Stuck in Neutral?

There are days where I don't feel like I'm making any progress with my speech comprehension. Today is one of them. I feel particularly tired today and I don't know why. The speech exercises that I've been practicing on are becoming too easy. The closed set exercises are a piece of cake, and starting to get boring. The open set is still as challenging as ever.

When I have the TV on at a high enough volume, I try to practice listening to see if I can comprehend the words without looking at the screen. It's hard when most of my brainpower is concentrating on the computer screen balancing my domestic budget, or even hungrily stuffing organic pasta sprinkled with a little (ok, LOTS) of Parmesan cheese into my mouth.

I have moments when I hear phrases on the TV without any effort on my part. These words just float into my head. In mostly garbly gibberish, I have flashes of the following:

... threw for three touchdown passes ...

... running for office in two thousand ten ...

... chance of rain tomorrow ...

When I have these moments, they always startle me and I snap my attention to the TV screen. But when I focus on listening to the TV, it's all garbled gibberish again.

You know one of those optical illusions where you look at a group of black squares separated by white lines? Those little gray squares appear only when you're not looking directly at them, but when you focus on where one of the gray squares are, they disappear. Like this:


It's sort of like that when I listen. When I focus on what the TV or radio is saying, I don't seem to understand anything. But when I shift my focus away or just un-focus, these phrases just seemingly float into my head. I get excited at such a mirage, then when I refocus, it's gone once again.

I hope this is a sign that I am getting better at this - even if it doesn't feel like it. Just like when a baseball player goes into a slump and then suddenly breaks out hitting ball after ball out of the park.