Travelling
What I like about travel by boat and train is a sense of the distance covered that somehow eludes me when flying, despite seeing countries zipping past below. The somewhat ponderous chugging of the ferry followed by the zippy passage across a chunk of Europe with long hours of landscape dulating and undulating (why does "dulate" not exist as a word? I think it should) gives me an impression of chilled-out vastness not otherwise easily conveyed by fairly densely populated western countries. Geographical distance is accompanied by its temporal companion, in the sense of separation by time. I think one of the reasons why I am rediscovering this form of travel is due to its gift of time inherent in the distance, time where very little demand is placed on my attention beyond basic politeness when facing those whose lives are momentarily intersecting with mine on our journeys (I know even that could be omitted without lasting consequences, but that's just not me). Still, it's a buffer between the intense interpersonal attention of my working life and the (occasionally loved) necessity of paying a similar kind of attention when I'm with my family this Yule. "Paying" attention is the right word - attention is a limited capital for me, easily spent and not so easily reacquired.
I recently talked with a psychiatrist friend about this lack of attention, theirs and mine, and our coping strategies. On a normal day, I almost meet the criteria for adult ADHD, on a stressful day with too many competing demands, I meet them. I was considering medication, we looked at the evidence and potential consequences and decided against it for now. My brain almost constantly feels as if it's running well below capacity, with major effort required to ramp up to capacity for an instant or two before it shrivels back again like a previously overextended rubber band. People hear this and feel driven to point out that I have two doctorates and thus, to them, can't be all that handicapped by whatever might be going on in terms of limited focus. My feeling is entirely subjective, I can't supply them wih evidence of what it is actually like, the implication is that I am lucky to function as I do, and that's right in many ways. What I am describing is also part of the Human Condition, it's just the extent that feel different, in very specific ways. I can concentrate on a movie, or a conversation, but I have great difficulty concentrating on writing and noticeable difficulty concentrating on writing.
I hear you say that I clearly appear to be concentrating on this blog post, but I've been at this for over an hour and I've had coffee, which definitey works as a short term attentional stimulant, even if this effect were solely based on association. Also, by the time you read this, I am likely to have edited it, while still managing to over-look a lot of typos, as well as pondering whether it says what I need it to say and whether I can post it openly on my blog, which has gradually become associated with my real name thanks to the vagaries of the internet and a bookcrossing friend who gave my online name with my real name in her blog quite a few years ago.
I recently talked with a psychiatrist friend about this lack of attention, theirs and mine, and our coping strategies. On a normal day, I almost meet the criteria for adult ADHD, on a stressful day with too many competing demands, I meet them. I was considering medication, we looked at the evidence and potential consequences and decided against it for now. My brain almost constantly feels as if it's running well below capacity, with major effort required to ramp up to capacity for an instant or two before it shrivels back again like a previously overextended rubber band. People hear this and feel driven to point out that I have two doctorates and thus, to them, can't be all that handicapped by whatever might be going on in terms of limited focus. My feeling is entirely subjective, I can't supply them wih evidence of what it is actually like, the implication is that I am lucky to function as I do, and that's right in many ways. What I am describing is also part of the Human Condition, it's just the extent that feel different, in very specific ways. I can concentrate on a movie, or a conversation, but I have great difficulty concentrating on writing and noticeable difficulty concentrating on writing.
I hear you say that I clearly appear to be concentrating on this blog post, but I've been at this for over an hour and I've had coffee, which definitey works as a short term attentional stimulant, even if this effect were solely based on association. Also, by the time you read this, I am likely to have edited it, while still managing to over-look a lot of typos, as well as pondering whether it says what I need it to say and whether I can post it openly on my blog, which has gradually become associated with my real name thanks to the vagaries of the internet and a bookcrossing friend who gave my online name with my real name in her blog quite a few years ago.