Yesterday I posted a comment on a blog written by someone who also experienced a stroke at a young age. In her recent post, she made an analogy to driving stick.

I had just made a similar analogy to Tonya, my occupational therapist at TIRR. We had just been to the grocery store, and were walking back. We talked about how now I found the grocery store loud and too colorful. I told her I felt slow and plodding, stuck in first or second gear, slow and lurching.

I took the analogy a step further.

There’s another side to downshifting before accelerating. Sometimes the driver downshifts to revent stalling out. Stalling out means a roll backward on a hill (lost progress), or missing the green light (your opportunity to go forward, however fast or slow). And it’s awfully frustrating!

In other words, if you don’t have the gas, don’t even try about the higher gears. You’ll stall out your car and have to start your car again, fumbling with the ignition and gear stick. I continued.

Being somebody who prided herself on her ability to ignore my limits–I thought if I just worked harder, faster, stronger, I could do anything–it’s been a little strange to constantly remind myself to go slow and steady, more like the turtle and less like the feisty hare, who, after all, lost the race.

Set yourself up for the win, even if for now you’ll have to operate at a different gear than you’re used do. I’ll be cheering you on.

Cheer us on.

I feel loved. I’m at Randalls, the Safeway grocery store. I’m not here for groceries; it’s got a Starbucks with free Wi-Fi. I’m not entirely fond of it, but I come here anyway. The Starbucks space is too loud; grocery-store Muzak plays interrupted with “commercials” about Rice-A-Roni, their Wi-Fi service, and getting your annual flu shot at the pharmacy. The espresso machine wails and groans thanks to a belt, I’m guessing, that’s needed adjusting for at least a month. The same fluorescent lighting in the grocery store casts a glare over my monitor. And the whole place grates against my sensibilities. Starbucks is thickly corporate and overpriced, hawking a hip, connected lifestyle that customers don’t really live, just like the big-box grocery store it’s housed in.

But what overrides these problems is that this Starbucks is one of the least-crowded wireless cafes in the Inner Loop. And short people (in my house, named Carmen and David) don’t bother me or make me feel guilty about trying to collect my thoughts in front of a computer (they’re not fond of seeing me sit down with a pen and paper, either). So, despite the Muzak, the espresso machine, the uninspired environment, and yet another reminder to get a flu shot, I go to Randalls and sit at my table, my desk-away-from-home-desk.Today I arrived with an hour to kill before going to TIRR, and I couldn’t login to the Safeway system. (I need to agree to terms and conditions that I’ve never bothered reading before I can access the Internet.) I rebooted, closed my wireless connections, restarted, and hit f5 until I finally walked over to customer service to ask if the service had been experiencing problems.

“Wi-what?” the woman asked to me, looking at me like I had made no sense. For a second I wondered if I hadn’t, but I was sure I had.

“You know, the wireless system for computers in the dining areas?”

“Huh?”

“You know, Internet?” I was out of synonyms. The last word thankfully registered as something she’d heard of.”Oh, that’s Starbucks.”

“But there was just an advertisement over the speakers saying,” I lowered my voice to imitate the announcement, because I’d only heard it several dozen times by now, I’m sure, “it was yours and it worked anywhere you sat down to check your e-mail . . .”

“That’s Starbucks,” she repeated.

I walked back to the Starbucks counter. The manager’s name is Precious. People, name your daughters Precious. I think it influences them to be sweet and generous. It influences them to be worried about your Internet connection even though you only buy $2 tea and hog the biggest table and wear ear plugs for hours at a time.

In between helping customers and killing the espresso machine, she called someone in Safeway technical-support-land who authenticated my computer by hand so I could use my remaining hour (all 15 minutes of it) online. It was no small effort on her part, and not her responsibility, but she helped anyway. I feel loved, if only for a morning.

Despite the noise, the over-marketed, over-hyped coffee grown by underpaid coffee farmers, and the fluorescent lighting, I’ll be back.

Edited October 21. 

Working at my laptop, my Howard Leight industrial-strength earplugs in to drown out the music and chitchat.  I have a little corner all to myself until:  

Oh, here’s a girl with a big purse coming this way, what’s up with those big purses these days?  Ooooooh, nooooo, it’s a decoy!  It’s a laptop bag that looks like a purse!  No, don’t sit here!  No, don’t let her hog the power strip!  Oh, my screen flickered.  Don’t you touch that power cord, lady! 

 Forget land grabs over the Wild West.  The newest frontier to be conquered is a power strip.

I just bought a fountain pen in an effort to improve my handwriting (it’s kinder to blame the pen than my own inabilities). I love it. My handwriting hasn’t really changed, but it somehow seems more legible, expressive. It seems that fountain pens don’t sell for less than $25. I’m ruined.

I’m meanwhile trying to salvage this afternoon. I’m trying to edit some written work and while my working space is pleasant, the music is too loud even with my Howard Leight earplugs, and a woman is leaning over patrons’ heads trying to hang her artwork. I’m of course distracted and working slower and more laterally than I wanted to work this afternoon. The tea is wonderful and the WiFi works, but I might make a change of venue pretty soon.

Beautiful afternoon. I’m going to go for a walk later, although it’s already getting dark far too early.

Yesterday I came across an article in Wired about David Allen and his task-management method “Getting Things Done.”

I read it with a great deal of interest.  For a long time I’ve super-planned my tasks some degree, even from high school. Lists, calendars, notebooks and Outlook task reminders all keep me moving forward and focused.  Now I rely on those tools even more so, from daily menus to elaborate and stepwise to-do lists.  For a while I had been feeling silly that I’ve been working hard to plan the minutiae of my day to make throught it without feeling exhausted or stressed, but this guy has been making a career out of it.  Maybe it’s not so bad after all.

Post completed November 2007, on a better day for spelling.

Cafe Artiste by e-mail to a husband at work:

9:58 am

It’s not friendly. I’m nervous. It’s too colorful and there’s no music but there’s an ice machine on.

Where did Joyce go, and how to do I find her?

10:01 am

and the ceiling is dusty

10:05 am

She’s still there, as long as she’s in an environment that works for her.

But where is that?

10:08
Re: and the ceiling is dusty

Hey, that’s the cheapest way to make an acoustic ceiling. Don’t spray stuff up there. Just don’t clean it for a few years!

10:11

I don’t know.

Wish you were here.

11:00 am

I’m proud of what you’ve done.
If we can’t find anything else that works, plan B is to buy 40 acres in Needville and you can be a farmer, and I can drill for oil or something. But I think we’d be even more lonely.

So, I’m prone to loneliness when I’m not around people, but . . . people? Can’t stand ‘em.

Gotta get that fixed.