Brain Uploading

I developed a digital, auditory, tactical, vison manner of multitasking growing up in the late 1980’s and early 90’s. I recall laying on blue carpet with Nintendo on this thirteen-inch television, a punk cassette on the stereo, cartoons on another television, and my homework on the floor, book open, with some poetry notebook not far away. I rigged this pre-internet A.V. room inundation of stimuli. Somehow I grew to be more productive this way. Collages of sound, and sight in a neural racetrack of prioritization. Grades prevailed well, scholarship to college came. INTJ side of me rooted maze-maps of logical optimum data upload into the computer brain.

The adult version of me has jettisoned television and video games entirely. Music remains, homework has transmuted into my self-assigned public library graduate school program of ten dvd’s a week typically documentaries or films of substance, but a hodgepodge to balance mood and subject matter stimuli gauged on how well I calculate I will need to pay attention to acquire appropriate neural memory pattern addition for the art form. Spock-me can rarely just watch a movie anymore if I am home alone. DVD goes on the laptop on the left side of the desk.

Giant center desktop computer monitor functions as a second visual source that alternates between Microsoft Word for writing, Chrome Internet Browser as I need to google words, sources, anything to cycle through the brain. I may get sucked into you-tube Ted talks or doc-films and have two movies going at once. The Microsoft Word will usually have three versions, one for poetry, one for notes, and one for the book I have been working on for about four years.

All the stimuli somehow relates to affect the book. How it all works, art, politics, psychology, economics, sexuality, sociology, religion, physics, pop-culture, philosophy, personal human experiences. I try to invest at least four sessions to practice yoga to physically reset per week to process in the subconscious and let the thoughts bubble to reset the mental cellphone between day at work and night of art.

I work full time and on the commute. I have my iPod of constant audiobook in my earbuds. I have my notepad ready while monitoring the road. I try to listen a few hours a day. Grocery store, cooking in the kitchen equal audiobook or laptop on the counter while chopping vegetables. I do not buy audiobooks, but I have gotten about a thousand from public libraries and Librivox.

I actively read two books on my kindle with a backlog that will take me years. Physical books are all non-fiction from the public libraries or the occasional purchase. Staff picks of new non-fiction are helpful ranging race, gender, revolution, economics, psychology, history, etc. My weekly goal is three audiobooks and a combo of there paper/audio books per week.  So that is six total per week if the system is going well, but this can alter depending on the length of the books. The intensity is more this past year while I am researching for the book I am writing, before that it was one book a week and I didn't start audiobooks until about a year ago. 

So as an adult I have the laptop on the left side of the desk playing a film, the physical book goes directly in center of the desk. Audiobook earbud in left ear to have all audio to left brain to pull this off, and then computer keyboard and monitor to take notes in the front. Also a small notepad and ink to take notes on the right.

So this gives me two auditory stimuli sources and two visual. My eyes center on the physical book, and spot the movie occasionally on the prereferral. I find that yoga has enhanced my ability to let go of my mind. To use my mind in dual hemisphere consciousness. My left brain for the auditory and my right brain for the visual.

You might ask how the hell do you do that. What is the point, you must not be able to focus on anything and get nothing? I figure time is the most precious resource we have in these bodies. This system maximizes it. When I am with another human being I am fully present with them, when I am alone, in my head, in my time, all of this going on and would rather make the best use of that isolation.

I have been fixated on speed reading for a while. I read a two-page physical book in six eye snapshots, three on each page grabbing the top leftmost and bottom right most borders absorbing and honing in on odd words reading the entire paragraph block at once. If needed I take a break, write a note in the Word document or the pad depending on length or context. The notepad has access to a black and a blue pen to indicate a check mark or underline in the opposite color for what has been transferred digitally to the book in some form.

Yes, I am faster just reading one book at a time and I can pay attention better to the audiobook if I only listen to that, but the reason I do it this way is because I do not want everything. I only want to remember the important pieces of the equation pertinent to human existence, the pulp of the art or science. Most of the films or books I remember enjoying there are piths, snippets of pertinent synopsis to pair the art in context with everything I have ever been exposed. Uploading an audiobook, film, and physical book is more productive to do all at once. 

This contrasts with writing. To write I want my full attention, sometimes music, an internet browser to pair thought analysis, but focus. I focus one line at a time. Edit. I find exercising my mind in this way makes my brain stronger to focus. It makes my actual job doing accounting or analyzing data like child’s play.

Accounting feels like sixth grade homework at this point. It’s simple. It has to balance. Other people pay you for it, but there is no rule it has to be hard. I think the contrast allows my work life to drive in low gear and think about other topics, to be, but not really be in a place if I desire. There is a blend of masochism in the banality of thought in comparison.

The writing the upload I figure you can always re-watch a film, or just find another, same with music or most audiobooks, just replay it if you want. I go with the Darwinian concept is that a shitty blurry eye is better than no eye, same with a wing or evolving aid. Even if I only get a piece out of the audiobook or film I am getting something and that something is better in time, making both sides of my brain able to sort it.

Does anybody else out there absorb / make art like this?