Intelligence and whatnot

[mousme]

I'm still debating whether to post this. Even if you see this posted, I'm probably still debating.

See, my friend forthright wrote a post about intelligence the other day, proclaiming notably that he was smarter than the vast majority of his readership, and probably the majority of other folks out there. Naturally, it sparked quite a bit of debate and discussion, although not much controversy.

Why am I writing about this? Well, because it made me think. Now, of course there was the whole issue of how being smarter than average gets you beaten in school (although forthright claims this was not a big problem for him, other than a few isolated episodes), but I've already covered that in some earlier posts of mine, so I won't go into that either.

What I was thinking about, really, was my reaction to the post. See, my reaction was kind of a "Yeah, and?" type of thing. That's when it struck me that, generally speaking, I tend to pick friends who are much more intelligent than I am. By a long shot, that is.

Now, don't get me wrong: I am not stupid, nor do I think I am. However, it remains that most, if not all of my friends are far more intelligent by anyone's standards.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this.

I guess I was trying to figure out if I unconsciously gravitate towards people that I know will not only stimulate me intellectually, but will force me to grow as well. I'm not sure.

Also, I've been having a frustrating time with my own brain these past few years. Most of you know this by now. ;)

Mostly, I have this sneaking suspicion that I'm getting stupider, or at least that I'm getting uneducated. As in, what little knowledge I acquired over the years is slipping away little by little. I don't remember things that I know I used to know. I'm not as quick on the uptake anymore.

I don't write anymore, for one thing. No more fiction, no more poetry. I used to be quite prolific, back in the days when my brain still worked. Now, there's nothing. There are a few ideas, but they never translate onto the page. I've tried a few times, but somehow I can never quite get anything to work on the page anymore. I shudder to think what my written French must look like these days (my own prose, not technical stuff).

Most frustrating of all is my almost complete inability to focus on anything for more than, say fifteen or twenty minutes at a time. I'm not sure if this is simply my broken brain playing tricks on me, or if it's a side effect of the meds, or what.

My brain is atrophying. Bad enough that my meds cause aphasia (not being able to find the words for what one is trying to express), but now I have the attention span of a twenty-four hour gnat, and the brainpower of a mentally challenged groundhog. I occasionally have thoughts of trying to regain that lost knowledge, and somehow every time I either get sidetracked (there's that attention span thing again), or else I get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of stuff I've forgotten.

Bleh. This got disjointed and rambly, and isn't going anywhere. I'm posting it now, but may think better of it later.