All Day I Dream About Smarts

DAY FIFTY-NINE: The Pauper Needs Some Stimuli

Working out is something everyone in their 20s at least mulls over.  Unless you are one of those cross-country sporty types in high school (read: I was never), then exercise is something that rarely crosses your mind.  Even if you are uncomfortable with that excess flab (read: I was always), you'd still rather LiveJournal it or cry in your room over it while listening to John Mayer albums believing "if only he got to see my personality, he'd fall in love with me!"

Really sorry that never worked out, by the way.  Try again next time.

But once your metabolism starts to fail and you realize that what you put into your body and how you treat it genuinely affects your own personal output in society, things start to change.  Motivation will strike in the form of a break up, an upcoming event where you just have to look a-MAH-zing, or a good old fashioned weekend-long ANTM binge that leaves you feeling like a balloon filled with delivery pizza and shame.

The point is, we motivate ourselves to be better people when a catalyst forces us to take action.  The same is true for our brains.  But people don't often realize that their brains are atrophying in the same way our muscles do.  In other words, getting dumber is a lot less obvious than getting fatter.

My catalyst for writing was quitting my job.  It gave me the freedom of time, which I covered last post.  But the motivation is getting harder to come by as I realize how atrophied my brain has become.

In high school and college, I was often the girl that students gave a silent (or in some cases, verbal) "yes!" about when realizing they were paired for an assignment with yours truly.  I got good grades.  Teachers loved me.  And I wasn't afraid to voice my opinion (read: be "that girl" who raised her hand to answer every question.)  If I wasn't going to be cool, I was at least going to be smart.  I liked being smart.

But something happened in my four years of paralegaling.  My brain was devoted to a field I cared very little about.  I didn't have to think the same way I used to.  I trained myself to be good at allowing others to succeed at their dreams.  Routine took precedence over challenge.  And I'm no longer the same thinker I was four years ago.

Sitting down in front of my computer, finding motivation becomes more and more difficult when I don't trust the thoughts brimming inside.  People around me seem to have evolved, while there's some personal devolution I can't seem to shake.  How do you overcome atrophy when you don't have school to knock the cobwebs loose?

You have to do it yourself.  It's not just a matter of writing at this point.  I have to study.  So before I get down on myself because the blank, white LCD screen in front of me shouts back slurs of insecurity; I'm going to do some things I haven't done since the last time I felt confident about my abilities.

I'm going to read.  Leisurely (fiction), scholastically (non-fiction books on writing), and research-based (screenplays).  Regardless of how much I hated studying in college; this becomes a matter of mental life and death.  Before our brains become a sedimentary rock formation, some times we have to push ourselves to get up off the couch, strap on our reading glasses, and start running some mental laps.