I have lately had to reduce my life (sold my house, cleaned out my wardrobes and things and gotten rid of all but what is necessary) and it has been a big change. At the same time I realize that it is possibly only my own approach which has changed. The chronic mental fatigue I acquired after my skiing accident 7,5 years ago yet remains, and with that experience in mind I suggest you all wear a helmet when bicycling, skiing, snowboarding, skating, etc. For the last few months I have not been very active here or in other social media, but I have followed some of what has been written and it enriches and annoys and brings up a lot of emotions.

I then simply had to speak with the fantastic Betlehem Isaak and thankfully I only have to converse, Christian and Nadim take care of the rest. I also get to have my brain, my ability to think and my need for meeting and speaking with people, and for the most part this is good but when you are struggling with mental fatigue these things always come at a cost.

Yesterday I was invited to TEDxGöteborg under the title “When Life Gives You Lemons“, and I really wanted to go, to see how TEDxGöteborg has developed these past five years, to meet friends I seldom get to meet, but most of all to be inspired by all the speakers. So I went, well aware that it would lead to headaches, fatigue and so on. After many great speeches about the importance of seeing people for who they are rather than who we want them to be, when I had finally landed last night I had difficulty relaxing. My legs became restless and it began to hurt all over (not quite pain, but discomfort and a kind of creeping pain), the headache made itself acute and then there’s the double vision–that irritating double vision which really is my brain telling me that I have gone too far and there’s trouble up ahead.

And in the middle of all this I had to take on the challenge of an English glossary test in SvD (sadly, this is how it is when I’m at my most fatigued–I can’t organize or prioritize very wisely and something like going grocery shopping can become very demanding). How stupid can I be? More so, what do I have to prove? And so fatigue became chaos, and I crashed and fell asleep to wake up ten hours later with an extreme headache.

But with one side of the scale full of inspiration, meetings, happiness, affirmation and life, the “hangover” is a little weighed up on the other side, or rather a lot. As I am writing this my vision is blurry (the two images don’t synch), my head is booming and with every wave discomfort washes over the brain and into the body. But I am alive!

Was it worth it? Perhaps not right now, when I am sitting here enduring, waiting for it all to go away, but yes, when I opened my inbox just before writing this and saw all the positive messages–“it was so nice to see you yesterday”–“I’ve missed you”–“thank you for coming” and so on. So yes, sometimes it is okay to build up a really terrible “hangover”, so long as you have the memory, the feeling and the warmth left from the previous day. And when I see the statistics of how many see and share what I write and record for my website–then yes, it is worth squeezing the lemon, for when the sour juice mixes with your love and care it becomes an enjoyable lemonade, if slightly too sharp of a one. Thank you my readers, followers and friends. Thank you TEDxGöteborg and all the speakers, and thank you Alex and Carl who many years ago gave me the opportunity to contribute to TED in connection with TEDxYouth.