Honestly, I have the concentration span of a kitten right now. Attract it with something and it starts to play with it. Dangle another bauble in front of it, and the kitty instantly forgets about the first object and plays with the next.
I am so like that right now it’s not funny. For example (if I can remember examples before they disappear as well), I usually go firstly to my browser and quickly look at the ABC news website to see if the world hasn’t fallen apart. I’m not sure why I do this, as the news is almost invariably depressing.
Two minutes ago, glancing at the Twitter feed, I noticed Mark Colvin had retweeted that Gaddafi's son had been seized (9:25 AM.) That won’t make it to any newsroom for a while yet.
News is instantaneous on Twitter. If there’s an earthquake in Tokyo, I’ll know about it within two minutes, if Twitter’s open. While my nephew Glenn is still feeling the aftershocks in Tokyo, I’ll know he is doing so. I may even know the strength of the quake, perhaps before he does! (Oy! Don't dare look at the Twitter feed, or an hour at least will be lost.)
But I planned firstly to respond to Jan’s and Lyn’s letters, not get involved in news stories linked to the ABC website or what my research assistants all over the world are telling me on Twitter. Then I want to respond to Michele’s and Pam’s letters, and Verdon’s. And Joan – all her comments on my blog I haven’t responded to... and am longing to do all this... and three other friends who have written. And a mysterious chap who has read my blog and has a strange and cryptic message.
I click on my blog because I have the sudden and uncomfortable feeling that I have already written something similar to this weeks or months ago.... I check for keywords that might reveal the déjà vu event, but nothing comes up. I’m relieved. Don’t tell me if you find one. I don’t want to know.
Then because I did that and can now view the blog, I see Scott’s blog comment on the Arthur C Clarke story and laugh, and it comes to mind how we programmed enthusiastically in BASIC 25 years ago, and I can’t resist trying my hand at it again.... But where’s the old Chipmunk BASIC program I know will run on a Mac, to create a little program? I want to try that. I do. The very first exercise or trick we ever learned with BASIC. STOP IT!!!!
And I have to sign those documents.... and I have three other postings open as Word documents I’ve been writing that I’m longing to get back to.... and then I remember a particular Twitter posting relating to this that points to an article that I will lose if I don’t pick it up right now and create a pdf. Hang on, I’ll be right back. Oh and look at that. A message I was about to send 20 hours ago just before I crashed for my siesta is still sitting there!... Is it still worth sending? Is it worth explaining in a humorous way why I didn’t send it...? I could do that. No. Get a grip.
DELETE. Whew. Best decision I’ve made all day.
I've barely started yet to describe the meanderings of my mind, but that will do. You get the idea. So here I am writing this, after sneaking in a comment to a friend on something else that caught kitty’s eye, and I haven’t even begun those letters I want to write yet - which is crazy, because I’m looking forward to doing so. I said that already.
Don’t ask me to write a priority list and follow it. I won’t remember where it is, and even if I did, I would break the rules before I started trying to follow it. Or spend half an hour re-ordering the priorities and admiring the beauty of it.
That’s just the kinda guy I am. Or have become. Forgive him, for he knoweth not what he doth.
Oh, you have to look at this. I don’t believe it – but seems it’s true. (On a Mac, replace CTRL in the comment with CMD – the Apple key!)
But we have to go downtown to sign documents in front of a JP. We have to get that photo ID done at the RTA.
This will have to wait to be formatted for the blog till after we get back. Can you believe that?
*****
Right then. We’re back, and we have the photo ID so we can park in a Disabled Parking Zone at long last. I said to Tracey, I’d love, now that I have the ID card, to do handsprings all the way back to the car, with all the RTA bureaucrats looking on.
If only! Hell, if I could do that, I’d happily turn myself in as a fraud.
If only.
Worst of all, I find, is when someone sends me a You Tube link. If I click on it, I know that that will be four hours down the electronic rabbit hole, if I'm not vigilant - there's always one more 'fascinating' thing to look at. And, like you, I usually only sat down to pay a bill or reply to something - but I only remember that the following day, when I'm nowhere near a computer.
ReplyDeleteI found this today, and it sure beats multitasking on the computer. The universe, too, is full of black holes.
ReplyDelete"..I then felt myself being whisked off into the cosmos, further and further, beyond the sun, beyond our solar system, beyond the Milky Way. And even further until I was in the edge of the universe, and still further until I was at such vantage point that I could see the universe in its entirety. I was stunned by what I saw: the universe was alive! And it was a single organism of awesome complexity, but whole and totally integrated. I recognized that it was still in the stage of its early development, comparable to a fetus, still differentiating the various aspects of itself. I saw how everything that exists, including me and every being was a part of that awesome being. We were aspects of its components just like the various parts of own our being are aspects of who we are. I saw that everything that exists is part of a greater whole and that the whole requires every part in order to be fully who it is. Every part is essential. And out of this a harmony ensues. The profound and mysterious complexity of the Universe accompanies me to this day, its unity, its aliveness, and the impossibility of ever expressing in words haunts me. Every aspect of the Universe, including us, has a place of relationship with it. We are perhaps the only beings who think that we are somehow independent, not realizing that our most profound task is to remain aligned with the Universe, in relationship with this awesome, vast being. And that our own wholeness is vital for the wholeness of the Universe. And only in this way do we ultimately come to experience our own place of belonging in the Universe."
~Eligio Stephen Gallegos PhD, "Into Wholeness: The Path of Deep Imagery"
Wow. That is a very powerful image and a conception that I share when I go out mentally into the depths of the universe and into the world of the sub-atomic space. At high school once, a lanky boy sitting next to me in Physics said, ‘We might just be tiny particles in a gigantic bar of chocolate.’
ReplyDeleteI didn’t mean to reduce this great image to the absurd. Who can say we aren’t? but there is one thing for sure. Whether you go outwards and upwards, or peer into the electron microscope or experiment with the Hadron Collider, it gets harder and harder to tell what smaller and larger actually mean. But it helps to see the interconnectedness, the harmony and the balance.
Thanks for that, Joan.
Zoe - You’ve just shattered my illusions about you. I had in my head a picture of this highly disciplined mind that could never be diverted from the task, all things neatly arranged mentally (and a tidy desk, unlike mine.)
ReplyDeleteI’m rather pleased, actually! It will complete my pleasure if you admit that your desk is littered with objects in a state I call ‘disorderly order.’ (That’s not what Tracey calls it.) Please don’t shatter my illusions a second time!
It’s not Youtube that traps me. It’s all those tantalising references to articles to read in my tweet line. You know what I mean. I want to read them all! It’s my DUTY to do so! Then I may want to blab about them and get sucked into a discussion I never intended to have or want to write something on.... that’s the real trap.
Try these, e.g. – copy and paste the link at the end of each into your browser.
@Jane_Anne62: 'I went on a date and he took me on a burglary': The dates from hell that are taking Twitter by storm http://t.co/A8jQFWj
@Jane_Anne62: Mom leaves kid outside a bar, in the rain, to drink beer http://t.co/IcYFK6y
@Jane_Anne62: Chainsaw-Wielding, Fish-Kissing Man Is America's Most Misunderstood Neighbor http://t.co/lVxUdLK
@Jane_Anne62: Madame Tussauds in Hitler row as it refuses to stop customers doing Nazi salute bit.ly/nIPkck
@Jane_Anne62: Mexico: teen girls 'offering their virginity for Justin Bieber tickets' http://t.co/MH0oC2j
As you see, all of great significance to the world....
Nothing wrong with leaving your kid outside a bar to drink beer - but give them an umbrella, for heaven's sake. Here's more evidence of my muddled state: http://zmkc.blogspot.com/2011/01/what-is-it-called.html
ReplyDeleteYoutube is my biggest time waster ,too. It's such a treasure trove! And a forum called 'Indiamike" :)But being there does keep me from achieving all I want to, and that annoys me. Besides, all this sitting - too sluggish.
ReplyDeleteTidy desks - pfft! A sign of no work happening,if you ask me (or that's my excuse :))
JM
Zoe: had I known about your posting on this matter I could simply have done a ‘what she said’ comment and given your URL. It’s SO familiar to me. I invite anyone else to go to that reference and make a comparison with yourself. You better know the feeling....
ReplyDeleteAs to drinking beer, in the days of my childhood it was common practice for the husband to buy a shandy for his wife and take it out to her and she would drink it in the car while he had his beer in the male precinct of the bar. Aunty Lucy preferred that as she could see who was with who walking down the street, which was far more interesting than Uncle Frank’s old cronies at the bar.
You are both right about youtube. It’s not just about silly stuff. If you want to know ANYTHING from fixing a tap to removing an internal drive from a computer, it’s all there! Really, it’s incredible the sheer instant access to knowledge we have.
Would that we could see an instant improvement in society because of it....
Indiamike? I don't think I want to know. No, really, I don't.
I agree with your Aunty Lucy.
ReplyDelete