April 8, 2022 – The Sixtieth Official Friday Night BeerBlog

I had the best idea for a blog this week. It was rich and funny and gave Mike lots of opportunities to be snarky on the FNBB podcast. I couldn’t wait to write about it. And then I forgot what it was. Like Poof! Truly I have scoured my memory, trying to take myself back to that exact moment when it was so clear, but alas, it’s just gone. And there is nothing more frustrating.

When The Memory Shoe Drops

If you are my age or older, I’m sure this scenario sounds familiar. You are working on a task and are in need of something from upstairs to help complete this thing. But before you go up, you check on dinner in the oven and maybe check Facebook. Eventually you get upstairs but can’t remember why you are there. The reason was so important like 5 minutes ago, and now for the life of you, cannot recall why or what you were going to get.

You abandon the trip. Now you may remember the thing it is you were to get once you get back downstairs, but then again, you might not. It varies. This same thing is true when you have something you want to remember to tell someone. The more important the thing, the faster you forget it. It leaves you muttering, “I was going to tell you something and shit, I can’t remember what it is.” Hopefully it’s not something important like, “The IRS called and they need you to call to claim some cash they owe you.”

Age Or TBI?

While this forgetfulness starts happening at about this age, I half suspect that a part of my absent-mindedness is due to a major concussion I sustained nearly 5 years ago. I crashed on my bicycle (again) and for the next few months had to work really hard to regaining parts of my memory.

Looking squarely at something, I would absolutely know what it was for, but could not remember the name of it. You play games on it. The kids love it. They’ve gotten in trouble over it and sometimes it gets taken away. It’s called…wait, don’t tell me. ARGGGG. Okay, tell me. The XBOX, of course. I knew that.

Poor Ian had to drive his mom around for a couple of months because I would get in a car and know where I was going, but just couldn’t remember how to get there.

Info In, Info Out

Eventually I got “most” of my memory back, but when we begin to forget little details, ideas, names, what you were doing, I hate to say is age related. Or one I call a capacity issue. I have a theory. I believe that once we get to a certain age, that our memory storage is full or at critical capacity. Much like your phone or your computer, your brain starts to slow down when it gets this full. We are all in desperate need of purging our hard drives in order to make space for new info.

At this age we have gotten to a point of info in, info out. If we ingest a piece of information or instruction, we have to get rid of something else. Sometimes that works in our favor, sometimes not. When you go upstairs and don’t remember why you are there, it is not in your favor. When you legitimately forget to call someone that you didn’t want to talk to anyway, it is in your favor.

Back To The Blog

I still haven’t remembered that brilliant idea that I had for a blog a few days ago. What’s funny is that I remember when I had the idea I told myself that I had better write it down. But in this long drawn out conversation in my head, I said, “Nah”, it’s took good to forget. Yeah well…

Maybe it wasn’t that brilliant. but I’d like to think that it was and that maybe it will pop into my head again. It will definitely have to wait until after my next info dump. I find the that best way to retrieve these things is to let them go and eventually they will find us again.

Until then, you just get a blog and podcast about how much it sucks to forget. Forget what I don’t remember.

Take care of your head!

LLM

PODCAST VERSION:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1594894/10406113