Thursday, January 14, 2010

Where is my mind

I am generally content with myself. It may be a case of low expectations and/or being under-ambitious, but whatever - I sleep well at night. There are a few things that I'm working on, my creaking and aching joints being the most prominent.

However something I really need to put some effort into is my attention span. I can't concentrate. Not for longer than 10 minutes. I need to do at least 2 things at a time and keep my hands busy at all times. I'm not saying I have ADD, and am least interested in seeing a doctor about it, but sometimes it really does concern me.

The signs are everywhere. I make tons of typos - even for the simplest words. And that's not just being fat fingered, I suck mainly because I've never paid attention to spelling. I never read the little error messages windows so helpfully pops-up. I've never read fine print - even when I bought my house. When I sign up for trials or promotions I don't even look at opt out clauses.

The latter cost me a lot of money recently and it made me evaluate myself. I could do a lot better at work than I'm doing now. Some of the stuff that I'm good at, and have gotten accolades for, are things I concentrated for 20 mins in an hour.

I don't think it's medical condition. It's just me, I just need to focus. And as I get older, and my physical and mental abilities weaken, it'll get worse. But fuckin' A, try as I may, I can't be arsed about things around me. But the questions I keep asking myself are

1) Even if I do focus more, will I be more effective or just get tired faster?
2) What if I focus more, and realize that I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed?

When I was in my high school, we had important term exams. As can be expected from my shoddy typing, my handwriting looks someone threw up black ink. The examiner hung around my desk for a long time, peering at my answers. Out of the blue he went

So, you're left handed?
Yeah...
Always had a bad handwriting?
Yep.
Miss words in a sentence?
Yep.
Get letters jumbled up?
Uh-huh.

That's the mark of a genius!!

And here I thought he was describing dyslexia. He probably was, just didn't want me to fuck my paper up. Which I did anyway.

4 comments:

Purely Narcotic said...

This was the dreaded Board Exams? I laughed out loud reading that.

What paper was this?

Australis said...

Hahaah - for the exam part of your post.

But on your worry about finding out you're not the sharpest tool in the shed - how else to sharp tools get so, I wonder? Something in me prevents me from believing its ALL nature. Nurture kicks ass too, in my opinion - focus, hard work, all those things our parents kept repeating and we kept ignoring.

Australis said...

Also, I linked you on my blog, hope that be cool.

Thanatos said...

@Narco : Yep. Social Studies I think.

@Australis - Long time! 'lo and thanks for the add. I think hardwork helps, but am afraid it may not be enough,