532 words.

Not stream on Twitch, but allow what’s inside in the mind to flow out for a while. It has been some time since I have done one of this, and I realise a constant pressure to set context for whoever I am writing for. This paragraph is in a way setting context already. Stop that.

What’s wrong with just dumping it all on the page now? Fear of not being understood, which I guess is a fear that I have coped with this entire time. Something good that seems to have changed in these months is a vulnerability that I didn’t realise I wanted. Instead of entering the prim and proper thoughts into these all the time.

What happens when I don’t let my consciousness stream? I think of it like a balloon always swelling. The thoughts are stuck in it if there is no release. Release can come in the form of different ways. Conversations with friends, working on projects, writing for a faceless audience. Not every thought can be released in any way though. The more pressure built up from storage, the more violent it can come out.

I feel like there’s an abundance of thoughts and ideas underneath this balloon, unavoidably bonded with other more present paradigms through prolonged pressure. Going through some of my earlier notes could help signpost the way I thought previously, but that’s something that looks like it’s procrastinating.

Procrastinating, our cunning friend. I have been feeling this need to be productive for… forever. And what does that mean? To produce. Procrastination rears its head by making distractions seem attractive. Read this book! Skim this article. Check out this new tool! Is anything produced at the end? No.

Handling procrastinating all these years, and all the flashy distractions in the form of attention-grabbing tech, those have crippled my attention span. I partially embarked on this exercise to hone the ability to sit down and write, without having to refer to something else, or to entertain the idle thoughts in my head. What happened was that I set a timer for 15 minutes, and I had to sit down and type for those 15 minutes without opening a new window. Focus is hard.

And focus is even harder for everyone who doesn’t find a need to train it. Every new innovation out there seems to emphasising flow, reducing friction. But the tide is pushing me away from where I want to be! Thoughts now are so fleeting, that if I don’t write it down with a minute, they are gone forever.

Other fleeting thoughts throughout this stream of consciousness:

  • What is real?
  • Thoughts are only made permanent when action is taken on them.
  • Neck hurts with a random accident some weeks back, and I wonder if the hit on the head is affecting the memory.
  • Wishing my past self had done a more comprehensive job of journaling, so that there are more bread crumbs to investigate.

But wishing for more data is another form of procrastination, isn’t it? There is no hypothesis to be proven or disproven, thus there is no qualifier for enough data.