The Fog

It's a 40/60 split between feeling sharp and dull.

My mind can feel clear and focussed. I can articulate long, complex thoughts. I can interject witticisms into a conversation faster than I can think. Did I say that? Wow! I'm clever. On some days I feel, while maybe not like the smartest man in the world, at least like his wise-cracking sidekick. I am living up to my potential. Using all my gifts with deftness and agility.

At other times, a fog rolls in and my thoughts are muddled. Conversing is a chore. I make tired jokes just to fill the gaps left by my inability to say anything of remote interest. I'm just watching the clock, marking time until it lifts.I just want those days to end. Watch TV and hope that I will wake up bathed in sunlight. I try not to take out my frustrations, my disappointment in my failure to get out of mental first gear on those around me. Sharing makes it worse. I feel like half a person, semi comatose, throwing away days from the ever-diminishing pile of my allotted days on earth.

Since I can remember, I've moved back and forth between these two states: control and frustration. As a teenager I came up with the image of a smudged pencil line to represent the less- than -prime- self feeling. It's not a black hole of despair, it's nothing so dramatic - just a dirty smudge.

The sharp days, however, are seldom put to good use. If I can muster the discipline to use those days in the most constructive way I can, I think the foggy days will feel less like one more unproductive step towards the grave and perhaps more like a well deserved break, a downshift from top gear, shade from the bright glare of my full potential.

You take the good. You take the bad. You take them both and there you have it.