How to think

I need to learn to think again.

When you have small children, your mind takes on a new routine. Mine centres around mealtimes, and how long til the next one. With breastfeeding a small, times between feeds are BUSY, feeding time is a nice sitdown in front of the TV. Feeding a toddler is more "how long do I have to entertain this demanding child before I can get on with the next meal?". Out of the twain, babies are definitely easier. Such is the joy of domestic drudgery, that I struggle to find the time to think of anything other than my children or basic housework/personal hygiene that needs taking care of.
This situation is exacerbated by being single. Sometimes, I go several days without having any face to face interaction with another adult. Watching Cbeebies all day drains me of any coherant thought. "Ah, Show Me Show Me...today we are learning about opposites. Oh good, I'm a little shaky on those now".
Also, memory loss. There is something about birth that mindwipes all that has gone before. I cannot remember being childless, even though it was less than three years ago. I cannot remember only having one child, even though that was less than five months ago! I cannot remember what it's like to be in a full time work routine, what I did to fill the hours, how I wasted all the free, childless time. Now my only childless time is about twenty minutes before I go to bed, when they are slumbering. But even that time is spent with me constantly on the alert, wondering which one will wake up first.

All this is not conducive to thinking.

So, to break me in, as aforementioned, I'm doing some courses on the OpenLearn part of the OU site. These are free short(ish) courses on various subjects at various difficulty levels, with no credits available. I've started with a course called Starting With Psychology. It has absolutely nothing directly to do with Health and Social Care, but it's something that I've always found interesting. It's supposed to be eight hours long, but I'm an hour in and up to the third part (of six). So far, I've learnt about dividing the corpus callosum, and now I'm on memory and memory improvement. Now, THAT might be useful!