Fragile and Deterioration

I was visiting at the house I used to live in. There were hedges to be trimming and gutters to be cleaned. Fortunarely, the Hedge Squad appeared and took care of that. I spend part of the evening cleaning the easy half of the gutters. The next morning, before the sun had heated things up, I turned to the harder half of the gutters and it went pretty well. There's a second level of my house where cleaning the gutters means sitting over the edge of the roof with your calves dangling over open space and it went real well. I was uncharacteristically feeling pretty strong.

Then I took an old wheelbarrow out and put air in the tires. Brought it back the the residence, than grabbed the empty recycling bin and brought it inside. Click, Click, Click, things were coming off my list of tasks. I felt a nostalgia like I was back to being my own self, getting things done, moving on to next tasks without intermediate naps.

My last task was to write some code for a client survey, which is an enterprise I pursue with my biz-partner John. It was nothing leading-edge. It was for a client we've supported for like eight years. It should have just flowed.

I could not cognitively come to terms with the tasks. The normal things didn't work. The arcane nature of the document object model was not cooperating and I used to be the master of that. I injected my usual debugging flags, like I'd learning in 8th grade, and my mojo just wasn't there. It really crushed me.

I called John and said, I'm sorry, I can't do this any more, it's not responsible. This was a business we'd been operating for like fifteen years.

Either physically or cognitively, I am robust until I'm not, I have little to no warning of when it goes bad, and it leaves me feeling greatly diminished.