Too ManyDead Brain Cells Are Not Conducive To Good Writing

Wow this is hard..

It's 10:00 am on Saturday morning. I'm starting to put together my first blog post in two years and I'm sitting here with a brain feeling like it's filled with molasses. Thoughts that should flow, or at least dribble out are only coming out in slow sticky drips.

This is not new by any means. For years now I've struggled during the process of writing.
Losing thoughts or my entire train of thought as soon as I encounter the next descriptive word that's playing hide-and-seek with my brain, or being unable to remember how the punctuation or grammar should go.

Part of the process to deal with this has been going into the thesaurus and searching through sometimes multiple (here's a good example of struggling for a word that should take seconds to decide on but may take 5-20 minutes now, and may lead to me forgetting what I was originally trying to say. "tangents" is the only word that came to me but I'm sure that there's another word that's much better, that fits what I'm describing. What I need is an app where I can describe what I'm trying to say and have it produce some choices for me. I seem to recall something like that where you could type in some words and it would kind of distill your input, hopefully providing the word or phrase you were looking for.). See what I did there? In the process of trying to explain, one thing led to another, and the next thing you know 30+ minutes have passed. 
Tangents was an appropriate word. I want to go from A to B but along that path I end up taking multiple side trips, and when searching for words in a thesaurus the words are all hyperlinked so I might open up multiple browser tabs from the original word, then the same thing can happen from any one of those other words. To make it more distracting, sometimes I just get interested in some of the other words I encounter!

Now many writers will not worry about fine tuning things in the first draft and just concentrate on getting their thoughts down without restricting the flow. In my case I would likely never get back to finish them because I can't follow any structured, organized schedule. I've learned that the way I get things done (when possible) is to complete them in one shot, and if that means working on a blog post all day & into the night that's what I have to do. The times I do end up working into the night have a way of ending sloppily though. Fatigue sets in and that's that. It would be so nice to be able to pick up where I left off the next day or even have multiple projects going but these days I consider myself fortunate to even feel like writing (at least more than 140 characters at a time).

Writing, in part, has been a way for me and so many others to achieve a small level of control during stressful times. My need for things to be correct, lined up and in order detract from that control because I realize that my writing skills, specifically my grammar and punctuation (and likely other areas that I'm not even aware of) are sloppy and are much lower than I would like them to be.
I simply have lost the ability to learn anything new (and retain it) unless it's something I can apply on a daily basis, and since there are very few things I do regularly these days learning new skills is rare.
It would be so helpful if I had someone to proofread and edit my writing, however ever since my father, then mother died within a short time of each other, I have lived a very solitary life and do everything alone. The whole technology revolution (at least since the desktop computer & Internet) has been something I've tried to learn on my own (not having any 'tech' friends that I could ask questions or collaborate with). I did fairly well keeping up with most of the advances and even authored a consumer-level security (alerts & advice) blog in a section of my local paper the Concord Monitor. But things like recurring depression and family matters started eroding my memory and intellectual abilities to the point that I wasn't able to do all the work necessary to keep up with all the news.
Without having someone 'live' to ask questions to about punctuation or grammar (as opposed to websites like "Grammar Girl"), or someone to check/correct things, I kind of just ended up doing what I can with what I've got.

I almost completely stopped writing anything for a while during the time of their deaths. I was diagnosed with Diabetes, Sleep Apnea and a few other things. Those things, combined with pre-existing mental health and neurological problems, all the medications and their side-effects, along with the physical effects of disorders like apnea, high cholesterol and diabetes have had over the years, conspired to starve my brain cells of oxygen. 
Lately, while my diabetes and cholesterol is under better control than it has been in years, the Sleep Apnea has increased to a scary level. My brain (and other organs) is being starved of oxygen at night and the daytime starts out with me being very spaced out, not getting much clearer over the day.
It's now 1:41 pm and as I was writing that last sentence my mind just took another trip into the void for a few seconds..

Despite all that I somehow wrote these 955 words in the last four hours..

I will try to do better than one post every two years. Next will be a new post over at The Chesterfield Dispatch (with lots of photos and possibly video in the future!).

Thanks for reading.

A Long Winter's Nap

ZZzzzzzzzz -------------

Napping is what I seem to be doing the majority of the time these days. Not by choice mind you, but finding the energy and motivation to do much of anything has been a struggle over the past months.

As evidenced by my previous post my cognitive abilities are much less than they were even at the beginning of this year. Composing posts used to take a long time, mainly because I have a hard time coming up with the precise words I want to use (in my mind I know what I want to say but the word is maddeningly elusive), but now the whole process has slowed greatly.

Still, every once in a while I'm sharper, I have energy, and actually feel like getting things done and/or getting out of my apartment. When it happens I try to take advantage of it and get all the chores like cleaning (vacuuming, dusting, laundry, kitchen & bath) done. Before the effects of diabetes complicated things I would do a lot of writing during these periods, but since then it's like someone opened up my brain and poured molasses inside (this post took me over 3 hrs to complete).

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I'm posting this because I feel like I need to let people know why my activity has been even slower than usual (and more disjointed) and kind of depressing. I really want to post a bunch of much more positive and interesting things, honest! 

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It's funny (not really, but..) when I lay down for a nap my mind starts thinking about all kinds of things. It's much more focused than when I'm up and about. But if I try to write down notes or even put it on tape I can't get past the first one! The process of doing that seems to disrupt the original thoughts (like a computer log set so low that it 'overwrites' itself). If there was a way of recording thoughts (passively) directly from my brain it would be such a help. I'd be willing to bet that in the future it will be possible, and by the time that happens getting it from a clinical/research setting to an affordable consumer device will be the easy part.

Now that I think about it, by the time [that] is possible scientists should have a much clearer picture of how brain chemistry works, hopefully developing much more effective treatments for things like depression, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, etc.. Perhaps some combination of gene and neurogenesis treatment..

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So now, tomorrow I go to talk about changing primary care physician and working on a more effective personal care plan (is that what it's called?) between health care providers and myself.

I need some kind of support 'cause all this is really hard to accomplish and deal with on my own..... I don't even have a pet

NOTE TO SELF: Make your next post much more positive!

Oh yeah, I'm "Still Alive and Well ..."

Glucose meters

Yes I'm still here.. Despite the recent diagnosis of diabetes mellitus (type 2), the finger pricking, the insulin injections (& medication Metformin), and the associated change in lifestyle, I'm adapting .... slowly.

From a starting point of my 'A1C' at 15% and a blood glucose of 586, I'm now down to 8.2% (A1C) and my morning/fasting glucose measurements averaging 110. In fact just recently I had my first *low* fasting measurement of 67 (which I quickly got to 100 with a small glass of grapefruit juice).

The [hyperglycemic] effects on my brain & eyes have returned to "normal" (a matter of  opinion, I know..), and that's a relief! For a while I couldn't see well enough to do much of anything, and my brain was so *fuzzy* that I didn't feel like doing anything anyway. I've even regained some color in my toes although they're still constantly cold and cramp all the time (btw, is there such a thing as an electric blanket for just the foot of the bed?). I don't like wearing socks when I sleep, but I don't want to use a full-sized electric blanket.

I've just recently started to get back to checking my Twitter feed and posting comments occasionally but I'm finding that keeping up with email, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, News etc. in addition to the new health maintenance tasks is often too much. Energy is one thing that's in short supply but I'm taking advantage of it when it's available.

I have grown to appreciate & rely on some of the many 'reminder' utilities available for the computer to keep track of bills, appointments and the like. Multiple alarm clocks help too.

One of the things I pictured in my mind when I was told that I'd have to take insulin was filling a syringe from a bottle of insulin kept in the fridge. Thankfully I was started on something called a "Flexpen", which is a pen-like device prefilled with insulin. All I have to do is screw on a tiny disposable needle and set the dosage! It's really simple. The hardest part was choosing an 'injection site' and remembering where the previous one was until I made myself a chart/grid and numbered the different locations so I could enter the location into a log.

On a less positive note, once I started researching diabetes (and my other issues like hypertension and family history of [that], depression, and Alzheimer's/dementia), the clinical research paints a fairly bleak & uncertain future. The combined 'risk factors' I have are all interconnected it seems.

I'm thinking that I definitely want to get as much accomplished as I can, while I can.. That'll be a challenge for a serious procrastinator like me! 

Thankfully my father had a saying that I've been able to embrace, especially since he passed away. "Keep smiling" (whether you feel like or not..) was something he always told me when I left his home. That and the ability to laugh at myself are so helpful in my solitary existence (and I've given myself plenty to laugh at lately).

I truly wish that the feeling of community and compassion that existed all too briefly after the attacks on 9/11 could be regained. The divisiveness and polarizing atmosphere that just seems to have grown exponentially over the years since then thanks in part to the extremists on the right and fanned by insensitive, dishonest & dangerous rhetoric spewed by the likes of Fox News-(in name only), Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, the GOP, et al..

And I'll finish that thought with the failure of (the majority of) the 'media' to have the guts to truly do their job and point out the fraud & lies from the right instead of claiming some kind of  'equivalency' between the left and right messages. Bob Cesca says it well in his "Killing the False Equivalency 'Both Sides' Meme".