The Monkey Always Wins

This is not an entry about Crafting although I'm working on another pair of plain men's socks. This one is about the things I'm doing to improve my brain.

I've never been much of a breakfast lover even as a young kid - I'm not much improved as an old adult but I AM getting better. I prefer to eat around 11AM. I know you need the morning fuel to use your brain efficiently but putting anything but liquid in my face in the morning gags me. But, I've learned I NEED to eat in the morning for my brain!

I joined Luminosity to improve my brain. Luminosity has a whole whack of torturous little games you play on a regular basis to improve Memory, Spatial Relationships, Problem Solving, Language Building etc. Just five per session, takes about 10 minutes. Like Name Tag for instance. You're shown pictures of people & given their first names. The pictures & name tags are then turned over & you play Go Fish. You turn over one name tag & one picture at a time until they're all matched. You start with two or three & work up to nine. When I started Name Tag, I had problems remembering who was who. Now I can usually whip them off in no time - mind you, I've grown to know them. But I AM better. I'm getting better at finding my way through a Maze with Monsters because I can remember where they are most of the time. But, one game really drives me crazy. It's called Top Chimp & the Monkey always wins! You go one on one with the Monkey. Each time you are shown a group of numbers from 1 to 9 & you have to get them in order from smallest to largest. You get to chose the number of numbers each round. But the program chooses the time you get to look at them. Time is the problem. Each round shows you the time you get to look at the numbers so you can choose to add or subtract the amount. My problem is that my eyes don't even SEE most of the numbers when they're flashed on the board. So the Monkey always wins.

What's all this got to do with breakfast?? you ask. Well, I didn't realize how much difference food makes until I started playing Luminosity games. I can do the same series of games before breakfast & after breakfast & SEE with my own eyes, the difference it makes. I always thought I did my best brain work in the morning when I don't want to talk to anyone & exercised my people skills more after lunch when I wanted to socialize. Turns out that I'm just bitchier in the morning because I haven't eaten!! LOL I've proved it to myself in my scores on the Games. That was the first eye opener. The second is the progress I've made in memory & name recall. My graph looks like the Stock Market - there's ups & downs all over the place but overall, I've doubled my scores over the last few months! As you age, you don't lose memories, you lose the ability to access them when you want them. They're all filed away in there but the drawer either won't open or the filing system is out of whack. So I've learned that I have to eat breakfast & keep on Memory Training. After all, if you don't use it, you lose it & the Monkey wins . . .