To begin, I think that I should explain a bit about what I perceive as my consciousness: it's not actually connected to most of my mind, it simply places itself between my main decision-making processes and sensory inputs/outputs. This is an interesting state of affairs, and leads to many interesting results, including the fact that I only (consciously) think one word or so ahead when I'm writing stuff, sometimes a bit more, or a bit less, and I don't know much of what I'm going to write until I write it (this is because the thinking processes of my mind don't actually use language, so even when I manage to catch a hold of them I can only translate them at a fairly slow rate). All of the actual composition is going on back in my skull somewhere, where I can't see much of it, and I can only hope that the threads sometimes get hooked up to whatever method I'm using to transcribe my thoughts (in this case, my hands, using a keyboard as the interface).
I am creative in bursts, when my mind is working correctly. If I get distracted, I can completely lose the thread - and it's really easy to get distracted. When I stop for a moment to look around, take a very short break from looking at the screen, almost unblinking, I often completely forget what I was going to write next.
Sometimes, when the creativity shows up unexpectedly, and I can't write it down, I try to memorize bits and pieces of the thoughts, so that I can transcribe them later. This tends not to work, but occasionally it does, and I jot down the thoughts on paper, or in a file on my desktop (optimistically titled "Story Fragments in need of homes." I don't use it much). Anyways ... back to the original thread (it's hard for me to stay on topic, which can be a problem. I don't write in very structured ways, generally, I write as I think, and I really hate editing on any level beyond spell-checking and a basic rereading to make sure that I haven't said something completely different than what I intended).
So, Multithreading. Since most of my thinking goes on outside of my mind, weird threads show up sometimes. Completely normal things - such as a spork - can result in really weird threads showing up, or being created - such as a device to convert gravity to sideways pressure, and its possible applications in torture (no, I'm not evil. Being evil would, in all probability, result in my freedom being limited by imprisonment or death, and those outcomes are undesireably enough that I'm not going to be evil until I can negate the former, and defend myself agains the latter).
I'm not going to give a lot of examples of the ways this works, as my memory is terrible (another argument for writing everything down), but I may mention some in the future.
On of the major half foreground and half background threads which is going on right now goes as follows, beginning with a bit of backstory, and then proceeding to the actual thread:
A few months ago, I went to an informal party, probably fairly small by standards of parties. There were lots of really great people there, and many fun things happened, including various games (Apples to Apples, some card games, etc. Fairly low-key stuff). I managed to get tired enough that I claimed to be able to control the universe / be a god (to explain why I was somewhat winning in two of the games), and I met a very interesting and nice person, who sadly had to leave before the actual end of the party. However, she expressed an interest in meeting me again / communicating me, which is, I think, why this story continues beyond here.
A few days after the party, we began a rather long correspondence via Facebook, which continued until the 19th of August (at least, that is the last message which I received). In that message, there was a mention of possibly meeting up that weekend, which ended up not happening. I have not received any more messages - which is a bit weird, even considering the previous gaps between messages (which led me, at one point, to compare the correspondence to the old-fashioned snail-mail correspondence), and has led me to, amoung other things, reread my messages quite a few times to see if there's anything in them which could have possibly caused this (paranoia is fun, although, in this case, it seems to be completely unjustified, unless I'm completely missing something, or the Fnords have gotten into my message).
One of the other main effects is that I've become somewhat used to putting a number of my thoughts into the computer and sending it off once or twice a week. This is, I think, one of the reasons that I've updated this blog much more frequently lately, combined with boredom. It's a good excercise in writing, and in thinking.
However, currently, I don't actually put what I'm doing onto this blog - that's the realm of my Identi.ca feed, which works quite well for the purpose: it's a combination of what I'm doing, my thoughts, and my opinions. The fact that it's microblogging, though, prevents me from saying a lot, even if I don't say a lot quite frequently. Thus, I'm considering, every few days, or at least once a week, writing up a summary of what I've been doing - as if I were writing a letter - and picking out the best bits for the actual letters, if the correspondence starts up again.
The problem with this, however, is that I write - and speak - best when I'm responding to something. I prefer listening to speaking, and I don't especially like speaking about what I do, simply because I do so few things which I consider especially interesting. There is a fair danger that, if/when I attempt this, it will quickly devolve to rants about various classes, descriptions of what I did that weekend at the ACCRC and Westfinder, interspersed with my more strange thoughts (methods of torture, for example), before I get too stressed to continue the writing, as school and life begin to overwhelm me. Then this blog drops back into death for a while, I remember that I have a blog sometime around the winter holidays, and throw up a filler post / post containing any additional drawings which I've done / post explaining that I completely forgot about this blog.
Of course, having written this much about it, I'm going to have to try it. During the days, I'll try to jot down (and timestamp) any especially interesting thoughts I have, or any especially interesting events, and every few weekends (whenever my homework load is low enough that I'm able to go to both the ACCRC and Westfinder, probably), I'll put it all together and try to get it to make a bit more sense.
If all goes well, the first post in this new series will be between the 10th and the 14th, after I get back from Yosemite, but before classes start (yeah, the schedule is weird). If it doesn't go up in that time period ... well, anyone who's interested in reading my thoughts is encouraged to bother me about it, beginning on the weekend of the 20th, or at least no earlier than the 13th.
Finally, I would like to assure anyone who's read this far (congradulations on managing that, by the way) that I intend to do all I can to keep this blog fairly high quality, and to keep rants about school out of it.I try to keep it fairly intelligent, albeit unstructured and sanity-optional.
Feedback, as always, via the comments section (comments will be moderated before being displayed, so I'll read everything, even if I don't respond to it), Identi.ca, Facebook, email, or Meatspace (the latter three are reserved for people who know me in Meatspace, or whom I happen to trust).
Cheers!
Editness: Later is not the same as Latter. I intended to write latter, but I wrote later. This has been fixed. Nothing else has been changed. Nothing, I tell you!
I am creative in bursts, when my mind is working correctly. If I get distracted, I can completely lose the thread - and it's really easy to get distracted. When I stop for a moment to look around, take a very short break from looking at the screen, almost unblinking, I often completely forget what I was going to write next.
Sometimes, when the creativity shows up unexpectedly, and I can't write it down, I try to memorize bits and pieces of the thoughts, so that I can transcribe them later. This tends not to work, but occasionally it does, and I jot down the thoughts on paper, or in a file on my desktop (optimistically titled "Story Fragments in need of homes." I don't use it much). Anyways ... back to the original thread (it's hard for me to stay on topic, which can be a problem. I don't write in very structured ways, generally, I write as I think, and I really hate editing on any level beyond spell-checking and a basic rereading to make sure that I haven't said something completely different than what I intended).
So, Multithreading. Since most of my thinking goes on outside of my mind, weird threads show up sometimes. Completely normal things - such as a spork - can result in really weird threads showing up, or being created - such as a device to convert gravity to sideways pressure, and its possible applications in torture (no, I'm not evil. Being evil would, in all probability, result in my freedom being limited by imprisonment or death, and those outcomes are undesireably enough that I'm not going to be evil until I can negate the former, and defend myself agains the latter).
I'm not going to give a lot of examples of the ways this works, as my memory is terrible (another argument for writing everything down), but I may mention some in the future.
On of the major half foreground and half background threads which is going on right now goes as follows, beginning with a bit of backstory, and then proceeding to the actual thread:
A few months ago, I went to an informal party, probably fairly small by standards of parties. There were lots of really great people there, and many fun things happened, including various games (Apples to Apples, some card games, etc. Fairly low-key stuff). I managed to get tired enough that I claimed to be able to control the universe / be a god (to explain why I was somewhat winning in two of the games), and I met a very interesting and nice person, who sadly had to leave before the actual end of the party. However, she expressed an interest in meeting me again / communicating me, which is, I think, why this story continues beyond here.
A few days after the party, we began a rather long correspondence via Facebook, which continued until the 19th of August (at least, that is the last message which I received). In that message, there was a mention of possibly meeting up that weekend, which ended up not happening. I have not received any more messages - which is a bit weird, even considering the previous gaps between messages (which led me, at one point, to compare the correspondence to the old-fashioned snail-mail correspondence), and has led me to, amoung other things, reread my messages quite a few times to see if there's anything in them which could have possibly caused this (paranoia is fun, although, in this case, it seems to be completely unjustified, unless I'm completely missing something, or the Fnords have gotten into my message).
One of the other main effects is that I've become somewhat used to putting a number of my thoughts into the computer and sending it off once or twice a week. This is, I think, one of the reasons that I've updated this blog much more frequently lately, combined with boredom. It's a good excercise in writing, and in thinking.
However, currently, I don't actually put what I'm doing onto this blog - that's the realm of my Identi.ca feed, which works quite well for the purpose: it's a combination of what I'm doing, my thoughts, and my opinions. The fact that it's microblogging, though, prevents me from saying a lot, even if I don't say a lot quite frequently. Thus, I'm considering, every few days, or at least once a week, writing up a summary of what I've been doing - as if I were writing a letter - and picking out the best bits for the actual letters, if the correspondence starts up again.
The problem with this, however, is that I write - and speak - best when I'm responding to something. I prefer listening to speaking, and I don't especially like speaking about what I do, simply because I do so few things which I consider especially interesting. There is a fair danger that, if/when I attempt this, it will quickly devolve to rants about various classes, descriptions of what I did that weekend at the ACCRC and Westfinder, interspersed with my more strange thoughts (methods of torture, for example), before I get too stressed to continue the writing, as school and life begin to overwhelm me. Then this blog drops back into death for a while, I remember that I have a blog sometime around the winter holidays, and throw up a filler post / post containing any additional drawings which I've done / post explaining that I completely forgot about this blog.
Of course, having written this much about it, I'm going to have to try it. During the days, I'll try to jot down (and timestamp) any especially interesting thoughts I have, or any especially interesting events, and every few weekends (whenever my homework load is low enough that I'm able to go to both the ACCRC and Westfinder, probably), I'll put it all together and try to get it to make a bit more sense.
If all goes well, the first post in this new series will be between the 10th and the 14th, after I get back from Yosemite, but before classes start (yeah, the schedule is weird). If it doesn't go up in that time period ... well, anyone who's interested in reading my thoughts is encouraged to bother me about it, beginning on the weekend of the 20th, or at least no earlier than the 13th.
Finally, I would like to assure anyone who's read this far (congradulations on managing that, by the way) that I intend to do all I can to keep this blog fairly high quality, and to keep rants about school out of it.I try to keep it fairly intelligent, albeit unstructured and sanity-optional.
Feedback, as always, via the comments section (comments will be moderated before being displayed, so I'll read everything, even if I don't respond to it), Identi.ca, Facebook, email, or Meatspace (the latter three are reserved for people who know me in Meatspace, or whom I happen to trust).
Cheers!
Editness: Later is not the same as Latter. I intended to write latter, but I wrote later. This has been fixed. Nothing else has been changed. Nothing, I tell you!
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