After my curiosity got the best of me from watching all the commercials about something called Lumosity I decided I needed to check it out. I discovered it was a web-site designed to keep a person's mind active and to increase a person's brain activity. I thought, what the heck. Why not give it a go. Turns out it's a bunch of games specifically designed to increase one's agility in various parts of your brain. In particular, speed, memory, attention, flexibility and problem solving. I was impressed when my first score was 107...I was appalled that for my age group...this was a horrible, horrible, horrible score. I was at the very, very bottom.
That made me mad and I continued playing through the free introductory offer. I found I had made a little progress, and I enjoyed the challenge so I signed on for a year. By the time the year was over I'd increased my brain activity in every area so that I was midway through the ninety percentile for people my age. My score was 1177. New games were added and I found some of them were harder, but I managed to increase my brain activity in them as I learned to play.
Then...earlier this year, I found my scores started to drop. At first I was frustrated with myself, and a bit angry, too. What the heck was wrong with me. The worse I got, the more angry I became. It got so I began missing days of play. Maybe (for my age) I'd reached the top of the ladder, there were no more rungs got climb.
I stopped playing for a whole week.
Played for a while, with no success, although my scores stopped falling.
I stopped playing for a month. I worried I might have had a stroke, it was obvious something had happened. My scores in all my brain functions had stagnated badly. I fretted, I know it affected me in other areas of my life. I was grumpy, miserable, unhappy, and I know it showed in my blogs and postings on Facebook. I even stopped making merchandise for my store. I....wallowed.
Then, one evening I decided to see what was new at Lumosity....and I discovered everything was. They had redone the entire site, and also changed the scoring for all the games in all the categories, for all the age groups. Oh, I was still in the ninety percentile for my age group, but the very low 90's. And they had changed my overall score so that it had dropped from 1177 to 1144, which (after all their studies) was a much more accurate score for my age. On one hand I was delighted to know I had not had a stroke or some other mental breakdown, while on the other I was very angry with them they had not told me they were upgrading the web-site. Grrrr.
My gene pool stubbornness kicked in. I decided I was done, done, done with them, and even though I had months to go on my membership I decided I didn't give a fig...and was never going to play again. Then, I decided I'd show them...buddy...I'd show them!
I started to play again. Yes, even the more simple games (I can't explain how) were harder, I had to work with stony resolve to keep my scores where they were, and didn't seem to be able to move up by even one measly point. Grrrr.
Then, one night, my scores didn't fall, and actually went up a point or two on some of the games. Well, howdy! It's funny how such a simple sign of mental agility brought me encouragement. At first my over all score read 1145, then increased to 1147, then it went over 1150. Oh, it fell a couple of times, as I began to learn new games, but at least I knew my mind was still okay. Whew!
Then, last night it happened. My over all score hit 1177. I'm back baby, I'm back!!!!!!!!!!
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