letters to H

-You discover a new document in your “completed” folder. It’s 20k words of fantasy and adventure. You have no memory of writing it.

- You take a sip of your coffee and set it down to type. After a moment, you take another sip only to find the cup empty. You have written ten words.

- You go to take a shower and discover writing on your skin. Dialogue, character description, tips for edits. You don’t remember bringing pen to flesh.

- The cursor blinks at you. You blink back. Time stretches as you blink, back and forth, back and forth until, at last, you both stop blinking entirely. Nothing gets written.

- The same word appears three times in the same paragraph. You edit them out, only to find them, again, three paragraphs down. You close your laptop and decide to go shopping. You stare at the word flashing by on the way to the store. You feel followed.

- Your pen carves vicious corrections onto a printed copy of your story. Later, you will not remember the way you grit your teeth while editing or why calling a character effervescent is “superfluous.”

- There are words scrawled on receipts, on post its, on torn out scraps of paper all over your room. You recognize your handwriting on most of them and choose to ignore those bits in handwriting you do not.

- Your mom asks about your day. You do not know how to explain the exhaustion in your bones or the way your neck aches with the weight of eyes you’d tried to leave on the page  or the way your fingers are still typing phantom words against your thighs. You tell her nothing happened.

- Your roommates are concerned. You have not spoken in days. You wonder who it was you were whispering to last night as you scratched out another outline at the kitchen table.

Citrus Sunshine 🍊

The way I explain it to my patients is that our neurons don’t regenerate. They make connections with each other and that’s it. If you don’t use your brain, they make fewer connections and, if one of them dies, you’re gonna miss it, because that was the only one that knew how to do X. Now, if each one of them has many, many connections, you won’t notice the difference when one of them dies. The others pick up the slack.

As of 2024, 45% of dementia risk factors are modifiable. Relevant to this conversation, 5% for less education and 5% for social isolation.

We absolutely are going to see the reflection of this, but it’s gonna take decades and it’ll be too late. So, for the love of your brain, pretend that it’s a muscle and make it work. People complain about “when am I ever gonna use this maths formula in my life?” You’re not. You’re teaching your brain to think logically. Those sinapses will be there for when you need to figure out your week’s schedule. English classes taught me how to interpret data and how to convey it in this text so it’s clear and you understand what I’m saying, not because I needed to justify why the curtain is blue.

Make your brain know how to do different things. Logic games, puzzles, taking care of a garden even if small, planning a church’s event or birthday, learn a new instrument, learn a few words in another language, look at a calendar every day, do some manual labor if possible. Do not, I repeat, do not let your brain get rid of sinapses by letting AI do everything. Your brain uses 20% of your body’s energy — do you really think it’s going to maintain connexions that aren’t in use?

Most cases of Alzheimer’s are sporadic, meaning no family history. Family history of a first-degree relative with Alzheimer’s starting before they were 80yo increases your risk in 2-3x on average.

open your draft

stare at the screen

Why is there always surprise incest in my YA books like first mortal instruments now this??? Also I love how they go back to their home village and this is the vibe

Like yeah they're pretty much used to living in a war torn region duh

Also I love the imagery and descriptions of this book so far I like hearing about the places they are visiting etc it's a lot better then oh no 3 boys love me who ever will I choose? (Spends time with all three)

And people ship them 🫪