The Ink-Pot and the Palette

I see the counselor again in the morning about my job. My first session a couple of weeks ago got me down out of the boughs about the unrealistic demands of my new assignment, and since then I've become more comfortable with them.

I'm hoping this second session will jump-start my brain again, because I feel mentally paralyzed, in a very eerie and creepy way.

I had some numbers to generate this afternoon, and I simply could not make myself focus on them. It's true that numbers are not my best thing, but this wasn't calculus, just some spending data analysis. I had the most horrible feeling of stupidity, of wondering if I seem stupid to my coworkers, and of desperately wanting to hide my stupidity.

This is, frankly, unprecedented in my life. In the long list of less-than-positive things one could truthfully say about me--moody, insecure, shame-based, lazy, angry, arrogant, obsessive, persnickety, mean, selfish--"stupid" just doesn't appear.

It's realistic, I think, to expect a certain drop-off in mental acuity as the happy life-dancing hormones decline--I will, after all, be 55 in a month. But this overnight-idiot act is freaking me out.

giandujakiss has pointed me to a place where I can order a custom chocolate bar.

You can too, at Chocomize (if you're in the US, I think). You select the type of chocolate and then start adding stuff like nuts and flowers and bacon or whatever, then you give them a credit card number, then they make your chocolate bar and ship it to you.

Mine? Milk chocolate, macadamia nuts, candied violets, and flecks of 24 carat gold.

I call it The Morgana.

OMG, now I have to think of a Merlin, an Arthur, and a Gwen.