Wait...what was I doing, again?
- Hillary Huyghue-Matias
- Oct 28, 2024
- 4 min read
Updated: Apr 15
If I had $1 for the number of times in one day that I constantly repeat the words in the title, I swear I'd be able to afford to live out my dream of traveling the world on someone else's dime and eating anything and everything that I want and having it reflect on someone else's waistline. Unfortunately, I seem to be repeating this phrase more and more lately. I start doing something, then the next thing I know I'm somewhere else doing something else and saying, 'Wait... what was I doing again?'
Now, just to be fair, my short-term memory has never been the best, and like everyone, I tend to occasionally forget things like where I put my keys. At least once a week, I lose my phone and discover later on that day that, yet again, my couch, which obviously has a cookie monster complex, has swallowed it. Pretty normal, right? My long-term memory, on the other hand, is closer to the other end of the spectrum. Believe it or not, I clearly remember what my kindergarten teacher was wearing on the first day of school. If I close my eyes, I can vividly see her walking towards 4 1/2-year-old little me wearing scuffed-up flip-flops and a blue-flowered house dress.
With all that said, while I tend to be a little forgetful with the day-to-day, recently, I've noticed that my forgetfulness is definitely on overdrive. Just to give you an example, I have an alarm on my phone every morning at 9 am to remind me to take my vitamins. So why is it that after the alarm goes off, and I've finished meticulously gathering all of my vitamins one by one from their respective bottles, 10 minutes later I'm second-guessing myself and asking myself, 'Wait, did I take my vitamins today?' Or, even worse, later in the morning, I find some remnants of the vitamins in a different part of the house and later learn that they also became victims of swallowed couch syndrome? Being that I'm a chronic multitasker, could it possibly be that I am just trying to juggle too many things at one time to squeeze a few extra milliseconds out of my day? Or could this be the result of some of the inevitable changes that happen in life with age?
While I'm still waiting for the jury to come back from recess and give me the verdict on the reason for an uptick in my forgetfulness, in the meantime, I've decided to be proactive and do some specific things to help keep my mind active. Since I'm a lover of words and puzzles, I've started playing the Wordle game daily on my phone first thing in the morning while having my cup of coffee. Have you played that game before? Well, if not, be sure to click on the link above and check it out.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
So, is playing this word game helping my short-term memory and my retention level? While I'm not 100% sure what the answer is, believe it or not, I do remember to play Wordle every day. It's so interesting how doing a repetitive action that involves using two or more of the body's senses can easily become a habit and convert into muscle memory. It's become a part of my daily routine, and honestly, I do find that it helps me to 'wake up' the part of my brain that even coffee doesn't have control over. It's also nice to take a few minutes in the morning for some 'me time' and do something that I enjoy. I have also seen how it puts me in a better frame of mind. After that, I'm ready to do my daily reading and take on the day...
Now, perhaps if the word of the day was 'vitamin', maybe that would trigger the part of my memory to remember to take the vitamins. Unfortunately, since the answers are always five-letter words, I won't ever be so fortunate. In the meantime, I'll keep the alarm on my phone to remind me to take my vitamins and use the alarm on my watch as a backup since, at some point, the phone will inevitably again become prey to the swallowing couch.
So, this is just one of the small things that I've done daily to keep my mind active, but I'll be sure to share other ideas in another post. Do you find yourself at times saying, 'Wait, what was I doing?' Do you have any helpful tips or stories to share? If so, we'd love to hear from you. So feel free to like and subscribe so you can comment on this post, and I'll see you in the next one!
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