Monday, March 8, 2010

Sponge > Brick

I was reading an article today in Rolling Stone about drug trafficking and the Mexican cartels. It was interesting. As I began the article's second page, I was still interested with the context. By the time I approached the end of that page, however, I suddenly realized that I had no clue what I had just read. The words were being read from the page, but they were not being absorbed.

So I began the page again...

Upon finishing the first column of text for the second time, I still had not retained any of the information.

As I have suspected many times before, I have a difficult time reading much of anything. My mind wanders. While my eyes read, my brain focuses on something else completely irrelevant to the context. At times, this is extremely frustrating for me. It gives me the false sense that reading is generally a waste of time. Then again, this same thing often happens to me with movies and television shows. For some reason, I can hardly remember much about them until I see them a second time. I guess you could say: The average person has a nice, big sponge in their brain. They use this sponge to soak up all of the information around them, apply it to memory, and then wring out the unwanted leftovers. Somehow, instead of a sponge, I ended up with a brick. All I can retain is any insignificant piece of information that sticks to it. Most falls off immediately before I can absorb any of it.