If you think you're brain is fuzzier than normal (assuming you haven't had COVID-19 to account for it), you may be right. It seems like a lot of people are suffering from similar symptoms, as this Atlantic article points out.
I first became aware that I was losing my mind in late December. It was a Friday night, the start of my 40-somethingth pandemic weekend: Hours and hours with no work to distract me, and outside temperatures prohibitive of anything other than staying in. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to fill the time. “What did I used to … do on weekends?” I asked my boyfriend, like a soap-opera amnesiac. He couldn’t really remember either.
Since then, I can’t stop noticing all the things I’m forgetting. Sometimes I grasp at a word or a name. Sometimes I walk into the kitchen and find myself bewildered as to why I am there. (At one point during the writing of this article, I absentmindedly cleaned my glasses with nail-polish remover.) Other times, the forgetting feels like someone is taking a chisel to the bedrock of my brain, prying everything loose. I’ve started keeping a list of questions, remnants of a past life that I now need a beat or two to remember, if I can remember at all: What time do parties end? How tall is my boss? What does a bar smell like? Are babies heavy? Does my dentist have a mustache? On what street was the good sandwich place near work, the one that toasted its bread? How much does a movie popcorn cost? What do people talk about when they don’t have a global disaster to talk about all the time? You have to wear high heels the whole night? It’s more baffling than distressing, most of the time.
I've noticed this too but have mostly ascribed it to both old age and the lack of routine in my life after retiring. But there's no doubt that the enforced lack of outside opportunities caused by pandemic lockdowns and quarantines have made things worse.
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