About six and a half years ago I found myself at a point where for the first time in over a decade my brain was ‘de-fogged’ a large portion of the time.  I could think clearly again.  Along with this clarity came the ability to socially interact with the people around me with a competency that had up ‘till now had only been distant memory.  Of course it was a lack of social skills that had perhaps created this entire mess in the first place but being back to at least this level of ability was a grand gift.

 

One of the greatest gifts I received at this time came in the form of what looked then like a terrible blow.  I was fired from my job as a waiter.  All I knew was waiting tables, I had been doing it since I left collage.  Don’t get me wrong, for the last couple of years I hated every moment of it, but before this I didn’t believe I was able to be good at anything else.  I was freaked.  I had no idea what to do. 

 

Because I was feeling better I started to want to exercise again.  There was another man in my apartment building that was going jogging each day and I asked if I could join him.  We got into a routine of running together three to five times each week.  In what seemed a relatively short time we were running about four miles each time we went out.  My running partner not only had good jogging skills he also truly amazing resume writing skills.  He helped me rework my resume and showed me how to send out five to ten copies each day with my computer.  In less than a month a had a brand new job, and this time not as a waiter. 

 

I was making more money, had better benefits,  and most importantly I was doing something I enjoyed.  I was doing route sales for an in-office coffee delivery service.  What is this you may ask?  Have you ever worked in an office with a coffee machine in the back?  I was the person who maintained and cleaned the machine.  I would restock the supplies all with great customer service and a eye on up selling.  Between the office managers I interacted with each month and the never ending supply of receptionist to flirt with I had ample opportunity to work on increasing my social skills.  I was actually looking forward to going to work each day.

 

Before I knew it I was dating one of the office managers I had gotten to know.  I was feeling better all the time from an MCS perspective.  I had money coming in.  I was dating a girl I really enjoyed.  Things were looking up.  The better my health got the more I began noticing something unexpected,  I felt better just about everywhere except my own apartment.  At my girlfriends place I felt pretty good, at work I felt pretty good but at the place I had lived for the previous decade was a different story.  At first I didn’t want to admit it.  How could this place I viewed as my refuge be an MCS trigger?  But the better I felt the more obvious the difficulty became.  Perhaps it was time to move.

 

To boil a complex story down to its essential components, I moved in with my girlfriend.   In doing so I packed up just about everything I owned and put it into storage.  I didn’t want to risk bringing anything into this new environment that may have triggered MCS reactions in my last apartment.  I held to this rule with only one exception… my TV.  One of the last items to be moved was one of my most prized positions, but when I moved the TV it became instantly obvious that it would not work.  It turned out that the TV was a major MCS trigger.  So I sold it to a friend and moved on.  I would not have my new environment contaminated.  Thankfully only a few days later a friend of ours was selling his TV, a nice 27” Sony that actually had a better picture then the one I just sold.  I bought it and had absolutely no problems with it.

 

In about a six month period I had gotten a new job, a new girlfriend, a new apartment and even a new TV to boot.  At the time I felt as if a metaphorical re-set button had been pressed on my life.  Looking back that was more was even more true then I knew at the time.