What's Shakin'?

Is there anyone out there in my vast readership who doesn't know about my tremors? In elementary school I got low grades in penmanship. During my high school years I began my second longest career as a graphic artist, back in the days of ink and xacto knives. During those thirteen years I struggled with the tremors, and learned to master them as necessary to complete the line I was drawing at the time, lifting my hand from the drawing when I felt a surge of shakes coming on. My daily concentration helped keep them in check (mostly) but they were always lurking.

When I moved to Orlando in '87, I found a new expression of my artistic prime directive building scenery, exhibits and displays for twenty five years. The shakes were a lesser challenge in this larger format, but still a challenge when I was up on a ladder, a scaffold or a snorkel lift trying to install a three inch screw in a piece of scenery, or assemble a bolt, two washers and a nut in a tight space. My relaxation of strict daily control made them stronger, and as the years have passed, the tremors have gotten gradually worse. In 2006 I earned the nickname "shakes," given to me by my co-worker Nick. (Otherwise it could have been a mattname from my co-worker Matt.)

After that most excellent career, I worked for three years mixing, selling and delivering paint for Sherwin Williams. By then, it took two hands to write legibly, so any phone orders I took were horribly scrawled. Even I couldn't read some of them. 

I have come to rely on the keyboard for written communication. The tiny virtual keyboard on my phone is very difficult to manage, but at least the result is legible. For long sessions, the big keyboard on my laptop is my preferred technology. Even so, I hit wrong keys or two keys at a time quite often. Luckily, the fixing is easy. But touch typing is not, nor has it ever been an option.

Nowadays I take seven prescriptions daily, and two of them have been prescribed specifically to deal with tremors. And yet, they still control my destiny. Just for a fun building project, I recently ordered a wooden model, a marble run with gears and levers and such. I also wanted to see if I could actually do it. Twice now, I have progressed to step 15, only to have some of the already assembled pieces wiggle apart while attempting to do step 16, sending me back to step eight. Very frustrating. 

There is some hope on the horizon. I'm getting set up to see Jacksonville's go-to neurology guy for tremors. I hope he can do something. Someday I want to finish that marble run.