I know a change is gonna come...

It's time to work with—not against—my mental faculties, and do the opposite with technology.

What was the old standard for childhood punishment among Boomers and Gen-Xers? Being grounded. Can't go out, can't play with friends, have to stay inside and not be social. The thing is, it only works for some people. Not all. And certainly not me. For the kid who loved to curl up in a corner and read—especially things like dictionaries and encyclopedias and such—being grounded was...well, my default setting.

What also was my default setting was sitting in front of the television and absorbing what I could from it. It was a good thing that I found things like cartoons less interesting and amusing than the offerings on PBS, namely Sesame Street and The Electric Company. I'd sit—probably too close, I might add—and just watch for hours on end. On the positive side of this situation, my mom gave PBS full credit for teaching me all about words, sounds, and spelling. (I should probably let them know this; coming from a spelling bee champion, such an accolade might thrill them, even decades after the fact—and decades after the demise of The Electric Company.) On the negative side, it resulted in me just getting hypnotized; you could argue that such a state was akin to a mild addiction. I craved it. So my parents decided to make my punishment restriction from television, for up to a week at a time. Yeah. That hit me where it hurt.

For better or worse, that punishment dissuaded me from watching TV once I weaned myself from those childhood shows. (I then moved on to cartoons; Bugs Bunny and Looney Tunes in particular guided me in the way of social cues and behaviors, but that's a story for another day.) The result, possibly, was that I ended up watching less TV than many of my peers; to this day, I can barely fill out one of those checklists of what TV series I've watched. I can't even claim to have watched a whole season of The Simpsons, and only recently have I seen a season's worth of Friends. (Shows like Daria, The Crown, Downton Abbey, Mad Men, and Absolutely Fabulous, on the other hand, I can claim to have seen in their entirety. So...maybe I just haven't come across the right checklist.)

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My history as someone with epilepsy has certainly guided my life. After my first observed seizure, whereafter no diagnostic test revealed any possible cause, I was offered drugs. My mom, knowing my past bad history with taking asthma medication, thought it wouldn't be a good idea, or perhaps even necessary, so we adopted a wait-and-see approach. But six months later, to the day, I had another observed seizure, so at that point, the diagnosis was clinched, and I needed to go on medication. Within weeks, my parents noticed that my affect was a bit blunted, and I had a harder time communicating. Not terribly, mind you; just enough that for the first time ever, I'd stop halfway through a sentence, my mind suddenly encountering the equivalent of television static. Sometimes I'd even space what I was talking about mid-conversation. Entirely. So...not ideal.

My first medication was Dilantin. Over the years, I've cycled through one medication or another, hoping to come across an ideal. All have had some negative side effect or other, but the most benign one so far is the one I've landed on currently, Vimpat, or its generic form, lacosamide. It's kept me seizure-free (to the best of my knowledge) for over ten years, and the only side effect I've noticed is a generic one I see common to all seizure drugs I've taken: decreased mental capacity. Conversationally, it manifests the way it did with Dilantin. I like to say that taking an anticonvulsant is akin to making a deal with the devil; sure, it will (ideally, hopefully) take away your seizures, but it will also ask for its pound of flesh. And you can't be under the effects of anticonvulsants for decades without them really having major effects on your brain

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Now, in me, the combination of these two situations—epilepsy with decades of anticonvulsant therapy and a tendency to be hypnotized by screens—is particularly pernicious. The past few years have wrought in me an even more blunted ability to communicate verbally and to think cogently. Moreover, I've noticed a major drop in mental endurance; give me a task to do that requires deep, extended thought—or just plain brain derring-do—and I struggle against a wall that pushes me to stop, to sit, and to relax. This could be reading an extended essay, playing a piano piece, practicing the guitar for a half hour, or even putting together a recipe. It's enough that Dennis has noticed it, although I wouldn't be surprised if he thinks I complain about it more than any outward manifestation would warrant.

But to me, a person who relies on his brain in huge part for his identity and his career, this development is especially worrying. And much has been made of society's addiction to screens. Specifically, it's our addiction to behaviors like doomscrolling late at night that are awful. Show me an incendiary headline. Thank you for that dopamine pellet. Show me the next cat video. Another dopamine pellet. How about this quick article on what one of my favorite celebrities just did, rife with ads and links to other articles? More dopamine. And with it goes away my ability to read at length and to be a deep thinker. But it also affects my ability to do other things that, again, require cerebral stamina. Being on medication that already lowers that capacity worsens the situation even more.

I don't need to be an expert in behavioral neuroscience to be concerned about what I'm experiencing. (Though, hey...doing more reading in this field could be a great way for me to counter my atrophying brain.) I get that I'm feeding my brain terrible junk, and it's responding in kind. What is difficult, though, is working with the screens that fill our lives nowadays, and separating the wheat from the chaff. I've done this up to now with some success; programs like FocusMe have been a godsend, keeping me away from social media at work. But getting myself better isn't as simple as just doing away with all screens, or even, say, my smartphone. They are undeniably useful. (Witness me typing this post on my laptop. Reading a David Foster Wallace essay on my e-reader. Or looking up a recipe on my tablet in the kitchen.) It's a complex dance with the devil that I need to grapple with. Even some social media may be beneficial—maybe—but in judicious doses, with an eye toward disciplined, time-limited viewing and interactions.

As a self-employed person, I've had a hard time sometimes differentiating what constitutes work and what constitutes personal time. The lines get blurred quite often. This is a situation where there really is no line. My brain is necessary for all aspects of life, and taking care of it is something that needs to take place at all times, whether at work or at home. Behaviors that will support brain health need to be planned and thought out, and I've been around enough to know that revelations will occur as easily at my desk as they might a mere minute before falling asleep for the night.

It's time to take control of my brain's health more consciously. To treat it with the care and the support it deserves. To learn more about it. If I'm to continue to live with happiness and prosperity, I'll need to make this an intentional, continual task. Let's begin.