How I Relax...

I have described my troubles with the amount of time that it takes to work on my project, and now I describe a way in which I may have found a way to help me focus. That avenue is music.

Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken.

~Ludwig van Beethoven

(Source: http://www.quotegarden.com/music.html)

A History of Falling Short

As I attempt to focus on my own "generative processes," I reflect on my past. One of the neat things about grade school was looking up to the yearly projects of the older kids. If I remember correctly...First graders studied native Americans. Second graders did a research project on one of the fifty states. Fourth graders built models of the solar system. But, one project caught my attention more than the others: the sixth-graders studied the medieval period, and their studies culminated with the building of castles. I saw many castles made of sugar cubes and cardboard...and I wanted mine to be different. I wanted mine to be great. So, for two years, my mother helped me save up what must have been well over a thousand milk jug caps (My family drank a LOT of milk!), and I had these grand plans to build an amazing castle of milk jug caps...For years I had this planned, but, yet, there I was, the morning it was due, frantically gluing together a shoddy imitation of the plans that I had formed in my head for years.
Countless other projects and papers turned out to be nothing nearly as good as I was capable of producing. The solar-system project ended up being nine or ten (long live Pluto!) crudely-painted pieces of cardboard placed along a string of spray-painted beads.

(This is not to say that I was not occasionally proud of my work... I liked my president project on James K. Polk and my state project on Arizona.)

The problem for me has never been a lack of desire...I think that problem is that I psyche myself out.

The Frustration of Distraction
or How I Psyche Myself out of Completing Endeavors to my Satisfaction

I think that, at times, I get very high-minded, thinking of the glory of the finished project without outlining a process and focusing on each step. I wonder how much of this is due to how I like to work in blocks...just a week ago I shut myself into a computer lab and worked on this project for ten hours. I read a play for my theater literature class by sitting in a booth in the student center, blocking everything else out, and read the play straight through. This reading lasted three hours, and I remember thinking how I did not seem to notice the passing of time.

How Music Helps Me

I am a person who can have trouble focusing on the task at hand. Perhaps I have cultivated distraction in my life by the way that I once spent a good deal of my leisure time...

In my high school days, I often returned from whatever practice I had (soccer, basketball, scholar's bowl) and parked myself on the family computer. I then proceeded to listen to music, talk to friends over instant messenger, and play a simple computer game... I sometimes wonder if I focus better if the easily-distracted parts of my brain are being taken up by some well-organized, but subtle, distraction. It seems that the answer could be a resounding yes, as I found myself last Sunday working tirelessly on this project while listening to the music of Dream Theater in the background. Perhaps my mind is less distracted by the concept of how much time something is taking if it has something audible to distract it from such superficial worries. Music, with its creative organization, seems to have a wonderful balancing impact between my emotions and my rationality. Beethoven also said that

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.

Last night, at my part-time job, I listened to the Royals game...the evening was not a very busy one compared to some nights at that restaurant, but I managed to complete all my evening's duties fourty-five minutes earlier than I often do.

Another related vexation...

Another issue that I face is that I think that, in the long run, it would be counter-productive for my maturation process to try to force myself to do things... I think that I will be better off discovering a process that helps me produce best sans an inward struggle.

A Solution?

Perhaps what I should do is figure out how much of my attention I need to accomplish a task...and turn the volume of the music to an appropriate level to help me take my mind off of superfluous concerns but still be productive. Then again, maybe I am doing this already...