Nov 07 2008
Restless
At the moment I’m playing a video game, reading a movie review, watching MST3K on my laptop, and on the TV is Nightmare on Elm Street 2 (the gayest movie in history) from FearNet On Demand. I am not sated. None of this is doing anything to make me any less bored, antsy, and generally malcontented.
Why do I need this constant electronic stimulation? Why can’t I just read a book or magazine without the need for some kind of background noise? Why can’t I drive in silence? Why can’t I just watch one thing at a time, rather than multi-task? Can I really call this multitasking, when absolutely none of it is productive and I’m not even really paying attention to any one thing for more than a few seconds at a time?
Yeah, I know this is pretty much territory I’ve already covered, but one of the symptoms of this unfettered spirit is that I also can’t focus long enough to come up with a decent idea for my mandatory blog post today. Ergo, I just talk about how I’m beating my attention span to death with a constant stream of noise and flashing pictures.
Maybe this is all a sign I’ve got too much on my plate.
I can’t wait until watching all these screens all the time gives me eye cancer. I kind of feel like Prison Director Poe sitting in front of Zed-10 in my creepy sterile lair, fantasizing about Christopher Lambert’s wife and randomly intestinating prisoners. (That’s all a reference to Fortress, which is one of my favorite Stuart Gordon movies. I could also reference Videodrome, but this feels more obscure.)
I think sometimes we plug into so many things to avoid the things in our lives that are really bothering us. Not saying that’s the case with you but I know I’m guilty of it. When I was unemployed at the beginning of the summer my entire day consisted of playing xbox and blogging. I would lose almost entire days that way instead of trying to face the fact that I needed to find a job and a social life. You’ve also got so many different writing projects going on that I’m sure they burn you out a bit. Maybe take a break from one or two. Try to explore new avenues of creativity. Or just completely ignore any advice I give you because my life is relatively boring and just as plugged in as yours. *hugs*
You’re probably right about me using this to avoid my problems and all the various miserable things about my life. That’s the best theory that doesn’t involve me having my attention span fried by action movies, at least. That and the fact that I’m a public school kid, thus I can’t think without a ton of screaming little rat bastards in the background.