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 Each day feels new, and my memory of the one before is faint. I’m learning to adapt. |
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In September 2019, a seizure revealed a lime-sized meningioma pressed against my hippocampus—the part of the brain that governs memory and language. The doctors said it was benign, but benign didn’t mean harmless. Surgery removed the tumor, and three days later I opened my eyes to a new reality. I could walk, I could talk, but when I looked at my wife, her name was gone. I called her Precious—the only word I could find. A failure of memory, yet perhaps the truest name of all. Recovery has been less cure than re-calibration. Memory gaps are frequent. Conversations vanish. I had to relearn how to write, letter by halting letter. My days are scaffold by alarms, notes, and calendars. When people ask how I am, I don’t list symptoms or struggles. I simply say, “Seven Degrees Left of Center.” It’s not an answer—it’s who I’ve become. |
| Saying it out loud still makes me smile. I stayed at the Flamingo Hotel & Casino, right in the heart of the Strip. Vegas was always right there. Lights, motion, sound, and people moving with purpose at all hours. Yet having a room to return to gave the whole trip a rhythm. Step out into spectacle. Step back into calm. That balance mattered more than I expected. One of the first experiences was O by Cirque du Soleil at the Bellagio. I knew it was famous, but fame does not explain what happens on that stage. Water becomes solid ground and then disappears again. Performers fall from impossible heights and vanish beneath the surface as if physics had politely stepped aside. It was graceful, controlled, and astonishingly beautiful. The audience sat quiet, not because it was subdued, but because everyone was afraid to break the spell. The High Roller offered a completely different kind of awe. Rising above the Strip, the noise fell away and the city revealed itself in full. From that height, Las Vegas felt deliberate and almost elegant. A glowing grid in the desert. I found myself lingering, letting the view settle in, knowing I would not see the city quite the same way again. The Grand Canyon tour was the longest day and the most profound. The bus ride eased the transition from city to desert, but the helicopter changed everything. Dropping below the rim of the Grand Canyon was a moment that reset my sense of scale. The canyon walls surrounded us, vast and ancient. Then came the boat ride along the Colorado River, quiet and steady, the sound of water echoing off stone that has stood for millions of years. It was not loud awe. It was deep awe. Walking onto the Grand Canyon Skywalk glass bridge demanded trust. There is no distraction there. Just you, the transparent floor, and the immense space below. It was breathtaking and humbling all at once. The stop at the Hoover Dam carried a different weight. Standing beside it, I felt the power of human determination. Concrete shaped by vision and effort, holding back a river in the middle of the desert. It was impossible not to respect what it represents. I ended the trip inside the Sphere, watching The Wizard of Oz. Calling it a movie does not quite fit. The story surrounded me, filled my entire field of view, and pulled me straight into a familiar world made new again. When Dorothy stepped into Oz, the color and scale were overwhelming in the best way. It felt nostalgic, immersive, and quietly emotional. When I finally headed home, I realized how rare this felt. I was not rushed. I was not disappointed. I was genuinely moved. I had seen beauty created by human hands, beauty shaped by nature, and moments where imagination and technology met perfectly. This was a successful trip. I truly enjoyed it. And I know it will stay with me for a long time. |
| The coffee is really good this morning. Which means my brain is awake enough to notice things it usually lets slide. It’s been a few days since my last blog entry. Not because I stopped writing, but because I’ve been buried in revisions. Same chapters. Same scenes. Same sentences, over and over. Somewhere between the second sip and the third reread, a dangerous thought showed up: Is my story getting stale? Turns out, I was asking the wrong question. Revision staleness is not the same thing as story staleness. A stale story stops moving. Characters stop choosing. Scenes exist just to connect other scenes. The pulse fades. That’s not what’s happening here. What I’m feeling is familiarity. I know this story too well because I built it. Of course it doesn’t surprise me anymore. I know the good lines before I get to them. I know where the tension spikes. That’s not a flaw in the story — it’s a side effect of living inside it for too long. Revisions are sneaky like that. The work starts to feel flat, not because it is, but because I’ve been staring at it in the same font, on the same screen, with the same cup of coffee. Okay, maybe not the coffee. The coffee is innocent in all this. The real danger isn’t a stale story. It’s me over-fixing it. Sanding down edges. Polishing the life right out of it. So today, instead of fixing the story, I’m paying attention to where I’m tired. Where stepping back might do more good than another pass with the red pen. Sometimes the best revision move is giving the story enough space to surprise me again. The coffee helped. And the story? It’s still breathing. |
| This morning’s writing didn’t start with a blank page. It started with coffee and a little curiosity. I’ve been tinkering with yWriter, the free writing software from Spacejock Software  . Not switching my life over to it. Not declaring it *the one true tool*. Just… poking at it. Clicking around. Seeing what happens when I treat my novel like a box of index cards instead of a scrolling document.And honestly? That alone was worth the time. yWriter doesn’t write for you. It doesn’t care about your metaphors or your coffee temperature. What it does care about is structure. Scenes. Characters. Which chapter belongs where. It asks questions like, *What is this scene doing?* and *Who’s in it?* Questions I already ask myself, but sometimes conveniently ignore. I didn’t discover anything revolutionary. No lightning bolt. No “this fixes everything” moment. What I found was a different angle to look at the same story. Like walking around a table instead of staring at it from one chair. That’s been a theme lately. Trying tools not to be saved by them, but to see what they reveal. Sometimes they show you a problem you didn’t want to admit you had. Sometimes they just confirm that, yes, you actually do know what you’re doing. Today, yWriter did the latter. Will I use it forever? No idea. Will I use it again? Probably. Because showing up isn’t always about producing words. Sometimes it’s about rearranging them. Sometimes it’s about learning a tool well enough to decide you don’t need it. Either way, the coffee was good, the curiosity was better, and the story is still moving forward. That counts as writing in my book.   |
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I’ve been waking up between 4:30 and 5 a.m. lately. I don’t remember deciding this was a good idea. I just know that once I’m awake, I’m awake. Lying in bed feels pointless, like waiting for permission that isn’t coming. So I get up. I start the coffee. I turn on the computer. I write things. Not important things. Just stuff like this. Words that don’t solve anything or reveal great truths. They exist mostly because I’m already sitting here. This isn’t writing in any grand sense. It’s practice. The kind that doesn’t look good or sound smart. The kind you don’t keep. It’s just showing up and moving your hands, even when nothing special happens. This morning I opened a new canister of coffee grounds. Fresh. Rich. It will easily be the best pot of the week. At least the coffee showed up prepared. |
| Rereading your own writing is strange. Most writers talk about wanting to read their work the way a stranger would, with fresh eyes and no memory of how it was made. Because of my brain damage, I sometimes get exactly that. I reread my own pages and genuinely think, What was I thinking? Not as criticism. Literally. The intention is gone. The struggle is gone. What’s left is the sentence on the page, sitting there like it belongs to someone else. In those moments, I get something close to a first-reader experience. It’s disorienting. It’s also kind of fascinating. Sometimes I’m confused by my own choices. Sometimes I laugh at a line I don’t remember writing. Occasionally, I surprise myself. The editor brain still shows up. Coffee helps. But every so often, the story unfolds without commentary, and I get to follow it instead of fix it. Rereading has become less about control and more about discovery. Not just of the story, but of the person who wrote it. And that, oddly enough, makes the reread worth doing. |
| Today I woke up knowing it is a good day. Today is a good day to talk about Seven Degrees Left of Center. Not because I planned it. Because my brain feels energized and my mood is good. The gears are turning without resistance. The coffee is here, but it doesn’t have to work so hard this morning. That matters more than people realize. When your brain is foggy or tired, everything leans. Thoughts drift. Focus slips. Writing feels like pushing uphill. But on mornings like this, things sit closer to center. Not perfect. Just aligned enough to get the words on the screen. That’s what Seven Degrees Left of Center has always been about for me. Not fixing the brain. Not chasing some old version of myself. Just learning what it feels like when things line up well enough to move forward. Today is one of those days. I don’t feel rushed. I don’t feel stuck. I don’t feel like I have to force words onto the page. I’m awake, I’m engaged, and I want to write. The coffee is good, but it isn’t doing all the work today. Feeling better after two weeks of COVID helps more. I’ll take a day like this when it shows up and use it while it’s here. |
| Thinking about writing doesn’t count as writing. This occurred to me sometime between the first cup of coffee and the moment I realized I was still staring at a blank screen. I was fully engaged in the process. Planning. Considering. Mentally revising a paragraph that did not yet exist. Very productive. Zero words written. Thinking feels like progress. It has posture. It sits there nodding seriously, pretending it’s on your side. Meanwhile, nothing moves. I told myself I was just warming up. Writers need to warm up, right? Stretch the brain. Loosen the ideas. Possibly check the news. Maybe refill the coffee. All very important steps. None of them involves typing. Then I ran into this sentence: Thinking about writing doesn’t count as writing. Rude. Accurate. Somewhere around the second reread of that line, my fingers hit the keyboard. Not confidently. Not elegantly. Just enough to break whatever spell had convinced me that thinking was the same thing as doing. So here’s today’s rule. If I catch myself thinking about writing instead of writing, I’m losing. The fix is embarrassingly simple. Type something. Anything. Bad sentences count. Complaints count. This paragraph definitely counts. Which means, despite my best efforts to avoid it, I appear to be writing after all. |
| I wrote a novel. I keep typing that sentence just to make sure it is still true. It is. I finished the first draft of my first novel, and when I read it, I did not cringe. I did not immediately start a mental list of everything wrong with it. I thought, “This is actually pretty good.” That alone feels like a minor miracle. Before the brain injury, I always wanted to be a writer. I talked about it for years. I had ideas, characters, notebooks, and exactly zero finished stories. Wanting was easy. Finishing was theoretical. This time was different. This time, I showed up. I wrote through confusion. I wrote through repetition. I wrote through days where my notes were more reliable than my memory. I did not quit. I did not wander off to start something new when it got hard. I stayed with one story long enough to give it a beginning, a middle, and an end. That matters. The novel is not perfect. It is not done done. But it exists. It has shape. It has momentum. It has characters who survived the journey with me. That is something I have never done before. I am proud of this. Full stop. Does everyone care? Probably not. But I do. And for the first time, that feels like enough. This draft proves I can finish something big, even with the brain I have now. Especially with the brain I have now. I wrote a novel. Then I made coffee, because apparently that is how I celebrate now. |
un: 
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