I am becoming concerned about my brain. There’s too much going on in there. While exercising at the gym I have my ear buds in listening to music, but sometimes I do not actually hear it because I got distracted by something on the tv screen that has no sound. Then someone comes in the door and I get to thinking about what kind of person they might be but I look down at the timer and I still have a few minutes to reach my goal. The song in my ear changes and I get lost in the lyrics and then lost in the memories the song triggers and then I am back to wondering how my mind became like a rabid squirrel. AND, I remind myself that we are out of milk at home and I forgot to thaw out something for dinner and an appointment needs to be made to get the dogs’ nails trimmed and that reminds me that I need to schedule a booster shot. Good grief! I will not accept that this happens when a person is on the downhill side of 77. Wait a minute. That could be an issue. At my age there are so many memories, so many things still to do, and way too many lessons learned and a whole lot of trivial information that serves no practical purpose and all that takes up brain space. Just like a computer with a full memory gets slow and maybe even crashes, my brain is overloaded. So, maybe I am okay after all. Not really sure about that explanation, but I like it so I am deciding to believe it.

I used to do the same thing with religion — choose to believe it for about half my life until it just didn’t make sense to me anymore. Gave it up and became a happy heathen instead. Now that can be a mind clearing experience. I like making decisions and choices based on what is real and evidence based. I like that there is no reason for me to fear hell. Hell isn’t real to me. I really like giving up the guilt that goes along with religious thinking. I just do my best. The freedom to choose what to believe and what to discard is something I am way grateful for. It can be a challenge for those who knew the old me and expect her to still be here — but that is for them to deal with. I’m just going to stay happy with myself.