Corner of Bourbon & Division

My web browser informed me that I already used the title I originally planned for this post, and not even all that long ago. Ah, short-term memory, I miss our time together.

I have gone to bed very late the past few nights, and I am paying for it. Both yesterday and today I came home and just... kind of sat at the table instead. of making food of any kind. Yesterday I had my D&D game as an external motivator to at least figure something out (I ended up having a makeshift peanut butter sandwich), but it's 9:30 now, or nearly, and I've done absolutely fuck-all to put calories in my body or go upstairs to bed or anything useful.

I did play Zen Koi 2, though! Super useful. ;)

My work week has been productive, but the more I get done at work the less energy I seem to have for, well, anything else. At all. Although I will own that if I were going to bed earlier I probably would have enough energy to at least make myself a grilled cheese sandwich or something.

I will probably not write the longer post I initially thought I might about the whole thought work thing, so I will note for the record that I found at least one flaw in my reasoning about it the other day, which is helping to reconcile things in my mind. I realized that I was going off the assumption that negative emotions are all bad, and that simply isn't true. If someone says or does something horrible to me and I have a thought as a reaction to that which in turn provokes a negative feeling, there is nothing inherently wrong with that. The problem arises when I make someone else's words or behaviour mean something about me, and it causes negative feelings about myself that are self-defeating or self-destructive. 

So that was a neat realization.

It's too late to go to bed "early" tonight, but I can still aim for a pretty decent time in order to get about 8 hours of sleep, so that's what I'm going to do. Maybe tomorrow I'll write about Joss Whedon and how he turned out even more terrible than I initially knew. 

I have come lately to the conclusion that I suck at mindfulness. I'm not sure how people manage it at all, to be honest.

Experienced practitioners of mindfulness (or whatever else you want to call it), speak of it being effortless. You're not meant to think about it, just to be aware of what you're doing and the consequences of your actions, and to be aware of your feelings.

I am not so much aware of any of these things. I get distracted extraordinarily easy. I don't generally pause to consider my feelings. When I do realise I was feeling something potentially harmful to myself, it's hours or days later. "Gee, I probably could have handled that better if I'd been mindful of my emotions." So, not helpful.

I've read quite a few books on mindfulness and related topics, and they always seem like a really good idea at the time. Except that they require me to put these things into practice, and I can never seem to remember to actually do it at the time. I don't know, does anyone have a good way to work around this? I'm curious to know.

When I was sitting in class yesterday, I worked out in my head (after the fact), that these days I can properly focus my attention for about 20 minutes when I am rested (more or less). In the morning I was able to pay attention in class for 20 minute chunks, then I'd realise at the half-hour mark that I'd lost track and have to scramble to figure out what was going on. By the afternoon, that number had dwindled to 5-7 minutes before my brain would shut down and meander along other avenues of thought. Or worse, it would shut down and not think of anything.

In the last hour of the course I tried to force myself to focus completely on the course, and my mind revolted. I stared at the projector screen and listened intently to the teacher as she spoke and... nothing happened. I did not process a single goddamned piece of information in that last hour. Today I can't even tell you what that last hour was about. I think it might have been about graphs. Possibly. It's not even that my mind wandered, because I was making an effort to be present and to watch and listen. It was like someone had erected a barrier that repelled all learning in my head.

It's really fucking depressing, is what it is.

Fifteen years ago I was an honours student who was able to memorise hundreds of pages of poetry and quote literature/movies/songs at will. Now? I can't even remember the content of a beginner-level word processing class that took place yesterday. I just turned 35. By the time I'm 45 will I have so little brainpower left that I'll forget that it's a bad idea not to turn on the hair dryer while I'm in the tub? Cripes.

With my apologies to M. Proust for taking liberties with his title… ;)

I mentioned in my post yesterday that my memory is for shit these days. It's been this way for a while, actually, at least a year if not more, but it's been getting worse as time goes by. I'm talking specifically about my short-term memory. My long-term memory seems to be mostly unaffected, but my short-term memory has degraded at what I feel is an alarming rate.

I didn't notice how badly my memory and my attention span had deteriorated until pdaughter moved in. We started jokingly calling them "Peanut Butter Moments," after an incident in which I was helping to reorganise the pantry. I looked up to see a jar of peanut butter on a shelf where it didn't belong, and asked "What's that doing there?" The answer, of course, was that I had moved it there not five minutes before. To this day, I have no memory whatsoever of moving that jar of peanut butter. There was no, "Oh, right, how silly of me!" moment. I truly don't recall doing it.

That's the funny part of this problem. Unfortunately, it's mostly not all that funny. I can't hold numbers in my head, I forget entire conversations, and I end up doing a lot of things two or three times instead of once because I can't remember if I've done them or not.

It's especially frustrating for pdaughter (and other people), because I ask the same questions over and over again, or forget stuff they've told me not 24 hours ago. It's not quite like living with someone with Alzheimer's or the onset of senility, but I imagine it's like a watered-down version of that. It gives people the impression that I don't listen when they're talking to me, and I can understand why that would make them feel frustrated and unappreciated and ignored.

"But I just told you that yesterday!"

It truly must appear that I'm in bad faith, when in fact, as a rule, I simply forgot. From one moment to the next, my brain no longer retains information. Writing things down helps, but isn't a guarantee I will remember. In fact, sometimes I write things down and then forget where I wrote them (unless I put it in the small notebook I always carry with me). Sometimes I write things down and forget I wrote them down. "I should write that down!" I think, and then after I open my notebook I find that I've already done so.

It's incredibly frustrating for everyone involved. It affects every aspect of my life, from family and housekeeping all the way to work. My new job is highly dependent on remembering all the standard operating procedures in place. I'm lucky enough that I'm a good note taker and have written down about 80% of what I need, but every time something unusual comes up that I know we've covered but that I haven't written down, my recall fails me.

In short, my brain is a pile of mush, it's getting worse rather than better, and this is making everything hard. /o\