MEDIA, TECH AND ME

[S K]

18 VIEWS!! @ 1^st post. Cool. People read and understood and commented. Thank You.

So I thought I would post as soon as I uploaded my basic information. But procrastination and a host of other factors got in the way. I realized that I can’t write on the spot in the cyber café. I have to write beforehand. That is because I discovered in the tiny cubicle of the cyber café my mind wanders. I chose the cyber café because I thought the fact that I was paying for the internet would force me to use it judiciously and focus. If I had recharged my dongle I was afraid I would use it as an excuse to daydream and work.

When I did not have a laptop (1^st two years of college and before) or even when I had it without an internet option (3^rd year) I used to go to the cyber café a lot and do my work/surf/useless Google searches and was usually pretty productive. During those days I used to daydream after college and during college. I could dream un-interrupted in my room especially when I didn’t have a roommate. I assumed with the laptop with articles to read and perpetual access to movies/games I would do more productive work/entertainment.

Instead it’s become an excuse to hoard movies/articles on my hard drive and daydream. Initially things went okay and I only saved images and saw movies as soon as I received them. Later on I realized I couldn’t concentrate on articles as my mind wandered so I saved them on the pen drive and transferred them on the laptop. It eventually led to me saving thousands of articles. It was a cycle that perpetuated itself. Gradually my attention span decreased. As I saved smaller and smaller articles instead of reading them, my attention span reduced. Also once I could read on my own time I started to pause even on one page articles so I could daydream and then had a problem figuring where exactly in the article my mind took flight. For longer articles I started copying them to word highlighting the bits I had read so I knew where to start- A practice which still continues to date.

It expanded to movies/sitcoms. I could now pause when my mind took flight and return to watching. I wasn’t compelled to pay attention so I could watch a 2 hour movie in 4 hours giving myself breaks in the middle or rewind when I missed parts. Increasingly this practice has now been transferred to online videos with much shorter durations.

Also one of the advantages of television programming was that I paid attention during the ½ hr the program lasted using only the breaks to dream (if that). But now my attention doesn’t last. It either uses the program as a take-off point or (and this is worse) just starts randomly dreaming. The random day-dreaming bothers me. It has also started happening when people are talking to me. This is absolutely new – never happened earlier.

I used to day-dream during lectures/classes but never when a person was speaking directly to me. The person was my roommate who in an attempt to be friends was trying to tell me about her family and I totally checked out. Usually in conversations I actively try to get the other person to talk to me as I don’t have much of a life to talk about. Since I don’t have anybody (literally nobody –I am not being dramatic) to talk to I should jump on this opportunity. Instead of engaging, I totally checked out. It was scary because it felt even if I had the opportunity to be in the real world, my mind is voluntarily opting out, maybe subconsciously because of bad experiences.

It also means the triggers I have been trying to identify may no longer be applicable. Triggers include music, boredom, social-isolation, stress, current events, having a crush, menial household tasks, etc.

Historically, music has been the jumping point for daydreams. It started when I was 12. That was when I discovered radio –in my summer holidays from the hostel I was in. I remember Bon Jovi’s ‘It’s my life’ was my first song that got me hooked on music. I did day-dream before that but daydreaming using a form of media, as a starting point, while the media was still entertaining happened then. It was radio, followed by music in tapes (the walkman, remember), the CD player, the boom box, mp3s, online music – the whole thing. I’ve day-dreamt through the evolution of the music business. I use the music to formulate scenarios where the music would be playing in my imaginary life (I was about to type real because those scenarios were based on real people) in so-and-so situation and the events that would happen. If the song was romantic I would transplant myself in a situation where the lyrics were relevant.

When I was in college and hanging out with friends listening to music I always wondered what people did to just enjoy music- without the mental flight. I would, just once, like to enjoy music for music-not as a coping strategy.  Even songs with lyrics worth listening to I can’t help letting go. I always wondered if anything showed on my face but this was before the lip-movement so I was partially safe though the blank expression did raise questions as to how I was hanging out for hours without doing anything. Obviously I could not explain the lost time.

Considering I am going back in history I just remembered one of the first tech-media-daydream take-off. There was a Japanese cartoon on Cartoon network when I was 7-8-9 with three central characters.The lead hero (Joe) had a brother Mike (these are cartoons by the way) and I started having daydreams about them. Joe was already in a love triangle in the cartoon, so naturally I started crushing on Mike. But since the cartoon creators projected Joe as the hero, as a novice to television watching, I was torn. I don’t remember if the cartoon characters took human form or if I took the form of a cartoon but I definitely remember storylines that took off from the cartoon in my head. It was a bit like fan-fiction but a childish-non porn version. I remember drawing I<3MIKE OR I<3JOE on a piece of paper and picking Mike as Joe was too much of a womanizer. This was a time BTW when I thought the term blue blood used to describe the princess of a galaxy meant she had blue-colored blood. This habit carried over to Captain Planet, Swat Kats, Big Bag, etc. Injecting myself into storylines or creating alternate ones.

 So I am assuming that my day-dreaming has a bit of a history since it preceded these events. I knew how to check-out. Television gave me a way but it was not as dysfunctional as it is now. It wasn’t dysfunctional because I was still playing pretend house, pretend games with my sister/peer group. Events and life that followed made it so.

 Ironically in real life even while playing house I never played anything but the daughter. I could never be anything else except me. I could never imagine it. Even when asked to write essays I could rarely write fiction-it was always the non-fiction topic I attempted to write. I was so firmly rooted in reality around real people my life that I couldn’t imagine anything else.

At the same time I dreamt that whenever I left home the furniture came to life or my real life were images I drew with fingers on the pillow dividing the pillow into parts, each having a family member. I had kept my real life and fantasy life miles apart but slowly real people and life started to get incorporated.

I guess these incidents/stories are more suited for therapy but I prefer this- its more real even though its virtual.

To quote Cordellia Amethyst Rose which really ‘got’me:

“It started when I was little. Actually, I don't know when it started, as I've been doing this as long as I can remember. I'd stare out into space & create a fantasy world, full of characters that were very real to me. It started with fairies, princesses, and other fantastical things. Then, as I got older, it developed, into lifelike human beings, with histories and well-developed stories. I'd do this for hours every day.....whenever I got a chance. It was an escape, which seemed harmless. The problem is I never grew out of it. Instead, it got worse and worse, and I'd develop the characters more and more. I had few friends and never spent much time with them or my family.

I was so far into my own world that I never developed any empathy or connections with anyone.” (Anonymous) 

AND another one:

Somehow they discover a magical world where everything is better.  It’s a heightened reality where they can think freely, endlessly, and there’s no one to tell them to stop.  Some people see it just as a way to relax.  Others see it as a reward.

For me it is both as well as an escape from a life I couldn’t control. A reward for getting through it and a relaxation from it by escaping from it.

[S K]

Glad to see someone getting  it. I am the same with volunteering info but considering the breaks in my education/career its become a necessity to have to discuss though deflecting to he questioner is the default response.