Chronic Illness, Brain Fog, Fatigue, and the Things I Didn’t Finish

After dinner, I opened the reminder list on my iPhone. A few things were marked complete. The rest were still there, waiting for me as if they'd spent the day working harder than I had. One phone call, a message, a refill. Such short lines on a screen. By evening, they looked like evidence. It's a body rebuild. Where the truth gets told.

With a little dark.

When this body throws a tent. Welcome to A Body Rebelts. I'm Tate. This podcast shares my personal experiences and is not medical advice. Please speak with your own provider before making medical decisions. The voice you're hearing is AI because illness makes speaking difficult, but the writing, memories, opinions, and experiences are mine. I want to talk about the work my reminder list leaves out and how easily I forget to count it myself. I love a list. I love adding reminders to my iPhone in the morning when the day still seems willing to cooperate. The phone call goes on there, the errand goes on there, a message I need to answer, something I need to pick up. For a moment, everything has a place, and I feel as though I've given the day a reasonable set of instructions. By evening, my morning estimate looks a little optimistic. Morning Me adds a call, two messages, an errand, medication timing, dinner, and the thing I've been avoiding. Evening Me opens the app with sore joints and foggy concentration, wondering who arranged all this on my behalf. The reminder says, call the office. Three words. First, I need to remember why I'm calling. I need to find the question I meant to ask. I might need to look through a message or a piece of paperwork before I dial. Then I sit down and get through the phone menu. Press one if I still have patience. Press two if I've lost it. Press three to hear the menu again while my soul packs a bag. Eventually I reach a person. Then I need enough concentration to explain why I called, listen to the answer, remember whether I need to write something down, and make sure I understood what I heard. When the call ends, I sometimes sit there for a few minutes before moving on. There's no dramatic collapse, no movie scene. I'm sitting in a chair, tired from an ordinary phone call. On my iPhone, the whole experience takes up three words. That's one of the problems with a reminder list. Every task gets roughly the same little line. The shirt I meant to fold gets about as much visual importance as the medical message I needed to answer. The list records the task. The list has no idea what the task costs. Something might take five minutes once I begin, while getting myself ready to begin takes much longer. Some days I reread a message several times before the words settle. Sometimes I pause halfway through a chore because my body has had enough for the moment. Sometimes I have enough concentration for one phone call. And after the call, I know a second conversation needs to wait. Then I start choosing. What needs doing first? What has a deadline? What involves another person waiting for me? What needs the clearest head? What takes physical energy? What gets moved? Those decisions happen between the reminders. No little circle appears beside them. There's nothing to tap when I decide not to spend the rest of the day pushing myself through five things because I only have enough energy for two. By night, my attention still goes straight to whatever remains unfinished. I remember the call I didn't make before I remember the one I did. I see the unanswered message before I give myself credit for getting through an appointment. The unfinished tasks are easy to find. I open the app, and there they are. My own review of the day starts to sound like a prosecution. I should have answered sooner. I should have moved faster. I should have finished the laundry while I was up. Should've is an impressively unhelpful little word. It never makes the call or folds the laundry. It stands nearby with its arms crossed and comments on my performance. I understand why I use reminders. I still need them. Brain fog doesn't make remembering errands easier, and putting things on my iPhone keeps them from floating away. I like knowing I've captured something before my attention moves somewhere else. The trouble begins when I treat the list as a complete record of my day. A shower might affect what comes afterward. An errand might leave me sitting for a while before I do anything else. One conversation might use the concentration I hope to spend on another one. A poor night of sleep changes the equation before breakfast. Symptoms change the equation again. When I add a reminder in the morning, I don't know how much any single task will cost by afternoon. I've lived with sarcoidosis for 20 years. After all those years, I still don't always know how a day will unfold. Morning plans sometimes meet an afternoon with different terms. There are days when I know I have enough for one thing, perhaps two, and I've written down five. Then I choose. The frustrating part is I still want the other three done. Leaving something incomplete doesn't make the need disappear. The refill still needs picking up. The message still needs answering. The laundry still needs folding. The paperwork still sits wherever I left it. I'm tired, and the work is still there. Both are true. As a private chef, I've spent decades working for one family household. Planning is part of how I work. I pay attention to what needs doing and adjust when the day changes. I bring some of that habit home with me. Planning helps me. Organization helps me. Sometimes the same habit also makes me impatient with a day I can't arrange as neatly as a list of tasks. At home, I might decide to make the phone call before an errand because I know I'll need more concentration for the conversation. Or I might leave the call until after I've rested because I already know my attention is scattered. I might walk past something needing to be put away because bending down and carrying one more thing across the house isn't worth what comes afterward. None of those decisions looks impressive from across a room. They still require effort. Sometimes I sit down before I feel completely spent. That one is hard for me. There's a temptation to keep going because I'm already standing. I'm already halfway through something. I'm already irritated by the idea of stopping. Stopping means looking at the unfinished thing. Stopping means knowing I'll have to return to it later. Stopping also means I might still have something left for the rest of the day. When I open my reminders later, I'm tempted to count only the time I spent moving. The minutes sitting down look empty. They weren't empty. I was making room to continue. I don't always feel pleased about making that choice. I might still be annoyed with the laundry. I might still want the counter cleared. I might look across the room at something unfinished and think, I was right there. Why didn't I finish? Chronic illness hasn't made me fond of leaving things undone. The choice is more complicated than the reminder suggests. The evening is when I notice the gap between the list and the day most sharply. The house gets quieter. I pick up my iPhone and the unfinished items are waiting. Then comes the nightly migration. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Soon tomorrow has its own overconfident list. I've had mornings when I wake up feeling behind before I've done anything. Yesterday's unfinished work has followed me into a brand new day and arrived before breakfast. That's a rough way to begin. Especially when yesterday included plenty of effort I've already forgotten to count. So I've been trying to make a fairer inventory before I put my phone down. Not an inspirational inventory. Not a speech about how wonderful I did. A fair one. I made the call. I answered a message after rereading it. I managed medication and symptoms alongside the errands. I stopped when I needed to stop. I left the laundry. The laundry is still there. A fair account has room for that too. I don't want to pretend an unfinished task somehow became finished because I had a difficult day. I want to remember what happened while I was trying to get through the day. There's a difference. Otherwise, a list on my phone starts telling me more about the day than my own experience does. A reminder app knows what I entered. It doesn't know how long I slept. It doesn't know how my joints felt when I stood up. It doesn't know whether I had trouble concentrating. It doesn't know how much energy a conversation took. It doesn't know why something got moved from Tuesday to Wednesday and then from Wednesday to Thursday. The app isn't judging me, of course. I'm the one supplying the judgment. That's the part I'm paying more attention to. Some days are plain difficult. Some deserve a narrow-eyed stare and a snack. I don't need to turn every rough evening into a heartwarming realization. I'd often prefer to finish the errands, clear the reminders, and go to bed. Still, the way I speak to myself when I open that app matters. If every evening becomes a recital of unfinished work, I carry the same tone into the following morning. A few reminders begin to feel like a verdict, even though I added them for the opposite reason. They were supposed to help me, but they were never meant to grade me. There's also something strange about how quickly completed tasks disappear. I tap the little circle and they're gone. Done. Finished. No longer demanding attention. The unfinished ones remain visible. Of course my eye goes toward them. The app is designed to show me what still needs doing. Useful design. Terrible biography. If I use the screen as a record of my life, the record will always lean toward what remains. There will always be another form. Another phone call. Another message. Another thing to put away. Life produces tasks faster than I mark them complete. I'm never going to reach some final permanent empty list where every obligation has been handled and nothing new appears. Even saying that sounds funny. I'd probably stare at the empty screen for 30 seconds and think, what did I forget? I'm keeping my reminders. I need them. I need somewhere to put things before they disappear from my head. I need dates. I need prompts. I need the satisfaction of tapping the little circle when something gets finished. I'm also trying to leave room for everything the app cannot hold. The effort before the task. The rest afterward. The decision to postpone something. The concentration spent on a conversation. The symptoms running underneath an otherwise ordinary afternoon. The fact that a person has to live the day while trying to complete the list. Tonight, some unfinished items will still be sitting on my iPhone. I'll move a few to tomorrow. A couple might survive another day after that. Before I put the phone down, I want to remember the call, the pauses, the choices, the things I finished, and the things I didn't. The reminders record what remains to be done. They don't get the final word on what I did with my day. This has been A Body Rebels. I'd love to hear from you. Write to me with your thoughts on the podcast, the topics or issues you'd like me to discuss, or a story from your own life. With your permission, I might share your story in a future episode. I'm Tate. Thanks for sharing this time with me. Until next time, take care of yourself, keep breathing, and remember, sarcoidosis is only rare until you're the one living with it.