I have aphasia. And alexia. No alopecia unfortunately, I was going for a hat-trick.
Not degenerative, it was stroked-caused, 11 years ago. Few would ever notice, I spent a week with a client last year and kept it well hidden. But it can be exhausting.
The hardest is the cognitive side of things. I could read a crappy novel on a beach in two days but when they send me a simple brief I can stare at it for an hour and still not read or understand it. An editor works with me and she will break it into bullet points for me and only give me the important bits. As in 'do x, y and z by lunch time tomorrow' and when that's done she'll follow it with 'a, b and c for the following day'. She manages my time for me.
Tiredness and stress always makes it worse. I've done two weeks of 7am-12am stints, including the weekends on a project that's really tight for time and I'm struggling to read emails at the moment. It's hard to pinpoint an actual email, let alone read one.
The number of mistakes I make when I speak is relative to tiredness and complexity of grammar and semantics etc. So in the company of strangers, keep it simple and do what you're comfortable with (flirting with women).
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Bruce Willis new