follow through
Feb. 22nd, 2009 09:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sub_dividedWriting from the café in the Big Box Bookstore on my new(!) laptop. It's an HP Pavilion with a 14" screen and five hours of battery life. Without the battery, it weighs 3 pounds. The case is metallic and has a brown-gray sheen that reminds me of the dress I almost wore to prom (or steampunk - that brushed aluminum look), plus an inscribed hexagonal pattern on the back. There's a matching steel mesh pattern on the front that makes it look durable. Very stylish and professional. I actually wanted the navy blue one with the light blue racing stripes, but they were out.
The keys make a very satisfying click click clack sound when you type on them. More processing power and memory than I will ever need. External volume control, which was a biggie. And I could walk out of the store with it, another plus (hate online shopping). For $600! I'm thrilled.
Have about an hour before I have to put another quarter in the meter (it's paid wireless). Let's see if I can review the two other general psychology/self-help books I read this week in that time. Though there's a large part of me that hesitates to say anything...no hard feelings, okay?
***
Sharon Heller, Too Loud, Too Bright, Too Fast, Too Tight. Subtitle "what to do if you are sensory defensive in an overstimulating world". Inspired by Graham Coxon and er this fic. These are people who notice more in their external environments than others and feel overwhelmed. They may also have poor balance and "overreact" to light touch. I have a sneaking suspicion that if you put ADD and SD on a spectrum, attention-deficits would be on one end (inclined towards/programmed for high stimulus and don't function well without it) while sensory-defensives would be on the other (inclined towards/programmed for low stimulus and don't function well within it). But these two are still sometimes confused with each other, because the obvious symptoms - high distractibility and anxiety - are the same.
An inclination becomes a condition when there's a bad fit between the person and the environment. According to Heller, the condition is not widely recognized. (I'd certainly never heard of it.) But I can think of several people who might fit already: my cousin, a bona-fide Romanian orphan who's got quite a few learning disabilities; and two kids adopted from Haiti by friends of the family. The younger boy was able to adjust but the older girl just couldn't adapt to the noise and light and smells in Brooklyn; she kept escaping from the apartment and they had to send her back to the island. Possibly diagnosis is easier in these cases because the backgrounds are so different and so extreme. In the first world, where we assume that everyone has grown up with television and traffic lights and distance learning (through computers - this is the new big thing @ community colleges btw) it may be rarer and less easily recognized. Heller talks about sensitivity to environment as a survival trait - the wolves who were the first to notice an intruder and could alert the rest of pack. This reminded me of something in High Albania, by Edith Durham (amateur Victorian ethnographer). According to Durham, the Albanians used to wrap the kids up in blankets and leave them alone in small dark rooms on purpose. So they would grow up more alert to sights and sounds?
About the book: it was really good reading. I especially liked the first section, which describes what the world is like if you're sensitive. Eye-opening - I don't experience the world that way at all - beautiful too. You don't normally expect a psychology book to be so poetic. The second section, about the anxiety disorders which may then develop, was harder going. I don't know about you but I can't read 100 pages of hammering heartbeats, dilated pupils, rapid breathing, omnipresent fear and anxiety, dizziness and vertigo, etc without getting pretty freaked out myself.
The third section is case studies. Quite a wide range here. I went in looking for professions for AU fic purposes ahaha, and got:
-artists. (sharp senses.)
-security guards. (ditto.)
-feng shui experts, spa owners. (people who create soothing environments.)
-models. (good grooming.)
Fourth section discusses treatments. Color therapy, aroma therapy, music therapy, and something called sensorimotor theraphy (for touch/balance). All those "mystical" New Age/alternative treatments that sensible people like to mock. I wonder whether this is because critics tend to be impatient, oblivious people - people whose offices are as messy as mine. (In contrast to my neat-freak office mates. Who are also morning people...)
***
Edward M. Hallowell and John Ratey, Delivered from Distraction. Subtitle "getting the most out of life with attention-deficit disorder". I shouldn't have read this. I don't need the encouragement! ^^; According to the authors, ADDers succeed by 1) marrying people who will pay the bills, and 2) landing jobs with secretaries who will manage the details. Great if you can swing it, but some of us have to do our own laundry. There's a slight gender bias here too I think: if you're a woman, it's harder to find a significant other who will clean up after you.
How this book is useful: it says that if you mess up the spelling of an author's name on a spreadsheet (for instance), it's not a moral failing and you shouldn't feel guilty. However you will still be held responsible for your actions insofar as they affect other people, so it is in your best interests to figure out a way to work that will not cause the people who depend on you to write you off as unreliable. If I'd read this book three years ago, it might have changed my life, but I'd kinda worked out that much already. (Talking to people who have read books like this one.)
There was a comparison between ADD and manic-depression which I thought was interesting. I read something somewhere else - NYT review of books? - that compared the first phase of mania to being drunk. You feel lighter, happier, less inhibited than usual. The difference, in my mind, is that manic-depressives are stuck dealing with the negative side, whereas attention-deficits find ways escape. (Which is also how we avoid learning from mistakes - by not suffering the consequences.)
***
Next up: Spook Country by William Gibson and Anathem by Neal Stephenson. I think it'll be interesting to compare them, XD.
The keys make a very satisfying click click clack sound when you type on them. More processing power and memory than I will ever need. External volume control, which was a biggie. And I could walk out of the store with it, another plus (hate online shopping). For $600! I'm thrilled.
Have about an hour before I have to put another quarter in the meter (it's paid wireless). Let's see if I can review the two other general psychology/self-help books I read this week in that time. Though there's a large part of me that hesitates to say anything...no hard feelings, okay?
***
Sharon Heller, Too Loud, Too Bright, Too Fast, Too Tight. Subtitle "what to do if you are sensory defensive in an overstimulating world". Inspired by Graham Coxon and er this fic. These are people who notice more in their external environments than others and feel overwhelmed. They may also have poor balance and "overreact" to light touch. I have a sneaking suspicion that if you put ADD and SD on a spectrum, attention-deficits would be on one end (inclined towards/programmed for high stimulus and don't function well without it) while sensory-defensives would be on the other (inclined towards/programmed for low stimulus and don't function well within it). But these two are still sometimes confused with each other, because the obvious symptoms - high distractibility and anxiety - are the same.
An inclination becomes a condition when there's a bad fit between the person and the environment. According to Heller, the condition is not widely recognized. (I'd certainly never heard of it.) But I can think of several people who might fit already: my cousin, a bona-fide Romanian orphan who's got quite a few learning disabilities; and two kids adopted from Haiti by friends of the family. The younger boy was able to adjust but the older girl just couldn't adapt to the noise and light and smells in Brooklyn; she kept escaping from the apartment and they had to send her back to the island. Possibly diagnosis is easier in these cases because the backgrounds are so different and so extreme. In the first world, where we assume that everyone has grown up with television and traffic lights and distance learning (through computers - this is the new big thing @ community colleges btw) it may be rarer and less easily recognized. Heller talks about sensitivity to environment as a survival trait - the wolves who were the first to notice an intruder and could alert the rest of pack. This reminded me of something in High Albania, by Edith Durham (amateur Victorian ethnographer). According to Durham, the Albanians used to wrap the kids up in blankets and leave them alone in small dark rooms on purpose. So they would grow up more alert to sights and sounds?
About the book: it was really good reading. I especially liked the first section, which describes what the world is like if you're sensitive. Eye-opening - I don't experience the world that way at all - beautiful too. You don't normally expect a psychology book to be so poetic. The second section, about the anxiety disorders which may then develop, was harder going. I don't know about you but I can't read 100 pages of hammering heartbeats, dilated pupils, rapid breathing, omnipresent fear and anxiety, dizziness and vertigo, etc without getting pretty freaked out myself.
The third section is case studies. Quite a wide range here. I went in looking for professions for AU fic purposes ahaha, and got:
-artists. (sharp senses.)
-security guards. (ditto.)
-feng shui experts, spa owners. (people who create soothing environments.)
-models. (good grooming.)
Fourth section discusses treatments. Color therapy, aroma therapy, music therapy, and something called sensorimotor theraphy (for touch/balance). All those "mystical" New Age/alternative treatments that sensible people like to mock. I wonder whether this is because critics tend to be impatient, oblivious people - people whose offices are as messy as mine. (In contrast to my neat-freak office mates. Who are also morning people...)
***
Edward M. Hallowell and John Ratey, Delivered from Distraction. Subtitle "getting the most out of life with attention-deficit disorder". I shouldn't have read this. I don't need the encouragement! ^^; According to the authors, ADDers succeed by 1) marrying people who will pay the bills, and 2) landing jobs with secretaries who will manage the details. Great if you can swing it, but some of us have to do our own laundry. There's a slight gender bias here too I think: if you're a woman, it's harder to find a significant other who will clean up after you.
How this book is useful: it says that if you mess up the spelling of an author's name on a spreadsheet (for instance), it's not a moral failing and you shouldn't feel guilty. However you will still be held responsible for your actions insofar as they affect other people, so it is in your best interests to figure out a way to work that will not cause the people who depend on you to write you off as unreliable. If I'd read this book three years ago, it might have changed my life, but I'd kinda worked out that much already. (Talking to people who have read books like this one.)
There was a comparison between ADD and manic-depression which I thought was interesting. I read something somewhere else - NYT review of books? - that compared the first phase of mania to being drunk. You feel lighter, happier, less inhibited than usual. The difference, in my mind, is that manic-depressives are stuck dealing with the negative side, whereas attention-deficits find ways escape. (Which is also how we avoid learning from mistakes - by not suffering the consequences.)
***
Next up: Spook Country by William Gibson and Anathem by Neal Stephenson. I think it'll be interesting to compare them, XD.