• Sleeping Wide Awake

    Eleven

    We’re programmed to live outside our heads. We’ll think about things when we need to, but that thinking will function within the parameters that genetics, upbringing, and environment have programmed into us. Most people never become truly self-aware. They never – or at least rarely – think outside of that programming. One exception is when you experience something like anxiety or depression, and that whole thought process turns inward. Then it becomes this scathing, torturous, unrelenting self-examination through every moment. Even the good times elicit that self-reflection and, as a byproduct of that, doubt and insecurity. I’m not going to go into work too much – at least not now.…

  • Sleeping Wide Awake

    Five

    When I was sixteen I broke my right arm playing football. I was flipped in midair as I leaped to spoil a certain mark. Complications meant I needed plates inserted. Then there was significant nerve damage – I couldn’t feel the lower half of my right hand, the ring finger, and small finger. I had to wear a brace around my hand that forced my fingers to flex when the rest of the hand flexed. Once I started feeling again, the brace bit excruciatingly into my right hand, particularly my palm. Well, that’s the way it felt thanks to the damage. I started wearing a fingerless glove – the genesis…