I feel I'm very much like you described. I have thought of it, in my case, of "becoming like my mother." I don't know if she's always been this way; well, to a degree, she has, but we see our parents differently as children, and as teenagers, and as young adults, and older adults. But my mom is not that intelligent. I don't mean to sound harsh, but she doesn't get many concepts, even some simple ones. She can't pronounce words that she "should" be able to say. I mean, she calls Kmart "Kmark" and Walmart "Walmark." She calls petite "peteek." She can pronounce "eat" but always seem to put a "k" at the end of some words that end in "t".

I just turned 45 less than two weeks ago, and I just feel like I'm much less intelligent than I used to be. I can admit that most of it is probably because I haven't used what I learned, and I also get easily frustrated. My pdoc said I have ADD.

I read things without absorbing them, as you described. My eyes fly over the words, but I'll be halfway down the page before realizing I have no idea what I just read. Sometimes it's because my mind wanders, and sometimes, I might describe it as the "brain fog" you mentioned.

I long to learn things, but don't have the patience. Plus, even with the few things I taught myself (like javascript and PHP), I'm back to Square 1 because I haven't used it and don't remember the first thing. I feel like it's a waste of time to even try to learn something. I think I'm going to get back into web design and use these languages, but then I never do. I know it's good exercise for the brain for me to try to learn, anyway, but I get tired of having to relearn everything.

I feel like getting older is putting me out of the running for anything I want to do. Our society loves the young, but as you get older, opportunities are few.