If I had to describe myself in one phrase it would be "low stimulus threshold." The underlying reasons and circumstances have changed, but I always come back to this rather euphemistic self-definition. To call it introversion is to suggest reticence, and an unwillingness to connect with people, which I feel does me little clinical good in a world filled with them. No, more accurate is my overwhelming desire to want to absorb all there is to know in the world, and my encumberance stems not from an imperitaive to escape, but rather where in God's name to start.
This begins with even the most pedestrian of everyday tasks; holding a simple conversation over the phone is a trial in pacing and timbre. The immediate need to respond to a statement or idea, my mind racing towards new as-yet-unexplored territory, often leaves my partner trying to get a word in edgewise. But it is not that I feel that my comments deserve any more precedence or are even worth uttering, it is simply the nature for them to be spoken, to float in the ether to be contemplated.
Looking back, those prior two paragraphs would appear to contradict one another; a low tolerance for stimuli, coupled with a need to generate it. I suppose what merits explanation is the definition of a stimulus. In my mind, a stimulus' role is beyond the mechanical; instead, I see it as anything that provokes a visceral memory. A stirring of the past, its constant writing and rewriting; these are the things that constitute my consciousness. Without it, I could continue to live, still be considered alive, but life would cease to maintain that certain manic ebb and flow that leads people to put pen to paper.
And so here I sit, attempting to quantify in type the very sorts of stimuli (i.e., everything) that I feel every day. Despite all of the ideas that run through me, I find it increasingly hard to sit and even fill this petty page with anything of meaning. It all streams outward like a river without a tributary, spilling over the shores and flooding shallow fields. My lapses from introspection to prose and back again, however stylistically improper, are probably the closest thing I have to a "style" of writing; but is it who I am? This seems like little more than a simple cathartic exercise sometimes; an emptying into a cistern of wasted thought and potential. But perhaps among the detritus, if I should cleanse my scriber's palette at some point in the near future, there will be a line, or a page, or a chapter, or a book, that will serve as a custodian of record to the world which rushes headlong before me.
This begins with even the most pedestrian of everyday tasks; holding a simple conversation over the phone is a trial in pacing and timbre. The immediate need to respond to a statement or idea, my mind racing towards new as-yet-unexplored territory, often leaves my partner trying to get a word in edgewise. But it is not that I feel that my comments deserve any more precedence or are even worth uttering, it is simply the nature for them to be spoken, to float in the ether to be contemplated.
Looking back, those prior two paragraphs would appear to contradict one another; a low tolerance for stimuli, coupled with a need to generate it. I suppose what merits explanation is the definition of a stimulus. In my mind, a stimulus' role is beyond the mechanical; instead, I see it as anything that provokes a visceral memory. A stirring of the past, its constant writing and rewriting; these are the things that constitute my consciousness. Without it, I could continue to live, still be considered alive, but life would cease to maintain that certain manic ebb and flow that leads people to put pen to paper.
And so here I sit, attempting to quantify in type the very sorts of stimuli (i.e., everything) that I feel every day. Despite all of the ideas that run through me, I find it increasingly hard to sit and even fill this petty page with anything of meaning. It all streams outward like a river without a tributary, spilling over the shores and flooding shallow fields. My lapses from introspection to prose and back again, however stylistically improper, are probably the closest thing I have to a "style" of writing; but is it who I am? This seems like little more than a simple cathartic exercise sometimes; an emptying into a cistern of wasted thought and potential. But perhaps among the detritus, if I should cleanse my scriber's palette at some point in the near future, there will be a line, or a page, or a chapter, or a book, that will serve as a custodian of record to the world which rushes headlong before me.
