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What's on your plate?
I'll tell you whats on mine. (Now that you're here.) In fact I'll give it to you at the speed of Light:
That C Series Racer needs modding to look more like the Merc Sauber C9. and I'm visualizing the mods on it while I eat. Working out of my Home Office, I'm also working on creating an Ad for a client of mine who rents acres of cold storage space. Frozen foods share my synapses with C9 Tail-lights.
Now my iPhone twinkles and in between brunch mouthfuls of syrup-soaked blueberries and pancake, I'm answering a friend's texts about the previous night's ritual rump roast.
But that's not all I'm doing.
While all this is happening, I'm concurrently running B-spec races on both PS2 and PS3, switching between them now and then to keep an eye on either lonely B-spec Bob on GT4 or the social AI Bots with the fancy new names on GT5. As well - the same TV outputs PIP giving me occasionally breaking news topping endless recaps from recent events this time the Norwegian Youth Camp Massacre and its aftermath. I watch, glancing, all ears, as I chew blueberries, visualize mods, conceive copy, text ma buddy, tight-lipped, grieving, while creating, multitasking emotionally, mentally, physically, grabbing Time by the horns and not just hanging on but charging forward WOT into the ever-present future.
But what of the opposite?
No thought of cars, no iPhone, no texting buddies, posting, talking, listening, no PS2, PS3, PIP TV with sinister news, or Copy to create - all those people, events and tools, toys and trinkets that call on our attention gone.
What when we give them all up and give a single task to Consciousness, the Event itself being who or what we are in that given moment of Time? A moment of Bliss?
For me, sometimes, a weekend in the Algonquin. And just the luxuries of a knife, lighter, and bedroll. Lying on the ground at night staring at the stars cartwheeling above, conscious while microscopic, in terms of Time and Space of being One with the Great Moment. The Moment of Bliss.
Back to Earth, with a knock on my door. I rise to answer obviously another task, another client, another money-making Opportunity.
Why do I multitask more often than not?
Because I can make a whole lot of things, can make them happen, can make them work, can create them - from thought, to form, to function . . . but I cant create Time! I can make money anytime. I can't manufacture Time - with ALL the money in the world.
Time isn't a renewable resource.
Every moment suddenly turns precious, undiscovered missions, unearthed, half-done. Hungered-for books tossed into one's face, movies stacked and waiting to be devoured, photos to be taken, foods to be explored, objects to create, ideas to imagine, places to be seen, people to love, to befriend, to share that most precious of commodities with . . . our time.
So, multitasking, of course, frees up frames of time in that limited quota of Time we have all been given to call our own, and gives us more time to be conscious solely on what we would be doing if we didn't have to multitask - whether it would be hugging our kid for a moment or snorting blueberries in syrup, or gapping out alone in a meteor shower.
But when do we take it too far? Where I live, using a hand-held phone while driving is against the law - literally, a crime. Obviously, this makes sense to any driver with a modicum of experience. There are some tasks, that one should . . not . . combine.
BMWs latest ad in The Economist boldly says: DONT TEXT AND DRIVE, backing up its directive with statistics from the National Safety Council that site more than 100,000 crashes due to texting and driving.
Other cellphone use has been responsible for an additional 1.2 Million accidents. Texting and driving seems to have obvious consequences. But having a coffee while driving? A smoke? Shaving? Feeding a hungry baby while driving?
Driving is already a multi-task process so adding to it seems dysfunctional. Or, at a stretch, superhuman (as, no doubt, some of us claim to be).
People differ on this.
I, myself, while being a prodigious multitasker most times, tend to do nothing else but drive, while at the wheel. In fact I will hardly talk.
Newcomers into my life assume Im rude because I merely grunt (though sometimes it may sound like a snarl) if someone talks to me while Im driving.
Driving takes all my Being.
I'm aware of nothing more than the stream of consciousness that passes me by when I caress the wheel, stroke those pedals, and feel the roll of the beauty I'm in, as I travel, three-dimensional, through Time - a moment of seemingly Endless Bliss.
So I multitask like mad, elsewhere, elsewhen, however I can, to create those pockets of Time that are my own, those moments of endless bliss that make me feel, however microscopic I am, at One with All Time and Space, totally guiltless of all pressure, feeling only pleasure at being my Self.
Thieves of time are my mortal enemies.
Parasites that bleed my life's Source are cut away. . . an important lesson I've learned is when to ignore people or events.
Much older now, having married and raising teens of my own, I remember my teen years as time moving along as slow as molasses, and nowhere near the speed of Light. We seemed to have all the time in the world and nothing to do it in.
Yet my own teen sons are prolific multitaskers (when otherwise doing nothing but behaving like testosterangs). I'll come across them sprawled on the living room carpet, schoolbooks, netbooks, cellphones spread around them like tanks in battle, with the TV full blast.
Homework or TV? I'll yell. What are you doing?
Both! they'll shout. Dont disturb us! Were busy! Cant you see?
I guess thats the teen version of multi-tasking.
How about you? Have you mastered the art of doing theorems while watching Sons of Guns? Whats the secret? How are you making time without doing crime? Do you text and drive? Do asanas while at the urinal?
Let's discuss this whole business of multitasking, all aspects of it, what we know, what we want to learn.
If you have the time.. . .
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