Since the accident I have kept a continuous Accident Log (AL). This is used to store random observations of my behaviour, in addition to possible solutions to injury related problems. The Accident Log provides a running record of difficulties as they are encountered.

In trying to get a grip on what is bothering me, I went back to the start of February and reviewed the AL for relevant notes. This is what was found.

2016-02-01
09:39:46

Coming to the computer this morning I have a sense of the need to be brutal. The TAQ hearing may be scheduled as early as a date in March. I am not yet ready. I must focus all of my effort on completing my TAQ submissions. As I write these words I am very conscious of the fact I have a nearly completed submissions package that was targeted to a January 29th submission date. I am avoiding it. the reasons for this avoidance appear to be:

It is very, very difficult work.

It forces a confrontation with the injury in that at the 4 hour mark I will encounter fatigue and incipient headache which will become full blown headache if I proceed further. My workday is not 8 hours long, or 12 hours long, it is 4 hours long. 4 x 7 = 28 productive work hours per week.

I am slow and make a great many errors. Both these factors greatly undermine my productivity and shrink my available productive hours by at least a third. This penalty is estimated at 9.25 hours. This leaves me with 18.75 productive hours per week or 2.67 hours per day. Call it 3 hours per day.

This time may be used in one of two ways. To perform more medical research. This is both difficult and time consuming. I can do some of this in my off peak periods. But I have found that the only way that I can really grok the science is by coming to it when I am most fresh and capable.

2016-02-02
15:06:34

Search for tools was like going through the home of dead man and searching through his things. I have many past projects that were placed on hold at the time of the injury and have not been addressed since that time.

That my mind is childlike in that if something is not physically present then it does not exist.

Thought of TAQ submissions and realization that I am attempting to duplicate submissions already in train but which I have forgotten about.

That much of my presently difficulty is that I lack a cognitive picture of the task and therefore have difficulty in resuming it. When I am deep in task involvement than I am able to pick up the “breadcrumbs” of work that I was doing the night before. This helps greatly in getting me back into the project activity.

2016-02-03
09:12:06

Up at 0830. Windows covered in ice. Hugely frustrated by having to deal with the TAQ paperwork. I have all this stuff everywhere, I cannot find the items I was working on, cannot remember why I wanted to submit certain items. Have urge to throw everything and to leave for a walk but cannot as the world outside is covered in ice so I am contained here with my frustration.

12:32:19

tO GET ANYTHING DONE i must completely restrict my focus to the immediate task. What I appear to do is take all my available cognitive horsepower and focus it on the immediate taks at hand. I have become very conscious of other thoughts and intentions. When these arise they are compltely frozen out and deliberately ignored as they will remove attention from the immediate task, result in a higher error rate, and task incompletion.

My sense is that this “cogntive targeting” results in a great many other problems notably an accumulation of disorder and other essential tasks which are deferred or frozen out due to the need to complete the immediate task. In essense the need to give priority to TAQ submissions creates problems in all the other areas of my life. The only task with a higher priority than TAQ submissions is walking. Walking is undertaken in response to overwhlmening frustration that may arise within the context of creating a TAQ submission and its myriad pieces of paper which i find it very difficult ot keep track of.

It is not half past noon. I sense I am running out of cognitive steam. I am trying very hard to complete one header sheet. Then there is the cover letter and two envelopes and I am ready to transmit. I am trying to get this out today if at all possoble.

Pompeii Moments

I have had exactly this sense recently during clean-up activity. I encounter some vestige ofmy prior self and I marvel at the fact that I had such a strong degree of involvement in this prior activity, activity which now strikes me as completely foreign and unknown.

In my stumbles about the house, I ahve had this sense of investigating the house of a dead man, putting my hads on things that once belonged to him, that reflected all of his interests and worldly activity. he is now dead, and I shuffle through his belongings, insensitive to any sense of treasure or value, or emotional assocaition. It is very strange form of activity.

2016-02-08
02:24:15

Last night I developed a huge headache. Realized that I had not eaten all day. Attempted to make soup. Was too far gone to make soup. Just wanted food now. Made tuna fish sandwiches. In process dumped knife full of mayo onto the kithcen floor. Mayo everywhere.

When I become tired I become much more clumsy. I drop things, make messes. I am already operating at my limits and then I create situations that make these conditions even more adverse, create even more problems for myself.

This is very frustrating to experience. I am attempting normal fucntion, to return to the land of normality but my expiernce is telling me no, you must learn to be an old granny and adopt old granny ways and limts. The problem is that I do not wish to be an old granny.

Heavy ringing in right ear.

2016-02-13
14:23:39

I am having problems dealing with multi tasking.
I go through the file and do one thing only. Then I must comb through the file a second time and do something else. I seem to be unable to comb the file and extract to twoor more destinations at once. When I make the attempt I quickly become confused.

In reading through all of the material I find a lot of entries that describe probs.

Also screwy stuff. And things that I have totally forgotten despite the fact they occured less than a month ago. It is as if I am moving across the face of the globe within a personal time zone that contains no sesne of history.