'Til Tuesday - Apoplectic Me

Hi! I think I’m going to change apoplectic.me’s regular posting day to Tuesday.

Over the weekend, there are weekend things to do, and then by Monday all the other things to do have built up and there are regular weekday things to do and I want to do all the things because if I don’t do all the things the to-do list will just get longer and longer for ever and ever amen.

[More whimsy and more personal reflections are available in the Apoplexy Tiny Letter.]

So, yeah. I didn’t forget to post this Monday. There just wasn’t time. And then by the time Tuesday rolled round, there were other things on the calendar and I’d already missed Monday, so what difference would another day make?

Then this morning, I got an email letting me know that I had a soundcheck to do today starting at 4pm. I couldn’t remember for the life of me what for. But I asked a pal who had a suggestion and pieced together the rest from there with the help of Facebook and my emails.

It's one louder, isn't it? — Soundcheck’s going to go well.

But no problem. Mrs Stroke Bloke had previously sent me an article that would serve as a good jumping off point for a blog post. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find it. I was pretty sure it was in my texts, but we send a lot of texts. Fortunately, I did remember it was about damage to short term memory in the wake of stroke.

It’s here, on Longreads, and it’s an excerpt from Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember: The Stroke That Changed My Life, Christine Hyung-Oak Lee‘s forthcoming memoir. It’s full of interesting reflections on what it’s like to lose one’s short term memory, and how memory works in its various forms.

1. It makes the specialist subject round a bit tricky.

So, I’m certainly not going to try to replicate it here. But I will note one short passage in particular:

Short-term memory is like an administrative assistant for the brain, keeping information on hand and organizing tasks—it will figuratively jot down a number, a name, an address, your appointments, or anything else for as long as you need to complete your transaction.

So it is that since my stroke, my to-do list – annotated with details like numbers and shopping essentials – has become increasingly important, particularly as a time-allocation aide.

Say kids, what time is it? — Flav sez: Your post is 48hrs late, Boyeee!

I wonder if my slight flakiness over the past couple of days has been tied to another step forward. I certainly hope so. It feels like I’ve been taking on a little more during the past couple of weeks, and hopefully that’s a sign that I’ll actually be able to do that soon.

Speaking of administrative assistants, we got an Amazon Echo (or Alexa, as it likes to be known) for Christmas, and as I scratch its surface, it’s providing me with a new format for my to-do list, an easy to compile shopping list, a voice-activated radio, weather forecasts, and a handy, hands-free grams to ounces converter for the Transatlantic chef. I think it’s got some potential as a coping aid for the stroke survivor.