Attention Breaks

Friday, July 15, 2005

It’s a yummy caffeine-free day. Lately, I noticed a drop in productivity increase and a surge of forced consumption—i.e., drinking when I’m not in need of its wonderful energies. Those last two sentences were awfully business-jargon oriented. As was that, when I think about it. I’m trying to open up more into my strange, abstract place, taking things as they come, if you will, and at the same time organizing my thoughts and fully developing them. I don’t do that often: develop ideas. I think it has something to do with too much television watching as a child. It was the commercials more than the MTV videos that shortened my attention span. That and the clicking. I didn’t get to click until I was older, of course. Clickers weren’t common when I was young, but once I got my hands on a clicker, it all broke loose—my attention span, again, that is.

I’m going to stop talking about the clicker because I’ve grown bored with the subject and I’ve determined that it isn’t yet fully developed, and I don’t fully develop ideas. I think it might be against my religion. I’ll have to look it up. I’m forcing myself to count words on the off chance that I might myself caring again about word count. I don’t, yet. There’s always hope, though, hope that I care, that is. Do you see how fun it is to write something without having anything to write?

New paragraph time. We’re planning a long bicycling ride tonight. The weather is beautiful, and my new gear is burning a hole in its shopping bag (I’ve always wondered about the mechanics of money burning holes in pockets). I spend too much money on sporting gear. What else is new? I spend too much money on everything.

Did you notice how each the last three paragraphs were shorter than its predecessor paragraph. I don’t know what that means, but I’m trying to break the cycle with this paragraph. Or maybe it’s better if I don’t break the cycle, i.e., make this paragraph shorter than the last. Too late, I’m approaching the fourth line (at least in Word), which means that I’ve already made this paragraph longer. Can you believe the B.S. I pretend is writing?

That initial bout of energy passed quickly and I alt-tabbed away to do something other than write. I do that often, alt-tabbing away searching for distractions. I think I told you about that. I’m having issues with ‘am’ and ‘have’ in my writing. I think I use them too often. I think I am using them too often, or, perhaps, I think I have used them too often. I’ll get over it.

I enjoy the demarcation lines when it’s sunny outside. There’s shadow and then there’s light. It’s very easy to determine the sunny and the shady part. I wish all of life was that easy to judge. The good people would be on this side of the line (perhaps the dark, if we assume the light part is in the Houston-summer-sun area), and the evil people (I guess I ruined the division by telling you the name of the second group in the first parenthetical—I do that a lot, spoil things) would be on the other side. These are the good people, he said and gestured to one group, and these are the bad people, he said and gestured to the other group. There. It would be much easier that way.

Scott and I went for a long bicycle ride along the lake to Madison Park. I didn’t get a chance to post this POS (that’s piece of shit, for those who try to stay away from the jargon). We have a morale golfing event this afternoon, followed by a long (hopefully sunny) weekend of no-Doolies. I will write more this weekend, and there is an off-chance that some of it might actually be useful or good or words. Yup, some of it will definitely be words.

 Seattle, WA | ,