Clarity

Every now and then I stumble across something that catches my attention and captures my imagination; most of the time I will dwell on the focus for a while and then move on, but sometimes I get obsessed.  When that happens, whatever it is that I am focusing on, it begins to invade my life until it reaches a point where everything I do is influenced by it, every thought connects to it, every second of idle time that I get my mind returns to that obsession.

I've been quite careful here to use the word obsession rather than addiction, and I know some people reading this post will have immediately drew parallels, but this isn't an addiction.  The reason I draw a distinction between obsession and addiction is because for me at least, obsessions are fleeting, they eventually pass, and I will often return to them in future and the same fixation doesn't manifest.  With addiction, once you are addicted to something, you will always be addicted to it.  When you are truly addicted to something, moderation is not possible.  This isn't about self-control, or about will power, addiction is a physiological process accompanied by behaviours.  The psychological elements of addiction are the result of, not the cause, of the physiological elements.  Or to put it more bluntly, true addiction is not influenced by desirability.

"True" in this regard refers to conformity with the literal definitions as opposed to the metaphorical definitions or hyperbole that people often engage in when it comes to these terms - much like depression which is often used erroneously as a synonym for sadness, the flippant use of the word addiction should be avoided here.

Nevertheless, whilst some of the behaviours I described are indicative of an addiction, it would be better to use the word obsession here, as that is closer to representing the novel nature of what I am describing. 

The interesting thing about these obsessions for me is the state of mind they eventually evoke.  At first the focus is something that requires a lot of attention, usually involving a learning curve that occupies my entire thought process.  During this learning stage I think of almost nothing other than my focus.  This can be viewed as the most destructive or obstructive period depending on your perspective.  This period isn't that interesting unless the focus is something you also share an interest in.  What eventually happens however, is that once the behaviours are learned, the knowledge is acquired, and various strategies formulated based on repeated actions, there eventually emerges a trance-like state of mind where whatever the focus is, the behaviours that are associated with it become meditative.  By this I mean, the actions necessary become rote in mind, and lead to muscle memory forming, to the point where the conscious mind no longer controls the behaviours but rather the subconscious and the unconscious minds share these tasks leaving the conscious mind idle. 

At this point something rather odd happens, I become busy but with a mind that is not occupied, the result is a mind that begins to wander, and where it ends up can be beyond strange to say the least.  Creativity and ingenuity flourish, ideas flood my mind with things I could do, things I could write about, and memories of things that happened weeks, months, or even years ago.  For me the latest example of this has been an obsession with a game called Cookie Clicker and the thoughts that spawned from the meditative state have been thoughts of who I have worked with in various jobs over the years, random names of people I had long forgotten have emerged from the recesses of my mind and I have had a lot of thoughts about the relationships I had with these people. 

I'm yet to figure out a way to capitalise on this predictable behaviour, mainly because it is the response that is predictable but not the trigger.  If I could find an easy reliable way to predict the things I would get obsessed by, then I could find a way to exploit this behaviour to my advantage, as a means of generating creativity on demand - something I find very difficult, which I have written about previously.  Creativity for me in general is something that comes in waves or bursts of energy where I have floods of ideas whilst other times I experience a drought as it were.  The trouble with predicting these obsessions however is that they rarely have anything in common.  A few games over the years like Minecraft, Stardew Valley, The Witness, and Project Highrise have all caused this state of mind, but they can't reliably trigger it when I return to them.  The problem with returning to these games is that there is no learning stage when I return as for the most part, those games don't change over time, save for a few mechanics introduced in updates.  Knowing how the games work prevents that initial engrossing period.

I used the word "meditative" earlier because I recognise that by most accounts of meditation and the descriptions I have read, this learning period is in essence a way of clearing the mind of conscious thought, leading to a clear mind that can then create without limitation.  Most forms of meditation that I have read about have similar goals, in that they involve some practice used to quiet the mind and reach that state - whether that be for the purposes of creativity like I desire, or for the purpose of relaxation and recharging as is the desire of many others.  As far as meditation is concerned though, my experience with it is for the most part a failure.  I've never been able to do it in the traditional sense.  I am still curious though.

Edit:

Since this post was written I have come across a Psychotherapy technique called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing [EMDR] which was developed by Francine Shapiro.  In its most simplest terms EMDR involves the use of rapid eye movements or repetitive eye movements whilst the subject focuses on a particular cause of trauma.  The combination of eye movement and thought processing in this way enables the subject to process thoughts that they would otherwise be unable to process.  After spending some time reading about this technique and some of the research behind its application, I have come to the conclusion that the behaviours I discussed in this post can be considered a form of EMDR.  During the initial learning stage that I mentioned above, a lot of repetition is involved which involves physical movements or reading or in the particular case of videos games, rapid eye movement.  It is also during this stage that the mind "quiets down" for me, in other words this is the stage where the mind releases what it was focusing on in order to achieve clarity.

This will likely form the basis for a future blog post when I have had time to explore this technique and its application.  I have some experiments I want to try out using it as a basis, for now I just wanted to add this footnote to acknowledge I found out similar behaviours to the ones I described have actually been used in a more standardised way.