Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2012-11-27 02:30 am
azurelunatic) wrote2012-11-27 02:30 am
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Crystal thrall, or, the attention focus problem brain at work
I submit that Anne McCaffrey's Crystal Singer series has one of the better non-medical descriptions of the ADD/ADHD/attention focus problem brain's unwanted hyperfocus at work.
A crystal singer can become inappropriately, damagingly enthralled with a piece of crystal, focusing in on it exclusively, losing time, ignoring/unaware of bodily needs, schedule demands, and physical dangers. It can take external intervention to snap them out of it.
Crystal thrall is seductive, of course, but also terrifying. There's a chance of death if it happens at the wrong time.
Earth is not prone to quite the extremes of weather that one gets on Ballybran, and not everyone with attention focus problems is regularly in the way of life-threatening danger, but it's the same general idea. Attention gets snagged by something -- particularly when you're exhausted enough that the executive function has given up and gone to bed, or hasn't been woken up yet -- and there goes a half-hour doing clicky things on the internet, snipping off split ends, scrubbing up soap scum, or gods know what.
It's so lovely when you can just disappear into something productive and come out a few hours later, drained but buoyed by the flow state, and with something awesome to show for it. It is not lovely when you come back to your normal brain and realize you're half an hour later for bed than you were planning, but at least you don't have any more shoulder blackheads.
I'm sure the comparison breaks down, but as a 101 for someone who's never experienced that sort of problem, but has read the book, it's not bad.
A crystal singer can become inappropriately, damagingly enthralled with a piece of crystal, focusing in on it exclusively, losing time, ignoring/unaware of bodily needs, schedule demands, and physical dangers. It can take external intervention to snap them out of it.
Crystal thrall is seductive, of course, but also terrifying. There's a chance of death if it happens at the wrong time.
Earth is not prone to quite the extremes of weather that one gets on Ballybran, and not everyone with attention focus problems is regularly in the way of life-threatening danger, but it's the same general idea. Attention gets snagged by something -- particularly when you're exhausted enough that the executive function has given up and gone to bed, or hasn't been woken up yet -- and there goes a half-hour doing clicky things on the internet, snipping off split ends, scrubbing up soap scum, or gods know what.
It's so lovely when you can just disappear into something productive and come out a few hours later, drained but buoyed by the flow state, and with something awesome to show for it. It is not lovely when you come back to your normal brain and realize you're half an hour later for bed than you were planning, but at least you don't have any more shoulder blackheads.
I'm sure the comparison breaks down, but as a 101 for someone who's never experienced that sort of problem, but has read the book, it's not bad.
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At the end when the slavedrivers are defeated more than a few of the Focus users decide to stay on a lower dose - enough to hit the focus state while still being functional in other areas. What really surprised the author (this was back in the days of Usenet, so we were all there discussing it) was how many of us would do the same thing; he'd thought his characters were making a bad choice and expected readers to reach the same conclusion.
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Focus
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Also explains a couple of things about myself.
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