On All Sides

I've spoken about my impulse to bombard myself with stimulus and my subsequent awareness of how counterproductive that is when I am trying to achieve something. Certainly some stimulation is useful, but only to a point. Well, I have not made it any easier to put the brakes on once I have reached that point. Rather, it remains all too easy to continue taking in when I should be putting out. I'm sure you're bursting into tears over that.

To begin with, there's the one computer that I've had a few years. Some years ago it shared computing duties with my old desktop PC, which now is dead and resides in the closet. It then took sole responsibility before being forced back into a platoon with a laptop. Between the two computers, I can get an awful lot of work done and ignore even more in favor of frivolous videos, socializing and music. There need not be any other apparatus in the room.

There is, of course. I have the television with all the free channels in the room now, as I've described. I can have that on in addition to the two computers in order to have visuals coming at me from three sides. If only the window was behind me while seated in my ordinary position instead of behind one computer, I could make that four sides. As it is, I make due with only the three, and console myself with the knowledge that I can look past the TV to see my reflection in a mirror.

Let me also not neglect the radio, which I can have on if for some reason any of the above three devices fail in supplying me with noise. Between the four, I can comprehend sound from one and bits and pieces of video from the other three, and in this way I can successfully fend off interaction with real people as well as my own thoughts, which are to be feared as one would fear an adversary in a knife fight. I certainly don't need that.