Getting slowly dumber
I haven’t posted a word since February, and I haven’t been reading. I’d always found reading and writing to be frustrating processes; they demand change. With work busy in the springtime, my fiancee’s moving in, friends’ weddings taking up the weekends, etc., etc., I simply wasn’t interested in mental change, in challenging my brain.
But wouldn’t you know it, I’m most assuredly getting dumber. Since I stopped reading and writing in the spring, I’m not as creative, thoughtful, or patient. And double those deficiencies because of a two-month-plus bout with insomnia—by taking Ambien I’m physically rested but not mentally, and my short-term memory is entirely shot.
My fiancee thinks the insomnia comes from stress, and she might be right in the sense that the longer the insomnia lasts, the less I’m able to process a day’s happenings and the more likely I am to be overwhelmed. But what hadn’t occurred to me until this week is that by not reading and writing, I’m cheating myself out of another method of processing life’s information.
So here’s a post. It’s not detailed and doesn’t refer to much. But maybe by getting back in the writing habit, I can stave off stupidity for just a bit longer.
