there's a traitor here beneath my breast

[enthusiastick]

I have discovered that the practical upshot of taking virtually no vacation time during the holidays (an attempt on my part to accumulate time off, since I only started in August and will likely make better use of it next year) is that my brain has apparently elected to just take its own vacation without me. I am feeling severely unfocused lately, and although I have in the past complained about lack of focus at work, the problem has become more pronounced and is now carrying over into my time off the clock.

I'm a pretty unfocused person to begin with -- over the years I've been compared to a 5-year-old child, a puppy and a magpie -- but I like to think that whether or not I'm capable of directing it my brain is generally hard at work. Lately that assumption has proved somewhat faulty, as evidenced by the dearth of meaningful content in my LJ for the past week.

A friend of mine (I'm fairly certain it was oberndorf) once observed that he did his best thinking when he wasn't wearing pants. I think he meant that as a roundabout way of saying that he was at his most lucid while standing in the shower, or possibly lying in bed, his mind free to wander and let go of its day-in-day-out cares.

Whether or not that was his meaning, that's certainly the case with me -- I get more thinking done standing half-awake in the shower than I do during the subsequent first four hours I'm at work on a given day. Similarly more cogent, well-thought ideas tend to come to me while I'm lying in bed late at night than any other time of day. Even though I'm very much a desktop PC kind of guy I sometimes wish I owned a laptop, so that I wouldn't always have to be springing out of bed in order to capture a stray realization.

This could just be stoner's logic, of course; I am half-asleep at these moments, and often don't subsequently remember the precise details of the supposedly great thought. Maybe I just think I'm coming up with great, innovative ideas, but actually they're crap and I'm halfway into dream-land. But I don't think that's the case, at least not entirely. As I mentioned, I am occasionally able to transfer these thoughts to recordable medium before they evaporate.

I need a break, and I need to spend it doing something fun. Much as I might complain of sloth, the truth of the matter is that I relax myself more when I'm engaged in a leisurely activity than when I'm actually doing nothing at all. When I sit and watch television, for example -- just watch whatever's on, rather than tuning in for a specific program -- my brain more or less shuts off, which apparently defeats the purpose. But time spent with friends does not have this effect. My mental muscles get a workout, which makes it all the more satisfying when I finally let them flop. And I generally wake up to discover that while I was busy distracting my conscious brain my subconscious managed to get some much-needed sorting work done, and has several fully-formed sundries awaiting my review.

Not for the past week or so, though. Its not that I haven't been able to capture any of these wispy, ethereal brilliant notions. I just haven't been having them. I stand in the shower like normal, but I don't find myself musing thoughtfully. Instead I just have this sensation not unlike having my skull used as an apiary. Its not quite a headache, but its unpleasant and distracting. And it persists all day. Its the mental equivalent of spending an entire week glancing over your shoulder at an imagined noise, unable to finish (or even properly get started on) a thought.

Comments

[rollick.livejournal.com]

Did you ever send Chris that thing we talked about? I dunno how fun that'd be, but it'd be amusing. To me, at least.

[pooka-madness.livejournal.com]

No, but thank you for reminding me. I tend to let time slip by on that sort of project, when really I should just get it done expediently.

ugly

[war-pug.livejournal.com]

you fixed your ugly icon
yay for eben

buttpete

[oberndorf.livejournal.com]

Yep, that was me. Also, you've hit the meaning exactly on the head.

[theshanakee.livejournal.com]

I'm with you all the way on the last part. More times than not I feel something like this, with the empty brain and the distraction. In a similar conversation recently, a friend of mine commented that this became a normal situation for him several years ago, oddly enough, while he was still in Canada selling real estate. He claims it's what happens when work really sets in.

Personally, I find it's just that if I sit alone for too long and don't communicate with people, my brain goes all raw hamburger like this too. I find that most of my best thinking happens when in conversation with someone else. It's become an especially pronounced problem since coming to Japan, having fewer opportunities to stretch my brain in the same analytical fashion as I am accustomed.

[lady-eleret.livejournal.com]

Pencil and paper by your bed will fix the lack of a laptop...no use making yourself get out of bed.

[pooka-madness.livejournal.com]

The rate of my typing is significantly faster than the rate of my writing by hand. The typing rate is also significantly closer to the rate at which I think. Its the difference between getting a wax crayon sketch of something and getting a decently composed fresco of it. Obviously a photograph would be preferrable to either of these things, but given the choice, I'll take the painting.