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May 10, 2005
Guiding Neuroses
I am a terribly distracted person, someone who is enamored with whatever is the most exciting at any possible moment. My tortured attention span expires without warning, constantly bounding from stimulus to stimulus, like a bee haphazardly collecting pollen in a field of epileptic strobing lights and sounds. This was a terrible pox to have on my schooling career with the explanation for my above average (but not even close to exceptional) grades originating from a considerable amount of parental pressure, being that they were both dedicated teachers.
I applied to only one college, my sole choice springing intuitively from a single visit to my brother whose fellow dorm-mates would stay up to the wee hours of the morning, playing pranks on more serious minded peers as they attempted to sleep or study. I had absolutely no idea what it is I would do with my life and spewed large amounts of bull feces when asked what I was considering majoring in.
Two popular answers were computer science and veterinary studies citing the nominal interests I had in both pets and technology, though I had no real idea of the truly laborious task it was to actually become adept at either of those aforementioned fields of study. Instead of worrying about my future I simply slept, finding comfort in the notion of shutting off my brain for hours at a time where I was free from its constant brooding. Intense forces of rumination were at play beneath my brow but I was at a loss with how to focus these seemingly unimportant, but potent, instincts into something of external value.
Shortly before I left for college I discovered the internet and how naturally dexterous I was at arranging content to be displayed on it. I had finally found something that both held my interest and distracted my brain for long periods of time, allowing the constant jitters of my mind to be compressed into a sine-wave of deep, robust vibration.
My weekends became full, not with social engagements but, with hour after hour of my simultaneous exploration of both technology and information architecture; parcelling off large tracts of time in which I would let my mind tumble from one related concept to the next. I was making things and it utterly captivated me; time was now passed, not with pensive anxiousness but, with a lucid ease and an object of noticable value left in its wake to lay testament to the entire experience. It was as if I woke from a nap, my chest heavy with the jewels recovered during an adventurous dream with my co-star Captain Nemo; creating allowed me to escape and I was now utterly dependent on that feeling of detachment.
College became an intense time for this type of action, only now my reveries took the form of molding the physical as I attended classes in drawing, printmaking, photograph and sculpture. I was absolutely smitten and thought nothing of what would come next, all consumed with the act of making.
For the past year distractions have slowly erected themselves providing their own rewards but subsequently obstructing me from my acts of creation. I have realized that I must cleave them from my life, like great oaks from the edges of a clearing, to free up those precious hours with which I am afforded the expanses of time wherein I can cogitate over that which engages my fickle attention span.
The vacation I have taken since completing _respondcreate_ has been well earned but through it I have learned that these side-quests are not altogether fulfilling. A new leaf has been turned and once the obligations to those distractions have been completed in the coming weeks I will return to my core passions with full creative vigor.
Stay tuned.
Posted by Jon at May 10, 2005 02:37 AM