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I am now in my third week of recording memory lapses during the month of July. It's amazing how much I have learned. For instance, my first lesson is that when I am coping with moderate stress, as usually occurs when beginning a new course in the Harvard Summer School, I am not very good at saying "No" to future stressful events that will cause me even more discomfort in the next week or two.
That stress came dressed in four different guises this last week. First was the ordeal with grandson James who had his impacted wisdom teeth pulled on the way up to visit Jo and me in Concord. He needed a lot of attention and care. Second, I had to relocate a considerable amount of my stuff from the downstairs bedroom, closet and bathroom to the upstairs bath and study, both of which were already a mess.
The third source of stress was a lengthy period of skin surgery the day before my grandson's arrival. I was left with quite a bit of head and facial pain that required medication and frequent bandage changes. Then finally, I lost my wallet—or rather misplaced it. Though this loss was not discovered until Monday, it was disconcerting. It was great relief to finally discover the wallet in the study bookcase where I had left it a week earlier.
Since I have trouble inserting tables or other media into the Psychology Today format, I will summarize the first two weeks of record keeping. Here it is:
1. July began promisingly, but then the combination of my lat week skin surgery, a probably bad reaction to the injected painkiller, and the arrival of my grandson who had four impacted wisdom teeth extracted that morning, set me back. There were four episodes of memory lapses (three in one day) as well as other bad moments. Stress level was high most of the first week of July.
2. Week 2 began poorly but improved. The biggest problem was trying to teach my class when I was not up to it. Monday was awful, with me running out of gas after two of three hours. Wednesday was only a little better, but I got through it. The biggest lift was finding my wallet. A smaller number of mental lapses, mostly the failure of the morning Autopilot. Only three memory lapses, none after Wednesday.
3. Week 3 was easily the best of the summer. No mental lapses and the two classes went well—as did the class's performance on the mid-term. Spouse and I are not sharing a bed this week, but our relationship seems generally OK. Overall, low stress level.
The second lesson for me has been the absence of my usual morning "Autopilot"—a habit of not thinking about my morning activities, instead carrying them out without any prior thought. Because I'm thinking about what I am doing, there were no memory lapses in the past week. But I do wonder what will happen when I stop keeping score.
Occasionally I wonder if this blog has motivated anyone else to keep a daily-weekly-monthly record of their memory lapses. If so, let me know what your experience has been.
