10:43:45 Urge to flee the house

Very uncomfortable with what I have written here. Great urge to flee the house, to walk, and try and sort all of this out.

Problem – I am very slow

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18:04:47

Back from flee the house walk at around 1730. Nice breezy day, a scattering of sun showers and the threat of a downpour which never materialized. Since the ALS / CTE concern surfaced, my focus has become immediate and narrow. The feel of the wind against my skin, the blush of sun in the forest, the leaves heavy with raindrops, the cool wet soaking that comes with brushing through the tight openings along the trail. My focus is compact and immediate. The TAQ issues are taking place on another continent. The notion of rehabilitation is forgotten, the outcome of the legal case centuries away. I am here, my body is sensate. I drink in the sights and sounds, the smells and sensibility. All this will vanish if the diagnosis of ALS/CTE holds true. I push those thoughts from my mind and step forward into the circle of light bathing the sandy trail.

Key Realization

The posts starting with the prior post constitute a dawning self-awareness. The origins of the posts are a series of jotted, point format notes. I have since returned to those notes and corrected them, altered them from the original point form into the published material you are now reading. The process of correction for publication destroys the true time sequence of events. I wish to interject these notes created during a “flee the house” walking interlude. This retains the temporal sequence of my experience.

The key realization is the discovery of all the various interests and projects abandoned subsequent to the injury. The injury resulted in a transition from a pre-injury complex mix of interests and activities to a period in which I had zero interests, and no activities other than the search for employment.

The Mapping Project

At one of my last meetings with Dr. D, she mentioned something about a mapping project. I was unable to fully comprehend her reference. In the course of creating the space for the window replacement, I have come across a wealth of documentation associated with this project. The project’s goal was the creation of a local bicycle atlas exhibiting major urban cycle transit routes together with a series of bike tours extending outside the city. It was a form of bicycle Baedeker.

The mapping project served multiple ends. It acted as a record of my travels within and outside of the city. It promoted cycling as a positive alternative to automobile use, and offered the possibility of minor income post retirement. There were periods at work when nothing much happened. The mapping project kept me occupied and alert during those nights I waited for a customer with a problem.

It was not until this week that I realized the amount of work I had completed for the project and the resulting comprehensive body of documentation. In the aftermath of the accident, this project was forgotten along with the other projects and activities documented in the prior post and in the post subsequent to this one.