02:51:38

Unable to sleep. Somewhat surprised at this as I developed fatigue headache due to the resumption of the TAQ submission process. Went to bed relatively early and have been lying awake with this uncomfortable sense of being stopped on a tightrope suspended high above some chasm. This is not a dream state. It is my perception of my world as I lie in the dark attempting to summon sleep.

This evening I reviewed the last post. I am now convinced that Dr D was attempting to help me reflect on the random imponderables of life in the attempt to assist me in coming to an acceptance of the injury. I interpreted her remarks as a request for information about existentialist philosophy! I gave her a short lecture on Camus. It has taken almost eight days to correctly understand something communicated to me by a person I know relatively well.

A similar problem cropped up in the context of the Concussion Research Group. Some fund raising materials were provided to the group, I read them, miss-interpreted the context and the meaning, and submitted a critique which was woefully in error. Once my error of interpretation was pointed out, I was left aghast at my ability to make such a total faux-pas.

The sense of being out in space on a tightrope is likely due to the resumption of the TAQ work. The work requires I construct a coherent argument and avoid the introduction of error. I must also correctly assimilate and synthesize a body of material ranging from my experience, excerpted snippets of various laws, coupled with elements of the documents provided in the Liste des Documents Fournis Par L’intimée. These various demands leave me uncomfortable, out of my comfort zone, forced into extended slow deliberation on each successive topic. I am uncertain how exactly to characterize the effort. I do know it leaves me unsettled, uncomfortably aware of my deficits, and forces a redoubling of my efforts to produce a worthwhile final output. There is the sense that at any moment the project may blow up in my face. Or that I will tumble from the wire.

This brings up the philosophic question of how a person with cognitive deficit can arrive at a full awareness of that deficit? The deficit recreates the world as if viewed via a fun-house mirror; everything is slightly distorted, out of focus, indistinct. I encounter the world, and my own behavioural response, through a pair of coke bottle lenses. I must make sense of the distortions without the benefit of any prior awareness of the true shape of each form.

Bad description, I know. Not sure how else to characterize it. Stopped on a tightrope pretty much sums it up.