Blogging is actually a desperate attempt to keep my brain cells alive

A friend who pops in and out of nowhere for the past 7 years or so just wrote me an e-mail and told me about how he has been reading my blog.  I gave him (and some other friends) the URL to this online journal when I started out, but I wasn’t aware that any of them were actually reading it — well, until today.

So I wrote him back and gave the usual account of what’s been happening of late and wrote that line above — it lit up a lightbulb in my head, so I hurried to this site to post. 

Because it is.  For me, at least.  It’s a way to “exercise” my writing skills (thinking I have some) and at the same time just talk out loud.  (That’s why one of my categories is “Just Me Thinking Online” instead of “Out Loud”.) 

I just turned 39, and I know that my eggs are not the only ones diminishing as the years go by.  My brain cells, too, are wilting away.  While that part of nature is beyond my control, it’s how fast or how much of them actually disappear into limbo that I am trying to get a grip on.  (I’m not going without a fight!)  Reminds me of THE NOTEBOOK which I wrote a post on here a while back.  The woman in the story started to lose her memory and eventually forgot the man she loved and the family she was raising.  It was a beautiful love story, something Alan and I tease each other about — but which I hope I will not have to live in my lifetime.  I’d like to go lucid, but all I can do is try — nothing I do will guarantee me that.

So I write and I write and I write.  Maybe next year, I’ll find myself reading the things I had written down here.  Then I’ll see how I felt at this point in time and hopefully I will learn.  And my brain cells would’ve had some work out keeping them healthy and fit for another 39 years. 

Reading Dan Brown's

I got this book as a gift from my 15-year-old stepson last month when I turned 39.  I didn’t really start reading it until a few days ago, not because I was busy digging into some other tome, but basically because I’ve just been too busy.

I look at the bookshelf in our living room, half of which is “assigned” or designated as space for my mini-book collection, and I see at least half a dozen books which I have yet to read — so I guess I am not buying any books in the next couple of months, because I have yet to exhaust my mini-library.

When I left Manila for New York in 2000, I ended up giving away many of the books I had started to purchase.  There is a sense of fulfillment in seeing the books I’ve read lined up on a shelf, no matter how small a space they occupy.  Since I have started working, I have tried to do as much reading done.  Of late, I have even required Alan to give me a book or two for special occasions — starting with last Christmas’  MY LIFE by Bill Clinton and LEAP OF FAITH by Queen Noor.  I started reading JONATHAN STRANGE & MR. NORRELL but got sidetracked, so it is still in my book shelf with a bookmark not even a tenth of the way through.

Reading is one of my passions and I have missed it, so I thought I’d start by reading this Dan Brown “prequel” to the Langdon series.  I thoroughly enjoyed THE DA VINCI CODE, but after my first 100 pages of the paperback, I’m keeping my expectations low.  So far so good..