lost my mind

I used to be smart. Like scary smart.

I could read 4 books at once

Recite Shakespeare

I could run the board while watching jeopardy

When my dad would be watching Wheel of Fortune I would just be passing through the room and yell the solution before I got 3 steps away.

I would latch onto a subject and immerse myself completely in it until I had consumed every scrap of knowledge I could lay my hand on then go onto the next.

In High School I wanted to get out of the first 3 hours of my day so on a whim went and took the ASVAB test (Armed Service Vocational Aptitude Battery of tests)

When the results came back and I can still recall this like it was yesterday, the recruiter sat me down and handed me this really big 3 ring binder and said “Young man, with your test results you qualify for every position in this folder”

Then he handed me another “and this one”

And another “and this one”

And 3 more “and all of these”

“You qualify for every job that we have to offer except Jet Fighter pilot and that is just because you wear glasses. You could go into anything even the CIA if you wanted to. Only 1 person in the state scored higher than you.”

Did I take him up on his offer?

No of course not.

Why?

Because at the time I was a rebel with issues with authority

In retrospect it was more along the lines of being lazy and dumb.

Yeah didn’t you know smart people can be dumb?

I just can’t plan for the future. The future me is a whole nother person.

One I really have never cared much about.

Anyway getting back on track here

I was intelligent. I was rockin an IQ of around 145 to 147 points.

I didn’t realize that I was THAT smart, I just knew I thought different than everyone else.

Yeah I’m bragging a bit here but I can because that was my thing.

I’m not handsome or outgoing or rich but this.

I had this.

    Had.

Now it’s gone.

You see, a couple of years ago I was trying, for lack of a better term, trying to get my shit together.

I had fallen on some hard times.

Well harder times, my whole life hasn’t been a bed of roses at a rock concert.

I was on antidepressants and ADHD meds.

Well, when I was on those I was literally sleeping my life away.

I was sleeping on my lunch at work and then going to bed really early as well as sleeping away at least 1 day of the weekend.

I lost so much of my kids growing up.

Time I can never get back and for that I loathe me, but that is a separate story all together.

Anyway I pitched the drugs. Figured I would just deal.

Once they were out of my system I realized that time wasn’t all I had lost.

I wasn’t as smart as I used to be.

My brain doesn’t move as quick as it used to.

The connections are not as sharp and I cannot recall as well as I could.

I used to have an eidetic memory. I could recall a memory so concise that I could walk into the memory and look around and see elements I may have missed.

This memory was really awesome

No one could best me at Trivial Pursuit especially the silver screen edition

(If you haven’t figured it out yet I really squandered my talents)

But now its all been dialed back

why we sleep

You know that as long as there have been humans we have had the need to sleep yet no one really knows why. Right now the only definitive answer that they have been able to nail down is "we sleep because we get sleepy".
As someone who suffers from insomnia on a regular basis I have theorized that since the brain sucks in every bit of input you experience. Every smell, sound, thought, sight, touch, whatever. All that input just sits in your brains RAM until you give the brain time to download and process the information. This is why the body gets the same amount of regenerative energy from just 15 minutes of calming downtime but you still have a need for sleep.
Thats what dreams are. Part of your brain is built to make sense outta input so part of your brain watches this info flying by as its being put away and starts making stories up from it. Why? bored maybe? maybe thats its job and it doesnt know how NOT to do its job so since it cant use current input it uses what it has available.
Anyway once your RAM gets full then the machine starts to break down. It is full to bursting with all of this data and hasnt had any down time to process it. The computer starts to error out. Your brain bluescreens. Too many bluescreens and the whole thing just shuts down.
Anyway thats been my theory for a while but what do I know. Just had 3 decades of sleepless nights to contemplate it.

movies via Outerplaces

Please include attribution to outerplaces.com with this graphic.

Thursday

I thought this was amusing so I thought I would share.

So Thursday morning I woke up.

As I often do with it being morning and all

I donned my robe and asked the dog if he had to go out.

Of course he did. He is the size of a well fed rat with the bladder the size of a walnut so he fills up pretty quickly.

I walked into the kitchen and opened the door to the garage ready to take the 2 steps down to the wintery cold garage floor.

Now here is where I pause to explain that my sciatic nerve has been pinched off a bit so I have a numbness going down the right side of my leg and into the left side of my foot. Usually it just causes me just a bit daily discomfort but I do have to watch the ground when I walk because it takes just a very slight unevenness for me to roll my ankle.

Rolling your ankle is a bit beyond discomfort as it usually involves you slamming your ankle into the ground with the entire weight of your person behind it.

This, as you can imagine, is quite painful.

Anyway, so there I stood in the door way and took one step.

Just one.

My ankle rolled.

My momentum proceeded to then launch me, Peter Pan like, out of the house. So out of the house I went and over the two steps I flew.

However I did not have any pixie dust with me at that time and gravity, being the force that it is, decided I needed a big hug.

So down I plummeted.

…….I taste floor.

You would have thought I had been running as my momentum kept me going after hitting the ground and allowed me the privilege of sliding head first into my deep freeze.

And bouncing off of it.

because hey, I have already done this far why not a bit more.

So after having been awake a mere 3 minutes I was now in a crumbled heap on the floor of my garage.

“Good morning to you too Thursday” I moaned.

“Dude can you quit goofing off I still have to pee.” said the dog

Obviously I’m doing fine today.

Middle of my back is a bit raw feeling and I am sore.

I am also looking into investing in a life alert too.