Tag Archives: health

Puzzles and My Aging Brain

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I develop a daily puzzle routine — with friends — to keep my mind challenged.

I’ve always been a fan of word games and puzzles, whether it’s something like Wordle or a crossword puzzle or the Washington Post’s excellent Keyword game. I’ve been doing them on and off for a while, but have recently made them, and other games, part of a morning routine.

The Routine

I wake very early — usually between 4 and 5 AM. (And please don’t lecture me about going to bed later; don’t you think I’ve tried?) I don’t mind waking up early. A year or two ago, I developed a morning routine that kills those first two or so hours pleasantly. It consists of these things, usually in this order:

  • Morning bathroom visit.
  • Make coffee.
  • Put my Apple watch on the charger. (I wear it overnight to track my sleep.)
  • Get back into bed with my coffee and turn on the light. (It’s still dark here this time of year at 5 AM. It won’t be in a few months.)
  • Use my iPad to check in on social media. I’m on just Mastodon now and I’ve used extensive filtering to block out 90% of the political crap going on. (I do this for mental health reasons. I still know what’s going on, but I don’t have to live and breathe it.) So catching up on what went on overnight is usually pretty quick.

  • Keyword Results
    Last week’s Keyword Results. I think this might have been my best week yet; the big challenge now is getting my averages down.

    Play a few daily online games: Wordle, Connections, Keyword, Sudoku (all three levels).

  • If I woke up really early, sometimes I’ll do a crossword puzzle; I have a great app on my iPad with more than 100 Sunday puzzles saved up and ready to go. (I don’t want to start my day before 6 AM unless I have something I need to do that early.)

By the time I do all that — the difficult level of Sudoku usually takes 25-50 minutes — my pups are ready to go out. If not, I wake them up and let them jump all over the bed, excited that we’re going to start our day. Then I throw on some clothes, take them outside (or for a walk, possibly on a leash if we’re on the boat or in the camper). When we get in, they usually go back to bed, but sometimes they wait by their dishes for food and I feed them and then they go back to bed. (Seriously: my dogs sleep a lot.)

Wordle

I have two Wordle buddies, Cheri (an old friend) and Teri (a neighbor). Every morning I play and send them my results. I have to use the Send Later feature on my phone so I don’t wake them. (Not everyone uses Do Not Disturb, although I don’t think I could live without it.)

Back when I had just one Wordle buddy, that buddy went on a trip to Europe and didn’t post her results. Because I didn’t get a text from her (and had not carved my morning routine in stone yet), I forgot to play and broke a 118-game streak. That really pissed me off. I’d rather just lose one day to break a streak than to break it by simply forgetting to play.

Then I started sharing results with Teri, too. I joke with her that it’s my proof of life. If she doesn’t get a Wordle text from me by noon, she should come make sure I’m not dead.

Connections & Sudoku

Connections and Sudoku are new to the routine. I used to play some Wordle-like puzzles that had me solving four or eight or even sixteen Wordles at once, but when Teri introduced me to Connections, I decided to mix things up a bit.

Connections gives you 16 words and you have to figure out how groups of four of them are related. It’s a lot tougher than it sounds, especially until you get the hang of it. I like it because it makes me think of each word in multiple ways. Because there’s no timer, there’s no stress. I get it 5 or 6 times a week. I think my longest streak was 6. That’s okay. I love the challenge.

I know that Sudoku has been around forever but I never got sucked in. I’d always seen it on paper and it looked like a lot of work. But then I discovered the digital version on the Washington Post website. It does the “pencil work” for you, leaving the task of using logic to fill in the grid. In the beginning, I didn’t fully understand the ways I could look at the pencil work and grid to logically deduce answers or eliminate possibilities. I found myself at a point where I’d have to guess, and I knew that wasn’t right. So I did some research and learned.

Sudoku
Here’s what today’s Sudoku looks like on the web. I usually play it on my iPad and it looks different, but not by much. I have what I call the “pencil work” showing. If I were doing this on paper, those little numbers would need to be manually penciled in (and erased) after scanning each row, column, or 3×3 grid to figure out what numbers are possible. The digital version keeps this updated, but at a certain point, I have to modify the pencil work to eliminate the little numbers using logic. That’s the part I like best.

Each day there are three puzzles: easy, medium, and difficult. The easy puzzle is painfully easy — I’m not sure why I bother with them. The medium puzzle is a good warmup for the difficult one. I love the way I can get to a point in the difficult puzzle where I seem stuck — and then use what I’ve learned to scan through the pencil work and eliminate possibilities. Then look at it all again and start getting answers.

I’m extremely pleased with this difficult Sudoku because it really makes me tap into my brain power and use logic. It forces me to focus. I know that I can solve the puzzle if I look at it in all these different logical ways. I’m really using my brain and I feel the challenge. I love it!

Solving Puzzles as a Diagnostic Tool

I think that my ability to solve difficult puzzles is what’s going to cue me in when I’m heading into cognitive decline. I live alone, so there’s no one around to tell me if I’m starting to slip mentally. It’s up to me to diagnose any possible problems. I look at the difficult Sudoku as my daily test to make sure my brain is still functioning. If I can’t solve the puzzle, I have a problem.

I know my short-term memory is getting bad. For example, I’ll solve the Wordle and text it to my two friends. Later, after 7 AM my time, I start getting their results. By that time — just an hour or two later! — I can’t remember what the answer word was, let alone the words I used to get it.

I don’t think my memory is a problem, at least not yet. I have tools and techniques to work around any short-term memory issues:

  • I keep an open spiral notebook on my desk to write down things I need to remember for a day or two. I tear off the sheets when I no longer need the notes.
  • I have a to-do list app on my phone, tablet, desktop computer, and laptop that automatically keeps the lists synced, so I can add items anytime, anywhere and have them available when I need them. I even use this for my shopping list and things I need to do 2 months from now, like changing the HVAC filter.
  • As I mentioned elsewhere, I use Scrivener to take notes on things I need to remember long term that aren’t things I need to do, like the size, in pixels, of the featured image on my Great Loop blog — why can’t I remember that?) Those files are stored in a Dropbox folder so I can access them from any device, anywhere.

As things stand, I’m not worried about memory or cognitive issues. But I’m getting older and I need to be aware of the situation. I think my puzzle solving abilities will be a good indication of how things are.

Constant Complaining Is a Total Turn-Off

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I befriend a temporary neighbor only to discover that I really don’t want to be her friend.

I’m stuck in a Kingman, AZ trailer park, waiting for repairs to the suspension on my truck. I’ve been here since Saturday and, with luck, my truck will be done before the end of business today, five days later. Sunday and New Year’s Day really screwed up the work schedule.

When I arrived I took my pups for a walk in a neighboring empty lot. Along the way, my next door neighbor came out and gave me her card. She seemed friendly. Inside her trailer, her dogs were barking and I was on my way to get my pups some relief so we didn’t have time to chat.

Yesterday, while I was hooking up the sewer hose to dump my camper’s tanks, she came out to chat. I was my usual talk-to-strangers self, giving her advice on how to connect her sewer pipe so it would drain properly. (She had it set up with the hose making a roller coaster of ups and downs which is probably the worst way to set it up.) She thanked me profusely but then started in on a litany of personal problems which included a restraining order on her ex, a truck she was making payments on but couldn’t drive because of some health issue, more health issues, medication issues, family issues, drug problems, alcohol problems, the handyman who ripped her off, the Facebook Marketplace buyer who tried to come after dark, the neighbor who teases her dogs, the 11 dead relatives in one year — the list went on and on, spewing out in a one-sided conversation while I stood there politely, holding an RV sewer hose in one hand, totally unable to get a word in other than stunned acknowledgement, and wishing she’d shut up so I could finish my task and go back inside. It only took a few minutes for me to realize that she was crazy or very near to it. Her telling me that everyone in the trailer park thought she was crazy kind of confirmed it.

Numb feet (?) was the health problem that finally got her to leave me alone and go back into her camper. I took care of my sewer hose and I took a few minutes to fix the roller coaster in hers since it was right beside mine. (It should work a lot better now.) Her dogs barked through the thin camper walls most of the time. Then I went back inside my camper, leaving the outer door open for fresh air.

She was back a few hours later, waiting near my door for the Walmart delivery person to bring her groceries. She wanted to see my pups so I showed her, opening the door so they could go out and get petted. She oohed and aahed. They didn’t stick around with her, though. Maybe they knew she was crazy, too. They ran back into the camper and I — well, I never came out.

Her dogs, by the way, are rescues, each of which are large — a Great Dane and a German Shepherd, I think — and have serious behavioral problems. It’s great that someone would literally rescue dogs that are going to be put down otherwise, but maybe someone with so many of her own problems should get a smaller, calmer companion pet?

The grocery delivery arrived and I thought I was spared. But she was back a few minutes later. It was New Year’s Eve and she’d gotten it into her head that I’d come over and drink with her. But only two drinks for her, she told me. That’s all she was allowed.

It would be zero drinks for me. There was no way I was going to go into her trailer with the giant dogs formerly on death row and listen to more of her problems while she got drunk. It was mid-afternoon and I told her I was going to take a nap. When she left, I closed my outer door.

I don’t know if she got the message (not likely) or just forgot about me because she didn’t return. I spent most of the day indoors today, writing. I didn’t want to run into her and it’s not as if I could drive somewhere with my truck in pieces at the Ford dealer.

I just want to assure readers here that I’m not making this up. It’s all true. The trailer park I’m in is funky, but it’s safe and relatively clean and certainly cheap enough. (Heck, I’m paying enough for the truck repair!) No one has bothered me. One neighbor came by with a big wrench to get the sewer cap off for me. And when dogs belonging to folks on the other side of me left three dog turds right outside my door, they cleaned it up as soon as I politely asked them to. (And no more since.)

Anyway, there is a point to this story and it’s this:

Everyone has their own problems and most folks don’t want to hear about yours. Yes, it’s okay to make one or two complaints. A sore back, an annoying neighbor. But stop right there. If all you can do is run off at the mouth about all the woes in your life, you’re not going to make any friends.

I feel sorry for her and I don’t think there’s really anything funny about her situation — despite how I might have written it up here. But I’m not going to sacrifice my own mental health and well being to give her companionship. I just don’t want to hear any more of her complaints.

And I honestly don’t see any reason why anyone should — other than maybe a professional therapist.

Letting Things Go

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I think about my inability to “let things go” and realize, with the help of a friend, that it might not be such a bad thing.

The Atheist's Guide to ChristmasYears ago, I went to a Solstice party at a friend’s house near my home in Washington state. This was back when I tried to spend the entire winter at home — maybe 2013? — before I realized that I needed more sun in my life than that latitude would ever offer in December and January.

The party was well attended by the “freethinkers” group I was a member of. We didn’t celebrate Christmas, but we celebrated the Solstice. I celebrated it as the end of the ever-shortening days and the return of the sun.

We had a bonfire (of course) and we gathered around it. There was snow on the ground and we’d spent some time sledding down a hill nearby before it got dark (at around 4:30 PM). One of the partiers handed out slips of paper and pens. We each wrote down something we wanted to let go of forever on that slip of paper. I’m pretty sure I wrote down something to do with my wasband or divorce or the dull, dead-end life I’d had with him. Then we each burned our slip of paper, symbolically destroying these things to remove them from our lives forever.

Ah, if only it were that easy!

As they say, time marches on. I’ve changed a lot since that winter night spent gathered around a fire with friends. I’ve achieved amazing things: building a new home on an amazing piece of land, growing my helicopter business far beyond what it could have been in Arizona, starting a successful jewelry-making business, exploring new hobbies like beekeeping and watercolor painting, and, more recently retiring from my work as helicopter pilot, selling the assets, and diving head first into a life cruising along the east coast in my own boat as a US Coast Guard-certified boat Captain.

Maria and Pups
Me and my pups during a recent stay at the dock in my dad’s backyard. While I’m not convinced that he fully understands what makes me tick, at least he has a clue, accepts the way I am, and doesn’t try to tell me how to manage my life. I appreciate that.

I’ve also resolved to keep toxic people out of my life, a decision that has cut me off from a handful of friends and most family members. After being in a mentally abusive relationship for so long — and not even realizing how it was affecting me until long after it was over — I simply decided I didn’t want to take shit from anyone ever again. Life is too short to let other people get in your head and mess you up emotionally. Why should I be laden with the baggage heaped on me by other people? Best to let them go and move on.

And that’s what I’ve done. Or at least tried to do.

Understand that I’m very happy in my life right now. I have the freedom that I need to do the things I want to make myself whole, to feel fulfilled. For a very long time, I didn’t have that. There’s so much in life that I wanted to do but was held back by people who either didn’t understand what made me tick or were actively trying to prevent me from achieving my own goals because of their own personal failures or jealousies. While I’m not by any means “rich,” I have enough retirement money socked away to do the things I want to before I get too old to do them. (As I’ve said elsewhere, I named my boat Do It Now for a reason.)

Jupiter Island Beach
Dawn at the beach near here the other day. Today’s sky isn’t quite dramatic, but I’m hoping for more sun when I do today’s walk.

As I type this, I’m sitting on my boat at an anchorage along Florida’s Intracoastal Waterway, feeling it rock in the wind. Later this morning, I’ll take my dinghy ashore, cross the little island there, and take a good, long walk on a deserted beach, picking up shells along the way and feeling the warm wet sand on my bare feet. Sometime before New Year’s Eve, I’ll travel down the ICW past Fort Lauderdale and Miami, and cruise down the Florida Keys to Key West. Along the way, I’ll anchor out and snorkel in aqua blue waters from the swim platform of my boat, along reefs full of coral and tropical fish. I’ll do this on my terms, on my schedule. And if I want or need to change my plans, I’ll do it without pushback from anyone else.

How can I feel anything other than joy?

But lurking behind the daily joy I experience in life is sadness. It comes mostly from the betrayal of someone I loved and trusted and it has been made worse by the knowledge that people in my family don’t understand or care about me. They say that blood is thicker than water, but in my life, most blood is like a poison acid that burns. Casting these people from my life stops the pain they were causing and helps me move on with the life I want, but I retain the sorrow of lost relationships that once meant a lot to me.

Simply said, I can’t let go of my past and memories that haunt me. So here I am.

I related all this to my friend Jason just this morning as I was preparing to write this blog post. Jason is a very smart, thoughtful, and intuitive guy. His response via text was extremely helpful and worth sharing (with his permission, of course):

Part of being alive might be living through pain. As in … while it doesn’t feel good, it may be an essential part of the human experience.

I’ve also heard that pain can be a messenger. And sometimes we learn more about ourselves by sitting with and reflecting on our pain.

I always love this chapter on joy and sorrow from The Prophet. It helps me think of pain in a positive way:

The Prophet Book Cover

I won’t share the whole quote here; you can read it for yourself. But here’s the meat of it (for me):

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

– Kahlil Gibran

What does this mean to me? I think it explains why I feel so much joy in my everyday life — it’s because I’ve had so much pain in the past. The pain dug a hole that the joy can fill.

So maybe it isn’t necessary to let things go completely to move forward. Maybe having some pain is necessary to have an equal amount of joy. Maybe I should stop thinking about letting things go and just keep moving forward. I’ve been doing pretty well so far.

How about you? How are you doing? What do you think of all this? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments on this post so we can all get something from what you have to add.

And, by the way, Joyous Solstice to everyone!