I’ve officially reached the era of my life where I forget things if I don’t do them right away. I mean right away. Like, I can walk into the bathroom thinking, I need to take my allergy pill, but then peeing will effectively remove it from my mind. It’s like having the attention span of a tabby. I can be intently focused on that felt mouse attached to the stick, but then when he can opener comes out, it effectively no longer exists.
I’d be concerned if this wasn’t also happening to a lot of my friends and acquaintances — and, since they’re mostly women, I would say that this has something to do with menopause, which I still don’t know if I’m officially in (I think it’ll be a year since my last period in August 2022, but maybe what I marked on the calendar was just that brief incident of spotting I had and not a real period? Because obviously, I don’t remember). Except that my husband is having similar issues. If he has something he wants to order from Amazon (yeah, we’ve sold our souls to the evil bald man for cheap access to two-day shipping of every item on the planet and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), he will repeat them over and over again, or make a song out of them, but inevitably, only one sticks.
“I’ve read that crossing a threshold can make you forget things,” he told me.
We live in a one-bedroom, so it’s basically all thresholds.
Calendar reminders are helpful, although if I’m busy, I may not see them until an hour late, or I may look at one and then not do the thing I’m supposed to do immediately, and then, yup, it’s gone. A list of Things To Do also is good to have. I’ll often look at mine and think, Oh God, how did I forget that? But on the other hand, I put stupid stuff on it too, like “Write,” and “Learn DaVinci Resolve,” which I think I have literally been ignoring for three years. Really, I should have three to-do lists, one for Do Today, one for Do This Week, and one for, Stuff to Feel Guilty About Not Doing For the Rest of Your Life. It’s especially funny when I have things like that on there twice at different places on the list, showing that I now have to remind myself to remind myself to do this thing that I didn’t do months ago, and am still probably never going to do.
Really that list is Stuff To Do When You Have Time, but I never have time. And I think in a lot of ways, that is the problem. Both Damon and I have too many pursuits. Not hobbies, mind you, but projects or activities that are connected to our jobs, or that will enhance our ability to get more jobs (this is where the DaVinci Resolve comes in), or that maybe will someday get us what we want to be our jobs, or art we want to someday be paid to make. If my list of things I’m trying to be wasn’t so long — screenwriter, prose writer, filmmaker, full-time professor — I wouldn’t have so many half-finished projects, partially-completed tasks, raw-dough ideas (as in not even half-baked), things on the back-burner and the side-burner and the way-back-burner, all of which I’m trying to hold in my tiny, hormone-sapped, calcifying brain at once. Which is why, I suppose, still trying to do all of that at 54 is truly insane and perhaps delusional. And yet, I wasn’t really ready or able to do a lot of this stuff in the way in which I’m currently doing it before now. Either I wasn’t life-experienced enough, or I wasn’t confident enough, or I wasn’t fuck-it enough, and so I guess I’m having to try and do it all with an old, used brain, that probably could use a full overhaul — body work, a new starter, new brakes — but it’s the one I’m stuck with because it’s way too old for a trade-in (plus as far as I know, the technology isn’t there yet. Although maybe Bezos has done it already and just kept it hush-hush).
And that reminds me: I have to go move my car.
Oh, the cookie dough, fuck-it confidence and thresholds! I feel very seen. Add five years, plus many, many post-menopause (although oddly, my body has just recently decided it went through second menopause and reformed itself in a new more apple-y shape that I'm trying very hard not to hate on). The DaVinci Resolve No to Nodes of it all... you're a smart Mint Milano.
Thanks Carrie! I’m honored to be associated with such a fine snack. 😊