Concentration

For some time, I’ve been struggling with concentration. Be it the dreaded “brain fog” (which most people seem to have these days), or just a general difficulty focusing on things for more than short periods… it’s certainly a nuisance, as well as an obstruction to engaging in much by way of “constructive” activity.

Too, I have been struggling with atrocious insomnia, a different problem but, I think, closely connected. And I believe the chief core of these issues is to do with stress, depression, anxiety & worry. I have a lot on my plate. At the end of this month, I have the tremendous pleasure of becoming 58 years old. To say the least, this is not something I have any enthusiasm about, as hinted at previously.

I’m definitely not one of those people disposed to “age positivity”. I see no merit in getting older whatsoever. On top of that, I am dogged with the feeling that I’ve substantially wasted my life—or thrown it away, if you like—with considerably less time left ahead of me (and considerably lower quality time, at that) than behind me, in which to… what? Redeem myself? Salvage my life? Make it all seem a bit more worthwhile? You get the drift.

Also, my living situation & conditions are basically awful. I am living in a place I dislike intensely, and I feel trapped by the situation and at a loss as to how I can genuinely, positively alter it.

This kind of thing might tend to cause a fair bit of stress. And stress has a pretty horrible impact on general well-being, and particularly on mental well-being. I attribute most of my brain fog & lack of focus to the amount of stress I am enduring more or less constantly.

One of my recent (since August) attempted solutions to this is to read a lot more. And by that, I don’t mean comics! Comics are great, but I definitely wanted something more intensive and demanding. And that means prose. I was keen to mention this here, because I’d like to write more about the stuff I’ve been reading lately—in some cases, re-reading, in other cases reading for the first time. I decided that I’d focus largely on “the classics” (ie. books written more than a hundred years ago, I suppose).

The first classic I revisited was Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1866 novel Crime and Punishment. This was my second reading, the first being about 25 years ago. I’ll save my comments on it for another entry, coming shortly.

After two months, I think the practice of reading quite regularly is becoming more normalised again. There have been periods in my life where I have read very regularly, sometimes every day, but other periods where I hardly read at all. The last time I was consistently reading books was probably about nine years ago—I was reading quite a lot of Philip K Dick at that time.

So: is it helping my concentration and focus? It’s helping in terms of the act of reading itself, but at the moment I’m not sure it’s helping much with focusing on other things, actually. My drawing, for instance. I am having a really, really hard time focusing on drawing these days. And there has been no progress on that in the last two months. So the answer is “kinda but not entirely”.

But I will persist. I am sure it must have a positive impact in general. And, besides, it’s good to read more.

It’s also good to write more—and I’ve been slack again on here, haven’t I? More imminently!

(I still have about 300 archival postings left to restore, BTW. I need to get that done too.)