Out of Balance

I have put my watch on my right hand today,
throwing my complete being out of physical,
mental and emotional balance.

What prompted such a crazy switch you ask?
I wore some skin off of my left wrist this
weekend at a wind tunnel. Not able to wear
my timepiece on the left wrist I naturally
switched to the right.

It seemed simple in theory, but in practice
is not. To start, it was difficult to put
on. I've been putting a watch on my left
wrist for, well, my entire life. I fumbled
with it for a few minutes.

The human mind has some incredible
compensation techniques. It has built-in
understanding of itself. Most people who
lose limbs typically find
themselves "sensing" that the limb is still
there. Lying in bed they expect to feel
something on their missing limb and at the
same time consciously know that it is gone.
This "sense of body" is very fundamental to
humanity.

It makes sense. When you're running from
lions and tigers (oh my) you have to very
quickly know where your arms are so that you
can prevent them from being bitten... so
that you can get home to pass on your
genes... if you know what I mean.

So the mind puts this sense of self at a
very low level, much as a computer
programmer writes machine-level code like
assembler for mission critical speed-
intensive applications. It's below Aldous
Huxley's "Doors of Perception." It's part
of life that fades into the grey ether. A
great survival technique that makes life
understandable and survivable, albeit much
less interesting.

Combining this "sense of body" with the
mind's compensation techniques I find myself
wondering today if my brain has added my
watch to its internal "sense of body." Does
my brain think that I've lost a limb?

I feel out of balance. I feel like
something is missing from the left side of
my body. My hand motions are clearly not as
natural or fluid. The watch itself looks
odd.

I would bet that everything I've done for
the last 15 years since I started wearing a
watch has built this compensation into it.

Running, writing, biking, skydiving... if
you look into my internal equations I bet
that you'd see a little "plus watch, minus
arm=balance."

Interesting feeling. I can't wait for my
wrist to heal so that I can put my body back
together.