My brain is going
Oct. 27th, 2014 08:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
swehI can "feel" it. My brain is going.
When I was a kid I could track multiple things at the same time. I remember when I was 13... my English teacher called me out "Stephen, you're not paying attention! What did I just say?". I repeated back the last minute of what she'd been talking about (almost word for word). She was right; I wasn't paying attention, but I didn't need to. I was chatting with my friend and thinking about a program I was writing. Listening to the teacher was a tertiary task, and I just recalled from memory what she said.
Roll forward a couple of decades; I was writing code, on a conference call and chatting with (and solving) a co-workers problem.
Roll forward 1 more decade. Just one decade. I can't hold 3 conversations in my head. I can't even hold 2. I'm finding myself at work missing things on conference calls because I've got bored and started to write more code.
I'm still VERY good at single threading.
But I don't think I'm that good at doing multiple things at once any more.
(More evidence; I've paused the Dr Who DVD I'm watching, to write this; I can't follow the DVD and write new and unique content at the same time).
My brain is deteriorating. I can 'feel' it. I am not as agile as I was before.
Now this may sound like #privilege and everything else. I'm still smarter and better than a lot of people. (Yes, I _am_ tooting my own horn here; false humility isn't what this post is about. Of course most people reading this journal are _also_ smart :-) ).
I am _dumber_ than I was before. And I'm scared. I'm only 46 and I know I've lost mental capacity.
My biggest fear of growing old is that I'll lose my mind and _know_ that I'm losing it. (My second fear is that my body fails and I'm still myself but can't communicate). I think I've started down this path :-(
When I was a kid I could track multiple things at the same time. I remember when I was 13... my English teacher called me out "Stephen, you're not paying attention! What did I just say?". I repeated back the last minute of what she'd been talking about (almost word for word). She was right; I wasn't paying attention, but I didn't need to. I was chatting with my friend and thinking about a program I was writing. Listening to the teacher was a tertiary task, and I just recalled from memory what she said.
Roll forward a couple of decades; I was writing code, on a conference call and chatting with (and solving) a co-workers problem.
Roll forward 1 more decade. Just one decade. I can't hold 3 conversations in my head. I can't even hold 2. I'm finding myself at work missing things on conference calls because I've got bored and started to write more code.
I'm still VERY good at single threading.
But I don't think I'm that good at doing multiple things at once any more.
(More evidence; I've paused the Dr Who DVD I'm watching, to write this; I can't follow the DVD and write new and unique content at the same time).
My brain is deteriorating. I can 'feel' it. I am not as agile as I was before.
Now this may sound like #privilege and everything else. I'm still smarter and better than a lot of people. (Yes, I _am_ tooting my own horn here; false humility isn't what this post is about. Of course most people reading this journal are _also_ smart :-) ).
I am _dumber_ than I was before. And I'm scared. I'm only 46 and I know I've lost mental capacity.
My biggest fear of growing old is that I'll lose my mind and _know_ that I'm losing it. (My second fear is that my body fails and I'm still myself but can't communicate). I think I've started down this path :-(
