Seven Degrees Left of Center

The Book Emptied My Brain - Now What?

I finished writing about my recovery from brain surgery. "Seven Degrees Left of Center - Book" 

Well, "finished" might be too strong a word. It is a polished draft, and I realized something this morning: I'm done. Not because the book is perfect, but because I don't have anything left to say about that part of my life.

The book emptied my brain.

And now I'm sitting here thinking, 'Now what?'

I wrote the book to make sense of five years of chaos. To take the fragments of memory, the gaps, the terror of not recognizing my own thoughts, and arrange them into something coherent. Something that meant something.

It worked. I made sense of it. I found the through-line. I discovered that recovery wasn't about going back to who I was - it was about learning to navigate the world seven degrees left of center from where I started.

But here's the thing nobody tells you: when you empty your brain of the story you've been carrying, you're left with... emptiness.

Not the purposeful emptiness of healing. Not the productive emptiness of making space for something new.

Just... empty.

This is the emptiness of: I told the story. I processed the trauma. I made meaning from the chaos. And now... what?

I'm not in crisis anymore. I'm not actively recovering. I'm just... here. Living a life seven degrees left of center from where I started, with no map for what comes next.

Here's what scares me: Have I been defined by recovery for so long that I don't know who I am without it?

Now? I'm just... a guy. A guy whose brain works differently.

And I don't know what that guy does next.

Maybe that's okay. Maybe moving forward doesn't require a plan. Maybe it just requires being willing to sit in this uncomfortable space between stories and see what emerges.