Someone told me that every year of difficulty (to put it mildly) experienced requires a week to recover after the crap that hit the fan has been all cleaned up. My lawsuit ended 8 years, 6 months, and 3 days after the crap started flying, which means that around about now, everything should be clean and at peace once again. Hmmmm. The only problem is it took me about 4 weeks after my lawyer said “Bye” to actually take some down time. I had things to do, sites to update, people to answer, and a restlessness that would not shut up. But finally the Olympics came, and being the Olympic junkie that I am meant that strange hours and must-see events ensured I turned off the computer — except for Olympic tweeting, so I guess that’s really not a full shut down — and started on some down time. And boy, did I go for it. I stopped everything related to getting well and being functional, except for acupuncture. I cannot do without that! As one person said in the acupuncturist’s office one day, “This is my job.” He meant seeing doctors, getting treatment, taking medicine, doing anything and everything to get well, was his job. I understood. That’s what I told myself way back when I was injured and immediately started rehab. It was a way to accept the situation. But, you know, getting better sucks as a job because, frankly being sick and injured sucks. And when getting better is a slow, laborious process because of the nature of the injury, it sucks even more. I am fed up. But I’m less fed up today than I was back in August at the beginning of the Olympics when I decided enough of this job; I want quits.
I got back into “real” life slowly at the beginning of September. I went to the Toronto Zoo — if you haven’t been recently, treat yourself. And that was an impetus to pick up my camera and take photographs for the first time in awhile. I practically missed a whole season of flowers, but at least I got a chance to immortalize the animals, made more poignant by the recent deaths at the Zoo. I mulled over all my online activities and put some on the backburner, some in the round file, and some on the front burner. What a relief! I decided to brighten up my environment. As rehab told me many a time, a clutter-free, bright living space will help you function better. And it just plain makes me feel better. I’m still working on that and am already liking the results. I used to rearrange my furniture regularly, switch around artwork, paint a room. I’d forgotten how all of that can be so energizing. Back then, I could do it myself, or direct Normand. Now I gotta hire people. But that’s OK. I can still toss cushions myself!
Today, I finally admitted I need neurofeedback, that I can’t do without it, even if I was hoping after several weeks of vacay, I could. Nope. I can’t. And so today, I did an alpha session, a short one, and look, I’m blogging! For the first time in weeks, my writing juices are flowing. Photography is fun, and doesn’t take much thinking unless you’re trying to finely-tune a composition. It does take motivation, but that’s more readily available than for writing — from fellow photographers, from an event, from something catching your eye strongly enough to pick up that camera. Tweeting — with the 140-character limit — is not too hard. It’s just writing down a random thought. But blogging … blogging is much harder. It’s not only writing down thoughts, it’s putting them together, and having to then tag and categorize the resulting post. It requires internal motivation, which people with brain injuries don’t exactly have. More work. More thinking. More work. Neurofeedback makes a difference. It obviously made a difference today. It amazes me how so few want to try it.
And so I’m back. I have ideas floating around in my head. In the immediate term, I want to blog on the federal election on my blogspot blog. I continue to tweet regularly on my Twitter account. I have a ton of photos yet to upload to Flickr. Since I’m prone to photography droughts, I’m parsing them to cover those lean times. I recently started my very first Flickr group called “Caffeine Planet.” A Flickr friend encouraged me, especially since we’re both keen on coffee and chocolate, and I do have a nice collection of teas. In the longer term, I have a book I want to, need to write. But as of yet, I don’t have a writing coach like I did with Lifeliner, and that part of my brain — the part the writing coach replaced — has done absolutely no healing whatsoever. Other parts have, but not that particular executive function. What a pain. Perhaps when the universe decides it’s time, another coach will fall into my lap. That would be nice. Until then, I shall continue to hone my writing through my blogs.
