RyanHarne.com

The summer is gone and I cannot help but again reminesce. But the summer brought some changes that I cannot yet shrug off or even pretend do not exist. There was so much stress, so much tension, so great a liveliness - there could be no ignoring the effects.

Two of the effects, the most prominent still lingering on, relate to my memory and concentration. For my concentration, it is increasingly difficult to pay attention and focus in certain surroundings or discussions; however, in some areas, I can focus at levels far beyond what I would normal pay attention to. This is baffling for me, particularly when the inability to concentrate takes hold.

With my memory, again, some of my memory capacity has increased while some of it has gone away entirely. In stressful circumstances, usually, I have noticed that I now need to have something repeated to me (or me repeat it to myself) many, many times before my brain can retain it; in the past week, I spoke to someone, turned around and then forgot entirely about the conversation. But again, the short-term memory loss seems only exaggerated in stressful situations.

I do not think I would frequently bring something like this to the table, but it happened and I mention it. Tonight, in a class, I read a portion of text from a document; after having done so and the instructor spoke about it, I realized I had no idea, at all, what I had just read aloud. The reminder that my memory is vanishing, in some respects, was shocking, actually.

There is a possibility that I am only noticing more extremes in my behavoir and analyzing them with greater scrutiny, thereby feeling a growth in some negative direction has occurred, when, in actuality, I am rather pointing out features of myself that were present before but never defined.

Either way, I would not trade the summer of 2006 for anything in the world. It is something to lean on.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 29th, 2006 at 9:26 pm and is filed under Contemplative. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.