I recently searched for a post regarding a text entry metric. In the course of that search, I located the TBI Inventory, Section 1 of which is included here. This event is reported in the post  Blogging and Avoidance  together with links to the other sections of the TBI Inventory. Sections 2 to 6 of the Inventory have been reviewed in prior posts. There was no prior post for Section 1. It appeared to have been completely omitted, or lost, or never created.

Then, while opening the WordPress draft of another post, I found a draft version of the Section 1 analysis. The tabular data had been entered and scored but there was no associated discussion, or comment. The original scoring would have been entered at the time of the original draft which WordPress reports as being entered on August 31st 2013. All of my comment was added today, May 19th 2014.

Both items in this first section show an improvement between 2012 and 2013. I suspect the 2012 Item 1.32 response is associated with my prior attempts to flee supermarkets due an inability to handle the noise. I now shop in the off hours when I know the store will be quiet.

I experience greater amounts of irritability today than previously. This is relatively new. Since I have training in customer service handling I am able to recognize when I feel an impulse to act out of irritability and I constrain myself.

I have recently been to a dentist. My teeth have sustained much more damage than I was first aware of. They should have been attended to earlier. Part of the reason for not doing so was the belief that I would be covered by the insurance claim. I did not wish to incur significant out of pocket expense while attempting to stretch out my retirement savings.

The memory problems continue. See the prior three posts for a description of a recently discovered memory problem. I would today rate this item as a 3.5, or even as a 4.0 due to its potential impact.

Difficulty finding words appears to have improved since 31 August 2013, the date on which I entered the 2013 data. I remember having particular problems with compound words: I would remember the Ernest but not the Hemingway. I still experience this problem but my sense is that it is less of an obstacle than it once was. The work on the blog may take the credit for the improvement.

I feel I am better able to communicate thoughts and feelings. If I read posts from the start of the blog and compare them to recent posts I believe there is a noticeable positive improvement. I believe I have become more self-aware and the blog is a vehicle that has assisted with this progress.

I do tend to repeat the same activities. In a prior post, I postulated that 90% of my activities involve cooking, photography, walking, and blogging. When I become upset I will retreat into these activities. There is less of the repetitive performance of the same action which was noted immediately after the accident.

I continue to have difficulty executing or doing things. I can get things done but I take an inordinate amount of time. I have the hope that the constant application of effort will result in a speed improvement but any such improvement appears to be very slow, if not glacial. I have an entire range of projects and activities that I have not engaged in since the accident and I am now proceeding to throw these things out as it appears very unlikely that I will ever reconnect with them. I am uncomfortable doing new things or extending outside my normal range. I need to constantly recheck what I do and then double check to make sure that I checked; I do not trust myself. I seek to avoid change in my daily routine. Any trip to a new dentist, or other new location, becomes an expedition project. I spent a day planning and preparing for a day trip to Montréal. I become very uncomfortable if I travel on new routes in the city and avoid this if at all possible. I refuse to park in other than my pre-established standard stops. I have 30 years of programming and PC experience, including 12 years in advanced tech support, but get flustered making changes to my own equipment. There are things that need to get fixed but I just defer this due less to complexity than a recognition of my own inadequacies. I have tried to brush up on my html, css3 and js skills. These are relatively simple programming languages  (I used to program in x86 Assembly which is a beast)  but I have difficulty in simply updating my skills. Everything I do is done slowly. If I attempt to operate at normal speed, I either become frustrated to the point I want to throw things, or I make so many errors I may not have bothered to start. In just this post I have made multiple errors and have entirely omitted chunks of text (an error I just found and corrected.)

This is awkward as I am tending to re-rate my 2013 responses based on my current response. On Item 1.17 Difficulty solving problems I would today rate that as a 2. I have the ability to solve problems; I am just much slower than I was. I have also come to rely on the fact that if I attempt a problem and am unable to resolve it, that it is likely that my mind will eventually present a full, or partial solution. This was first noted with the quiz puzzles presented by Dr L.

The prior three posts all address  Item 1.18 Difficulty understanding spoken instructions. This may be influenced by my hearing loss since the accident and an inability to discriminate spoken words from background noise. It may also be due to a failure to remember just what was said.

I also believe that I am showing improvement in abstraction. I believe the blogging activity is helping me in handling conceptual problems. Today I would rate this as a 2.5.

Mental rigidity remains a sticking point. In the real world I continue to follow the same set of routines and travel the same routes. With photography I appear to have forgotten my prior routines and this has led to an improvement in image making. With blogging I experience my writing as being more playful. Today I would rate this as 2.5.

I am not sure on what basis I scored Item 1.21 Difficulty handling work requirements. I am fairly certain that were I to attempt to perform my prior work for the computer company, I would have great difficulty in doing so. That job required the ability to multi-task which I no longer have, it required an ability to control frustration and irritation which I now have difficulty with, it required an ability to recall informal data from months previously, a skill I no longer have, it required an ability to engage in constant learning which is something I continue to have trouble with. I would leave this item scored at 4.

On Item 1.15 Difficulties doing simple math, it is noted that the first attempt to total the scores associated with this inventory was attempted manually and it was incorrect. All later scores have been tabulated using built in spreadsheet functions. I use a calculator at all times.

I am not sure I understand what is meant by Item 1.19 Deficits in sequencing information or by Item 1.29 Decreased capacity for reality testing.

I know that I had some problem with speech when I first saw Dr H. I cannot remember where I encountered the note on this. I suspect it was in the Accident Log. Today I would score Item 1.14 as not observed.

There is no change in the items in this section.