What I'll Focus On

Today I decided that I'm done with brain damage.
If I step back and try to look objectively at my circumstances, there's only three things that are actually a serious challenge. These are:

1. I don't know if I can drive safely right now, and I no longer am sure if the insurance company will pay for my transportation. It's the same old song, different verse so far as Mild Traumatic Brain Injury is concerned: Physically I'm fine; My brain is just damaged. No biggie.
2. My attention span and working memory are in the 23rd Percentile and I'm not used to having to work so hard to pay attention to everything.
3. The neural fatigue is still very difficult for me to predict and adjust to. I'm not used to being so tired so suddenly that I literally can't hold my head up and my eyes open. I have to learn what types of physical activities bring this on, and what types of mental activities bring it on, and then I can plan for resting before and after those types of activities. I don't have to give them up, I just have to plan for them.
4. The Vocational Therapist seems to feel it's unrealistic for my goal to still be getting to teach in a classroom. That's the most depressing thing of all.

The part that is not so serious is mostly my ego, and consists of the following:

1. I miss my independence, having a car, and calling all my own shots as opposed to having to get called to the carpet every time I overdo. And I don't care for the way some people are judging me just because they don't understand what's happened to me, or don't know who I really am. 
2. I now have the kind of attention span that as a teacher always made me want to rip my hair out or ask the student if they planned on learning anything today or if they were just going to sit around calling out unrelated comments that had nothing to do with my lesson plan. I am now that kid.
3. I don't wanna have to take a nap every time I want get to do something! Waaaah! I don't want to have this problem. I don't want to have to micromanage every day for the rest of my life to ensure my brain doesn't shut down and start running on just the generators. I am sick and tired of talking and thinking about all my deficits. Education and acceptance are all very well, but at some point this needs to be about my strengths.
4. I've spent a lot of time and money working on being the best the teaching field has to offer, and I don't want to see that wasted. But I don't know who to believe when it comes to my chances of winning this battle, so I sometimes wonder if I should just defer to the experts and find some nice, steady factory job that doesn't challenge me too much. 

In the name of concentrating on my strengths, I have decided to set myself back to default mode and proactively discuss my options from here on out. This is how I intend to do it:

1. Who cares what anyone else thinks? (I'm afraid I shall be reminding myself of this for as long as I live, but I guess that's not very positive, so I'll have to stop that right this instant. What I'm really going to think is that I will keep encountering this problem until I finally have learned the lesson. When I went from 3rd to 4th grade, I remember specifically thinking to myself, "What?! I had to LEARN the Multiplication Tables so that I could also do them in fourth grade?!" I'd thought I'd seen the last of those little bastards.) And as far as driving and independence are concerned, there is a bus, my family and friends love me, and ultimately what I do with my life is entirely up to me, so no more victim mentality. I'm in control here....and I guess I'll have to stop worrying about the insurance coverage at least to the extent of reminding myself that if I can't do anything about it right this second, so I need to focus on something else.
2. So I'm ADD now, so what? I've worked with a lot of kids with ADD over the years, and you know what? The majority of them were the smartest (and therefore most bored) students I have ever had. Yes, their lack of attention was irritating, and people reacted badly to that, and that made them react even worse -- It was a terrible cycle. Clearly if I'm aware of this, I can beat it. And, even better, when I DO get back to teaching again, I will have a lot more empathy and know some coping skills that could really help those kids. Ta dah! Better teacher already.
3. If I keep plugging away at Neuro Fatigue every day, I can and will build more stamina and also eventually be so good at planning around it that I will hardly ever notice it anymore. It's a non-problem so long as I stop whining and keep working at it.
4. People with physical or mental obstacles beat the odds all the time. They just focus on the positive and work harder than the rest and do amazing things. I just need to keep listing my strengths, keep setting my goals and taking the steps necessary to get where I feel I need to be. 

There is nothing stopping me.

Fear and Discouragement are illusions.