Why Can't Don Write Anymore?

If you are one of the few people out there that reads this blog you will have noticed that lately my productivity has declined. It's not that I don't have any ideas, quite the opposite there, it just seems as if I've lost my urge to write. There no longer seems to be the push that I had before to make it happen. I've been giving a great deal of thought as to why this has happened. In September and October I was seemingly on fire with stories and song lyrics and then the effort to follow through and bring them to life literally dried up overnight.

Time of course is always a culprit when you have a young child and are the only person working in the family. Stress can also be a problem although I've found that sometimes it can be a veritable goldmine for making me think on a deeper scale. Once I'm thinking I will inevitably find an idea to focus on and then develop. The one thing that I could identify that was different was that in September I started taking a nootropic supplement called AlphaBrain from Onnit Labs. I had heard about it on Joe Rogan's podcast. AlphaBrain is a cognitive enhancer made from natural ingredients and is designed to sharpen your focus and increase creative abilities as well as memory and can even help you with lucid dreaming. I never noticed a sharp increase or surge but rather it seemed to be a slow building one. I was intrigued enough to buy a second bottle and that's when it was clear that not only was I was writing a lot more but I was also having ideas constantly appear. I've always had those ideas but now I was following through on them and bringing them to life.

I even had one story come to me in a half-dream state and it ended up almost completely finished in my mind before I even woke up. Everybody dreams but perhaps because of my severe sleep apnea (untreated at the moment) I never have been able to remember mine. If I was to recall even a small bit of a dream, upon waking it would fade away and within a few hours not even a wisp of the dreams content remained. With AlphaBrain however that was changing. I was starting to remember what I dreamed about. Not every day mind you but it was becoming more and more frequent.

Then came November. Unfortunately my financial situation changed for the worse and I couldn't realistically justify spending the money for this supplement, no matter how much I was convinced that it was helping me. When you are worried about being able to make your house payment or getting your utilities paid on time you have to cut whatever you can, big or small. Dish Network had been sacrificed long ago. Thankfully we never put a lot of things on credit cards so there was no big bill there. We changed our cellphone plans to spend less. Since we need the internet for various reasons it was AlphaBrain that got cut as well as some other less costly things. Eliminating smaller things added up along with some help from our church with groceries so for the moment we are okay. However my wife now has knee surgery coming up so we have to wait for her recovery from that and then perhaps we'll see an improvement in our finances.

Once I was off AlphaBrain there was a pretty immediate change in my output. While I still had ideas I just couldn't seem to follow through with them. My blog posts decreased rapidly and by December I only made three of them for the entire month. January was even worse. Additionally I also had basically stopped working out. There just wasn't a passion anymore, no fire burning in me to do much of anything. I'm sure part of it could be reasoned away by the changing of the season. After all, the onset of the colder months can do strange things to the brain as well as the human body. Still, it seems clear to me that it's more than that, AlphaBrain had an overwhelmingly positive effect on me and now I am missing it.

At the end of January I realized that I had gotten a check from my older sister as a Christmas and a late birthday present combined and had forgotten to cash it. At the same time I received an email from Onnit that was about a special offer for an eighteen percent discount so I decided to jump on it while I could. I made my order with the thought that I'll worry about getting more once it runs out, that is if I continue with my previous production. Today was my first day resuming AlphaBrain but I won't count the first two posts I've made in this month as both were almost completely written within the last week or so.

Some people may say something such as AlphaBrain doesn't really work and some may say that it does. Personally I'm the kind of person who likes to experience things for myself instead of listening to what others have to say. Do what I did, research nootropics, go to Onnit Labs website and look at the ingredients and research them then make a decision for yourself. Whether you do or don't please keep coming back to see if my "experiment" will show another increase in output or if it sputters into abject failure. I already know which way it's going to go but I'll wait for the proof.

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.