Scattered

Fuck.

My mind is a messy, whirling vortex of noise.

In the time of writing those first two sentences I have since installed Grammarly on my Chromebook, becomes confused as to how to actually install it on, and started playing an ASMR video courtesy of Calliope Whispers. Whilst finishing this sentence I have since skipped the Grammarly app and simply downloaded the Chrome extension.

Flipping between focuses quite like those seen in the previous paragraph are common in the hourly struggle of being me. Often I have a task of which my mind will make a tenuous connection to something else, fixate on that side-quest for a few minutes before magically leaping from one cliff to the next - the void engulfing the space below a dangerous quagmire of discarded thoughts as well as those vying for future dominance - and eventually getting lost in a wooded enclosure far removed from the original point of entry; eventually I backtrack enough to where I started.

The frequency of all this can occur within five minutes.

An example: I endeavoured to my nearest supermarket earlier today with the intention of picking up pancake ingredients because the second best day of the year - Pancake Day - is today. Yes I am unprepared, and yes every day can be Pancake Day if you allow it. But such is life. Such is my life. All too often I am either late or unprepared, but usually both. I digress. Supermarket, pancakes, in need of ingredients. During my time there I wandered the homewares aisles thinking of what to purchase with some vouchers later on. We need to replace various things in the kitchen because reasons, none of which are very interesting, and I fancy treating myself to something. So naturally my vagrant mind wanders its own aisles speculating over what can be bought. I was without headphones on this venture so the store dirges (the sound of other customers, squeaking trolley wheels in need of fixing, tannoy announcements, the general noise of people being people) became overwhelming, flooding my brain with its incessant desperation; its mindless droning approaching closer, swallowing the very vicinity surrounding my person - a finite space constantly invaded by the inconsiderate browser mentality shoppers seem to exhibit. Something inside my brain tweaks. I cannot focus. I am aware of my present inability before realising this is not just a present awareness but a constant one. I find myself searching online for brain supplements to help increase focus and enhance memory, skeptical of the services such supplements provide but later I would brave the risk of buying some and I await their delivery on the morrow. At this point I reckon I have been inside the store for almost thirty minutes, with only a bread knife and a knife sharpener in my basket. I return to my original venture as my mind begins to panic for a few reasons: I've wasted time, I'm aware my job eats up too much time I need to dedicate to all my desired projects, I've no idea how to rectify this without sacrificing my income, I ponder whether I should get coffee afterwards as well as getting some for a colleague at work I fancy (my place of work is just down the road and on my way back home), there are too many people around me and are within centimetres of my body, the space around me is too enclosed, and I'm wasting more time deliberating all this knowing full well I have reviews I need to write. After I finished procuring items I message the colleague, grab a hot chocolate whilst waiting for a response which never came, swing by work to pick up some baking / roasting trays, talk with said colleague as well as others and the managers, before finally making my way home.

What should have been just a half hour journey turned into two hours of dilly-dallying. All I went out for was eggs, flour, and maple syrup.

I had woken up at half eight. My wife had a virtual team meeting for work at 10am. I had intended to get breakfast, get dressed, be gone by half nine and return no later than half ten to begin a day of reviewing albums. 10 o'clock swings by and I am still in pajamas in the bedroom. I cannot remember what I was doing but I was probably playing Toon Blast on my phone; once amused by it when my then-fiancée starting playing it, I am now at level 2562 and simply play it to pass time - so ingrained is it in my pre-sleep wind-down it occasionally takes up my entire day.

10:50. Half-way through the wife's team meeting they take a break and I am reminded it is safe to venture into the living room. I brush my teeth. I get dressed, put my trainers on, and something to keep me warm outside. I am waiting for my phone to charge a little longer before "I am definitely heading out". I have £50 worth of vouchers I can spend and have already earmarked a vacuum cleaner which has been reduced in price. Bonus. But this would still leave me with half of the voucher to spend. I also have a rice cooker in the basket. I've been wanting one for some time now: rice is healthy, a staple in our house, and can kept warm throughout the day to be used for each meal. I spend an hour weighing up the pros and cons of getting one. During this time I also look up wireless earbuds, as my current headphones need repairing (just some gluing back into pace) and will be wanting some once gyms reopen. The music filling the vacuous place is atrocious and has been a turn-off in the past. It would also be nice to listen to music whilst out jogging, especially during 10k+ runs, which are usually how they end up.

12pm. I still haven't left the building. I snap out of whatever zone I am in and just go. All I needed to get was eggs, flour, and maple syrup.

At this point I feel the need to explain both myself and my wife are ethically non-monogamous, before anyone reading this suspects otherwise.

Eggs. Flour. Maple syrup.

I get home. Too drained from being around my fellow humans, too exhausted from the constant anxiety of everything to care about anything else. I have some lunch and try to focus on the first episode of Dirty Money, which has sat on my Netflix list since the first season aired. Volkswagen cheating scandal. 75 minutes. Half way through I begin re-reading a module handbook for the Masters program I am in the process of applying for before scouring online for some of the recommended reading. Torn between focusing on reading the product description of a book discussing the evolution of art history and the testing of diesel fumes on non-human primates. I then succumb to comparing life insurance quotes. Cue the inundation of unanswered phone calls from companies who now have my number.

An hour into this and I am on my third ASMR video. A lesson in gibberish, just what my brain needs.

Average day-in-the-life of yours truly. And yet I am trying to prepare myself to a return to university. I must be mad. No, not mad. Not insane either. But surely somewhere in between.

I love documentaries. Despite their bias they're one of my favourite modes of information consumption. Yet, as I have gotten older I find them becoming extremely energy-intensive. I usually find myself drifting off or, as you have witnessed, doing something else while simultaneously trying to retain the ingestion. It doesn't work. And the more I do this the more aware of time I become. I cannot do both, clearly. But time wanes. If I can't do both I only have time for one or the other. This, ladies and gentlemen, has been the story of my life for the past decade: a constant struggle between what I want to dedicate my time, my life, towards. Too many interests, too many obsessions, far too many ambitions, yet starved of resources to accomplish any of it. We spend a third of our time asleep, and for a large number of us another third earning an income meant to fuel the remaining third. For someone such as myself, a dead-end job cannot cut it anymore, and my brain knows this. Its awareness of temporal limitations is beyond sadistic. The more I throw myself down one path the further away I become from another. I spent the latter half of 2020 building up a running routine, throwing myself into a regime which now sees me frequently run 10k. I then took to the gym, reaching the fittest I have ever been when the second lockdown occured. Changes in my shift pattern over Christmas left me unable to commit to running, or to anything else for that matter. Getting back into the swing of things this year has proven difficult. But during this time what else got left behind? My website. Reading. Cinematic encounters. Studying. I pick up one thing and drop about five. I can count, I forgot to mention something that's all - and I cannot account for what it is.

We got all that from "I love documentaries".

And the noise continues. The only thing quelling this noise are the ASMR videos I use for sleep.

And what did we learn from all this about an insignificant pawn in the cosmos? Not a damn thing.