Mental Itch

Every now and then I get an itch that needs to be scratched.  Not a literal itch but a figurative itch, one that centres around mental exercise.  I wouldn't call it boredom as such, because I wouldn't exactly say I don't fill my time with plenty of things to keep me busy.  No this is more of a desire or a craving for something mentally challenging; like a craving is a desire for a certain type of food, this is a desire for a certain type of thought.

When I get a mental itch the things I scratch it with are strategic, mathematical, or logical.  Real Time Strategy games are a great place to start but like most things I am often left to look for older games as newer ones tend to be less challenging.  Mathematical puzzles like Sudoku are also very effective, as are logic puzzles.  One of my favourite PC games when it comes to strategy is Caesar III, which was developed in the late 90s by a company called Impressions Games and published by Sierra Entertainment.  They created a whole series of City Building games but the Caesar series was my favourite and Caesar III was the best of the series in my opinion.  I get an urge to play this game every now and then because it challenges me.  Despite knowing some optimum strategies there are still ways in which the game can challenge me mainly through challenge maps created with the Map Editor which can be used to set ridiculously high goals with the odds stacked against you. 

I've always had this itch come back.  Whenever I feel like I haven't been challenged much or if I feel like I'm reaching a point where I'm just going through the motions.  Like I said I wouldn't call it boredom because it's not a lack of things to do, I have plenty and I immerse myself in that work until it's complete, this is more about having something different to focus on that presents me with something dynamic to engage with. 

The strange thing is, while you'd probably associate this with attention and distractions, I wouldn't view it that way.  These aren't things I do to procrastinate, on the contrary they are things I do after I have completed my work to unwind.  I've never quite understood how something that makes me think and focus helps me unwind but it does.  Then again I guess the fact it occupies my mind to a point where I don't think about the work I was doing or anything else for that matter, could perhaps explain it, but it's still increased activity with the aim of decreasing activity - it's a contradiction I know, but it works.

One thing I do notice when I go through phases such as this, is that I find myself a lot more coherent which helps increase my productivity and this actually accelerates the work I was doing in the first place.  I've touched on this wave of energy before when writing about awakenings I just wish there was a reliable way to reproduce it.  This behaviour without the precedent of the itch doesn't lead to the same outcome if anything it has the opposite effect.  The mind really is an unusual thing, at times I often wonder if there really is such a thing as a soul, and that the will of the body and the will of the mind represent the conflict between the two.  I know some people don't believe in any such thing I just feel there are times when you can feel like a completely different person and be entirely conscious of that yet powerless to control it.