“I must be fine, ’cause my heart’s still beating.”
I’m feeling better now.
I bet you didn’t know how bad I felt. Let me express how I know I’m feeling better: As of yesterday, I started listening to University-level lectures again on my iPod. Before the breakup … I didn’t mark my calendar when it stopped, but … before the breakup (maybe it was even before that last suicidal night that I stopped), I was going through various lecture series and even entire classes at Universities (I’m listening to Chem 1A from Spring 2006 at Berkely now, I finished a Particle Physics lecture series last night and this morning.) at a pretty good clip. Like, depending on the course, I can listen to up to eight or nine lectures a day… or if it’s this Chemistry class, two or three… but when I was … well, a bit scatterbrained, occupied, anxious, not feeling good, or however you want to put it, I couldn’t concentrate enough to retain anything. I couldn’t listen to them at all. They weren’t enriching, they were simply frustrating.
Which makes sense. Scientists recently found that worry and anxiety reduce the capacity of your short term memory, for example. You literally can’t create new memories as well, or retain fresh information as much, if you’re worried or anxious.
So… being able to pay attention to lectures this week… a couple from Princeton earlier in the week and some hard science in the last couple of days… I’m feeling much better now.
