I am agitated today.
I forgot my phone at home, because I was sidetracked from the usual droll morning routine, and I realized that my phone pocket was empty right when I was about to make the left turn out of my subdivision. It wasn’t too late to go back and get it, but it was too late in the sense that in the game of minutes that’s Atlanta morning traffic, I’d gone too far. I’ll live without it, but it’s more of the niggling inconvenience of not being able to derive some amusement from it be it from texting friends or checking the Big Brother-free internet, during any sort of downtime. And, I won’t have a source of music to listen to while I’m running on the treadmill, which is going to probably suck.
I forgot my work ID/key card in my car. By the time I realized it, I was already in front of the employee door to my office, with no key to buzz myself in with. The thought of walking the eighth of a mile and a flight of stairs in a sauna-like humid morning just to go retrieve two plastic cards that nobody in the building actually checks didn’t seem quite worth it. I used the front door to the office instead. The fact that my gym fob was attached to it almost made me want to go get it, but I could just as easily check in with my phone number at the front desk, so I scrapped that idea as well. I’d gone too far.
Aside from these first world inconveniences foolishly making me feel quite blah on the day, the point is that I think I’m becoming forgetful, and in the grand spectrum of things, that does worry me a little bit.
For someone who can remember a litany of useless tidbits, like Michael Jordan’s career-best single season scoring average (37.1), the generic horsepower number used by the Japanese government to “regulate” sports cars (280) to Wolverine’s first appearances (Incredible Hulk #180), I seem to be more susceptible to spontaneous bouts of forgetfulness of things in the current than I think I used to be.
It’s not just the two incidents of this morning that have me feeling this way, either. It’s the littlest things, like always having this sense of unsureness to whether or not I’ve closed the garage door after I leave home in the morning, or whether or not I’ve remembered to lock my computer when I’ve walked away from the keyboard at the office. I can literally do both things, but as soon as I’m out of sight, it’s like I’m suddenly unsure of if I did them or not.
I’ve gone back to check on both accounts more than I’d like to admit. I can’t think of a single instance where I’ve failed to do either, but it doesn’t change the fact that I still have this paranoia that I’ve forgotten. The garage door concerns have gotten to a point where I’m practically singing out that the garage door has been closed as a pneumonic reminder, but it doesn’t change the fact that I look in the rear view mirror like three times to make sure, before my house vanishes behind the crest of the hill.
So, the question is, is my age becoming more than just a number and am I becoming forgetful on account of growing older? Or am I subconsciously under a degree of stress that it’s beginning to inhibit the brain functions that associate with remembering things? After all, my mind is heavily wrapped up in convention planning and costume construction as of the start of the month, and I’ll be the first to admit that most of the time, my mind is on either topic or both.
Maybe it’s both. Or maybe my brain is just stagnant and lacking in overall stimulation.
Either way, I don’t like the fact that I’m showing forgetful tendencies, and I’m hoping it’s more of a temporary fluke than a permanently degenerative sign of things to get worse.
