10-22-03 @ 10:58 am EDT

I find myself distressed today. I think there are two main causes. One is that my mind has been fixated on THAT subject again. I've already outlined it in an earlier entry and so won't go over it again. It's been that way for the past two or three days. It doesn't feel as strong today but it's still bothersome, especially since I have no one to talk to about it. I can't elaborate, or I may grow offensive when I don't mean to be. I guess it's my petty/selfish side popping up again. I don't know, I just feel that there are certain things...whenever I start to talk about them, I get the feeling I am not meant to. Every time I've brought them up in the past I had to close my mouth again, and that's just the feeling I keep getting. I'm not blaming anyone, just wondering why it must be that way. It's almost like Someone is telling me I just can't talk about certain things.

So that feeling, and the obsessing, has been bothering me more lately. The other thing bothering me is my own difficulty with the things I used to and still love. I can still write--when I give myself the chance. (Haven't had much of one lately, but everybody gets stuck now and then. It happens. You get over it.) What I CAN'T seem to get over is my difficulty reading.

I used to be a very good reader. I was reading 100 pages of The Stand daily when I was very interested in it, and other books I loved, I could read for hours. I just can't do that anymore. What's most bothersome is that it's affected my writing, too. I just can't seem to proofread beyond a few paragraphs a day. Even if I can, I have to drag myself to the task with dread. I still have a good deal of Part 11 of the Chronicles to proof and I have been putting it off and putting it off and putting it off. I actually started the rewrite of Part 12, but eventually that will be done too, and will also need to be proofed. The thought just sits in me like a lead weight.

I used to LOVE reading. And I used to be such a good proofreader. I used to openly advertise my preference for longer, multipart stories around here--I was one of the few people willing to read anything over 30kb. I could handle 50kb easily! Those days are long gone now though. I'm lucky if I can manage a few paragraphs, a mere 1000 words at best. In several sittings. With numerous self-interruptions.

I was diagnosed with mild ADD in high school. It's never been bothersome, though. Just typical daydreaming when I'm not interested in the task at hand. The only time it truly bothered me was during algebra class. I have ALWAYS suffered in math, even as I got good grades. Trying to wrap my brain around equations and factoring and such was torture. I would always end up screaming and throwing my book at the wall, then sitting in my bedroom sobbing until Dad came to see what was going on. He would try to help me, but it seems math classes change every year. Our parents just do not understand the things we are being taught. There was only so much he could do.

I really am bad at math. I hate numbers. I'm far better with words. (Obviously.) But I also think the ADD affected this. In a class with 20-30 students, how much one-on-one attention are you going to get? That's right--none. Unless you ask, and stay after when you just don't have the time or the car. Proof of my belief came in college when I found myself drowning in algebra class. I just could not understand factoring no matter how hard I tried. And believe me, I tried. I tried so hard! But I could not understand it. The warmer months especially were awful in that class...I would sit and stare out the window at the campus green and wish I were anywhere but there. And at home, I would throw my book at the wall and claw my legs and scream at the ceiling.

I actually considered getting a tutor, even though we could not afford one.

Finally I just went to the algebra teacher after class and asked for help. I felt so stupid, but I had to do something or go crazy. He was a very nice man...Mr. Helmer, I believe his name was. Ma and I sat in the college after hours one day as he slowly went over factoring with me. For once, I did not have to keep up with the other dozen or so students in the class. For once, I did not have to be afraid of asking a stupid question for fear that everyone else would think I was an idiot or sigh with impatience. For once somebody just took the time to go over it with me, S-L-O-W-L-Y, and I finally understood it.

Yeah, I've forgotten it all by now, but that time he took helped me keep my sanity throughout the rest of the course.

Do you know how Ritalin, the ADD drug, works? It is a STIMULANT. Why give a stimulant to a hyper kid, you may be asking? The answer is simple. Our brains just do not move at the same pace as everyone else's. They move just a little bit slower. This isn't to say we're stupid. It's just that we're on a different wavelength. Everything goes around us in a blur. We just can't keep up. And so in an attempt to keep up, some of us just go FASTER. This does little, except make us look hyperactive. Some of us choose the other option and just zone out. I fell in the latter group. I never meant to daydream. I never meant my notebooks to be more full of DOODLES than of NOTES. It was just that...well, it was far easier for me to think about my stories and my characters, than to think about numbers and government and exactly how the cell functions.

Whenever the subject at hand was ancient history, or creative writing, or art, my attention span could last for ages! I memorized all the names and traits of the major Egyptian gods. I created entire, elaborate fantasy worlds and easily kept track of the names and personalities of literally hundreds of characters. I excelled especially in psychology, history, and writing classes, simply because they INTERESTED me. Science, math, government...I lagged in. I never did poorly, but my heart was never really in it, either. I'm sure my teachers could tell. I have "fond" memories of dozing off and nearly toppling off my stool in junior high science class. Just about did the same thing every morning in college anatomy.

And do you know what?...it's happening again. I have wandered far, far off course from what this entry was originally going to be. I must get myself back on track somehow.

What I was trying to get at was...I have always been attention-deficit, but I was always good at what I loved. Writing, creating, imagining. And reading. I know I'm still good at these things, on some level. But not as good as I used to be. And not nearly as good as I wish I were. I seem to grow poorer and poorer every day, and this has started to depress me, making it even HARDER for me to focus.

I hate that I want so badly to do some more writing, but instead I usually find myself shuttling rapidly between moods--Manitou Island?--the Chronicles?--something else?--and getting nothing done. I hate that even if I do finish something, eventually I will have to polish it, proofread it. I hate that I just can't seem to do this anymore.

I hate that there is so very much that I have not written yet, that I intend to write, in the Chronicles and elsewhere, yet proofing the earlier parts is holding me back. I could simply SKIP proofing altogether...but I just don't want to be so lazy. Already I'm not proofing RTMI. It must be filled with horrible errors. But I'm blind to all of them. And no, that's not a good thing.

I wanted to print out the Chronicles as I fixed them, but I do not want to print them out if I will just find a typo and have to print them out again.

When I had noticed myself becoming like this a while back, I was right to blame the Web at least partially on it. I've noticed that my attention span has suffered greatly since coming online. I went to ask for advice on what to do before I got worse. The majority opinion was to cut back my Net time. The very structure of the Net itself lends itself to attention-deficit people: Face it, how many of you out there would REALLY want to read a 30k+ story around here, or anywhere online, for that matter? How often do you really click through things? When you find yourself growing bored, all you have to do is click somewhere else in an instant. You do not even have to go hyper or start daydreaming before you're there. After a while of this, everything becomes GIMME-GIMME-GIMME-NOW-NOW-NOW. Notice how what used to be a decent modem is no longer nearly fast enough, even though the pages load as quickly as they can? Do you ever find yourself cursing or at least feeling rather annoyed when a favorite website is down, even for a moment? It always seems to happen right when you need to visit it most...doesn't it? I can't be the only one who often feels that way.

I just wandered again. O_o

But as I was saying...the advice given me was to cut back Net time. Get back into the real world a bit, and try to settle back into older, slower patterns. Perhaps, like wearing a brace for a while helps stop and even heal the spread of carpal tunnel, merely logging off the Internet an hour or so earlier than usual could help me get back the attention span, however weak, that I used to have.

I have not been spending nearly as much time online as I used to at my "peak." At least our hours did not time out this month, which means something. You've noticed the lack of entries here in Skew, haven't you? One reason is because it takes TIME to type them up, and rather than do that, I just skipped it. I hate that I've been sitting here for a half hour typing and am not done yet! But anyway, I started limiting my Net time to doing things that had to be done--some updates, some checking around--then getting off and doing other, non-Net things--typing up my dreams, reading, doing puzzles, listening to music, transcribing my dream tapes, printing my journal. Not nearly enough reading and writing, but still, at least it was not aimless surfing. I hoped and hoped that my attention span would work its way back.

It's not working.

Maybe I'm too impatient and need to wait longer...? It did take a while for me to end up this way. But I hate it. I hate waiting. I want to be able to sit down and read more than 1000 words or a few paragraphs at a stretch. I want to be able to do what I used to love, without chewing on my fingers, examining my skin, looking at the ceiling, walking away from my chair every few minutes. I just want to be able to sit and WRITE, and then sit and READ. Like I used to. I wish I could do that so much. Not only proof my own work, so I can move on to do more of it, but to just enjoy the written word like I used to.

I set aside my SRA book for the time being...even though it's a subject I'm greatly interested in, the chapters all just seem so clinical, wordy, hard to follow. I drag myself over the words. I told myself I was taking a break from the Chronicles, and I believed it. I would find myself reading the same passages over and over and OVER and I still would not understand what they said, even though my brain processed them, my mind sounded them out, and they seemed to be spelled right and made sense...but how could I really be SURE if I could not pay 100% attention to them? (Obsessive-compulsive behavior at work here, too.) I still seem to TECHNICALLY be able to proofread, as whenever I found a typo it would shout out at me from the page, jerking me awake from drifting, but how can I be sure I didn't miss one or two others along the way...?

I tried limiting how much I proofed in a day or in a sitting. 1000 words a day seemed to be my absolute limit. So be it. But eventually I found myself opening up the word processor just so I could use the word count feature, to see if I'd met my quota yet. The last few hundred words began to drag as well. I probably spent more time checking word counts than actually reading.

Distracting myself with music and puzzles only helps so much. I'm not using the same parts of my brain with those tasks that I am when reading or writing. So there's hardly any comparison. They are just distractions, keeping me away from what I love to do.

I dug out all my HP Lovecraft books the other day. Lovecraft, my absolute favorite author. I adored his fiction so much that I read it repeatedly--I, who can barely stand to read the same book more than once! I've read probably every published fictional piece of his, including the collaborations, some poetry, and some spinoffs by other authors. Lovecraft, I reasoned, always managed to hold my interest enthralled before. Maybe if I could sit down and read some of his stories, I could recapture that feeling.

Well...I've been at least partially correct. I've managed to sit for the past two or three mornings and read one short story each day in one sitting. I stumbled and dragged over the words now and then, but for the most part followed through without the endless repetition I get from reading my own or other online material. I even went to the Online Books Page and downloaded all the works I could find by Lord Dunsany, one of Lovecraft's inspirations...I hope I can make time to read some of HIS work sometime soon! If he's anything like Lovecraft, I should enjoy it.

But I have yet to get to any of the LONGER stories...this book contains "At The Mountains Of Madness," a VERY long story...what will become of my attention span then? I hate to even think about it...

And I still want to write more, including to at least try to work out some of the scenes flitting around in my head, my recurring obsession that I mentioned at the beginning...even THOSE scenarios don't stay the same for long before I get bored of them. My own writing is boring me. I really want to write more, but when I can't even look over what I've already put down on the page...what do I do?

It's an awful feeling to WANT to read, to WANT to write, and to be able to do neither. Because reading and writing have become such awful trials for you. The very things you love the most are the very things holding you back from them. How do you fix that?

Today I temporarily fixed it by coming in here and spending about an hour typing up a journal entry, describing my current frustration. But like puzzles and music and such, it's only a distraction. As soon as I post this, those obsessive thoughts I can't talk about will come right back, and I'll still be wanting to write and read and will be practically unable to do either.

The writing? It will never really leave me. The next part of my serial, even more writing on the next Chronicle, will eventually get done. I don't worry about that, TOO much.

But the reading? That's what's worrying me. Eventually, if I want to continue writing well, I will have to read. And I can't seem to do that anymore.

I really hate this. :(

And I don't have any way to resolve this dilemma, or this entry...and I've typed far long enough (no, that's not a typo, but I bet there are other typos somewhere in here as it's not going to be proofread)...so I'll just say tar.