Drawing A Blank
8.9.21
C. Derick Miller
Head Writer
Your Stories On Video
So, it’s Sunday and I’ve been sitting here staring at a blank screen for what feels like hours. I’ve had my morning coffee, an amazing donut from a little bakery in the Bishop Arts District called The Salty Donut, and I’m sitting in near silence. Under normal circumstances, I would be pecking out my weekly subject like a sped-up maniac in a stabbing contest. Instead, I’m drawing a blank.
Has this started to happen to anyone else since we’ve begun to get older? You know that you know information but, no matter how many photographs you look at to trigger your memory, nothing happens. Where did this information go? If our brains truly do mimic a computer, what happened to the search engine? You’ve given it all the context clues imaginable, yet that old glob of whatever sloshing around in your head can’t seem to fit the bill. It’s embarrassing, really. Downright depressing!
I’m not even sure if I remembered when it started. At the beginning of the pandemic, think. I was never really known as a forgetful type of guy. All I know is that I woke up one morning, and this sort of thing began to happen more and more frequently! What did I do in my sleep that night? Did I subliminally flip a switch that I shouldn’t have touched, like that one at my grandmother’s house that they kept taped in the ‘up’ position otherwise the slightest nudge would force the freezer to thaw? Maybe we both should’ve used stronger tape because I ruined a lot of food a few times as a kid!
Maybe I didn’t do anything wrong at all and this is just a sign of aging. I truly hope not because this sort of thing drives me insane! Sitting here thinking for minutes, sometimes hours on end for the simplest answer that I know is sitting on the very edge of my tongue. Then, later in the day when I’m nowhere near home and performing some ridiculous, unrelated task, it will come to me. Only then do I realize I’ve forgotten the question. Why was I even searching for this answer to begin with? It’s a never-ending cycle of useless information floating around in my noggin. Sometimes, I do wish it was more like a computer and I could just empty the recycle bin. Too bad it’s nothing like that.
No, we must live with those memories, good or bad. Sometimes, we search for them, and they never appear. Other times, the ones we’d like to forget dance all through your head when we’re attempting nothing but a good night’s sleep! The brain is something humanity pretends to understand. The true great mystery. Forget the ocean or outer space, why can’t we figure out what’s going on within our own heads? You think we, as a race of beings, would want to analyze the heck out of that first before going any further outside our own front door. Nope, we’re still trying to communicate with aliens and catch strange fish. Priorities?
In a way, I guess we at Your Stories On Video do what we do just in case this sort of thing ever happens. What will you do when you’ve reached that age of forgetfulness and you can’t pass on that family story which was told to you by the generations who came before? In the age of information in which we live, pretty much every single person on the planet has a recording device in their pocket, yet we use it for the most insignificant stuff imaginable. Cat videos, food photos, and audio of our day job boss lying to us about an upcoming promotion. How many times have you activated it when your grandfather begins telling you about his childhood or when you mother describes the things she felt on the day you were born?
It’s rare, isn’t it?
This is where we come in.
I’ll be damned. I wrote a blog!
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