Construction Zone

I alternate between colorful buzzing, ideas like rabbits and feeling like a dried up grey pancake. Yes, there is room between the two and a few zones that I float around just pleased that I have some time. However, I do worry that I killed my child brain. Thirteen years of stress, numbers, spreadsheets and the corresponding happyish hours. What did that do to the little girl that wrote a story about a milkshake growing a beard and long blond hair (a mix between Susanne Somers and Burt Reynolds) then counseling a confused child about the nature of life. From the fridge.

Thankfully, the brain is very resilient. It’s not dead, but I think many of my neuron roads are filled with potholes, missing bridges or became temporary camps for accountants during tax season. Some roads will be rerouted, while some demolished. And I must contract for brand new construction. Maybe hovercraft would be easier.

For encouragement, I went back to a book by Diane Ackerman (one of my favorites), The Alchemy of Mind.

"...whenever we learn something, the brain mints new connections or enlivens old ones along familiar pathways… The brain bends, learns, effloresces, adapts. When we learn something new, we grow new synaptic connections. Neuron trees grown new twigs along their branches, while some of the branches themselves become stronger.”

And for those of you trying to break from smoking, addiction to fake cheese, or chewing cardboard boxes (ok, that’s my cat):

“As the developing brain blooms and prunes connections, it has to decide which ones to fix permanently and which to dissolve. Preserving what’s useful and killing the rest, it chooses. How does it know what’s useful? What ever we use most. Hence the popularity of bad habits. Breaking them feels like splitting welded steel, and in a sense, it is. The Use it or lose it axiom has a dark side. Behave in a certain way often enough, whether it’s using chopsticks, bickering, being afraid of heights or avoiding intimacy – and the brain gets really good at it. One can master unfortunate skills that are hard to forget.”

So good news for the most part. I mean she does use the word kill here, but I think it’s just for dramatic emphasis. I like the phase, familar pathways. Patime, that’s what I will name my brain (Patient dear, it takes Time).