hopes and most brightly burning dreams have been from my actual reality throughout the course of my 4 decades-plus on this earth, you would weep for days, maybe weeks. But this is not the time to cry. Not when I have within my reach the means by which to put myself on the track I long for. Not when I have the resolve to take my life to the next level. Not when I have — at long last — the information I need to understand my limitations and my cognitive-behavioral makeup. Not when I have the drive and desire to live life to the fullest, to love and grow and learn and … and …

But enough — the day is waiting, and I have things I must get done.

Peace, out

BB

Crossing the river(s) when the bridge is washed out

I’ve been thinking a lot about how my brain developed over the course of my life, wondering if/how my early mtbi’s affected me.

I have to say, it’s a bit confounding. It’s hard to see where the differences between me and everybody else are just regular personality differences, and which ones could be related to my falls and accidents and the assault when I was eight. I’ve actually remembered more incidents, over the past few months, most notably an incident when I was in daycare as (I believe) a 4-year-old.

I don’t remember much — just climbing up some stairs when some of the older kids encouraged me to come play… then running and jumping a lot… and then lying on the ground, looking up at an older kid looking down at me… and one of the other kids running downstairs to tell the lady who watched us all that something was wrong… the lady coming at me, looming over me, checking me over… yelling at the big kids… lots and lots of yelling. I’m not sure if my parents ever found out that something happened, but I remember trying to get upstairs a few more times, but the lady who ran the place wouldn’t let me, which really made me mad! It was fun playing with the big kids. I didn’t want to be stuck downstairs with the “little peepies”. I wanted to run around and play with the big kids.

I think that I may have been kept downstairs because I was small for my age. A couple of my younger siblings were actually bigger than me, till I was about 12 years old and I started to grow. I was a little kid, so I think the lady who kept me probably told me to stay downstairs so I would be safe.

Clearly, that didn’t work. If memory serves — and there’s the distinct possibility that it doesn’t. At least, in this case. I was reading a book, lately, about how the brain doesn’t always store the information it’s exposed to. It’s not like a tape recorder or digicam. It doesn’t just take in everything it’s shown. And sometimes it “records” things that never happened. So, I could be wrong about this — yet more fiction about my life…

But I’ve felt for a long, long time that something bad happened to me when I was little — in day care — and I always had this faint memory lurking in the back of my mind. It’s always just been there, I just never paid any attention to it. But then, the other week, all of a sudden, I got this big Wham! of a hit of the sequence of events. Like all of a sudden, they “clicked” with me, and I could see it all happening in front of me, like it was yesterday.

Hmmmm…

I also remember falling down the stairs more than once when I was a kid — one time in particular, I went down and slid the whole way down the carpeted stairs, banging my head on them, one at a time. Similar to my fall in 2004, which anniversary is coming up soon, but when I was little, I hit just about all the stairs on my way down. I can still remember the feeling of my head bouncing off the stairs — bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang — and the dull fog that enveloped me when I got to the bottom.

Man, oh, man…

Well, anyway, I know that I have a long history of head traumas — plenty of them subconcussive, as I was a very rambunctious kid with a lot of energy but not quite as much balance… I was always biting off more than I could chew, energy and coordination-wise. So, I fell down a lot, hit my head a lot, ran into things a lot. I got banged up, bounced back up, and got back in the game. I was game. Totally. Always up for more. Just try and hold me back…

Sometimes, people were able to, like the lady who watched me when I was little. But most of the time, they weren’t.

I showed them. I could do it. I’d be up and at ‘em in no time. Sure! I could do it!

Now, I’m dealing with the after-effects of my (sub)concussive childhood. And I’m wondering if the impacts over the years had a lot to do with how my brain developed. I have to say, although I have some complaints (who doesn’t, tho?) I’m pretty pleased with how flexible my thinking is, and how well I can perform, by and large. I tested very high in my neuropsych evaluation – high 90’s, percentile-wise. In my moments of self-satisfaction, I imagine I’m a genius or a savant of some kind. (Ha – yeah, right – when I figure out how to keep my study clean and get stuff done when I’m supposed to and make it to the train on time, then I’ll qualify). I have to say, though, I don’t have that many of those kinds of self-satisfied, self-congratulatory moments (I should be so lucky), so I try to savor the ones I have.

But anyway, back to the washed out bridge thing. I’ve heard head injury described as a shearing of fragile connections in the brain — the fine connectors get disconnected, sheared, frayed, and generally disrupted. Kind of like the frayed strings in my sweatpants when I was a kid and I wore my sweats to shreds. And the routes that normally connect the different parts of the brain end up having to re-route to find other ways to connect. And that’s where the fatigue comes from. And the constant restlessness. And the agitation. The brain has to work all the harder to do basic, regular stuff. It can do it, it just takes more effort. The ways that are usually used, the pathways that everybody else seems to have intact, don’t quite work the same for us.

So, we mtbi survivors have to find other ways to get down the neural pathways of our lives. We have to find other routes, when the highways and byways of our brains are washed out by the storms that take us by surprise. The traffic of our brains doesn’t stop — not as long as there is life in us. It just keeps coming and coming and going and going, and when it comes to a place in the road where a bridge used to be, or a paved portion is mising from a huge-ass virtual sinkhole that opened up under it, or there’s a huge fallen tree getting in the way, we — the traffic in our brains — have to find a different way of getting where we need to go.

And I think about all the times when I was a kid, feeling like I was so far behind, just struggling to keep up with what was going on around me, hassling and hassling and hassling over every little detail… all the while seeming to be fine, because I learned pretty early on to be stoic and not let on when I was having trouble — and anyway, I was a tough little kid who didn’t take shit from anyone — and I think about my brain and how hard it was working to put two and two together…

Man, I have to hand it to myself for not going crazy. Granted, I was a strange kid who went off on horrible tantrums, beat up on my siblings, and had all sorts of weird habits, like rubbing through the satin edge of my blanket because the feel of the satin between my fingers was the only thing that would calm me down enough at night to get to sleep… I won’t go into the hiding in dark corners and talking to myself for hours on end and tearing out clumps of my hair — that’s a tale for another time. But all that disturbance aside, I actually came out okay. And nobody I know seems to have noticed there was something really amiss with me.

Of course they didn’t. I learned a long time ago, to hide what goes in with me. In fact, it wasn’t until I realized I was several hundred thousand dollars poorer than I’d been three years before, and I couldn’t explain to myself exactly why or how or when that had happened, that I noticed there was something amiss with me.

Crazy.

Anyway, something must have worked, because here I am, relatively normal, as far as anyone else can tell, testing well, for the most part, in my evaluations, and able to hold down a job and advance my career. Maybe I’m just fooling myself and I’m in for a rude awakening, when I find out that I’m not nearly as competent as everyone else seems to think I am. Maybe I’ll crash and burn. Maybe I’ll self-destruct. I don’t plan to, and I don’t think I will, but you never know.

All I know is, all these years, whether because I’ve kept busy or just kept moving, I’ve been able to re-route my brain around lots of obstacles, and find other ways of getting where I need to go. I may have had all those falls and all those injuries, but if anyone is a testament to neuroplasticity, I am. I’m serious. All the crap that’s gone down in my life, and miraculously my brain has managed to adapt, grow, change, and not show up horribly deformed on my MRI or register more than slight abnormalities on my EEG. For all I’ve been through, for all the crap that’s been done to me, and the wrecks I’ve survived, I’m doing okay.

Even if the bridge is washed out in places, there’s plenty of territory to discover while I’m bushwhacking my way through the underbrush. And if I’ve learned anything from this life, it’s that if you just keep going and use your good sense and you don’t go out of your way to do genuinely stupid stuff, you can find your way back to a beaten path of some kind. It might not be the road you left, and it might not be the road you were looking for. But sometimes a detour is the best thing for us.

Just keep going.

Poor Memory + Anxiety = Too Much To Do

I had a revelation the other day… they just keep coming…

One of the reasons that I end up with too much on my plate is that I literally forget that I have things going on already.

That’s not a terrible thing, in and of itself, but when I get nervous and/or excited, I tend to seek out things to do, and if I forget that I already have a full plate and don’t keep in mind the things I need to get done, I take on more things that excite and enthuse me, but are completely new and different and have no bearing on what I’ve already got going on.

So, I pile up more and more things, forgetting that I already have more than enough to do, and I end up with a huge stack of stuff that needs to get done, but that cannot possibly all be taken care of in a timely manner.

That leads to overwhelm, which leads to ineffectiveness, which leads to discouragement, which leads to ever decreasing self-esteem… which makes it harder and harder for me to function properly, or feel good about myself when I do function properly. It’s hard to feel good about what you’ve accomplished, when you continue to have a massive backlog of crap that still needs to get done.

And I’m tired of not being able to enjoy my successes, because of my self-imposed “failures”.

Now, for years, I thought that the main reason I got into new projects before I finished the old ones was that the old ones simply bored me or didn’t hold my attention well enough, and I lost interest. But when I look more closely at the pattern of behavior, it’s not that I lose interest. I’m keenly interested in what I’m working on, at any given point in time. The things is, I literally forget what I’m supposed to be working on. I lose track of what steps to take, I don’t have all my materials in front of me, and I can’t remember what I’m supposed to do next.

I do have a lot going on, on any given day. And objectively looking at what I have happening, it’s actually quite exciting to me, on many levels. That’s why I get into these things — they interest me, and I love working towards and achieving my goals. And it’s so frustrating to me that I get so few of them accomplished, relatively speaking.

I could never seem to figure out how to keep myself consistently on track. I tried all manner of things to keep my interest engaged. But now I realize, it’s not my interest that fails me, it’s my memory. My mid-term memory for the in-between steps that are getting me to my ultimate goal. It’s not that I stop caring about what I’m doing; I stop remembering what’s next. It’s not boredom that’s getting in my way, after all. It’s forgetfulness.

Which is helpful to me and my understanding of the issues I face. All along, I thought that I was basically unable to sustain interest in what I’m working on. I thought there was something wrong with me, that I would start these really involved projects, and then drop them for no apparent reason. It’s happened to me, ever since I was a young kid. I would start exciting projects for school, or start a yard cleanup job for a neighbor, but then I would get distracted or get pulled away to some other activity, and I would never go back to the project I was working on before. It used to drive my parents and teachers and neighbors crazy. They just didn’t know what to make of me and my behavior.

They seemed to think I was stupid or lazy or I didn’t want to do the work. I can hardly blame them, when I would walk away from a job… forget to go back to it… then remember I was supposed to get paid and show up at their door, expecting payment for a job I never finished. How else could they have explained my inability to complete special school projects that I, myself, had designed and decided to do? I would get all enthused about something, then get swamped in the details, then go off and do something else to relax, then I would literally forget what I was originally supposed to be doing, and either nobody was there to help me remember, or the people around me would not realize I needed to be prompted, and they’d get angry with me for being lazy or contrary or undisciplined.

Ugh!

Well, anyway, now that I’ve got a clue about how my crappy memory has made my life miserable and ineffective, all these years, now I can do something about it.

I’ve put together a list of all the things I’ve started, but either forgot to complete or put off finishing. It comes to more than 50 items (I’m at 51 and still adding).  Some of these things are very important to do, and I’ve got to keep them in front of myself. Some are nice-to-have’s and I can let them wait. But there are some particular projects which I cannot afford to let drop — especially ones for work. I’ve got to cultivate better work habits and use some of my tools more aggressively to right this bad trend.

So here’s what I’m doing about it:

I’ve made a list of the most important, most vital things I need to do, and made notes about exactly why I want/need to do them. I have prioritized them and I am tracking them as I take care of them.

I copied my list onto a large stickie note and put it in my daily planner in easy view each day, where I see it each time I open my planner to the day I’m on. When I complete an item, I check it off, and I remind myself regularly that I am making progress, and how important it is, and how good it feels to do it.

I also plan to make a wallet card of the most important goals I have, so I can carry it with me and look at it frequently. The purpose of it is not just to remind myself of what I need to do, but also remember what I have accomplished, so I can move forward with confidence and self-regard.

It’s  a process, of course, but at least I’m getting somewhere. And at least I realize one of the root causes of my ineffectiveness over the years and I don’t have to beat myself up over it (quite as much) anymore.

It’s all good — and getting better!

Writing lots to keep things simple

I had an epiphany today during my morning exercise. I realized that one of the reasons my life tends to fill up with all sorts of activities and I get swamped by so much to do – and spread so thin, I can’t focus fully on what’s in front of me… is because I forget what I am supposed to be doing. Not only that, but I forget why I am supposed to be doing it.

Someone wrote to me the other day that they used to feel like the guy in “Memento” who has to write everything down, because he can’t remember, from day to day, moment to moment, what he’s supposed to be doing.

It got me thinking… and I realized that I’m like that to — not on so extreme a scale, but this Swiss cheese memory of mine is problematic. And with my constant restlessness, I have so much energy, that I have to be doing something, but I don’t remember what exactly I’m supposed to be doing, or why, so I end up launching into another bunch of activities without realizing I’m forgetting something.

It’s like I have a rushing river in my head, and the gaps in my memory are like big boulders in the river. I’m in a boat that’s headed down river, and because all these boulders are in the way, I can’t go in a straight line. I end up flying downstream at top speed, but I get spun around, I bump into things, I go way out of my way on tangents, and I have to paddle like crazy to keep upright.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world is paddling downstream in rivers with far fewer rocks, they are better able to keep upright, and they arrive at their destinations a lot less exhausted and bedraggled and frazzled than I do.

Literally, when I get up in the morning, it’s like I’m starting a whole new day. That’s great for my optimism and general cheerfulness, but it’s not so great for my effectiveness. I tend to not think about what I was doing the day before, and how it ties in to what I’m supposed to do today. And if I’m not careful, I can get caught up in a whole lot of stuff that I don’t need to be doing, and which keep me from finishing what I’m working on, but which seem so interesting at the moment…

It’s been a huge problem for almost as long as I can remember — and even more so, since my fall in 2004. It’s impacted my work and my family life and my self-esteem, and I can hardly believe it’s taken me this long to realize this fact and the impact that it’s had on me.  No wonder I can’t get anything done in a timely manner — I keep forgetting what I’m supposed to be doing. But at least now I am aware of it. (It’s amazing what happens, when you communicate with another human being.) And now that I’m aware of the problem, I can devise a strategy for dealing with this.

My strategy is:

Keep a running list of the really important things I’m supposed to be doing, and make sure it is in easy view of me each and every morning. Keep that master list with me throughout the course of the day, and keep checking back with it.

I have to refine this, certainly. I have to figure out how to prioritize and manage my items, so I don’t get completely overwhelmed. A spreadsheet will probably help. I have one that I use for the Big Things I Need To Fix in my life. Now I need to come up with a way to record and track the everyday things I’m working on. I may also use a handwritten list. I’m still working it out, as I learn more about how my brain does — and doesn’t — work.

I do know that the more I write down about what I’m supposed to be doing, the simpler it becomes to get things done. My writing (especially in my journals) extends beyond the list-making and into the story-telling aspects of my life. When I write things down in detail (tho’ I have to be careful of getting swamped in the details), it helps me envision where I want to go and what I want to achieve — and why. The more I can work out in my mind, ahead of time, what I want to do, the less I have to think about it later. I can just look at my list and, step by step, get things done that need to be done. It’s important. Very, very important.

Well, it is a process, and it’s one that keeps evolving, as I get more and more information. The bottom line is, now I realize that having holes and weaknesses in my memory is one of the root causes of my ineffectiveness over the years. It’s not because I’m a loser or lazy. It’s because I literally forget what I’m supposed to be doing, but I have so much energy, I can’t just sit there, so I start other things… and then forget to complete them. It can be maddening. But that’s where tools and strategies come in.

It’s all a process. I’m just relieved I’ve realized how this aspect has impacted me. After all, you can’t fix something if you don’t know it’s broken.