Tuesday, February 1, 2022

Thoughts

 Starting a sentence with something attention grabbing is hard. I feel our attention spans are only in short bursts and any longer than 30 seconds of content our minds immediately need to move onto the next thing. Long form content is the new background noise to push us along whatever household chore or work task we're trying to complete. Not to enlighten or teach us something but to trick our minds into thinking the thing we're doing is going faster than it really is or to somehow keep us company. Fill space.

 I know some people can read books and listen to music at the same time. I am not one of those people. If there is music playing, it can't have words in it if I'm reading, or it has to be quiet. The last book I read took me a month to read. It was the final book (supposed to be the last book in the series, but after reading it I'm not so sure now) and I wanted to make it last as long as possible. It made me sad, then angry and then shattered all the expectations I had about what was going to happen. I was left being that meme shouting "DISAPPOINTED" out loud to nobody.  

Now, if I'm painting or drawing something. I can listen to music or have a video playing on in the background, only as noise. No life changing, thought provoking subject matter, maybe a rerun of some old show I used to watch and forgot existed. Half the time I couldn't tell you what song I was listening to unless I paused it to read the title. 

Getting someone to read something and stick with it till the end. That's tough. I admire authors who have millions of readers who eagerly await to find out about their favorite characters and lose themselves in stories of fantastic beasts. I aspire to be like that one day. To have an audience who foams at the mouth waiting and longing to find out what happens next, that's the kind of story I want to tell. Eventually. One day. 

For now I'll write things like this, to people like yourself, who have nothing better to do than to read this sitting on the john. So with that I'll leave you with this.. Don't forget to wash your hands.