My last decent vacation in a good long time…

The way life goes, you never know how things will shape up. I’ve had so many hopes and dreams over the years, and so many times, I’ve been on the verge of really breaking through… then something happened. And that “something” was often a TBI.

I was just getting my act together in elementary school, finding my footing with my peers and getting involved in a special program for “gifted” kids and discovering what worked for me, when I got hit on the head and things changed. I became combative. Difficult. A behavior problem. So much for the gifted program. They showed me to the door on that one.

My family relocated, and I was finally figuring out how to interact with the people around me (who all talked with thick accents I could barely understand). Then I fell out of a tree and wrenched my neck. And I kept hitting my head while playing sports. Football. Soccer. Just playing outside. Hitting my head was routine. I can remember a number of really significant blows to my skull that disrupted my consciousness, but they happened against a backdrop of regular clunks on the head. It seemed like every time I got on my feet and started feeling like I had a grip on my life, I’d get hurt (again), and I’d be back at square one.

I eventually got out of my parents’ house and got on with my life. When I drank a lot, I fell down — a lot. I may have (probably) hit my head a bunch of times, but I don’t remember much from the 4-5 years after I left my parents’ home.  Those years that could have been some of my best (and in some ways, they were). They could have been years of exploration and learning and experience like no other, but instead they were mired in the muck of hangovers and all the confusion that comes from not knowing what happened the night before. A few scrapes with the law… being ostracized by my peers… some violent confrontations… making money by borderline means, just to get by… it was definitely an experience — that’s for sure. But it took me years to recover from the damage I did to myself.

After I was in the working world, driving to work each day, I got in a bunch of car accidents. They weren’t huge deals, mostly just fender-benders, but whiplash and getting clunked on the head didn’t help matters any. During years when most of my peers were getting on their feet, finding their way in the world, I was scrambling. Trying to catch up, after being set back. I got a job, then got hit by a speeding door-to-door salesman. I left that job without saying why. Just left one day and never went back. I relocated to a really great city, but just before moving, I got rear-ended and spent the next several months in a manic haze.

Years later, I had a pretty decent job with a lot of responsibility, then got tangled up in a 7-car pileup, and everything fell to pieces there, too. That worked out okay in the end, because I found a much better job and a completely different career track, but it did a number on my self-confidence, and it caused me to pass up a golden opportunity that my new manager laid at my feet (and begged me to take). I can only imagine how much more stable my life would be now, had I actually taken them up on it.

The last and most debilitating TBI was when I fell down a flight of stairs at the end of 2004. I was just 18 months away from having some investments mature, and if I’d been able to hang in there and keep up with my life, I could have repaired and paid off my house, gotten rid of my debt, and really solved a lot of logistical problems that are the kinds of things that only money will solve. None of that got solved. It all fell apart. And it’s taken me 12+ years go piece it all back together to just a semblance of how things once were.

So, what does this have to do with my current vacation (which is now drawing to a close)?

In the course of my life, I’ve never known just when everything would fall to sh*t. It’s partly me being oblivious, partly me not having a reliable crystal ball that lets me peer into the future. So, all those times when I just assumed I’d have time to do this, that, or the other thing… all those times when I thought I was set… all those times when I didn’t pay attention to what was Right In Front Of Me… in so many cases, they were the last hurrah for that part of my life. The last shred of self-confidence. The last vestiges of feeling competent. The last months of feeling like I could actually plan my future with certainty. The last weeks of being able to take certain things (like how my brain worked or how I’d react to experiences) for granted.

I didn’t savor those things when they happened, because I was too damn’ optimistic. Too oblivious to just how sh*tty life could get for me. Not experienced enough to realize that things could get That Much Harder for me in a moment’s time. I took them for granted. I didn’t wring every last bit of goodness out of them, while the goodness lasted. And now I just look back on a lot of wasted opportunities and chances I totally missed enjoying… all because I thought there would be another time that would be somehow better.

I don’t believe that anymore.

Especially not this morning.

From here on out, my vacations will probably be a lot more work than relaxation, a lot more frustrating than renewing, and a lot less worth it to me. But they’ll continue. Life goes on. Sh*t gets complicated. So it goes.

For today, I’m just going to enjoy myself. Because this might just be as good as it ever gets.

#braininjury Q and A for today

Looking at my site stats, here are some questions people asked or things they searched on — and then found their way to this blog.

• are some people wired for failure

I think some people may be. I know people who cannot seem to help making one bad choice after another, who can’t seem to avoid screwing up, time and time again. “Failure” is relative, of course. If you look at all of your life experience as a series of opportunities to learn, failure is a great way to learn more than you ever thought possible. People who succeed at everything they do, don’t get the benefit of the lessons that come from failing to achieve your goals. Then again, some people never seem to learn. They seem almost addicted to messing up, and there’s not much you can do, when someone is in that state of mind. Of course, you can call their attention to ways they could do things differently, but not everybody can hear it, understand it, or put it into action. Unless they can, their failure isn’t going to do them much good, and that’s pretty depressing to watch.

• can hot flashes be brought on by injury

Yes, I believe so. In the case of women, I believe menopause can be triggered by a brain injury. The endocrine system, which manages our hormones, is actually pretty easily impacted by brain injury, so it can really mess up how your body handles things. This goes for men, as well. We all have hormones. We all are affected by it. And it’s my understanding that the endocrine system manages our body temperature. So, if it’s affected, yeah – you can get hot flashes after injury. The other thing is that brain injury can put you in a state of persistent fight-flight, which pumps your system full of adrenaline and other stress hormones. I don’t know about you, but when I’m all hopped up on adrenaline, I heat up. So, that’s another way you can have hot flashes after injury — you system can run hotter, in general. And getting it to tame down can take a lot of work. It’s a good use of time to work on that, of course. It’s done wonders for me, I can tell you that.

• zone out after brain injury

I did this for quite some time, after my TBI in 2004. I would sit in front of my computer at work, just looking at the screen, not even seeing what was there. It was bizarre. And people around me got pretty uncomfortable. One day, I was an over-the-top peak performer… the next, I was a zombie sitting in front of my computer, just staring at the screen. My brain was full of gunk that needed to get cleared out, so for weeks, even months, after my accident, I just zoned out. It took quite some time to get over that, but I did. I still zone out, now and then, but that’s usually because I’m over-tired or overwhelmed.

• concussion and remembering names

Lots of things can keep us from remembering names. After my last concussion, I couldn’t remember names, nor could I remember faces. I’d have long, involved conversations at work with people, without any clue who they were or what their names were. Then I’d walk around the office, trying to find where they sat, so I could secretly check out their name plate and figure out who they were and what they had to do with me. In order to remember something, you have to make that memory, you have to encode it in your circuits. After TBI, your brain can be so scattered, you don’t have the concentrated attention to encode memories as well as before. This can improve over time. But then you get into remembering names… which is a whole other thing. Sometimes I can’t for the life of me remember who someone is, or what their name is — just last week, I couldn’t remember one of my relatives I knew quite well as a kid. I just drew a blank. But when I asked someone else who they were, it all came rushing back. It’s tricky. It’s kind of a minefield. But it can change. It can get better.

It’s not just women who suffer from isolation after #concussion #TBI

I knew there was a risk of leaning too heavily towards a gendered approach to concussion and TBI treatment with my last piece. It’s very tempting to narrow the focus to one specific group or case, when you’ve got a set of research looking into that. And it’s tempting to focus on subgroups who have been traditionally overlooked.

I do think there’s a lot to be learned from considering special characteristics of people, but that can leave out the needs and circumstances of those who are on the margins of the margins… or those who “don’t belong” in the subgroup, but don’t quite fit in the mainstream.

And so the pendulum swings from one side to the other… Women are marginalized… Let’s put women in the spotlight… And then comes the very human response of folks who feel left out because, well, they are left out, but they also need attention. So, the discussion may end up “pinballing” from one special case and group to another, until everyone feels simultaneously noticed and disregarded.

Funny how that goes.

The thing is — and this is especially true of brain injury — there’s no one silver bullet that’s going to fix it all. Everyone is different, everyone’s experience is different. What works for one, might not work for anyone else. But that way of exception-stymied thinking can stand in our way. I think that’s actually hindered the development of treatment innovations, because the perceived differences and variations between those millions of survivors seem to preclude a consistent, systematized approach to treatment and recovery.

But there is one thing we all have in common after TBI. Brain injury is an assault on your person, as well as your place in society and your community. So, when it happens to you, it happens to everyone. And the folks who are sequestered to heal from their mild TBIs, due to doctors’ orders, drop out of a social circle that depends on their participation to be complete. Unless you live as an island with no social contact at all, that experience is going to be shared with millions of other concussees and TBI survivors.

When a social circle loses a piece of itself, it’s traumatic by its very nature, because the integrity of the group has been compromised. Losing a connection that gave all the members a coherent and durable sense of who they are, represents a loss to all of the members — a group of friends, a clique, a team at work, a sports team, etc. The loss doesn’t just affect the injured party — the whole social circle and all its members have been impacted as well.

When a concussee is a member of a tight-knit team, the sequestration after mild TBI will absolutely contribute to their level of stress. They’ve lost the connections that tell them who they are, that remind them of their identity, which bond them with others who help them through the hard times. You can never, ever overestimate the importance of the team, when it comes to the spirits of everyone who’s a part of it. And you can never, ever underestimate the negative impact of losing that sense of belonging… that sense of self… that happens when you’re suddenly pulled from the center of the group.

So, while their tend-and-befriend impulse may predispose them to affiliating more in times of stress, women aren’t the only ones who take a hit when they lose their connections with others. (And let’s not forget that not all women are equally inclined to bond with others for reassurance and nurturance.) Anyone who relies on the support of a group, who is cut off from that connection, is going to struggle in sequestration.

What does this mean? What does it imply? I’m suggesting that we reconsider the way we respond to concussion / mild TBI in the acute phase (within the first 7-10 days when the brain is righting its impaired metabolism), perhaps exploring ways to actually increase the sense of connectedness and support, rather than limiting it.

One possibility (this occurred to me last night, as I was drifting off to sleep), is the use of therapy dogs (or cats) post-concussion. Therapy animals have been shown to reduce stress and provide companionship to folks who for whatever reason aren’t integrated into the larger community. And service dogs are becoming common with folks after TBI, especially veterans.

For those who can’t take on the care and feeding of an animal full-time — and who may not actually need a service dog — I could see how daily visits from a therapy dog could help reduce the stress and foster a sense of connectedness. I know it’s being done for folks with moderate and severe brain injury, but I think it’s just as valuable for folks with “just” a concussion of “mild” TBI. Especially in those days and weeks immediately after, when everything is so confusing and uncertain…

Animals can offer a special connection that has nothing to do with computers or devices or texting or television or any of the other modern (and medically proscribed) ways we connect with each other. You don’t have to work at a relationship with a therapy animal. But you can interact, get some lovin’, and have the contact you crave with “someone” who isn’t going to judge you or criticize you or make you work at interacting with them.

Another option might be educating members of the social circle about concussion, and fostering regular (limited) contact with real people, in real life. This is going to be more logistically difficult, because everyone is so busy, and with work / game schedules, it can be tough to carve out time. But just having some contact with your social circle is better than nothing at all. One of the big barriers to that happening, is fear and uncertainty and insecurity about brain injury in the wider population. It’s a tough nut to crack, but having some info and guidelines in place might help.

Those are two ideas for maintaining “low-impact” contact with the outside world immediately after concussion. I’m sure there are many more viable options. It’s all an evolving process, and more ideas will emerge over time. There’s lots of opportunity — it’s just a matter of what we’ll do with it.

I certainly hope we do. Because clearly, women aren’t the only ones who suffer after mild TBI and concussion. They may suffer in more specific ways, and the things we do to help may make things worse, but the same could be said for many others.

We’re literally all in this together.

Research papers on post-concussion syndrome (PCS) and psychological factors

Happy reading!

On PubMed I found over 500 papers for a search on “PCS and a history of psychiatric disorders”. You can see the full listing here – click to see the list

Check out Google Scholar’s listing, to see what’s been published regarding post-concussion syndrome and having a history of psychiatric disorder – https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=post-click to see the list

Happy reading.

Research papers on post-concussion syndrome (PCS) and psychological factors

Looking for the original post? It’s moved here – https://tbiresearchriffs.wordpress.com/2016/02/16/research-papers-on-post-concussion-syndrome-pcs-and-psychological-factors/ – to my brain injury research blog.

White Matter Injuries in Mild Traumatic Brain Injury and Posttraumatic Migraines: Diffusion Entropy Analysis

From Radiology:

Original Research in Neuroradiology

White Matter Injuries in Mild Traumatic Brain Injury and Posttraumatic Migraines: Diffusion Entropy Analysis

Abstract

Purpose

To determine the performance of Shannon entropy (SE) as a diagnostic tool in patients with mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) with posttraumatic migraines (PTMs) and those without PTMs on the basis of analysis of fractional anisotropy (FA) maps.

Materials and Methods

The institutional review board approved this retrospective study, with waiver of informed consent. FA maps were obtained and neurocognitive testing was performed in 74 patients with mTBI (57 with PTM, 17 without PTM). FA maps were obtained in 22 healthy control subjects and in 20 control patients with migraine headaches. Mean FA and SE were extracted from total brain FA histograms and were compared between patients with mTBI and control subjects and between patients with and those without PTM. Mean FA and SE were correlated with clinical variables and were used to determine the areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUCs) and likelihood ratios for mTBI and development of PTM.

Results

 Patients with mTBI had significantly lower SE (P < .001) and trended toward lower mean FA (P = .07) compared with control subjects. SE inversely correlated with time to recovery (TTR) (r = −0.272, P = .02). Patients with mTBI with PTM had significantly lower SE (P < .001) but not mean FA (P = .15) than did other patients with mTBI. SE provided better discrimination between patients with mTBI and control subjects than mean FA (AUC = 0.92; P = .01), as well as better discrimination between patients with mTBI with PTM and those without PTM (AUC = 0.85; P < .001). SE of less than 0.751 resulted in a 16.1 increased likelihood of having experienced mTBI and a 3.2 increased likelihood of developing PTM.

Conclusion

SE more accurately reveals mTBI than mean FA, more accurately reveals those patients with mTBI who develop PTM, and inversely correlates with TTR.

Serious, not serious

I’m feeling better today – much better. Thank heavens for that. This bug I’m fighting off is likely just a sinus infection, but the aches and pains and sore throat had me down. I woke up in the night feeling really sick, choking on my coughs, the back of my throat burning. I wanted to get up and gargle with warm salt water, but I couldn’t rally. So, I rolled over and went back to sleep. My body’s been in a lot of pain, over the past weeks, what with all the driving and the disruption of my schedule over Thanksgiving – AND the break in my daily exercise during November, when I was so busy, each morning.

I’m paying for all of that. I thought I was doing fine and I didn’t need to keep up with my “maintenance”… but I was wrong. So very wrong.

I’ve been having a bit of trouble, lately, with my memory and reading. I’ve been mis-reading emails at work, which isn’t good. I put people through all kinds of extra work, because I don’t understand what I’m reading, or I miss some details. I need to just get in the habit of reading an email three or four times before I respond to it. Maybe I should read them out loud to myself.

I also got a text from a former co-worker last week, and I completely forgot who they were. They were at a conference I was supposed to attend, but couldn’t because of my dentist appointment (it went well, by the way – but my spouse wasn’t feeling up to eating out, so we just came home and I cooked us some fresh steaks, which was just as good as eating out — maybe better). Anyway, I got this text from someone saying “Are you here? We are –” and then they listed the names of the other people I used to work with. But because they didn’t put commas between the names, I thought it was all one name, and it didn’t look familiar to me. And didn’t I look like an idiot, texting back “Um, I think you have the wrong number. I have no idea who you are.”

So much for that.

I dunno, I kind of feel like I’ve been going backwards over the past weeks and months. My memory isn’t as great as I’d like it to be, and I keep missing small details in conversations. I also have lost ground on the stuff I’m managing at work, and I’ve gotten lost in the weeds of all the details. Big picture thinking is not my strong suit, these days.

Of course, it doesn’t help when you’re being threatened with layoffs, and you don’t know where you’re going to be in a few months’ time. I totally dodged a bullet on the most recent round of layoffs, but supposedly there will be more. And it’s tough to not let it bother me. I’m the sole breadwinner for my household. I have a mortgage and bills to pay, food to buy, and my spouse’s business to keep stable. My spouse does a good job at what they do, the market just isn’t always there for their products & services, and there have been issues with customers not paying, so that’s a problem.

I like not being homeless. Been there, done that, not going back ever again. When I was a little kid, I once struck up a conversation with a little old lady who was buying dog food (I used to be a really outgoing kid, before the TBIs started happening). I asked her what kind of dog she had, and she said she didn’t have one… and then she ran away from me. I asked my mom why, and she said the lady was probably going to eat that dog food, herself, because she didn’t have money, and dog food has a lot of good protein. I’ll never forget the look of shame and distress on that little old lady’s face. And I swear to God, I will do whatever it takes to prevent myself and my spouse from ever having to experience that.

It made an impression, to be sure.

So, that’s my focus in life – just keeping us housed and fed and healthy. Of course, there’s only so much you can do for someone who won’t help themself. And that’s where my spouse is — just neglecting themself and letting their health go to hell. Watching the love of your life fade away because they would rather die than provide themself with a sense of being loved and cared for, is not easy. But that’s exactly what’s happening. If someone isn’t waiting on them, they don’t feel loved. So, in order to feel that, they play helpless and victim, and they wait for others to wait on them… which is about the worst thing you can do for yourself and your health.

I blame their friends. They are all of that ilk. And it’s killing them all. Not good.

So, that’s adding stress to my life. Just a bit.

It’s hard to know what things I should stress about, and which ones I should just take in stride. I don’t want to keep having these memory and cognition issues, but I also don’t want to make too much of it. I need to be objective and understand exactly where I come down, compared to where I want to come down, and then take steps. The thing is, I don’t get a lot of help from others, figuring this out. It would be nice to have an objective outside opinion, but my neuropsych is very much into the idea that we make the lives we want to have, and mild TBI is not the sort of thing that should hold me back. Especially the kind of TBI(s) that I have had over the years.

They seem to believe that because my test scores are pretty good, overall, and I have just a few areas of difficulty, I should be fine. And the thing that makes it worse for me, is my interpretation of my experience as something that’s negative, rather than positive.

I get that it’s important to be positive about things. Absolutely. The thing is, when I am having issues, I need to be able to be clear about them. I need help getting clear about them. And their influence doesn’t help me, because I get very stressed and very turned around when I try to explain to them, and I can tell they’re not taking me seriously.

It’s been infuriating at times, and many’s the time when I nearly didn’t go back at all. I have a hell of a time verbalizing my issues out loud. And when I come up against the “disbelief field” of their attitude, everything gets all jumbled up. So, I’ve often wondered how much sense it made for me to even go see them. But they’re literally the only person I know who has a grip on brain injury, as well as what’s possible in life, so I’ve used that experience as a way to be more clear in myself about what was really going on with me.

And of course, I have this blog. And my notes. So, I can write my way through all this and make sense of it in writing, even if I can’t do it out loud.

It’s hard to know what’s serious, and what’s not. And the thing that makes it all even more stressful, is having pressure on me to be a top performer, when I am lagging cognitively. So, I just do what I see others doing – I just keep going. I pretend that everything is fine, and I’m getting it together, and I don’t worry about how I look to others, or if it’s compromising my position.

Just keep going. Focus on the basics. Stick with fundamentals and keep everything very, very simple. Ultimately, things will work out, if I just don’t give up — and I keep learning my lessons properly.

Onward.

And suddenly, it is fall

Autumn coming… time to bring back the reservoir

I have been so preoccupied this week with the work changes and catching up with old friends whom I haven’t seen in over a year, that I have not directed much energy towards noticing this season.

I’ve been tired — with that kind of cognitive and physical fatigue that is particular to brain injuries. My head has been looking for ways to make sense of it all… past, present, future… and that’s been taking up a lot of my time and attention.

It’s a double-whammy. On the one hand, opportunities like I’ve had in the past weeks are rare — having three days of solitude to clean out my garage and basement… having friends from overseas come to visit… being part of the beginnings of a corporate merger… These are over and above the usual speed bumps and wrinkles that populate my days and weeks. These are different, and they demand a special kind of attention — the sort of attention I actually try to avoid: drama, excitement, speculation, intense work for 12-14 hours straight, without much of a break.

But because of their nature, I have to  just go with it. Get into it. Be a part of it. Allow myself to be swept along in the current – like a proverbial kayaker who gets dumped from their craft in the rapids — as you get washed along in the current, keep your head above water, keep looking forward, and keep your ass up and out of the way of rocks.

The main thing is to keep your head up. Don’t drown. Keep looking forward.

One thing you learn from TBI, is that when it comes to activities, you have to pick and choose. I suppose it’s true of anyone who expends a lot of energy in their activities… or who is very effective in what they do. You mustn’t squander your energy on things that don’t matter. But especially with TBI, you have to be extra careful.There is literally only so much you can do, and if you try to do it all, you end up wiping out your reserve of extra energy — and then you have to spend even more time building back those reserves.

Because lack of energy and fatigue just make everything worse. It siphons off your cognitive abilities, it depletes your stores of happiness and joy, and everything can feel like a slog.

Even the good stuff, the fun stuff, the stuff you know you should be grateful for and happy about.

For me, that’s probably the most depleting thing — knowing that I should be happy about things, knowing I should be pleased and excited and uplifted… but just not having the energy for it. Even energy spent on good things, is energy spent. And building it back is not a simple matter of sleeping in on the weekends. For every two days of extra energy I burn through, it takes two weeks to build it back. And if I don’t have two uninterrupted weeks (like this past month) and exciting things keep happening to me, well, then everything gets that much harder.

In what ways?

1. I get more distractable. I lose my focus and find it next to impossible to concentrate on the tasks in front of me. I get caught up in all sorts of side activities — which seem so important at the time, but are not actually relevant to what I’m supposed to be working on.
2. I get more irritable. I can’t deal. I get cranky and snappy like an arthritic terrier. I get anxious and difficult to live with — with others, and with myself.
3. I get less attentive. My attention gets fuzzy, and I stop noticing details – like the leaves turning outside, or just how beautiful everything has suddenly become. Everything around me seems wrapped in hazy gauze, and my senses are not sharp. My sense are so busy just trying to attend to the basics, that the extra special things in life slip by me very easily.
4. Joy sorta kinda evaporates from my life. I know (intellectually) that I have a lot to be grateful for, and I know there is so much that I have to be glad about, but I just can’t find the joy. It’s nowhere to be found. And any attempt at reasoning with me to get me to find that joy… well, that just makes me feel stupid and ungrateful. My neuropsych tries to do this all the time, and the net result is that I feel stupid and short-sighted… rather than realizing that I’m simply tired, and letting it go at that.
5. It gets hard to sleep. The more tired I am, the harder it is to relax and sleep. When I should be getting to bed early, I end up getting on Facebook for 90 minutes — and completely blowing past my normal bedtime. And you guessed right — fatigue becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where I get more and more tired and wired, as the days wear on. All of the above continue to escalate. It’s awful, and it’s very difficult to stop it.
6. I end up in a downward spiral. Unless I can get a bunch of good nights of sleep, I’m toast. Things get worse and worse, until I finally just  Give Up. And it turns out, giving up is the best thing for me. Some nights, I go to sleep hoping I never wake up again — I am feeling that depleted and used-up. But the very act of completely abandoning hope actually makes it possible for me to rest. And in the morning, everything looks quite different than the night before. Usually, anyway. Some mornings, I’m still not convinced I want to keep going.

So, fatigue is a thing. It’s a very real thing. And if I don’t stay alert to it, and recognize when it’s getting to me, it can get the better of me, which is never good.

For today, I know I’m tired. I have a full day of things to do, but I can pace myself and take my time… really soak up this fine fall day, and enjoy what I come across, as best I can. Seasons change. It would be a shame to completely miss this one, because I’m distracted.

That One Pure Thing

Somebody has to wait their turn…

I took time out over the weekend to focus in on getting some things done that have been hanging over my head for quite some time. I had an idea that needed to be developed, and so I developed it. I cleared everything else off my creative plate, pretty much, and I just worked on That One Thing.

And as it turned out, it was a very productive time. I really got a lot done.

I didn’t hash through all the other millions of things in my mind, which I also want to do. I focused on That One Thing.

Plus, when I wasn’t working, I did the other things that I need to do regularly — I got my naps, I did my morning workouts, I got some acupuncture, I went for a couple of hikes and long walks down the road, and I made some good meals.

And I got ‘er done.

Which is great, because I have a tendency to start things and not follow through. That’s gotta change, I know. I’ve been able to sorta kinda mozy along, jumping from one distraction/interruption to another, and piecing it all together bit by bit as part of a “flow”.

The thing is, “flow” for me is more about my pesky lack of resistance to short-term interference. This can happen when you get hit in the head a lot – like I have been. You get distractable and can’t sustain attention. Your mind knows it wants to focus on one thing at a time, but your brain just ain’t feelin’ it. It’s not just that it ain’t feelin’ it — it’s literally incapable of dealing with it. It just can’t.

My own resistance to short-term interference is almost in the single-digit percentile. It’s really, really bad. As in, 90″ of the people in the world are better at resisting disruption from interference, than I am. It’s not that I don’t want to — I do. It’s just that the wiring in my brain has gotten a bit frayed from all those concussions / mild TBIs, and it doesn’t light up as well as it might otherwise.

So, what’s the solution? Clearly, I need to come up with some approach that lets me function. I can’t go through life jumping from one thing to the next.

And this past weekend, I made some headway on things.

By realizing — after looking at my List O’ Things To Do — that I was never going to make progress, if I kept letting one thing trump another. I just needed to buckle down, make some choices, and Do That One Thing.

As purely as I could.

So, I did. And today I have an actual finished project under my belt.

And that’s pretty cool – not to mention a relief.

Happy Monday, everyone. Onward.

 

 

 

 

From good, to … where?

More quandary… I woke up early again today. I think I’m just jazzed about having extended time off, and all the ideas I normally don’t have the time to really dig into are pushing at the edges of my thought process.

They’re like neglected children — or puppies — all clamoring for attention.

What to do?

Well, first, I need to realize that this is a really good problem to have. A lot of people never figure out just what they want to do with their lives. I know what I want to do, and I’m doing it.

I just need to figure out how to make the most of it — and also get support from others to keep doing it. I spend a whole lot of time researching and writing and publishing, yet so far, the majority of the support has been motivational, moral support. I’m not knocking that — far from it. The “emotional paycheck” (as they call it) has been hugely important to me.

The thing is, emotions don’t really pay the bills, and I’ve gotta do that. So, I spent the lion’s share of my time working jobs that will get me money, so I can keep up this work… keep it going. And do more.

The other thing that’s kind of throwing me off, is that I’ve gotten into a pretty good space with my life. Sure, I still have issues that make my days “interesting”, but they’re manageable. I’ve figured out how to either ameliorate them or work around them or just plain ignore them and move along with my life. All the energy and time and focus I spent on identifying my issues, addressing them, coming up with new strategies and techniques, etc., etc.  …. well, it’s all paid off. And I’m in a really competent space right now (when I’m not mouthing off to police officers and managers at work, anyway).

And now where do I go?

I mean, seriously. I’ve felt like I was barely breaking even, for most of my 50 years. I’ve always had the sense that I was playing catch-up… and I wasn’t catching up very fast.

Now that I have the sense that I AM caught up, what do I do with myself?

If all you’re doing for your entire life, is trying to break even, and your whole life is geared towards laying low and minimizing risk, how can you transition to stepping out and above and beyond, when you no longer have to be chasing an ever-elusive goal?

If all your life you’re geared towards keeping things from blowing up, what do you do with yourself when you don’t have to be on constant guard? What do you do with all the energy that’s been spent on moment-by-moment damage control for so many years, when you’ve managed to achieve that level of control at a higher level?

And how do you keep yourself from imploding or going supernova from all the energy that comes up, when you’re not in constant fight-flight mode?

That there’s the question I’m wrangling with, this weekend. I have a lot of things I want to do, and that’s great. And in addition, I need to get used to the idea of moving forward into the unknown — and NOT having it all blow up in my face.

Well, this certainly keeps things interesting.

Onward.