5d ago
53 and I am now That Person in meetings. The one with the notebook open before anyone else has sat down, writing everything as it happens because if I don't, it's just... gone. Completely gone. I used to be able to hold a whole project conversation in my head and recap it perfectly afterwards. Now I lose the thread mid-sentence and have to style it out like I was pausing for dramatic effect. Had a team catch-up on Tuesday and I had written "chase Sarah re: contracts" on a Post-it literally thirty seconds before I walked in. Did I look at the Post-it during the meeting? I did not. Found it in my pocket at 5pm. The afternoons are the worst. About 3 o'clock I hit this wall where my brain just refuses to cooperate. I've started keeping something with protein in my desk drawer for that exact window because I noticed I was worse on the days I'd just had a coffee and ignored lunch properly. Whether that's actually doing anything or I'm imagining it, genuinely can't tell, but I'm paying attention to it now. Sleep is the other thing. I've got quite strict with myself about what time I stop looking at my phone because I was getting these rubbish broken nights and turning up to work already behind before I'd even started. Two weeks of earlier wind-down and I think, THINK, the mornings are slightly less horrific. Maybe. What I actually want to ask my GP, when I eventually get the appointment, is whether this specific kind of fog, the word-finding thing, the mid-sentence blankness, is something they recognise as hormonal or whether I'm supposed to be ruling other things out first. I've written down three or four concrete examples from work to take with me because I know myself, I'll walk in there and say "I feel a bit fuzzy sometimes" and that will be the end of it. x