Thank you John Peters for a great interview. "I just want to clear my head ... I just want my head to clear ..." resonates with me so much.
Cognitive limitations are what trouble and frustrate and limit me the most by far. I don't care about the rest either.
As luck would have it in retrospect, having had (presumably) gradual onset ME since I was in my late teens in the 1960s, I became a classical musician, majoring in two instruments, so it took up most of my days for many years, and until recently I was still doing it. (I've had to stop because of physical reasons - osteoarthritis, muscle spasms, neuropathy.) Back in my university days I had no hope of dredging up and expressing ideas for written exams so each year I rote-learned essays I wrote to cover all types of possible questions. My god it was tedious!! I could automatically dredge up a good answer for anything despite brain fog which was my biggest problem then too. In those days, in the music education faculties, exam questions barely changed from year to year. If I hadn't learned well enough and had to think at all, I was lost.
I don't know what it means, but I can 'think' about how to use my body/use of muscles etc. in fine detail at times to get the music results I want; imagine what I want the music I play to sound like in advance so that physically and emotionally I'm ready to do it; all at the same time as reading and interpreting the music notes and instructions on the page and following verbal instructions as well. It's constant problem solving and is effortless, presumably because it is non-verbal. Playing music has allowed me to "be in this world" in a sense.
That's as far as my foggy state allows me to think about it so far.
Added the bit about exam questions being predictable in the olden days. I hear things have changed since then!
