Can't I even watch just one screen, Watari?

This is Part 3 of my notes from my 28 day Saturn Rite. Part 1 here! Part 2 here!

Week 3: No entertainment or stimulants.

As soon as I had finished my first solid meal in a week, I realized that I was no longer used to eating solid food, because the exertion of digestion left me strangely tired. I had to sit down and take a breather.

Sitting on my living room couch, staring at the blank TV screen, it suddenly hit me that at least for me, the TV would be off for the next two weeks.

Oh god.

What the hell was I doing? No watching anything on a screen for fourteen days? Why the heck was I thinking, getting into this magic nonsense, if it would get me into situations like not watching anime or playing video games or surfing the net for two whole weeks?

No going to social gatherings either. No parties, no going to clubs or bars, no movies together. Minimize conversation.

And no caffeine? No chocolate? No alcohol? Not even antihistamines or headache pills? What was I thinking? What was thinking?

Thinking. Oh dear. I would be doing a lot of it for a while. I would be alone with my mind for a long time. Oh sure I could read, but reading involves more mental effort than just plonking down in front of an episode of House, where the characters are so smart they do all the thinking for me.

Just lie back, relax, and leave the mental activity to us.

I soon discovered just how little time I spend undistracted. Since we moved to a hotel suite while repairs were being made to the air conditioners at the condo, I found myself sitting alone in the hotel room in silence. So I began to read.

By midweek I had finished reading 4 books, a book a day. The last time I read this voraciously was before I got unlimited Internet access and cable TV. I also noticed that I would fight reading just one thing at a time, and would flit from book to book, an urge I now stifled. I had developed my multitasking so broadly that I now gave no single task any sort of meaningful depth or effort. I had developed ADD.

This is why I hadn’t made any headway with my Vigilant light novel. The worst part about writing is, well, writing. Sitting down and shutting out all distractions and just writing. It is painful, tedious work at times, and whenever those times would hit me I would stand up from the keyboard and do something else, or check Plurk, or browse over my feeds.

A curious thing happened on Week 3. I ended up writing 6 chapters. Because what else was there for me to do?

My dreams also became more vivid and memorable, because I had no distractions to crowd them out of my mind. I went from not being able to remember my dreams at all, to remembering very long, continuous stretches of dream narrative.

This was all well and good, but Week 4 was looming before me, a combination of all three of the previous weeks. I wouldn’t even have the satisfaction of being able to watch TV or play video games again. It would be that, plus No Sex, plus No Solid Food.

Why the heck was I doing this again?

(continued in Part 4)

Like

Unlike