The edge

Last Sunday I ended up writing about six future blog posts. None of them are lengthy, for the most part I just wanted some words to accompany some photographs from my recent travels. Working through them, I found that I knew what I wanted to say but that I could barely type and in addition had forgotten how to spell some common words. I struggled with ‘decision’ for instance, and found myself needing to use backspace incredibly frequently. For a moment I wondered if I had some kind of early-onset degenerative disease whose only manifestation at this stage was manual dexterity and a bit of memory loss, but I think the answer is far simpler. And nicer. In short, inactivity. I was rusty. I hadn’t typed anything for ages, and my brain had not been forced to do any kind of non-numerical work for several weeks. I’ve not been reading any books, I’ve not been writing anything, and so whatever part of my brain controls literacy had gone into power-save mode and took a while to come back online. Like anything you don’t engage in for a while, your proficiency declines. By the third post I was finding it much much easier, and as I type this I have now completed around eight small posts which will be winging your way shortly at around two day intervals. It’s always nice to know that what you write is being read and appreciated by others, but this recent experience brings a whole new meaning to the notion that I write this as much for me as for other people. It may be that it’s an important part of keeping my mental edge.

PS if this post was completely incomprehensible.....