After upgrading my cell phone, I have been having lots of problems with re-learning. Everything has changed. I have become a phone duffus.

There is a distinct demarcation between areas of competence and incompetence. When I venture outside established routine, it is like slamming into a brick wall. I experience difficulty, have an increased level of frustration, feel completely incompetent. This is my variant of operant conditioning. I exit my comfort zone, end up hitting my own nose with a big stick, and beat a quick retreat back into familiar cognitive territory.

The skills demonstrating the best retention are those skills I have been engaged in the longest. I remain very capable in the application of logic. The difficulty comes in converting my entire life into a series of syllogisms. This is very difficult to do. I stay awake at night as I make repeated attempts to achieve this goal.

I appear to perform well when cooking and feeding myself. A basic food routine has been established. This derives from the fact of a limited budget. Regardless, it works. I also do well when it comes to kitchen upkeep (the fridge needs a cleaning). The sink is kept clear and I think I am OK in this department.

Word smithing and photography also appear to be OK. I have been doing photography since I was 10 (?), perhaps earlier, so that is a well ingrained skill.

Dealing with the new phone has been a bit of a shock. I expected to find the same feature set as on the old phone but with the advantage of a bigger screen area and stylus input. The underlying OS has changed significantly and this was not anticipated.

The outcome leaves me with a sense of total incompetence, embarrassed, perplexed, uncertain, distrustful of my own perceptions.

When I try and push through and achieve mastery, I simply encounter an increased level of frustration and a sense of the impossibility of what I am trying to achieve. And all that I seek to achieve is a return to my state before the injury.