unrot your brain

on post-grad decay and the fight to feel sharp again

There was a time I devoured books like candy. Sometimes reading them as a pdfs, unable to wait for it as a gift. I kept notebooks full of weird facts and quotes I didn’t quite understand. I was the smart girl.

My favorite characters were Hermione and Annabeth Chase — the smart girls. I saw myself in them, and I liked that. I liked being smart. I liked being the one with the good ideas, the one reading, the one who knew answers. It gave me a sense of identity, one I wore with pride.

I learned early that intelligence made people uncomfortable. That being curious wasn’t cute if it made others feel small. That speaking up too much, knowing too much, caring too much—especially as a girl—could make you annoying. Unlikable. That being smart could be a liability. Still, for a long time despite that, I never cared because my mind felt electric. Alive. Like there was something sharp and sparkling underneath my skin that made me me.

Not any more.

Post-grad hit like a hazy fog that won’t lift. No more assigned reading, no more late-night debates, no more papers that gave me a reason to think. Now I scroll. I skim. I start articles and abandon them halfway through. I lose my train of thought mid-conversation. I forget words I used to know by heart.

It’s like the muscle that once made me feel powerful is rotting atrophying.

And maybe I needed the break. Maybe after years of pressure and burnout and noise, I earned a little numbness. But no one warns you how easy it is to slip from rest into rot.

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If you’re anything like me, you miss thinking for the sake of thinking. You want the curiosity back. The attention span back. The ability to sit with a question, really sit with it, without reaching for a distraction every ten seconds. To want to engage again. To feel mentally present. To reclaim the part of you that used to light up at complexity instead of shutting down. You want to feel sharp again. Capable. Awake.

Lately, I’ve been trying to unrot my brain.

Or maybe a better word is rehabilitate. Rebuild. I’ve been coaxing my mind back into movement, the way you’d stretch a stiff joint or retrain a weak muscle. Not to be productive. Not to prove I’m still “the smart one.” Just to feel like me again.

Because somewhere underneath the scroll fatigue, the algorithm brain, the constant static, I know she’s still in there. The girl who asked questions for fun. The one who highlighted entire pages. The one who wasn’t afraid of a hard book, or a weird one, or one that made her feel small in the best kind of way.

If she’s in you too, here’s where we start.

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How to unrot rehabilitate your brain:

remember who you were before the dullness set in.

- it really is that damn phone

Step away from the infinite scroll and give your brain a second to remember how to think without being spoon-fed. Not in a dramatic, I'm-quitting-social-media-forever way. Just pause. Let your dopamine system stop firing like a broken vending machine and your prefrontal cortex to actually breathe. And while you're at it: stop asking ChatGPT every little thing. You already know more than you think. Sit in the question a little longer. You need your own thoughts. Three days. Take three days to sit with the itch to check your phone every 5 minutes, and instead embrace your own thoughts. Let it remember how to generate its own ideas.

-let yourself be bored

You don’t need to be entertained every second. In fact, you shouldn’t be. Remember when you could stare out the car/train/plane window for the entirity of a long trip?

Let yourself sit in silence. No phone. No music. No stimulation. Just 10 or 15 minutes of mental stillness a day. Stare out a window. Stare at the ceiling. Sit with the buzz of discomfort. It’s not about being bored—it’s about giving your brain the space to recalibrate. Try the Navy SEAL nap if you need structure: lie on the floor, feet up on the couch, 20 minutes max. It’s not lazy. It’s neurological recovery.

-write like your brain depends on it

Because it kind of does. Just start writing. Use your notes app. Open a doc. A scrap paper. Spill thoughts. Follow tangents. Let yourself ramble. Write something ugly and tangled and undeveloped. Not to produce or sound intelligent, but it’s to hear yourself again. To track the way your mind moves. To think your own thoughts without structure or pressure or input. You write to find out what you think. To watch your brain unfold in real time, without a filter.

-learn something that fascinates you

Pick a topic, anything. Become obsessed. Not to be graded or read. Not to get ahead. Just for the thrill of it. Write a thesis, do the research, produce the paper. Watch lectures. Take notes. Make PowerPoints no one will ever see. Make homework for yourself, like you used to. Give yourself a deadline in one month, three, or five. “By August 15, I will finish a mini paper on X.” Educate yourself on something of interest and passion the old school way. You need fascination, the kind that doesn’t serve anyone but you.

-read more—but make it a challenge

Read like a kid again—greedy, curious, unselfconscious. Read the way you did before posted reading goals, before Goodreads, before booktok. Go to your local library and get physical books. Ever do the pizza reading challenge as a child? Give it shape. Make it tangible. Make it a challenge if that helps: five books in two months. One fiction, one nonfiction, one re-read, one wildcard, one deep-dive into something niche. Pick a reward for completeing it. You don’t have to be the fastest reader. You just have to turn the page.

-pick up a new hobby that requires focus
Learn a language. Teach yourself a song on a dusty keyboard. Knit something lumpy. Garden. Build a bookshelf. Learn how to cook without a recipe. Give your brain a tactile way to play. Let it be challenged, let it hurt, let it work. Give your brain something real to touch. Something with friction. With error. With movement. It’s been neglected.

other ways to use your brain:

-Listen to a philosophy podcast while walking

-Rewatch a childhood movie and analyze it

-Learn a new word and use it in a sentence

-Handwrite a letter to someone (or yourself)

-Memorize a poem

-Learn the capitals of every country

-Create a mini book club with one friend

-Pick a side in a debate—then argue the opposite

-Rewrite a fairytale from a villain’s POV

-Read the footnotes of a nonfiction book

-Watch a TED Talk and summarize it in your words

-Take a walk without your phone—just walk

-Do something manually (grate cheese, fold laundry) without watching or listening to anything

-Write down 10 questions you don’t know the answer to

-Make something that won’t be posted anywhere

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Your brain isn’t broken. You haven’t peaked. You’re not doomed to scroll yourself into oblivion. It’s still in there—that sharp, curious, wide-eyed version of you. The one who read books for fun and asked big questions and thought deeply, even when no one was watching. This is about becoming the present version of you. The curious one. The engaged one. The one who used to lie awake thinking about big things—not because you had to, but because your mind had the peace to do so and wanted to.

You just need to remember: your brain is still yours.

Unrot it. Reclaim it. Wake it back up.

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