Having your executive functions slip away is crippling. There is so much you can’t do anymore, basic fundamental stuff, it drives you nuts. Or it doesn’t, and everything is every pleasant, and then someone reminds you that you forgot to do almost everything you were supposed to do. The weirdest thing of all, though, is how everything is increasingly in the present tense. I quickly forget most things beyond a day or so, and I can’t see into the future at all as far as planning… anything. I just sort of wander along in the now, and the whole concept of time as a continuum from past to future disappeared somewhere a few hundred thousand missing neurons ago. When I’m hanging out with people you all talk about your lives in terms of things you did and things you plan to do. And I know that I used to be able to do that and just sit and marvel at the wonder of it. I think to myself that when I go home I will write about it, but I usually forget, and write about something else. Now I’m looking at this stack of papers on my desk and know that there are things I was supposed to do in there but can’t remember what. I lift up the keyboard and there’s an unpaid parking ticket and a jury notice I was supposed to call about. And a neurologist I was supposed to call. I forget his name. What a weird mess this is becoming, in tiny increments, a few damaged synapses at a time. Sometimes I miss the old Brick, but mostly I can’t remember much about him.