Let’s just say you have spent a lifetime enjoying a very specific form of multi-tasking, that is, knitting and watching TV. Knitters will get the allure – maybe even necessity – of pairing those activities. They go together like peanut butter and jelly. All you knitters – and other ardent multi- taskers – out there are nodding. Of course we do more than one thing at a time. It’s why God invented audio books. Or for that matter gave us two hands!

In my case, the knitting justified all that television. Look at this! Yeah, I’m doing lots of viewing but at the end of the day, see my nice new sweater! And by the same token, the pleasure center of my brain was rewarded while I watched the gripping Succession, as my needle-clicking hands almost on autopilot created my newest hand-made garment.

Before expounding further on the perils of multi-tasking, especially among older people, a word ( of travesty) coming up.

All too few of my hand knits pass the “old friend test.” That is, how will I feel if caught unawares sporting that Fair Isle sweater I made two years ago and bumping into a college classmate who seemed to have it all back then and now, has it even more, as she gesticulates with her impeccably groomed hands while describing her daughter’s wedding to a French nobleman ( is that still even a thing?) at his family’s chateau in the Loire Valley? Like a frump is how! Sure, the cardigan is crafted – expertly- from the softest yarn of alpacas who run free on a farm in the Andes before their wool is humanely harvested from their well-tended bodies and makes its way from Cuzco to my local yarn store to my knitting needles to my back, where it is on display to all I encounter, including aforementioned former friends.

Here’s the rub. Not only do I not like the way I look in my gorgeous garments – and yes, they are quite lovely – I really don’t have much desire to knit anymore. I think it’s about my energy, or lack thereof courtesy of my old frenemy Parkinson’s.

What do the experts say about what I’m guessing is a very 20th/21st century phenomenon. According to psychologist Clifford Nass, “people who multitask all the time can’t filter out irrelevancy. They can’t manage a working memory.”

Scientists tell us “The human brain is actually incapable of completing more than one cognitive task at a time. Instead, it rapidly switches back and forth among competing tasks, resulting in what’s called a “switch cost,” a delay that occurs when the brain stores information related to an abandoned task and redirects its attention to a new one. Numerous studies have shown people nearly always take longer to complete a task and make more errors when switching tasks than when they focus on a single task at a time.

”Bingo! Multitasking, bad. One task st a time, good.

And I’ve begun to notice something. Usually, when multitasking I miss things on TV, because I dropped a stitch while knitting or had to check the pattern for the next step. How do I know I’ve been absorbing less plot due to my multi-tasking ways? Because the next day I might see a friend who was watching the same program and asked me what I thought of a certain plot development and I will have to confess that I don’t know what she’s talking about. No doubt I was multitasking, During the course of a one hour show, my distractions on any given night might include a trip to the bathroom, taking a phone call, remembering I had to make a doctors appointment so making a request to the online portal, and searching for a cookie, preferably chocolate chip, knowing full well that no such thing exists in my abode at the moment (Yes, I did check the linen closet, where I have in the past mindlessly abandoned glasses, my debit card, an empty box of Cold-Eze, ditto Prilosec, and – yay – half a chocolate chip cookie!)

What to do? Watching TV while doing nothing but, well, watching TV, feels decadent. Nah, that’s the wrong word, implying as it does a sort of hedonistic pleasure, more descriptive of, say, a gooey dark chocolate “gateau.” Indolent. Self- indulgent. What’s the opposite of industrious? Lazy!

I’ll admit that the scientists are right. I do get more out of an activity when I’m more mindfully, undistractedly focused. That doesn’t mean I won’t knit while watching Derry Girls for the umpteen millionth time. But I can use the toilet, make the doctor’s appointment, or conduct a fruitless cookie hunt before I sit down to watch, almost distraction free. This is, for me, a major lifestyle change, one that I hope will make me less anxious, and calmer, and with all my possessions accounted for and where they belong, as opposed to the bottle of laundry detergent left on the check-out desk at the library. Wish me luck!

Recommendation

And now, turn your FULL attention to my recommended viewing to fill the hours before you go back to work. Because we’re having a KIERAN CULKIN FILM FESTIVAL. Yay!

First up, his latest film, A Real Pain, in which he and his cousin (Jesse Eisenberg) embark on a family heritage tour in Poland to honor their recently deceased beloved grandmother, a Holocaust survivor. I found this film deeply moving, as it deals with loss, family, human connection and much more. Note: it’s sad in spots but I would not call it depressing.

And now, we get to spend 39 hours over the course of four seasons watching the antics of bad boy Roman Roy (Culkin) as the baddest i(and most entertaining) in a family of louts, schemers and manipulators. I’m talking about Succession, which is compelling, bingeable and really, really mean. If you need redeeming characters in your TV diet, skip this one.

Happy holidays to all!

And please don’t forget to check out my podcast, Parky Conversations. All eight episodes are now available for your entertainment and edification.