On the way home from the oral surgeon, Fiona asked for her favorite song. She’s fourteen. At check-in I’d told the front desk we were there to have her wisdom removed, and now the job was done: four wisdom teeth out under general anesthesia, the drugs still running the show. With gauze in her cheeks and eyes half open, she wanted her music.
So we put it on, and she sang all of it, slurred and swaying and committed. There’s a part in that song she knows she shouldn’t sing. I knew it was coming, and I was kind of paying attention to see what she would do, because I was curious.
The part arrived and the words dropped out, a little pause in the performance. Then she picked the song back up on the other side and kept going like nothing happened.
Anesthesia takes a lot offline. Filter, judgment, balance, short-term memory. She remembers almost none of that ride. And medicated to the point of slurring, without anyone enforcing anything, she still opted out at the right time.
We pulled into the garage and got out of the car, and Fiona opened a debate about going for a run. Right there. Mid-argument she started swinging her arms in a running motion, in case I was unclear on the concept. She could not walk unassisted and she was ready to go for a run.
As we entered the house, the dogs were barking. And Cayde, the big boy, was loud as ever.
Fiona went over to pet him, stopped, and delivered a ruling: “That’s not my dog.”
She had asked me to film all of this, by the way. Requested it the day before the surgery, and again on the ride home. She wanted the footage. So I was filming, and since she was hard to understand through the gauze, I kept mirroring her words back to her. “That’s not your dog?”
She held her position. So I confirmed the ruling. “You’re right. That’s not your dog. That’s my dog. But there’s Montana. That’s your dog.”
She shook her head yes. “That’s my dog.” Then she pointed at Cayde. “That’s not my dog.” Pointed at Montana. “That’s my dog.”
She wasn’t confused. Cayde is technically the family dog, but it’s kind of understood that he’s generally my dog and Erin’s snuggle buddy. The filter was gone and the balance was gone, and the ownership map was still perfect. She ran the whole inspection herself, and every ruling held up.
Then she announced she was going upstairs. I asked what was upstairs. “Well, I don’t know.” A hand wave, pure whatever. It was autopilot, a destination without a reason, and being asked for one didn’t bother her at all. I suggested the couch instead.
Once she was settled, the debate about going for a run continued. “I can’t walk, but I can run.” I repeated it back. You can’t walk, but you can run. “Yeah, I need to lift weights.” You need to lift weights. She flexed her arm to show me the equipment, saw the IV site, and stopped cold. “Heeey! What happened?! What happened to my muscles?”
Later that day she told us what happened in her head at that moment. She thought the IV had removed her muscles.
It would be easy to watch that footage and think the drugs turned her into someone else. They didn’t. She was medicated past the point of walking, with no filter, no judgment, and no memory of most of it, and everything she said and did was still exactly her. The drugs didn’t reveal a stranger; they revealed her defaults.
I build systems for a living, at work, at home, for myself. It’s my whole thing. And here was the result of systems that Fiona built for herself.
Fiona started running and working out in mid-April. She’d done it off and on before that, but that’s when it became consistent, when she decided on her own that it was non-optional. “I have to run, I gotta go run” has been the soundtrack of our house ever since. By surgery day she had three and a half months of reps behind her.
About a month before the surgery, she came to me in the kitchen. She didn’t feel motivated that day, and she wanted to know what I do when that happens.
“My answer may not be what you want to hear, but I can give you my perspective if you want it.”
She said yes, and so I told her. Motivation is a feeling, and feelings are just data. The process is what you follow whether the feeling showed up or not. And then: “If it was easy, everyone would do it. But it’s hard, so everyone doesn’t do it. But you’re not everyone. You’re Fiona.”
She went and ran that day. When she came back, she thanked me for the conversation.
I think what clicked for her is the inversion. It’s not motivation first, hard thing second. You do the hard thing, and the feeling follows. Even that fades eventually. You get used to it, and it just becomes what you do.
And what you do is what boots up when you can’t think. Anesthesia is an audit nobody schedules on purpose. Executive function offline, filter offline, and whatever’s left running is whatever got practiced. Who you are when you can’t think is who you’ve been programming yourself to be. She did the programming. I answered one question in one kitchen, and only because she asked.
As this goes out, she’s almost a week into recovery and on the upswing.
Here’s what I’d offer you, the same way I offered it to her, and only if you want it. The feeling is unreliable, and the reps don’t need it. Whatever you practice on the ordinary days is what runs on the day you can’t think. Your defaults are getting written either way; the only question is who’s writing them.
You’re not everyone. You’re Fiona.
Uncomplicated systems. Uncommon results.