akirlu | Life During Wartime

I feel like I'm losing track of things. Yesterday I took a day to go up to the City and just kick around on my own. I kept double-checking my wallet, my Muni pass, my BART pass, over and over, never quite sure of where I wanted to stow them, constantly fearing that I was about to lose something vital. I swear I've lost track of a $20 bill. Or maybe that was Sunday dinner. I'm hitting about 50% on tag-backs in communication chains -- doubling up on some notifications and forgetting others entirely. In a phrase, I suck.

But I finally remembered: the brain's Executive functions -- the evaluating/choice-making/problem-solving/discriminating part of the brain -- is like a muscle: it gets tired with use, and becomes less effective when tired In an unfamiliar environment, with a lot of what will happen in the next day, hour, 5 minutes being out of my hands, and a lot of extra choices falling my way as I try to figure out how I'm dealing with the flux in my parents' plans, my Executive is tired. If I seem flaky, it's because I am flaky. At least for right now. This will get better once the crisis is over. It had better. For the time being, please pretend I just had a baby.