Monthly Archives: June 2014

Feeling Very Uncomfortable

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I have been trying to develop a better understanding of the blog software. As I do so, I rapidly become overwhelmed. I attempt to read the relevant technical material and it does not click. I study the same text again, and again, and it still does not take. I begin feeling very uncomfortable and I start to back away from the work I am attempting to perform.

This worries me.

In the past, in the info-tech sphere, I would totally devour technical information, readily grok it, and have no difficulty in moving forward with the implementation. This was true back when I was teaching myself a new programming language. It was true when learning a new software application. It was true when I worked for Gargantua in the global information factory. The customer wants support on some exotic new technology? No problem! I would just dive in and solve the issue.

Now I appear to become lost, or severely challenged, when making an equivalent attempt. I am trying to interact with one of the easiest to use, most widely adopted, open source software packages available. This is software with training wheels! It is software with all the sharp edges removed! Surrounded with lots of thick padding to protect the user from his own actions. Despite working on a platform with excellent ease of use, and a clear, straightforward UI, I continue to encounter problems. When I seek out additional technical resources, I encounter a similar set of problems. I have been working on these issues for several weeks now. And I acknowledge having made the same attempt months earlier, an attempt abandoned in frustration.

The software itself readily accommodates text input. Creating a blog post is not an issue. Making a post is a very straightforward task and amounts to little more than copying in some text, and pushing a button. Voila! All is done.

But I am attempting to dive deeper into the back end, to get under the hood, so to speak, and acquire a more comprehensive technical understanding. And, when I make this attempt, I quickly hit a wall. I become overwhelmed and discouraged; this is followed by an embarrassed retreat.

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I have been mulling this issue over to get a better fix on it.

I do not believe this is due to any further deterioration in my abilities. I think it has something to do with the level of complexity involved. I have the sense that I am able to operate in a few limited areas. Within those specific contexts, I am able to perform to a reasonable standard. When I seek to extend my operational boundaries beyond a narrow comfort zone, I easily become overwhelmed.

At some level there has been an improvement. One example is found in writing. I am able to hammer out a decent batch of prose. In some instances, I surprise myself by the quality of what I have written; I have not previously engaged in producing this form of written material. I believe I can detect an improvement in my skills from the first few months of the blog, up to today.

My photography has also improved, but for a different reason. With photography, I abandoned some sophisticated techniques. These techniques were not required to produce images for the web. With photography, the improvement has come from a relaxation of standards, or from embracing standards appropriate to the output medium.

Both writing and photography are long term skill sets. If my understanding of brain injury is correct, then well adapted procedural skills are rarely impacted by brain injury.

I am going to let this issue sit for a while, and see if I develop any further insight.

 

 

 

 

Thoughts on Waking

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I do not want to wake. There is a strong wish to continue with the sleep state. Today, I lack any memory of my dreams. When I do remember dream content, it always concerns aspects of an active past, those periods in which I had no injury. My thoughts on waking this morning are that I have a powerful wish to resume an uninjured state. The only way I can easily facilitate that return is via a dream state.

I realize also that my time horizon has shrunk. It is now so compressed it includes only the immediate present. Before the injury, I had a long term outlook. I was planning for a future retirement, I was actively engaged in developing activities that I might pursue as enjoyable interests, and as sources of supplemental income.

Since the injury, my time horizon has contracted to the few hours of the immediate day. In fact it has shrunk to an even smaller dimension. My focus is not just on getting through today, my focus is on the project that confronts me in the immediate now. This is part of the fixation on the blog. I sit here writing this draft post and my sole goal is to reach the end of this sentence, to arrive at the end of the paragraph, to complete a reasonably interesting post.

Beyond this writing activity, there is a dim awareness of major events such as my next scheduled visit to my doctor. I am enclosed within the immediacy of an endless today,  an all encompassing now, punctured only by next week’s doctor visit. Beyond this lies nothing. I once conceived of a future that I should strive to achieve, or to protect. I organized my daily affairs around this vision. It would inform all undertakings, described a set of goals which shaped my day to day activity.

Today, I lack any conception of the future. My chief goal is to get through the day without screwing up, messing up, loosing the car, or performing some other involuntary act of stupid forgetfulness.

I had other thoughts on waking. I realized that I had been involved in a wide variety of projects, and activities. None of these interests appear to have survived the injury. These are the few I can remember this morning:

Thoughts on Waking  – Adventure Cooking

I eat. Therefore I have had a long term interest in good cuisine; Mediterranean food, Asian food, Mexican food, Norman food, the food of Emilia Romagna, Scot’s oatcakes, Wakame, sourdough, hummus, and everything in between. Before the injury, I would spice up the menu by opening a cookbook at random, searching for an interesting dish, making a list of the required ingredients, and then searching them out. Then, as my form of a special Sunday dinner, I would cook and enjoy the meal.

The recipe typically called for ingredients enough for four or five persons. I would take the leftovers, parcel them out among single serve ceramic food containers and freeze them. One of these portions then became my 2:00 AM meal at the information factory.

This interest ceased with the accident. I was not even aware that it had come to an end. This insight has been triggered by last week’s discovery of a fridge chock full of exotic condiments and ingredients, all of them left untouched since the date of the accident. I am now in the process of disposing of these stale, spoiled, antique food items.

I have also recently become aware of my trove of cookbooks. There are several shelves full of them, a collection started when at university (a very tattered copy of one of Elizabeth David’s books. A hefty copy of How to Cook a Wolf. A well stained introduction to Lebanese food). None of these have been touched since the injury.

Thoughts on Waking  – Income Supplements

In order to stay active in retirement, and contemplating the possibility of generating a supplemental income, I had embarked on the creation of a set of photo books. I had plans for a small publishing business, and did a great deal of work on potential revenue streams, and the type of books I wished to produce. Break even points, pro-forma financials, profit margin calculations  —  all of these issues were addressed in a series of digital files, files I have not encountered since the accident. I have no idea where they are.

I had gathered images for use in the creation of a set of sample books. This work was underway prior to the accident and I attempted to continue with it. It quickly became problematic as I failed to remember the required processing steps and the various actions I needed to perform. I tried to manage these deficits by keeping incredibly detailed notes on every action taken, but gave this up when I realized that I was constantly introducing transposition errors. These rendered the documentation useless as a performance guide. The book projects withered on the vine. I did manage to complete a few samples and I gave these to one of my doctors as a small token of my immense gratitude for her assistance.

Thoughts on Waking  –  Art Projects

Prior to the injury, I had reactivated an early interest in drawing and painting. I purchased art materials, and brushes, and spent considerable time experimenting with different techniques and media. This came to a complete stop with the accident. I continue to come across residual evidence of this activity. I throw it out.

I have been up now for a few hours and have spent most of that time writing these notes. When I woke this morning I had a series of insights. The fresh perspective of these thoughts on waking motivated me to exit the bed and complete a record before the thoughts vanished back into the dark silence from whence they came.

It has now been more than three uninterrupted hours at the keyboard. I am encountering difficulties as, in writing these words, I have come to recognize the enormity of the change that has taken place. I had no real sense of this until now. This moment.

 

 

 

 

Constant Unease

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I have a sense of constant unease. This arises from a profound distrust of myself. I am overwhelmed by the sense that I cannot trust me, cannot trust my sense perceptions, that I am enclosed by a world of epiphenomena that may, or may not, be congruent with physical reality. I have no clear way of distinguishing the two, or of identifying my mis-perceptions.

The truth comes later, always later. And it is this constant delay, this continual discovery of my inability to perform normal, accepted tasks, that I find so unsettling.

And it is this sense of being unsettled, of being disconnected from both the world and myself, of somehow being suspended in an ethereal and confusing space between the two, that propels me to write. I write to pacify and calm my worries. I write out of the unspoken belief that I will obtain clarity, that through the act of writing I will achieve a union of the two worlds that now appear to be drifting so far apart.

This unease extends to the act of writing itself, a growing doubt over the ability of words to stitch my world back together. There is a budding sense of the futility of my efforts. I step back and wonder what in the heck am I doing? What is it I seek to accomplish with my manifold lists and these thousands of words?

The quick reply is that I am working diligently to become “better.” A more reasoned response forces the acknowledgement that there is no “better.” There exists only what I presently am and that it is imperative that I learn to accommodate myself to this diminished sense of me. I must teach myself to be senile and incompetent. This I refuse to do.

This year I will start my 63rd year on this planet. Sixty three years of forcing air into my lungs, of peering around corners, of sniffing the air. Sixty three years of learning about life and what it means to experience a conscious mind encased in a frail human form riven with a thousand combustible animal appetites.

If there is any one element that might serve to define what it is to be human, it must be found in our sense of aspiration, our wanton hunger for something more, slightly better, improved, new.

After 63 years of aspiration how does one learn to “lie down, accept being whacked in the head, and contemplate your new found imbecility?”

How does one do that?