{"id":933,"date":"2024-09-25T20:10:20","date_gmt":"2024-09-26T01:10:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olaviakite.com\/maianebula\/?p=933"},"modified":"2024-09-25T20:10:20","modified_gmt":"2024-09-26T01:10:20","slug":"a-smooth-sandblasted-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olaviakite.com\/maianebula\/2024\/09\/25\/a-smooth-sandblasted-brain\/","title":{"rendered":"A Smooth, Sandblasted Brain"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">My mind has been feeling a little bit eroded lately, language-wise. A smooth, sandblasted brain. I&#8217;ve been unconsciously sneaking Japanese grammar structures into my English sentences, and don&#8217;t get me started on the way my mind seems to drift off mid-sentence, because there are holes where entire phrases used to be. Sometimes I&#8217;m looking for a word in either Spanish or English, and my mind serves me a smorgasbord of possibilities in Japanese, French, German&#8230; everything save the language I actually need. So this is day 1 of me writing every day to try to save my mind from utter obliteration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I wonder how I survived in Japan with absolutely no one to talk to. Well, social media was not as pervasive back then, and I still had to go to school and participate in class, which counts as talking. <em>Oh my god, is this what they call <strong>brain rot<\/strong>?<\/em> I definitely feel an unusual sluggishness when trying to respond during conversation. <em>Have I brought this upon myself due to overconsumption of social media?<\/em> <em>Is there such a thing as a healthy dose of social media, anyway?<\/em> I&#8217;ve <a href=\"https:\/\/olaviakite.com\/maianebula\/2024\/06\/11\/sorry-i\/\">already written about this<\/a>, and the answer is no. Not for me, at least. There must be a way to make it more educational, though, like following accounts in my weaker languages only. <em>Ha! That&#8217;s where I&#8217;m one step ahead of you<\/em>, says social media. <em>I&#8217;ll make it impossible for you to see only the things you follow. I&#8217;ll make you crave more novelty, and forget about your original noble (albeit very na\u00efve) intent. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My weakened language production skills have brought about an unhealthy habit of second-guessing every word I say. <em>Is this idiom correct? Is this sentence structure correct?<\/em> My mind is negating decades of written and oral communication in my two main languages. Meanwhile, my third language is neither regressing nor thriving. Ha, what a fancy way to say I&#8217;m stuck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, to make the jump from whining to action, in addition to these writing exercises, I&#8217;m ramping up my water intake because hydration is also vital for optimal brain function. Nothing can come out of a shriveled up brain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(I also need to talk to actual people on a regular basis, but life in this century is making that particular endeavor especially hard.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My mind has been feeling a little bit eroded lately, language-wise. A smooth, sandblasted brain. I&#8217;ve been unconsciously sneaking Japanese grammar structures into my English sentences, and don&#8217;t get me started on the way my mind seems to drift off mid-sentence, because there are holes where entire phrases used to be. Sometimes I&#8217;m looking for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olaviakite.com\/maianebula\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olaviakite.com\/maianebula\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olaviakite.com\/maianebula\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olaviakite.com\/maianebula\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olaviakite.com\/maianebula\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=933"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olaviakite.com\/maianebula\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":935,"href":"https:\/\/olaviakite.com\/maianebula\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933\/revisions\/935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olaviakite.com\/maianebula\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olaviakite.com\/maianebula\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olaviakite.com\/maianebula\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}