I’m not an intellectual. I know a little bit about a bunch of things, but I don’t know much about much of anything.
I’m smart enough, sure, but I’m not an intellectual. I don’t seek out knowledge. I don’t read much anymore, not like I used to. I don’t care much for researching things, even if they interest me.
I wonder what happened. I used to read all the time. Fiction, nonfiction…I loved it. Now? Now I think about reading all the books I have piled up, and I just can’t. I can’t make myself do the thing that used to engulf my time. Is engulf the right word? I’m not even intellectual enough to know anymore.
It amazes me when I go to SCA events and people know SO MUCH about the past. Any subject, really. They can rattle off dates and names and eras and cultures and on and on and on, and I’m sitting there like, How do you retain all of that?!? How do you absorb that knowledge and maintain the database and still function?
I used to be like that. When it came to forensics and serial killers, I was a wealth of knowledge. I knew so much, once upon a time…
Sometimes I wonder…is it my medicine? Is it just a general loss of interest? What happened?
I know we go through phases in life. Our interests change, our primary motivators shift gears, and our minds find new things to entertain them. Is that what happened to me?
Who knows. Maybe it’s that simple. Maybe my mind isn’t engaged by learning new facts anymore. Maybe it’s the learning of new activities that my brain craves. The facts about those activities? Meh. I SHOULD try to make myself learn them, too. If I want to be a Laurel some day, I’ll need to force myself to learn the details about the period arts that I do. The facts. The research.
But becoming a Laurel takes a long time. I only just started on the path, so maybe my brain will switch gears again soon.