Where is My Mind

I spent 5 hours on Saturday at the library with a German and Greek dictionary and one of my books for my dissertation. How many pages was I able to finish? 15...15 pages! I am exhausted. I cannot wait to get this done.

In a perhaps related development, my brain is starting to shut down. I have a really hard time remembering day to day things. I have had this kind of a thing since I moved to London and I assumed it was just stress. I am fine remembering the stuff I read, what I am working on, etc...but if I have to remember something like a daily task it is hard. Its not like things slip my mind, like "oh yeah! I was supposed to do that." It is more like I know I am supposed to do things and I cannot remember if I did them no matter how hard I try. I need evidence that I have done a thing I was supposed to have done in order to know I did it. Receipts, notes to myself, and saved emails serve this purpose.

The second thing is even more bizarre. This too I think may be stress, lack of rest, and maybe confusion with the languages. When I am taking notes in hand I find myself writing the letters in words out of order. I spell them right, but take a word like "understand," in this case I may write the "r" or the "s" first and then write from the center to the sides. Or sometimes I will write the 3rd letter or something first, then the 5th and then I fill in the rest of the letters if I have left enough space. In my mind I am not doing this! If I were not looking at the word as I wrote it then I would not know that I was writing it out of order cause it comes out normal. Its especially odd because I watch it happen with my eyes, but in my head its as though I am telling my hand to do it the right way and my hand does whatever it wants. This does not happen all the time, but when it starts happening it happens a lot. The only way to make it stop is to take a break. It happens more when I am writing a word in German or Swedish but it happens in English too.