AARP ADHD

Is it a symptom of an aging brain or are we all in need of medication?

Or is it simply the fact that, after a certain point, we have obtained and hopefully retained, so much information that our minds are scattered full of holes like a buckshot-wild carcass and we seek, perpetually, to categorize and reference the myriad bytes and bits we have managed to collect in our sub conscious.

Is it when we wish to expand and expound upon these treasured bits of flotsam that we feel in need of Ritalin? Or do we, like our Macs and our PCs, simply need a better filing system?

It used to be we all carried around calculators. Who does “math” anymore?

It used to be we all carried around “Day Planners”.  There’s an app for that.

It used to be we had phones on our desks and at home, period.  We all know how well that worked out.

So we’re mobile. So we’re connected. So we’re constantly current.

So why do we feel as if we’re about to be flung out of control like a Tilt-a-Whirl gone off it’s track?

I wonder if it’s because we don’t trust in our connectivity…….our devices….our screens. Or is it because we don’t trust that what we have input into our devices, because it is subject to our own limitations and foibles and errors and is, therefore suspect; hinged to our imperfect memories and modalities and hanging from our well-used but slightly shoddy memory banks.

I doubt younger people are plagued by these shadows and slights of mind. They were weaned on their devices and pacified with their pads. Their comfort has always been contingent on their connectivity.

I write notes to remember to write notes.

I send myself emails to remind me to write notes.

I forget to look at my “Notes” file on my phone for so long that when I do get back to it, the scribble-scrawled, hasty pudding of parlance stares back at me in a fontish taunt, challenging me to read my own past-mind and regurgitate even the slightest faint of familiarity that might help glue this string of unstrung pearls of wisdom back together.

The delete key is my friend, my taunting enemy…..…and my salvation. I accede to the rule of the adroitly aging; “Out of Sight, Out of Mind”

Click………gone………maybe I’ll recall it again, someday……..mostly not.

My obeisance to this faltering frailty does not frighten as much as frustrate. It provokes a challenge in me, a gauntlet to be taken up; how to better capture the ephemera that, bird-like, flit across my frontal lobe and vanish into the mass of minutia-gathering matter that constitutes my brain.

I know I have one……..a brain.

I know it works, mostly.

My body clock is quite regular. The functions I perform daily are not only rote and routine but also thoughtful and clearly formed. Errands, shopping, driving…..I can do these with aplomb……….but not necessarily efficiently well………without lists.

It’s the fog of war that confounds me. The war with the words that formed so adroitly in my mind and now scatter elusively around the periphery, hiding from clear view like cockroaches when the light is turned on; you know they’re there, you just can’t pin them down and it makes you want to squash them all the more. But I loved those words, those phrases, those inspirations, when I had them. They seemed radiant, alive, evocative of more to come and more to say. That is why I took the time to write the notes……..the remnant reminders of nascent ideas yet to be fleshed.

But now the notes must be longer, the construction and definition of the thoughts more carefully and completely framed. The single word thought triggers must morph into more worthy word-phrases if they are to become more than piles of pixels to be moved to the trash.

The notes need notes if they are to be worthy of future thought and evocation.

And so we search, we Google, we ferret, we fret; looking for the perfect “system” to catalog our minds and annihilate the anarchy that daily mounts a determined defense against our every effort to remember.

Our Finder files grow like seedling in spring soil. Our Dropboxes, once singular in their function, now flash their fullness and beg, no demand, that we upgrade and purchase more memory.

If only.

I do want to purchase more memory. Really.

But there is no Memory Store wedged between the Best Buy and the Apple Store.

And don’t even start to ask me about my photo library. For that, I do need drugs, or at least a stiff drink.