Monday, May 22, 2006

The Big Picture

I've known for quite some time now that I suffer from chronic scatterbrain-ism.

Infact now that I think about it, I was probably born with it. I've never been able to remember birthdays and my poor name face mapping abilities are quite notorious. And then there's always been the amazing ease with which I can miss the most obvious details unless they are pointed out to me. What's made my particular case much more severe is the additional complication of sidetracked-ness. In the middle of a perfectly logical conversation, I can launch into a complete tangent. This coupled with the unfortunate neediness of trying to see the funny side of (almost) everything can lead to some very irritating humor. Many thanks for the fact that puns don't come easily to me. I've noticed that the most common symptom of scatterbrain-ism and sidetracked-ness together is briefly exploring a million and a half options in every case but never sticking to anything long enough to see a result. I wish blogs were more private or that I had chosen an anonymous identity. Its difficult to rant uninhibitedly if you know that its going to be read by people who know you. This because I was trying to get somewhere with all that jazz about getting sidetracked but now I don't think I'll go there afterall.

I tried writing a short story recently. Unfortunately it went nowhere because somewhere in the middle of talking about a beautiful princess who lived in a land far far away, I got stuck with describing the social hierarchy in that kingdom, what crops they grew, what seasons they had, how they elected their king and since it was a very small kingdom with traded with lots of other such small kingdoms, I absolutely had to talk about how exactly that trade was carried out. Meanwhile the princess grew old and died, and I decided to return to reading. So, I finally went ahead and bought Eragon which I wasn't surprised to find out is written by a 17 year old, who I guess is a big Tolkien fan and has read enough fantasy books to pick all the ideas he liked, add some of his own (not sure about this, but there were some which atleast I hadn't read earlier), and come up with a somewhat interesting book. I smartly bought both books one and two together (I realized recently that I'm shallow enough to read and watch everything hyped. Except 5 point someone. I drew the line there), so now I'm onto part 2. Its not that bad though. I'm just in one of my more critical moods.