They say getting on a regular schedule is good for you. Go to bed at the same time every night and get up at the same time every morning and eventually your body will get into the rhythm of it. Soon your brain will be waking you up at the same time without your alarm even going off.

What “they” don’t say is why that would be considered a good thing?

If you had a roommate who came into your room on your day off and shouted, “IT’S 8AM! YOU’RE GOING TO BE LATE TO WORK!”, would you be grateful?

Spoiler alert: the answer is no. You would get rid of that roommate immediately, with the only delay being if you took time to beat them soundly first. So why is it okay for your brain to do to you?

Then again, we do let our brains get away with way more than we’d ever let another human being do.

For example, these games that you would punch a human for but let your brain play:

      1. “I’ll hum a song over and over and over until you guess what it is!”
      2. “Guess who that person is! I’ll give you a hint: Their name starts with a ‘P’”(which is a lie, because it will turn out their name actually started with a ‘J’, but your brain is a cheater)
      3. Random Acts of Amnesia, where you forget vital pieces of information as you are about to use them, such as why you entered a room or a commonly used word just as you are about to say it in a sentence. (And don’t believe your brain when it tells you that the word starts with a ‘P’. It’s never a ‘P’!)
      4. “Let’s make you look crazy! The rules are that I’m going to make you think so deeply about something that you’ll forget no one else in the room could hear your internal conversation and then you’ll say something that makes sense in the context of your thoughts, but to no one else in the room. Ready? Go! But do you think his height worked against his career?”
      5. “What else have you seen that actor in? You have until 3:00am to name that movie or I’ll wake you up and tell you.”

Basically, you are sharing your body with the world’s worst roommate and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Allow me to further illustrate my point with this graph:

Graph

What does that have to do with brains? Nothing.

That is my point.

That graph does not belong with this post. So which post does it belong with?

I cannot answer that.

I drew this graph specifically for a certain post I was writing, but I can’t remember which. My brain has decided that piece of information is above my security clearance and thus I cannot be trusted with it. My brain has successfully orphaned this graph, which makes no sense out of context. (To be fair to my brain, knowing me, it wasn’t going to make sense in context either.)

Brains are horrible, horrible things and yet we put up with them because we don’t really have a choice.

Maybe that’s what we really need to fix. We need to put the pressure on our brains by showing them that we DO have a choice in brains. I propose science follow current trends. We have ride-sharing. We have home-sharing. Now we need brain-sharing.

Imagine having someone else’s brain for a week, legally and without fear of a sudden raid of your basement collection, and subsequent life-sentence.

I know what you’re thinking: “Dang it! Why can’t I think of what else that actor’s been in?” But it won’t be too crowded in your skull because you’ll wait for your brain to leave first.

You know when you realize you’ve just been staring off into space for a while, thinking of nothing? That was your brain taking a smoke break. That’s when you quickly move another brain into your head. When your brain comes back and finds another brain has a 2 week lease on your skull, it’ll be awkward, sure. But it’ll also send a clear message to your brain that you don’t like the Macarena, so stop singing it every time someone says “macadamia”! They’re not the same word, dang it!

So…who wants my brain first? (Comment below to reserve your slot.  First come first serve.  No smokers.  Must love dogs and weirdness.)

P.S.  I remembered!  This was a graph about the amount of credit perfectionists give themselves.

Graph

I’m so glad I remembered. I just wish I could get back to sleep now.