Stuffing Yourself

Last evening, my extended family held an early Thanksgiving feast at the folks' place in Cambridge. This meant that all the food was vegan, from the roast to the sweet potato casserole (with marshmallows) to the doughnuts. This turned out to be unfortunate for me, because I ate too much. I don't remember the last time I overdid it so epically, and, man, did I suffer for it. I lay down on the little daybed--on my back, of course--and proceeded to slip in and out of consciousness, feeling bad about my antisocial behavior and swearing off all food for the next day. Then, this morning around five, while everyone else slumbered, I slipped quietly down the creaky old stairs and stole three doughnuts.

Believe it or not, I'm going somewhere with this besides a treatise on why I've not lost the weight I've wanted to for so long. Overeating is a good analogy for how a writer or devoted reader (or viewer) can gorge himself on one subject and get sick. I've done it plenty of times. Back at the turn of the century, I reimmursed myself in the Star Wars Universe to a dangerous degree, buying up toys in the stores and on eBay, getting addicted to themed websites (especially those action-figure humor forums), and devouring movies, novels, comics, and magazines. When 9/11 struck, I wrote about it by dressing it up as a story of Alderaan's destruction. That was pathetic.

It was years before I got over that fever--sometime after Revenge of the Sith was released, in fact. But I just replaced it with other obsessions: comic books (especially Superman), Disney World, Shakespeare, TV series streaming on Netflix, what have you. One of the symptoms of ADHD is a facility with narrow focus. "Wait," you interject, "I thought people with ADHD had a lot of trouble focusing." And you're absolutely correct; generally speaking, focus is a major problem. But a sufferer can lock in on one thing and lose herself in it to the exclusion of all else. It's annoying to other people, I know. I once had a girlfriend who used that compulsion as an excuse for breaking up (there were other factors, but that's the thing she brought up).

Because of this narrow focus, the obsessive will burn out on the subject so that she won't want anything to do with it for some time. That can be an issue if dealing with that subject is necessary, especially in writing. Yes, immersing oneself in that material is often helpful when boning up during a research period, especially when that period is brief. But I've also found that an exclusive concentration on one project can make you sick of it more quickly, and that can leave you with unfinished work. I have a number of projects that have been abandoned to the dust for a while because I burned out on them. It's frustrating and disappointing and not particularly professional. But I have a solution that's working rather well.

My answer to this burn-out problem is to switch out the subject after a short time, to keep multiple things going at once. Thomas Jefferson kept a self-invented Lazy Susan sort of instrument filled with several books so he could read one when he tired of another. Because of this habit, combined with his sometimes-narrow focus, I'm convinced that TJ suffered from ADHD. But he had the right idea; reading a number of books at a time can keep one from losing long-term interest in any of them. I'm always reading several books at one time; right now, it's a book of pulp horror and fantasy stories, a collection of essays by pulp writers, and a couple of grammar books. I burned out on comic books a while back, but I know I must get back into them if for no other reason than a need for research. Anyway, I've not tired of those four books I just mentioned; they remain fresh and fascinating. And, as I dive into professional writing projects, I intend to always have multiple going at once, because that technique will keep me interested and also objective about each piece.

To gorge oneself on any one book, TV show, or writing project can make one sick and have one swearing it off for too long. Can you imagine puking words and images? Hmm, there's a story in that...

#reading