Posted by Gary on October 29, 1998 at 12:42:21:
In Reply to: mental effects - missing them after ? posted by Gary on October 29, 1998 at 12:39:02:
I discover myself becoming extremely detached from what's happening around me, between attacks, during a cluster. Constantly lose focus, short term memory COMPLETELY disappears. Sometimes just stand there in deep space for…???….
I tell my wife I'm having an attack of "Halftimer's Disease"
~~~Time realization is another pronounced change - I lose sense of time a lot. Will think it's been a long long time since X and come to it's only been 3 or 4 minutes. Or the opposite - sit down for "just a second" and an hour disappears (but not napping). Don't know what the big deal is about NASA space travel - I do it all the time, and never leave Maine !
Mostly this stuff is just goofy, but there can be problems.
~~~~ In the last few days: doing dishes, walked across the room to answer the phone, hung up and sat down to read a magazine; completely forget about the dishes and the sink overflowed all over the place.
~~~~We heat with wood -yesterday, fired up one of the heating stoves - (for you townies - you start with kindling & burn it hot and fast for a few minutes, then shut the dampers down to a slow steady burn); Stepped over to look out the window while it got going, and then just walked out of the room. 10 mins later, the smoke detector went off. The stovepipe was glowing red. Had I not recently cleaned the chimney, I'd a had a mean chimney fire going.
~~~ NO it's not my age you wiseguys - when I'm not "in cluster" those things just don't happen to me.
~~~ So, part of my cluster discipline is to TRY to remember that I behave differently and break my tasks down into itty-bitty pieces that I can get done and walk away from. And I'm not very good at doing that.