Just.Sit. Still.

I feel like my attention span has gotten a lot shorter. I’ve started writing another post probably about 11 times but halfway though I will give up on it. My reasoning will either be that I figure what i’ve written is way too personal....or I just lose steam. Something else grabs my attention for a millisecond and that’s it. No more writing. But it’s not just with writing that I find I can’t sit still it’s with reading as well. My excuse for that is that I just haven’t found a book that grabs me. But that’s poor reasoning. I’ve started several books that are very interesting, I just can’t seem to get past the first 20 pages..okay it’s more like 10. Sad, I know. So why is this? When I ask myself this question my immediate response is, “I blame Facebook”. Yep. That’s exactly what trails through my mind. The devil made me do it. Except the devil in this theory is the oh, so addicting book of faces.

You don’t know it but I just took a three minute break from writing this to talk to my roommate....then I picked up my coffee cup and almost started drawing on it...and then I realized what I was doing and thought it might be better if I actually finish writing the blog about not being able to finish things. Phew. How was that for a run-on sentence? Ok...where was I? Oh, Facebook. Yes, it’s not just Fbook that has to do with this whole attention span of a gnat thing, it’s technology in general. Well...maybe society in general. Ok I know i’m about to sound like a grandparent who can’t figure out their email thereby condemning all technology to hell, but bear with me. We live in a world where everything is done in an instant. Access to the world is just the tap of a keyboard away...or a finger swoosh if you have an iphone.

Just this morning it took a near 15 seconds for my google page to load. 15 WHOLE SECONDS! And I got impatient. I kept hitting refresh because it was taking so freaking long. Guess what I was looking up...the weather. Yup. I could have gotten up, walked the 20 steps to a window and looked outside. But nope, I googled it.

At that moment I looked deep inside myself (ok, not that deep...just enough....it’s not like this is some life altering epiphany) but I just realized the absurdity of the situation. I rely on my computer for everything. Have a question? Google. What movie do I recognize that actor from? IMDB. What the heck is a Bot Fly? Youtube.(Which by the way, kind of makes me not want to travel.)

Anyway, I just feel like those movies that were made 25 years ago about the future and how robots will take over...I kind of feel like that’s coming true. We rely on getting information so quickly that we are losing the ability to sit down, focus and do things the “hard” way. Like doing research by cracking open a book. It’s like we can only focus in 15 minute increments.

Oh, and don’t even get me started on the spelling of today....sorry, I just had a small rage blackout.

Anyway...let me end with a quote from the novel “1984”

“Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we're not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller.”

Like.