Losing My Mental Queue

I observe in myself a strange change of these last few years that I do not comprehend but it disturbs in me to see. I have no way of describing it except to say that I’ve kind of lost much of my mental queue.

It’s kind of like when someone asks you like 3 questions all at once and you have to answer them. First you answer one but then you can immediately bring to mind the second one and then sometimes even the third after you answered the second. Sure we all have experiences where we can’t recall the other questions because we were too focused on the first or were planning out our answer to the first question and therefore weren’t really listening to the other or it just “slips our mind”.

Well for me it’s like it ALWAYS slips my mind. In those situations I will in general mostly focus on the last question and it would be almost a miracle if I remember either of the other two. It’s like those aren’t waiting in the mental queue anymore even though I’m fairly sure I used to be a lot better at that sort of thing.

Likewise in passing during conversations I will often enough be formulating a though in response to something my girlfriend or my boss has said thinking about it carefully or recalling something I heard on a podcast that I want to share but then as conversations go the person I am speaking to brings up something else, and in the time it would take to wink an eye that thing I was thinking of is gone. My mind is now focused on what the person just said. And I have to respond to it now. That was always fine in the past though because I had a mental queue. I could after the current conversation ended go back and say what I was going to say before. I never felt in a rush to interrupt anyone to get my say in because I always felt in the past that there was no rush. I’d just wait until there’s a moment where it fits in and then say what I was thinking. But now… I don’t think I can wait. If I do, the thing I was going to say is just flat out gone.

I also find myself kind of zoning out a little when someone speaks, lost on a train of thought unconnected to what the person is saying. To be fair I’ve always zoned out even in my grade school days. I’ve always been absentminded too. Anyone who knows me will tell you that. But now it seems a little different. It’s like I sometimes have a hard time focusing even when I care about what is being said and even when I don’t have anything particularly interesting to think about instead.

This has all been growing over time and it’s getting pretty frustrating. I’ve started taking more notes and trying to deliberately focus my attention more. It’s hard and it’s annoying but I hate the feeling like I’m missing out on part of life due to this changing state of being more. Of course often I forget to do that too.

Perhaps this is a result of what they say about distractions online changing the way the mind works. Too much twitter and news feeds and such. Too much screen time. Maybe it’s all destroying my ability to focus, record, and remember. Maybe it’s because I spend hours upon hours of every day writing code and also listening to podcasts dividing my attention in two ways all the time and it’s having some kind of destructive effect on my brain processes. Maybe just years of programming by itself is enough to cause such harm. Maybe it’s just a result of years of poor dental hygiene and poor diet and generally mediocre health resulting in some kind of harm to the way my brain works. Or maybe I’m just getting old.

Or maybe it’s all in my head. Maybe I’m imaging some greater processing ability that I once had but in reality I just have gotten more intolerant of my short comings. Maybe I just want so much to be a wise and erudite being, quick witted and clever with all the best things to say right away to build bridges of understanding and make conversations flow smoothly and brilliantly from one idea to the next. Maybe wanting that is making me angry at myself as I butt up against the shortcoming of my memory capacity, in the same way I get angry when I hit up against a skill wall in a video game I’m playing and progress beyond it seems potentially wholly beyond my reach. Maybe on some level I no longer want to be the kid with his head in the clouds dreaming and ignoring everything that wasn’t right in front of him but I’m finding doing so is easier said than done.

Or maybe I’m thinking waaay too much about something that is wholly natural and just the way everyone experiences life. And I should shut up and live my life and worry about problems when they are known to be real.