Re-Un-Distracted
Well, snap. I got myself distracted, so I have to work out of it again.
I wasn't even trying not to focus, which is probably why I got foiled. I needed to try to focus. Whatever. Here I am, rambling again to ramble out the distraction. It's a bit of a waste of time, but sometimes you need to reset, restart, reload, or whatever.
I'm trying to write about my board game that I'm hoping to make some day. I need to find a space for reading and recording! I need a space.
In other news, I am feeling very warm. Air conditioning is now making me feel less warm. Lovely.
I'm feeling a dash less distracted, but there are a bunch of things on my mind. Tomorrow is on my mind. This past Saturday is on my mind like the superluminal jets on an active galactic nucleus. My paintings are on my mind. The need for a recording space is on my mind. Tonight is on my mind. Too much is on my mind, and I'm trying to let it sift out for a bit.
How do you quiet your brain? Usually, I just need to write, and my thoughts become a lot more sorted. I miss my pipe. It has such a quieting effect on me overall. I miss sushi; it has a milder but similar effect.
I might be focused enough now. What do you think?
I've started word-counting like everything. Often, when I get emails, I'll check the word count. Whenever I write a post, I check it's word count. Fun fact: my "Estimated Reading Time" in minutes is determined by taking the word count and dividing it by 200. I round to the nearest minute. For example, my last post was 407 words. Boom. That's about 2 minutes.
Some guy wrote an article about wasting people's time or being up front with people about the commitment required to do/read something. I hope it's a helpful tool.
That is all.
Thank you.
I wasn't even trying not to focus, which is probably why I got foiled. I needed to try to focus. Whatever. Here I am, rambling again to ramble out the distraction. It's a bit of a waste of time, but sometimes you need to reset, restart, reload, or whatever.
I'm trying to write about my board game that I'm hoping to make some day. I need to find a space for reading and recording! I need a space.
In other news, I am feeling very warm. Air conditioning is now making me feel less warm. Lovely.
I'm feeling a dash less distracted, but there are a bunch of things on my mind. Tomorrow is on my mind. This past Saturday is on my mind like the superluminal jets on an active galactic nucleus. My paintings are on my mind. The need for a recording space is on my mind. Tonight is on my mind. Too much is on my mind, and I'm trying to let it sift out for a bit.
How do you quiet your brain? Usually, I just need to write, and my thoughts become a lot more sorted. I miss my pipe. It has such a quieting effect on me overall. I miss sushi; it has a milder but similar effect.
I might be focused enough now. What do you think?
I've started word-counting like everything. Often, when I get emails, I'll check the word count. Whenever I write a post, I check it's word count. Fun fact: my "Estimated Reading Time" in minutes is determined by taking the word count and dividing it by 200. I round to the nearest minute. For example, my last post was 407 words. Boom. That's about 2 minutes.
Some guy wrote an article about wasting people's time or being up front with people about the commitment required to do/read something. I hope it's a helpful tool.
That is all.
Thank you.
How do I quiet my brain? The most effective strategy seems to depend on the type of brain activity:
ReplyDelete- If it's a confused mess of jumbled thoughts, I find writing works best to sort it all out.
- If the thoughts are more emotionally based, I find playing the piano does wonders to release it through my fingers.
- If the thoughts are anxious, I find prayer to be the only solution that truly brings peace, re-centering, and often, a total change in focus.
And my feedback on the Estimated Reading Time is that it is a helpful tool; I appreciate it! I should probably adopt it for my messages, although it might scare a lot of folks away, haha!
Well, snap! I need all of those.
DeleteI haven't played the guitar in a long time; it has been a very calming activity in the past.
How long have you been playing the piano?
Warning: ERT 2 minutes, hahaha!!
ReplyDeleteI've played the piano since third grade. I started begging my parents for lessons in first grade, but they wanted to wait a while to make sure it wasn't a passing fancy. I had to stop taking the pastel art lessons I had been taking and loving, because there wasn't money for two extra-curricular activities, but piano was my passion. For the first year or so, we had no piano in our home, but since we lived in the church parsonage next door to the church, I had access to the church piano. The only problem was that when wintertime came, the church building was not heated during the week. So upon returning home from practicing, my fingernails would be blue with cold! But I didn't think to mention it to my parents, because I just wanted to learn to play piano so badly! Thankfully, we were soon able to buy a used piano from one of the congregants.
I continued to take lessons from third through twelfth grade. It was during the high school years that my grandpa got sick with cancer. That was the first serious illness and death I had ever experienced in someone close to me. The associated emotions needed an outlet. It was during that period that my piano playing transformed from a mechanical/technical challenge into a means of expressing emotions beyond words. In classical education lingo, I would now say that that was when I passed from the dialectic into the rhetoric stage of piano playing. In any case, it became for me an emotional pressure release valve, and has remained so ever since. Am I so full of joy that I feel I could burst? There's a song for that. Am I depressed? Angry? Pensive? Amorous? There's a song for that. No matter what it is, there's always a song, usually one that works better than any words I can string together.
It's a longer story why, but after the move from Philly to York, I had to go for an entire year without my first baby, my baby grand. When I was finally able to pay the ransom and bring my baby home, it was like being reunited with a long, lost friend. I am so grateful for the outlet of music. It is such a gift from God!
Ho. Ly. Sna. Pola. I know what you mean.
DeleteI think one of the things that has inspired my wild pursuit of everything (guitar, painting, literature, poetry, dancing, and more) has been the drive toward pressure release valves.
That's a lovely chronicle about your piano-ing. Do you write your own music by any chance?
Oops! That chronicle was supposed to be a reply to your reply, not a new comment. I keep doing that, agh!
DeleteWell, your drive towards pressure release valves has been very fruitful! It's fascinating and often redeeming to see what fuels art.
No, I've never felt comfortable departing from written sheet music. During a period of time when I was part of an inner city church worship team but was the only team member who read sheet music, I used to take the guitar chords and create my own sheet music! I found some music composition software that would transcribe my experiments on the piano into notes on the computer. It was pretty cool software, even though it still required a lot of tedious cleanup. (No, I DIDN'T want a dotted sixty-fourth note, crazy computer!!) I did take a harmony course in college, and the professor said that everything I wrote sounded like a jingle. In context, I THINK it was a compliment, because he was saying that my little ditty homework exercises were catchy, but I can't be 100% sure. Another opportunity I once had was to take a few music composition lessons, for which I wrote a short piece of music in a classical style, attempting polyphonic voices. Fun! But I've never been the kind of pianist to sit down and play a song by ear, or to just churn out an original song extemporaneously. I WISH!! I have great respect for those who can. I simply adopt the music of the great composers of the past to give voice to whatever mood I need to release through my fingers. A large enough repertoire can provide a song for just about any emotion.
Interesting. I've never thought to consider playing a song for every emotion — but that's exactly how I choose my music. My Pandora stations, for example, are categorized with emotions: Fury, Infatuation, Calm, Chillin, Adventure, and more.
Delete