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 Each day feels new, and my memory of the one before is faint. I’m learning to adapt. |
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In September 2019, a seizure revealed a lime-sized meningioma pressed against my hippocampus—the part of the brain that governs memory and language. The doctors said it was benign, but benign didn’t mean harmless. Surgery removed the tumor, and three days later I opened my eyes to a new reality. I could walk, I could talk, but when I looked at my wife, her name was gone. I called her Precious—the only word I could find. A failure of memory, yet perhaps the truest name of all. Recovery has been less cure than re-calibration. Memory gaps are frequent. Conversations vanish. I had to relearn how to write, letter by halting letter. My days are scaffold by alarms, notes, and calendars. When people ask how I am, I don’t list symptoms or struggles. I simply say, “Seven Degrees Left of Center.” It’s not an answer—it’s who I’ve become. |
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. |
| There's a shift happening that I almost didn't notice. The learning curves are changing. Then: Climbing Mountains In the early days after brain surgery, every new piece of information felt like scaling a cliff face. Steep, exhausting, requiring every bit of concentration I could muster. I'd learn something in the morning and by afternoon it would be gone—not just fuzzy, but completely erased, like I'd never encountered it at all. The curve was brutally steep. I'd climb and climb, making progress inch by inch, only to wake up the next day back at the bottom. Every day was starting over. Every conversation was reintroduction. Every task required relearning from scratch. My daily notes weren't just helpful—they were essential survival tools. Without them, I had no bridge between yesterday and today. Break the habit of reading them, and I'd lose not just the details but entire days. Now: Rolling Hills Something's different lately. The curves are still there—I still have to learn and relearn—but they're not as steep anymore. They're leveling out into something more manageable, more forgiving. I'm remembering more. Not perfectly, not like before the surgery, but more than last year. More than six months ago. The information is starting to stick, at least some of it, at least sometimes. I still forget things. I still rely on my daily notes, my systems, my external memory. But now when I relearn something, there's often a flicker of recognition. A sense of "I've seen this before" even if I can't quite place when or where. The struggle is less. The exhaustion isn't as overwhelming. The learning curves are leveling out. The Difference Before, learning felt like pushing a boulder uphill—constant effort with constant backsliding. Now, it feels more like walking a path I've walked before. Still work, still attention required, but familiar work. The terrain is gentler. I don't know if this is permanent improvement or just a good stretch. Brain recovery isn't linear, and I've learned not to make predictions. But right now, in this moment, I can see the difference between then and now. The curves are leveling out. The memory is holding on a little longer. The struggle is easing, bit by bit. That's not nothing. That's progress. And after five years of climbing steep mountains every single day, I'll take rolling hills any time. |
| It strikes without warning. Yesterday, my faithful coffee pot burbled with promise. Today, it has other plans—it does nothing, nothing but betrayal. In the back of the pantry it sits: a jar of instant coffee. No expiration date in sight. But the dust tells a story. A sad story. I unscrew the lid and stare at the freeze-dried crystals. They look less like coffee and more like aquarium gravel. Still, desperate times demand desperate measures. The Denial I try to convince myself it can’t be that bad. People drink this stuff on camping trips, in hotel rooms, even in office breakrooms where dreams go to die. Surely, I can survive one cup. Then Bargaining I reach for the spice rack. Cinnamon? Nutmeg? Cocoa powder? If I add enough extras, maybe I won’t notice the taste. Maybe it’ll pass as Starbucks. Just another pipe dream. Finally Acceptance The first sip hits like a plot twist I should’ve seen coming. Thin. Bitter. A flavor that whispers, “I was almost coffee once.” I swallow anyway, survival. A bad cup of coffee still beats no coffee at all. And instant coffee, for all its faults, is loyal. It may be dusty. It may be sad. But it showed up when the coffee pot failed. Freeze-dried disappointment? Absolutely. But also resilience in a jar. And on mornings when betrayal is an empty pot, I’ll take what I can get. Because sometimes, survival tastes like instant coffee. |
| Rewired: Five Years After Five years ago, surgeons removed a brain tumor. Five years later, this is as healed as my brain will get—and I've learned to work with what that means. The unexpected gift: fewer distractions. My brain processes differently now. I see, smell, hear more clearly. When I write, I describe more because I genuinely perceive more. The noise that used to clutter my attention is simply... gone. But healing isn't simple. Memory issues block my creative process in ways they never did before. I can describe a scene with startling clarity, then forget the plot thread I was following. I can capture the exact shade of evening light but lose track of my character's motivation. So I've adapted. I lean on AI to help format my thoughts, to bridge the gap between what I perceive and what I can organize on the page. This brings mixed emotions—I know some writers are completely against using AI. For me, it's become a necessary tool, helping translate my enhanced perception into coherent prose when my changed brain struggles with structure. This is my reality now: seeing more clearly, remembering less reliably, writing differently than I ever have before. It's not the writing life I expected, but it's the one I'm living. And somehow, despite everything—or maybe because of it—I'm still here, still creating, still finding ways to get the stories out. New neural pathways, new creative paths. Both harder and clearer than before. |
A few days ago, a tree limb caught my left arm and left me with a 14-inch cut. My first thought? "It's just another scar." I was surprised by that reaction until I understood why it came so naturally. My body already carries a bigger story—a horseshoe-shaped scar around my ear from brain surgery. That mark represents the scariest chapter I've lived through so far. I've learned that scars aren't marks of damage. They're proof of healing. Each one is evidence that I survived something that tried to stop me. My brain surgery scar taught me I'm stronger than I thought. This new arm scar is teaching me that strength can become familiar. What once felt impossible now feels manageable. What once felt terrifying now feels like Tuesday. I've discovered that resilience isn't something you're born with. It's something you build, one experience at a time. Each challenge I survive adds to my capacity for the next one—not because I become numb, but because I develop trust in my ability to heal and adapt. The words "just another" might sound dismissive, but I've found they're actually profound. They represent hard-won wisdom. I'm not minimizing this injury—I'm placing it in context. I have the tools for this. I've done harder things. My arm is healing nicely. In a few weeks, it'll join my collection. Two marks, two stories, countless reminders that I'm tougher than I look. And if another scar finds its way to me someday? "It's just another scar." What scars tell your story of resilience? How has surviving one challenge changed how you face the next ones? |
| It is easy to get caught up in a daily grind. The daily pattern of completing a checklist of tasks. There is a purpose for the list, for the effort needed to make it through each new day. Sometimes I need to be reminded. I took a break from reading and writing my daily notes. I really needed the break, but I shouldn't have done that. Now, I am a little lost. Sometimes I forget that I forgot what I have forgotten. I know that probably doesn't make sense. That is okay, it doesn't always make sense to me. I have to remind myself that I have brain damage that causes memory loss. My daily notes aren't just habit—they're how I hold onto yesterday, last week, last month. When I stopped reading them, I lost more than the routine. I lost the days themselves. This isn't about being forgetful. It's about needing systems that work, and the consequences of breaking them. The notes create a bridge between who I was yesterday and who I am today. Without them, each morning starts with a gap. Not just "What did I do?" but "Who was I?" The checklist isn't busy work. It's proof that I existed, proof that things happened, proof that I had thoughts worth keeping. The break was necessary. The consequences are real. Both things can be true. Today I write a note. Tomorrow I will read it. The system rebuilds itself one day at a time. |
| I ask that question every day. Writing is the best therapy I have found for my brain. Well, puzzles seem to help also. However, I sometimes forget to write on certain days. This morning, I am ensuring to get my words in. What am I writing? A story about the seven deadly sins. The exercise is to stay in 3rd person limited POV. Not an easy task, but a lot of fun working everything out. The coffee is hot, and the story awaits. Have a great day and keep writing. |
| I’m a bit of a pantser when it comes to writing. Yesterday, in full pantser mode, I got completely lost in the story, not in a good way. One would think I should know better. But, remembering to remember is something I am still working on. Regardless, I think the basic storyline is still good. I need to practice some plotter skills to bring it back under control. |
| These days, I find myself waking up earlier than I used to. People say it comes with age. If that's true, maybe I can make the most of these quiet mornings. Then again, I could be a grumpy cuss all day. The odds are like flipping a coin. |
| Decaf has always struck me as coffee’s polite cousin—the one who shows up to the party dressed right but leaves before anything fun happens. It looks like coffee, smells like coffee, even pretends to be coffee, but when it comes to the punchline… nothing. No spark. No buzz. Just brown water with good intentions. Like decaf, dreams without courage look promising but deliver nothing real. And that’s exactly what a dream without courage feels like. You can picture it, plan it, daydream it, even talk about it as if it’s already brewing. But unless you stir in courage—that jittery, heart-thumping, “oh no, I’m really doing this” kind of energy—it stays flat. Safe. Decaffeinated. Courage is the caffeine in every real dream. It’s the thing that takes you from imagining to moving, from someday to today. And yes, it might make you shaky. It might make your heart race. But it also wakes you up to your own life. But if you actually want your dream to carry you forward? Skip the decaf. Decide today—where can you add courage and take one bold step toward your dream? A dream without courage is just decaf. Don’t just imagine—choose boldness. Take action and taste the difference. |
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Sending prayers for continued improvement and recovery 
