Has the internet destroyed your brain? Mine is supposedly fine? Ha.

You can try this test to determine your ability to focus.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/06/07/technology/20100607-distraction-filtering-demo.html

My results said: When there were two distracting blue rectangles, you made 100 percent of tests correctly... When there were six distracting blue triangles, you made 92 percent of tests correctly...

Then I took this test:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/06/07/technology/20100607-task-switching-demo.html

The results were not given in percentages, but it appears I am a little bit slower at multi-tasking than people who have good multi-tasking skills and slower still than those with poor multi-tasking skills (?!!). Poorer-than-average multi-tasking seems to go along with the great outcome of the test that determines the ability to focus. I don't really get my results of the second test, but I found it funny that the only place I aced the competition on that one was in needing very little time (almost none) to 'switch tasks' (I'm trying not to laugh at this part). Anyway, me no unnerstand the conflicting results of the various parts of the second test. Maybe me dumbed down after all?

Hmmm... and this after three beers. I wonder what the results (and my ability to unnerstand them) would be stone cold sober. Maybe I would have shitty focus and totally understand the second test, no matter my performance on it. The verdict? I am a scattered mess who somehow still has the ability to 'filter out' distractions. OF COURSE I CAN FILTER OUT DISTRACTIONS. I AM THE FUCKING MINDFUL, DISSOCIATED MASSAH AT FILTERING OUT DISTRACTIONS. Even when I AM the fucking distraction. And that is precisely why I'm a disaster area. I estimate that the vast majority of my brain is filled with distractions (trauma memories and scary thoughts freaking the fuck out right and left) and I use most of my energy dissociating that shit so I can think. And when the dissociation begins to crumble? I have some fucking beers so I can still filter out distractions. Gotta be all mindful and shit, you know? Nobody likes a fucking crybaby. For some reason I'm pissed off now.



Edited to add: I had a fourth beer and now I understand the results of the second test. Apparently I am a HIGH MULTI-TASKER. Which slows my ability to respond to more than one set of shit at a time. Duh. You would not believe the shit I have going on in here almost constantly. It's like one of those movie theaters that is playing a dozen or more movies at any given time. Yeah, it slows down response time. And therein lies the love of an almost OCD-like focus because the more tasks going on at once, the harder it is to filter out the irrelevant. Until it ALL becomes irrelevant and then I shut down. Like now. 'Night, y'all.

p.s. I still resent that therapy and therapists turned me into a set of further dissociated movies that I am not allowed to really see and whose plots clamour for my attention around the clock. And today is a traumatic anniversary. Four years ago today the teenage girl was told to either go to a psychiatrist and drug up or focus on the present. The horror of the rape was something that was ugly and should not have been shared. Not remembered, not known, not shared. Shut up and act normal. Focus, goddamn it!

Sometimes I hate people.