In the spirit of use it or lose it, I like to do different things to keep my mind challenged. Challenged, that is, in a way that’s different from trying to remember why I came into this room, or just where it was I decided would be the perfect place to store the vacuum cleaner bags. That<\/i> kind of challenge is exactly the reason why I keep at the other<\/i> kind of challenge: I need to try and slow down the aging of my brain. That relentless decay. The inescapable slide into mental chaos and oblivion. And, as a result of those, having to go buy more vacuum cleaner bags every single time I need one. That would be good to avoid.<\/p>\n
I’ve read many, many places that to keep the mind “young,” you need to keep it creating new neural paths<\/a>. That means learning new<\/i><\/b> things. A new language is good, and that’s on my To Do list. Doing familiar things in a new way is good. Math is very good. But the thing that really gets me going is geography. And by that I really just mean knowing where places are.<\/p>\n I know where places are. Almost all of them.*<\/p>\n I can name, off the top of my head, 185 countries. (It does take<\/i><\/b> a few minutes, but still.) I can do all the Sporcle<\/a> and Jetpunk<\/a> geography quizzes that have to do with which countries are where, or what the name of those outlines on the map are. I can fill in the map tests at worldatlas.com<\/a>. I’ve taken the time to learn it because it fascinates<\/b><\/i> me.<\/p>\n I am fully aware that this particular body of knowledge doesn’t really do much for me in real life, though I sure did know what directions the refugees were streaming when they were leaving Libya for Tunisia. And I knew the general area where the Kenyans were setting up camps to house Somalian refugees without checking a globe. And if my fantasies start coming true and someone suddenly asks me to identify all the countries in eastern Europe, I’m so<\/i><\/b> ready.<\/p>\n In addition to the (I hope) brain benefits, I also have to think of this as kind of a hobby. I say have to<\/i> because it takes up more time than you would think. The fact is, my brain and I aren’t as young as we used to be, and if I don’t keep reinforcing this information, it seems to somehow leak out or something. So I periodically go over all the maps, making sure I remember what’s where and how to spell Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and whether Oman and Yemen are in alphabetical order or reverse alphabetical order (just so you know, it’s reverse).<\/p>\n I spent today “going over” it. Today. As in all<\/i><\/b> day. As in I got up at a reasonable hour, made coffee, then sat my fat ass down at the computer and played geography trivia quizzes and filled in maps all. day. long<\/b>.<\/p>\n So\u2026I think I’ll go take a shower now. Brush my teeth. I’m a little ambivalent about the whole makeup thing, seeing as it’s five o’clock. PM. [sigh] Tomorrow will be more productive, I’m sure, now that my brain is all tuned up. Right.<\/p>\n *I kind of stink at Oceania and the Caribbean. I know everywhere else, though.**<\/p>\n **Yes, everywhere<\/i><\/b>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the spirit of use it or lose it, I like to do different things to keep my mind challenged. Challenged, that is, in a way that’s different from trying to remember why I came into this room, or just where it was I decided would be the perfect place to store the vacuum cleaner […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/originalorknot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/originalorknot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/originalorknot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/originalorknot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/originalorknot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/originalorknot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/originalorknot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/originalorknot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/originalorknot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}