When did I lose all my concentration?

internet

pretty much

wild turkey?

if only the computer wasn't where all the work had to happen!

i remember reading

what the hell did people do all day at work before the internet?

affairs!

faxing!

rrrobyn, sometimes I read in the bathtub to combat this. strategy!

xposts

drinks!

FAXING lol

Reading in v. hot bath while drinking a 40: pretty classic.

I couldn't even read a fucking video game magazine the other night. This is intermittent, I must note, but when it's on studying is a fucking mindfuck.

i've never been able to read in the bath
i like reading (novels, well-written non-fiction) for really long stretches. like 2 hrs where you just sit/lay there and then when you get up your body kind of aches b/c it's been in the same position for too long.

you can do that in the bath if you add more hot water intermittently. lots of my books are kind of...damaged, though.

Yeah I do tend to fatten them. I did once in a foolish time w/a library book & I still feel v. guilty about this.

baths are not really my favourite thing really
i like oceans and lakes and swimming but baths mock all that
at least showers are honest about what they are

ha fair enough, rrrobyn. I need to take a shower before a bath, definitely, otherwise it just feels dirty.

I have this with writing fiction lately, which is a bit of a blow to, you know, my main function in life, etc. Even worse: the other day I started working on recording a song, hoping the instant-gratification part of making noises would kind of lure me into a focused state -- but within an hour I was wandering around the neighborhood getting coffee and making a totally unnecessary trip to the drugstore to buy cleaning products I didn't even need.

Apparently I am contagious; I apologize. That is just like how I am doing things.

did you buy a magic sponge?
they are actually necessary

(I still can't decide on the role of coffee w/r/t writing: it either makes it impossible for me to sit still and focus on what I'm doing -- jumpy legs everywhere -- or it leads to this situation where I get tons and tons done, but in the most painful pacing-around tormented-creativity way imaginable. Possibly I should just shoot for the latter of those things, and just totally give up on ever getting a calm, settled focus going.)

I think coffee is a psychological prerequisite for writing (I'm not doing the same kind of writing as you, though, nabisco) but unfortunately counterproductive as I get older. that jumpy thing is super-annoying, but it's also a relief to rediscover that my brain actually works.

I am pretty damn super-jumpy without coffee. It tends to calm me down but mebbe its bcz I put a lot of fatty in it.

Things I bought:

- paper towels ("it's not like you can have too many")
- new shower gel ("now I can smell different for different occasions")
- shoelaces ("I should really have a backup, just in case")
- floss ("that last one will run out, you don't want to interrupt your new flossing roll")
- batteries ("wasn't there something that was out of batteries the other day?")
- cough drops ("better to have these BEFORE you get the cough")

stop making me drink more coffee okay

lol shower gel

haha those justifications all have the virtue of being true, nabisco!

well, maybe not shower gel. you bought shower gel?

creativity goes in phases though, nabisco. don't be so hard on yourself. besides, you never know when a shoelace is gonna break.

Haha nabisco I do that when nervous/flighty shopping too. Last time it was: a pyrex casserole pan (did not have one), socks, band-aids, another bottle of quick-release extra strength tylenol, and a back-up bottle of conditioner (bcz my current one will run put in...what...two months)? At least, I tell myself, my impulse buys are practical.

What, am I misusing the term "shower gel?" Surely I'm not the only guy in the world who uses a liquid soap / "body wash."

xpost - My most productive fiction-writing days used to involve a big meal at noon, and then four hours of drinking coffee at the cafe and talking to people, interrupted by long random walks around the neighborhood planning out what I was going to write -- by the time I settled down to write around 5 or 6, my brain would be filled with enough stuff to actually match the restless caffeinated feeling. But this was totally dependent on having a weird work schedule and full days off to write -- it's like I need to spend the majority of a day doing nothing before I get bored (or focused) enough to spend 5 hours writing.

shower gel is one of my favourite inventions of capitalism
but i only use soap, because of allergies. to the system.

In regards to writing, my experience (which has also not been with writing fiction) is that coffee is extremely helpful for about 2 hours max, and afterwards my concentration is pretty much shot. More coffee doesn't seem to help. It's amazing, though, what can happen in those two hours. I've gone without coffee enough and have had pretty wide-ranging degrees of success in regards to productivity. Somehow, that calm, settled or consistent focus is pretty difficult to attain with or without coffee.

no, i'm sure you're not, nabisco! "now I can smell different for different occasions" made me laugh, though.

For REALLY special events I will use a scientific mixture of two soaps, for a signature melange

coffee is an amazing drug if you can gauge it right, i find
xpost

lol shower gel melange

In regards to writing, my experience (which has also not been with writing fiction) is that coffee is extremely helpful for about 2 hours max, and afterwards my concentration is pretty much shot. More coffee doesn't seem to help. It's amazing, though, what can happen in those two hours. I've gone without coffee enough and have had pretty wide-ranging degrees of success in regards to productivity. Somehow, that calm, settled or consistent focus is pretty difficult to attain with or without coffee.

Yup. It's all about finding your own personal coffee effectiveness window. And It's only after the two hours that I get all j i t t e r y. And that's when I need a walk.

am i being falsely nostalgic that coffee used to just make me smart without the jitters? the jumpy thing only started happening in my mid-20s

coffee actualy makes me less jumpy the older i get. as long as i don't have TOO much

I spent years trying to convince myself that the "you should write in the morning" thing is bullshit, or not applicable to everyone, or at least not applicable to me, but sadly enough it's turned out to be totally true. Which sucks, if you happen to be really terrible at waking up. But I usually don't work until noon, so I'm actually making this grueling effort to get up at 8 and do my writing before I go.

xpost

you might have a point horseshoe. Well, in any case I don't remember coffee affecting me nearly as strongly in my first few coffee-drinking years as it does now. I used to be able to have it after dinner and still fall asleep without any problems, and that's pretty much impossible now.

today i had two coffees at home before 9 am and then rode bike 10 min to be somewhere at 11 am and totally had the shakes when i arrived! but they went away after abt 15 minutes
i'm making coffee right now
xposts

yep. i have to write in the morning. like first thing. i can edit in the afternoon, but "fresh" first draft writing almost never happens in the PM.

Levels of caffeination don't really change my ability to write actually! But if I am in a funk it is hell of hard not to write like death woe sad mope worthless suicide cry fuck whatever, which IMO is crap & not something I wld want to write and mostly not read. Like last night I ended up writing some sentence where a guy was trying to suicide himself by CO in a car in a Wal-Mart parking lot w/his headlights on and everything/ Some sentence like "Maybe the drivers would quit honking and notice he wasn't a homeless guy living in his car but a lifeless guy dead in his car." Smug ahoy: I thought that was pretty clever, but OTOH jesus what is my fucking problem, with the dying and the sad and the giving up.

So comparatively coffee isn't really a thing.

This could work out: if things continue at their current pace, I will eventually reach an age where I can't focus on one thing long enough to ever die.

Although I guess I was looking forward to whatever concentration shift allows old people to put together jigsaw puzzles.

i bet that won't work

xpost

i love jigsaw puzzles! but i haven't done one for like 2 yrs

why you always stomp on my dreams, robyn?

why do you call me an old person and make me drink more coffee, n?

actually the coffee has been working its magic on concentration zone i gotta say

Things I bought:

- paper towels ("it's not like you can have too many")
- new shower gel ("now I can smell different for different occasions")
- shoelaces ("I should really have a backup, just in case")
- floss ("that last one will run out, you don't want to interrupt your new flossing roll")
- batteries ("wasn't there something that was out of batteries the other day?")
- cough drops ("better to have these BEFORE you get the cough")

Sub-Nicholson Baker.

it's like I need to spend the majority of a day doing nothing before I get bored (or focused) enough to spend 5 hours writing.

Unfortunately, this is sort of how I treat my job. Like some days I only really start to get productive at around 3 or 4.

It does not contain the phrase "loud curt fart like the rap of a bongo drum," as The Mezzanine does = I concur

is nabisco writing a novel or something? what a geek.

americano - caffeine, plus hydration

That sounds about as useful as Coca-Cola's hilarious new hydration marketing ploy.

no, Coke is claiming that drinking it will hydrate you, while I am claiming that drinking espresso with water and ice will dehydrate you less than drinking espresso alone or with milk.

also, coffee has less than 10% the calories/carbs of coke

my brain refuses to engage with the inanities and trivialities and details associated with my job. by inanities i mean accounting/paper trail type stuff that the Accounting dept. finds very important. I will look something up then forget it then look it up again and forget it. I fear am going to get TEH SACK if i can't concentrate better than this.

This hasn't changed or has perhaps gotten worse.

AA didn't start til a while after prohibition started. Same thing's gonna be true about the Internet.

I was hoping you were going to say something other than the internet.

Weed?

If I worked in publishing, I would make something like the Chicken Soup for the Niches series, except about moderating Internet use, and retire to Santa Monica next year.

bad concentration: i tried a book on tape bc i knew reading would be out of the question for my friend brain and couldn't even focus on that. 10 minute sections would go by and i'd have to rewind.

I used to take 120mg of sudafed + lg coffee w/2 shots espresso. Helped me pass my math quals, at least. Also I suspect my sudafed habit of giving me some nasty cavities.

pseudoeph mouth

Worst Cocteau Twins song ever

The causes of lack of concen... oh, look, a puppy!

abbot, if you are able to fix your concentration, please let me know how you do it, and i will forever be in your debt.

t

Booze did my brainmeats in I think. Oooh look a squirrel.

mmm marinated brains

I've eaten brains on toast before. It wasn't all that tasty.

life is like brains on toast. the more bread you have, the less brains you have to eat

http://i25.tinypic.com/f1jgis.jpg

life is like brains on toast. the more bread you have, the less brains you have to eat

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40127000/gif/_40127544_students_203152.gif

kevin shields has really let himself go

Ha!

In my twenties I sort of figured out that concentrating was spoiling my fun and making me unhappy. So I more or less consciously decided not to concentrate on anything. Now, I hav reeched levels of intellignets I could never hav imaginated before.

2000

This is getting to be a major problem for me.

currently tapping the bassline to 'transmission' on laptop, pouring another glass of chablis, not getting anything done

then searching for chablis on ilx, for no good reason, athough i found this

Egad, now I'm trying to think of various chattes I have tasted and wondering how to pair them with the right wine.

For X's pussy, I prefer a Chablis but for Z, I think a Vermentino's just the thing.

― Il suffit de ne pas l'envier (Michael White), Thursday, 18 March 2010 20:45 (3 years ago)

Posts very much in character.

Wait, we were talking about inability to concentrate.

Concentration seems more like an ilm thang than it is here on ile.