Saturday, October 25, 2008

The fine line between reading and frustration.

Yay! 20000 views!

I can't believe i made a 'celebrating 100 views' post a while back. lol... such a noob... :P

New link to a new blog: Thoughts of a College Boy - thanks to 'gatechguy1' for ACTUALLY TELLING ME HE WAS LINKING. :D:D:D:D

He writes quite well... which funnily enough leads into my post for today.


Today's post:

There's a funny thing about me... Even though i do a lot of writing and a lot of work with words, i have a very short attention span when reading. Occasionally i'll find myself in the proper reading mood, but when i'm not, it's quite hard for me.

My eyes jump from line to line, and it's hard for me to read each word. Especially when i'm reading something other than a book, i can't read things in the proper order. I have to keep going back and focusing on the words.

Sometimes, even when i'm doing that, i can miss words and even big chunks of writing.


It's especially hard for me when people don't do paragraphs.

When i'm faced with just a massive chunk of writing, my eyes just glaze over. It's very hard for me to read, and understand.

And don't get me started on the people who cut out all the vowels, lol. I struggle enough to read REAL words in tough situations.


Then when people start talking to me when i'm trying to read i get really stressed. It's hard to explain though, so people just usually joke about it, and tell me to not overreact and stuff.

I get distracted so easily. I have to fix every little thing before i can settle down... But that's a whole new OCD topic altogether. lol :P


But... when i put on music that i like, everything becomes a bit easier. Music helps me to focus. I don't know why... Maybe it drowns out the distractions, and helps me focus a bit more.

And music also helps me incredibly when i'm writing. You wouldn't believe how much so. It helps me to generate the story in my head. :)


Hooray for music.

And hooray for blogging. :)

love,

===>mirrorboy<===

14 comments:

Seth said...

Hey, whatever helps you concentrate and accomplish your goals, right? OCD is funny that way..... for me its the exact opposite, if I have music on, I can't concentrate on anything else.

And I agree completely with the "people who don't use paragraphs" philosophy. Some blogs you think, dude, you just typed 1500 words and didn't use a period.

Ditto for the SMS-speak. Are those guys actually blogging from a phone or something? LOL. I won't name names .....

Congrats on the increasing views, too.
:)

AJCon89 said...

haha! i'm drunk!!!!

i feel your pain... i am soooo ADD. It takes my so much concentration to read a long post... yet i write long posts... i must be an ass!!!!

For me, I cant listen to music when writing... because I analyze it... it kinda sucks... i cant ever just enjoy a tune... i have to break it down and see what the harmony and shit is about...

I listen to talk radio when I have to write paper! lol@!

and btw... you write really well, you will do great with it!

<3,
AJ

Anonymous said...

dude. that's funny. the only way i could ever manage homework was to wear headphones and listen to music so loud it almost hurt. it put me in a zone, and i could focus completely on what i was doing. but if i'm not trying to concentrate on something else, i have to analyse the music also. music ia a big part of my life, and i have to know how it works, and know what the lyrics are or it makes me crazy. i understand the skipping words thing too, and sms speak is insane. but so is 1337, which i can read almost as readily as real english. it comes from being dyslexic, i think. they taught me to speed read in school, which helps immensely, until i get to the weird blog things with no vowels, or try to read off a computer screen. it's weird. ok, so yeah, i'm not like rambling or anything. sorry.

Bitter And Sweet said...

Im glad im not the only person that listens to music when I read and write. Music just seems to make me more... imaginative and seems to wake up my brain.I just cant listen to music when people talk or else I go off into my imagination.

I know how OCD can be, just seems to break up some parts of your life when you dont want it to but you have to do it because something seems wrong.

JRC said...

i listen to music too, cant listen to music and dont do write cretaive, it like jumps starts your brain and helps to keep a flood of creative thoughts, now i was doing science work then thats diffrent, but it helps me chill, forgert everything and have fun, you can write creative if you have things on your mind, and in the fututure i will write in paragraphs for you, after this comment

Mirrorboy said...

hahaha that's sweet of you jc. :P

Anonymous said...

Hey Dusty, you may be a little dyslexic... Its cool, it can be dealt with. I'm a synesthesic, and that means that reading or writing can be a huge challenge. Fatigue and stress tend to magnify the problem. I've read your story, and will say that you have real talent! Imagination is everything.

Keep writing no matter what. Ambient music helps me. Music with no lyrics to follow, music thats calm and easy on the ears. Maybe give that a try?

Love Tristan

Mirrorboy said...

Ambient music is great - very relaxing.

Then again, lyrical music is great fun too! Cos then you can mime away and be happy, even if you're not getting much done! ;D

thanks guys,

===>mirrorboy<===

Thanks for reading my story too, Tristan. I like to think that i've improved even more than what you read over time. And, it was a short children's story as well, so... i couldn't get as extreme as i wanted. lol :P

AJCon89 said...

story?

How come I didnt get to read your story?

:(

Bill said...

Heyyy,
Yea, I find it hard to read huge chunk of words too ( Excuse me for my last post, I couldnt do anything to change the structure of the post..ARGH!)

But yeah, music helps! I really enjoy your writing, love your thoughts! =)


Peace
Bill.

Anonymous said...

i think tristan's hit on something - you may be mildly dyslexic. sometimes it goes with OCD and ADD and ADHD

i think i've always been OCD, just never clinically diagnosed. when i was younger, thru all my schooling done entirely without personal computers, i devoured the written word - both for fun and for learning.

now, as i see less and less of the printed page and more and more of the monitor, i've got the same problem as you describe. i remember some ancient assignment to learn about printing and some tidbits about famous typefaces (or fonts). since you said the problem was more with things other than books, maybe what i remember learning will interest you...

we don't actually read the way we learned to read, phonetically, that is. with practice, we recognise shapes of letters and shapes of words, and with more practice, the meanings of the punctuation shapes and so on. we read so well that we forget entirely the machanics of reading and get lost in the story. an example of this - i've read 1000-page novels with a central character with an unpronounceable foreign name, yet was never troubled by that gibberish; i simply learned the shape of that name, its image, and always knew who was who in the story.

print publishers had to find and use eye-friendly and brain-friendly fonts, spacings, margins, and page formats to protect their investment in their product. pick a printed book that you read easily and compare it to what you see onscreen, you'd be surprised at the difference.

online publishers have forgotten these lessons and use all kinds of funky fonts and formats, often simply to be different. the symbols we use to communicate are uniform for a reason. the worst thing is when ppl write online using a colored font against a colored background and forget about contrast. think about trying to read yellow letters against a khacki background.

i think that's the reason for our difficulties, but i don't know much to do about it.

Mirrorboy said...

Yeah you make a veeeeeery good point. A lot of the... easiness (?) of reading comes from how the words are spaced, paragraphs, colours, and fonts. I personally totally blank out when the lines go across a whole computer screen because my eyes just don't like looking that far to read.

===>mirrorboy<===

Anonymous said...

first of all, it's me 'xoxo'

who's inundated your blog with late night comments

the most serious error online publishers make is the error of justifying both margins . . .

scholars of this subject make the point that the most serious error is to justify the right margin. if the right margin is justified, how are we, the casual reader, supposed to differentiate between the various lines! the inherent differences betweent the length of the lines, in un-justified text, is often enough to get us past the obscure fonts and other online publishing mistakes.

xoxo

Mirrorboy said...

omg i would go insane reading fully justified text. :P

===>mirrorboy<===