Yesterday was a good day. I was riding high on the boost I got from work, and the day turned out pretty cool.
The more I think about the compliment I got at work on Friday, the more it means to me. It’s really sinking in, and I’m “letting it in” (as my spouse urges me to do). I don’t like to get into patting myself on the back too much – no sooner do I get really comfortable, than the rug gets pulled out from under me, and I have to work my way back to a place that’s good again.
Over the past two days, I’ve been looking back at the way my life has developed — how it was in the days and weeks and months and several years after my TBI in 2004… and how I’ve re-ordered it in the meantime. I have made huge progress — thanks to getting regular support from folks who don’t treat me like there’s something wrong with me (it’s important to have some of them in my life, because so many people seem to think I’m not quite “right”), as well as constant WORK.
It’s been a long, long road back, through the disaster area that was my life for so many years. Like the tsunami in Japan that devastated so many lives in cities and villages, TBI tore through my life and trashed a lot that used to be reliable.
It sounds weird to me, thinking about how devastating the damage was, relative to my injury. I had a “mild” TBI — a concussion. I wasn’t knocked out more than a second or so. I didn’t end up in the hospital, hooked up to tubes and machines. I wasn’t in a coma. I didn’t have to relearn to walk and talk. But within a few years after my fall, my life looked like the picture of Japan above.
And at the time I realized just how bad things were getting, I thought the good stuff was gone for good. I thought I was gone for good. I couldn’t imagine ever coming back.
But apparently I have.
It’s been a balancing act — making concessions here and there, and pushing forward with things that meant a lot to me. There are certain things I had to let go, and other things that have come back to me.
Three things that I’ve had to change are:
- How quickly I do things
- My sleep frequency and patterns
- How I live my everyday life
One thing I can’t do anymore is the “rush” thing. It’s confusing and exhausting, and I hate it with every fiber of my being. I used to get a charge out of it — a real rush. But not anymore. Now it just screws everything up. I’ve had to slow down a lot — for me, that is. Compared to others, I’m not going that much more slowly, but for me, it feels like I’m moving at a glacially slow pace, and it makes me nuts. But I have to do it, so I do.
Another thing that I’ve had to let go of, is staying up till all hours of the night/morning and then being able to get up the next day and go to work and be fine with it. That’s gone-baby-gone. If I don’t get at least 7 hours the night before, I struggle all day. I might not feel tired, but I can definitely tell I’m impaired. It’s just not worth it to me, to get all ragged around the edges and have to push through. Adrenaline is all very well and good, but it’s no substitute for a good night’s sleep.
I also need to actively manage my life with notes and reminders. If I don’t set reminders and keep notes for myself, I lose track of a whole lot of things I need to not lose track of. It’s pretty bad — especially when I’m tired. Sometimes I “rebel” and try to wing it – and then I learn again what a bad idea that really is. Keeping notes and reminders lets me focus on what’s in front of me, without needing to keep the reminders and to-do items in the back of my mind all the time.
I have to do a lot more preparation, too, than I used to. I need to preview my days and figure out what I’m going to be doing, and how. I need to actively manage my entire day, making sure I’m doing things at the right times and in the right sequence. If I don’t, it spells trouble.
Making accommodations for how I’ve become isn’t much fun. It’s a little depressing, to tell the truth. I want things to be like they used to be. I want my brain to be like it used to be.
But that’s not going to happen. Not like I think it’s going to be, anyway.
Actually, though, the accommodations I’m making for my brain are helping me in many unexpected ways.
It’s actually good practice to take things more slowly than I did before. This is not only because of my brain, but because of the greater complexity of my life, compared to how it used to be. Ten years ago, I wasn’t juggling my own logistical issues with the intense health issues my spouse has, along with being the only wage-earner in the house. Both of us were working and earning okay money, and we were both self-sufficient. Then the sh*t hit the fan, and I now have to manage a lot more for both of us, because my spouse just isn’t as capable as they used to be.
On top of that, my job is now more managerial than before. I’m managing projects and leading teams, so I have to factor in a lot more in the course of each day — and this spans not only this country, with coworkers in multiple time zones, but also overseas with colleagues in Asia and Europe to accommodate. Work has gotten way more complicated than it was, just a decade ago, and the nature of my work has changed as well. So, going fast and rushing to completion is not an option anymore. I need to consider a lot of things, including time zones and cultural differences — and also not rush myself and others in the process.
In all of this, sleep is critical. And my relationship to it has changed a lot. I don’t have a lot of downtime, each day, and I’m exhausted by the end of it all. It’s been that way for a long time, actually — and it got that much more acute after my last TBI. I had a lot of trouble with insomnia and sleep disturbances. Just getting myself to bed has been a challenge, over the years. But where I used to really fight it, now sleep feels like a little vacation to me, when I can just let it all go — disappear into a different world. It is the ONE escape I have, so I value it like never before. I don’t drink or smoke or eat a lot of junk food, and my vices are necessarily few and far between (they can really derail me). Sleep is the one luxury I have, I’ve realized, and since coming to that conclusion, it’s become easier for me to let it all go and get some rest.
As for my lists and reminders, they keep me organized. I’m so friggin’ organized (out of necessity) at work, that my calendar is a model for others. I spend a lot of time at work, moving dates around and trying to fit things together in a big-ass choreographed production. In fact, that’s probably the best way I can think about it — as an exercise in choreography.
Getting people dancing… moving together… and making a beautiful production out of it. It’s funny — watching dance irritates the crap out of me. Maybe it moves too fast for my brain, or it takes me too long to catch up with it. But I absolutely love still pictures of dancers in motion. The pictures of mastery in motion really inspire me — if they can do that (and how do they do that?!) then what isn’t possible for people to do?
Still pictures of dancers — especially black and white photos of modern dancers in motion — really inspire me. And my job as a project manager is to inspire people do to the equivalent in their own work, so that our projects come together in a unified performance.
And you know what’s interesting? In the process of accommodating my limitations, I’ve actually been able to extend what’s possible for me, above and beyond what I’ve done in the past. In some ways, losing my basic functionality at one level, forced me to learn to live at a completely different one.
If I hadn’t gotten hurt and gone downhill as badly as I had, would I have been forced to “bump it up” the way I have? I’m not sure. Other keys have definitely been getting the right information and also getting some support, but ultimately, it was the total unworkability of my past ways of doing things in my emerging life, that forced me to dig deeper and see what else was there.
Anyway, this post is going on way too long. The bottom line is, TBI trashed my life, but I have gotten to a point where it’s no longer a total wasteland without any hope for the future. I have a ton of hope now, and that’s for a good reason — because things are turning around in tangible, daily ways. I have something to show for all my work, and it’s good.
It’s really, really good.
Onward.
Broken Brain - Brilliant Mind 
Slowing down is something we have had to embrace too. Because we have such a strong family foundation, it makes it okay not to participate in all the activities we would have been doing pre-injury. Not great, but okay. We still want certain experiences for our daughter and we are more selective and they must be high priority and with quality people. It is almost like we just focus on making the best of what we’ve got to work with, but definitely trying to cut out the BS. Maybe this isn’t going to help with teaching certain life skills of getting along with others who are difficult, but it is emphasizing quality relatuonships and interactions, and so for now, we think it is the best plan moving forward. We really do focus much more on being in the moment and the slow pace is just a part of it so we have more calmness than chaos in our lives.
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That actually sounds like good practice, even without any injuries in question. It’s certainly not easy to swim against the tide of everyone else, and with other kids it must be particularly challenging, as today’s education seems to be all about multi-tasking and racing around at top speed. But ultimately, stepping out of the “rat race” is a reward in itself. And all the things we “miss” often turn out to be not worth the craziness, after all.
Calm is pretty awesome.
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