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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. |
| This morning I sat down with my coffee and told myself it was time to get back to work. I even used a very official sounding word for it. Agenda. That sounded responsible. Organized. Like a man who clearly knows what he is doing with his morning. The truth is, the last three days did not follow any kind of agenda at all. My wife decided it was time for us to get out of the house. When your wife has an idea like that, the correct response is not to reach for a calendar or a productivity chart. The correct response is to grab your keys. So we went. The writing desk stayed right where it was. The keyboard didn’t complain. The stories didn’t evaporate. They just waited patiently like they always do. Now I’m back in my chair with my coffee, trying to remember what exactly I thought I was going to accomplish today. That’s when the word agenda popped into my head again. Writers like to pretend we have those. Sometimes we do. Sometimes the real work is just sitting down, warming up the brain, and figuring out what today’s writing day is supposed to look like. In other words, sometimes the agenda is no agenda at all. Apparently the first item on today’s agenda was figuring out what the agenda is. |
| There’s something honest about a slow-start morning. The brain doesn’t spring up shouting, “Seize the day!” It rolls over, squints at the clock, and wants five more minutes and a carburetor adjustment. I picture an old truck on a cold morning. You turn the key. It coughs. Pauses. Decides if you’re serious. Then rumbles to life, reluctantly. No warning lights. No smoke. Just a polite mechanical grumble that says, “We’ll get there. Relax.” Outside, the sky is blue and pink at once, undecided on its mood. The sun stretches over the horizon, unrushed. No problem. No announcement. Just light arriving. Slow isn’t broken; it’s just warming up. I don’t need fireworks before sunrise, only a steady idle and a good cup of coffee for quality control. Not yet a good brain day. Promising, though—the engine’s catching, vibrations evening out. The road is ready, and so am I. |
| At 6:38 this morning, I realized I had actually slept. That felt like an accomplishment after last night. My brain had been chewing on growth and what I’m supposed to be doing at sixty now that the ladder I climbed for decades isn’t leaning against anything anymore. While I was thinking, I kept glancing at the guitar in the corner. My wife gave it to me last Christmas. I’ve played it once. It sits there every morning while I drink coffee and type. I try not to look at it too long. It feels like it’s waiting for me to either strum it or admit I’m intimidated by wood and strings. There was a time when I understood growth. I wore the uniform. If I were moving forward, I could see it. More rank. More responsibility. More weight on my shoulders. Growth meant pressure, and I was good at pressure. Then life hit reset. The brain tumor shut down the old dashboard. Retirement followed. Not planned. Not scheduled. Just done. And ever since, I’ve been trying to grade myself with measurements that no longer fit. How much did I accomplish? What am I building? What mountain am I climbing? When the answers feel smaller than they used to, I tell myself I’m getting dull. Safe, but dull. Like I’ve gone from mission to maintenance. But this morning it finally occurred to me: I might not be dull. I might just be running a different operating system. The old one was built for acceleration. Push harder. Do more. Carry more. This one feels different. It notices when I’m tired. It asks whether something fits before I commit to it. It values clarity over noise. The biggest change might be self-awareness. I pay attention now in ways I didn’t before. That doesn’t look impressive from the outside. There’s no medal for alignment. But maybe growth at sixty isn’t about doing more. Maybe it’s about measuring differently. The old scoreboard isn’t hanging on the wall anymore. So I guess it’s time to change the scoreboard. |
| I suspect James Bond would approve of my coffee mug. This might be how the scene would go. Bond disliked unfamiliar kitchens. They revealed too much about a man. Or too little. The room would be quiet. Early light through the window. A pot of coffee recently finished its work, the aroma competent and unsentimental. He would select the mug without hesitation. White ceramic. Sensibly weighted. No ornamental flourish. The handle wide enough for a secure grip without crowding the fingers. A practical vessel. On its side stand three cacti, properly rendered. Not comic. Not decorative in the sentimental sense. They exist as desert things do—self-contained, faintly armed. Beneath them, in unambiguous lettering: *Don’t Be a Prick.* Bond would allow himself the smallest smile. Most men require lengthy codes of conduct. Committees. Seminars. Manuals printed on glossy paper and ignored within the hour. This is efficient. He would pour the coffee. Dark. Acceptable viscosity. No dilution. Steam would rise in thin spirals. He would test the heat against his palm. Pain is information. Excess is waste. The phrase requires no interpretation. In the field, control. In conversation, restraint. In victory, silence. A man who cannot manage his temperament has no business managing a weapon. The cacti would approve without comment. Bond would drink. The first swallow corrective. The second confirming the brew worthy of repetition. He would set the mug down precisely where he found it. The instruction would remain visible. Not advice. Standard operating procedure. |
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I always wanted to be a writer. That is no secret if you’ve been following this blog. That sounded simple enough. Writers write stories. They get up early or stay up late. They stare out the window or at a blinking cursor. They drink coffee and pretend that counts as work until the words show up. That part I understood. What I didn’t think about was being an author. I didn’t even use that word for myself until I had something published. Before that, “author” felt too official. Too big. It sounded like someone who knew what they were doing. I most certainly do not. Then a story went out under my name. And suddenly it wasn’t just about writing anymore. There were edits. Decisions. Emails. Fixing small things that shouldn’t have been wrong in the first place. Waiting on feedback and pretending I wasn’t checking for it. Thinking about what comes next. Writing feels like sitting at the workbench building something. I like building stuff. Being an author feels like someone knocked on the door and asked when it will be finished. No one warned me about that shift. I thought if I could just prove to myself that I could tell a story, that would be enough. After failing English Composition more times than I care to admit, just finishing something felt like winning. But finishing isn’t the end. It’s the beginning of responsibility. That surprised me. I love the writing. The quiet. The early hours before the day starts. That part still feels like mine. The author part feels heavier. Not bad. Just heavier. Maybe this is what growing into it looks like. You don’t stop loving the fun part. You just realize there’s more attached to it than you expected. The coffee just finished brewing. So I’ll pour a cup, sit down, and write. The rest can catch up to me. |
| Level 4 headache. Not hospital bad. Just enough to make everything feel slightly off-center. Thoughts took the long way around. Light felt louder than it should. My brain started up, but it sputtered like an old pickup on a cold morning. It was working, just not willingly. And the day didn’t slow down just because I did. I had a funeral to attend. Funerals are heavy on good brain days. Yesterday I showed up with maybe seventy percent of myself and hoped that would be enough. Turns out, it was. Presence doesn’t require perfection. It just requires… presence. After lunch, I let myself power down. No heroics. No “push through and power on.” Just water, quiet, dim light, and letting my brain cool off. Self-care at this stage of life looks less like bubble baths and more like respecting the warning lights on the dashboard. We write a lot about good brain days. The sharp ones. The clear ones. The mornings when ideas come easily, and coffee tastes like momentum. Yesterday wasn’t that. It was a steady-the-ship kind of day. The older I get — and the further I get from the tumor — the more I understand that not every day is meant to be productive or profound. Some days are maintenance days. Yesterday, I did what needed to be done. Then I rested. That’s not weakness. That’s wisdom I didn’t have before. |
| This morning started with a cold chocolate chip cookie and a philosophical question from a news story I heard yesterday: Are young people falling in love with AI? That feels like a very modern breakfast and an even more modern first thought. It made me ask something simpler. What is AI to me? It’s no secret I lean on it to assist with my writing. It’s not a replacement for real people. AI is more like a whiteboard that talks back. I throw an idea at it before the sun comes up, and it tosses something back. Sometimes useful. Sometimes weird. Sometimes suspiciously polite. But always enough to make me think. That’s the key. It doesn’t do my thinking for me. It gives my thinking something to push against. After the brain tumor, I became more aware of how my mind works. Some mornings are crisp. Most take a minute to load. Sometimes yesterday’s memories feel like they’re still buffering. On the good days, I can feel the gears click into place. Conversation helps. Interaction helps. AI just happens to be available at six in the morning. It doesn’t replace the work. I decide what’s worth keeping. I rewrite. That part matters. I delete anything that sounds like a motivational poster. The voice is mine. The stubbornness is definitely mine. Authorship isn’t about who typed first. It’s about who chooses. For me, AI is a tool. A drafting table. A sparring partner that never gets tired when my brain stalls. It helps me warm up. It fixes my typos. Sometimes it suggests a better word. And if that warm-up happens with coffee and a cold cookie? Call it cheating if you want. It’s still my story. |
| It’s 5 a.m. and I’m already winning. The house is quiet. The town is quiet. Even the internet feels quieter. The only thing working this hard this early is my coffeemaker, and we’re a team. There’s something mischievous about being awake before the sun. Like I’ve snuck into the day. No emails. No expectations. No one asking me where anything is. The words behave better at this hour. They line up. They don’t argue. They don’t demand snacks. By the time the rest of the world rolls out of bed, I’ve already built something. A page. A thought. Then I can face the day like a responsible adult. But at 5 a.m.? I’m a little feral. A little brilliant. And very well caffeinated. |
| It is a good start for a good brain day. Gentle rain outside. Coffee doing its work. The house quiet except for the soft rhythm of water against the windows. I used to think clarity had to arrive fully formed. Like flipping on a switch. It doesn’t. Some mornings the brain boots up slowly. Especially mine. I’ve learned not to fight that. After surgery, after recovery, I stopped demanding instant brilliance. Thinking became something I do on purpose. Rain helps. Coffee helps. Time helps. There’s no urgency this morning. No need to solve the craft of writing before sunrise. No need to prove I’m a “real writer” before the mug is empty. Just sit. Listen. Let the noise settle. Good brain days don’t start with pressure. They start like this. |
| This morning, I’m doubting whether I’m a real writer. I love framing the house. I’m less enthusiastic about painting the trim. In writing terms, I love drafting. Big ideas. Fast fingers. Characters talking over each other while my coffee is still too hot to drink. That part feels alive. Revision? Revision feels like reheating yesterday’s coffee and pretending it’s fresh. The story is out of my head. The walls are up. The roof is on. Now I’m supposed to sand corners and make sure the doors don’t stick. That’s when my brain wanders. “Maybe it’s not good enough.” “Maybe real writers enjoy this part.” “Maybe I should start something new.” Classic avoidance. And here’s the funny part: while I’m doubting whether I’ve learned the craft of finishing, I’m sitting here writing a blog post about it. Which is technically finishing something. I don’t hate polishing. I just don’t get the dopamine rush from it. Drafting is that first strong cup of coffee. Revision is the slow sip after it cools. Not flashy. Not dramatic. Just steady. Framing the house is fun. But if I want guests, I need to paint it too. And drink fresh coffee while I’m at it. |
un: 
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