Week 8.
So. Linearity and frustration. Life flying at us in bright splinters. This is how I feel everyday.
Stream of consciousness.
I can never concentrate. I can never focus. It’s a really irritating issue. I’m trying to figure out why I can’t focus. I literally just stopped in the middle of that sentence to write another sentence. Even people who I think are serious procrastinators are saying that I procrastinate more than they do. And it’s true. It’s definitely not for lack of trying to not procrastinate. I really try not to. But it seems impossible not to. The number of things I find per hour is insane. Videos and articles and stories and links and pictures and artists and music and facts and so on. I learn so much about the world when I am supposed to be concentrating on an assignment. Or even just a simple task that should take 2 minutes. But for me, it takes 5 hours. I can’t stop doing it. I daydream too. I want to do everything. And there’s not enough time. I find so, so much inspiration in my searchings. But I wish I could just hold off on this and do what is most immediate. My brain refuses to help me do this. Flat out refuses. Life flying at us in bright splinters. Linearity and frustration. That’s why I’m talking about distractions. Because all of those words of the week remind me of how I think. All at once and randomly and impossibly distractingly.
And you know what? I really am sick of essays. Essays do not emerge from this kind of thinking. Essays are constraining. And limiting. And rigid. And soul-crushing. And mundane. And painful. This kind of thinking–the random kind–can actually be really productive and exciting. I get film ideas from doing this sort of thing. I learn things. I build concepts. The only reason it’s not productive is because I’m trying to fit it into a formally structured task. And that’s just not going to work. I’m over essays. I don’t have the patience for them anymore. I want to do better stuff. I want to make things. I want to explore new things. That’s why I like that we’re looking at Korsakow and nonlinearity. It’s incredibly refreshing.
Distractions are great. Productive. Brilliant. But incredibly limiting in formal circumstances. University is this formal circumstance.