My head is buzzing. Well no, not like a mosquito. Bouncing around, like a sugar-high rabbit in a cage. My brain is itching to be distracted. Writing feels slow.

I hate this feeling. I want to be in flow. Flow is what happens when you’re in the zone, when you’re concentrating, when things just fit together. I love that feeling, and it frustrates me that I can’t slide into it as easily as I did before. In the meantime, I’ll keep writing, because I’ll eventually get back on track. Whatever I write now can then be edited into something better.

Games threw me off balance. A gameplaying binge last weekend led into games taking over my subway ride, and I have had enough. I had never realized how important my commute was for decompression , or how stretched my brain can feel when it’s trying to go all over the place. Video games are particularly evil because part of their business is to get into your head. Pretty pictures. Random reinforcement. A sense of control, agency. Just like Sesame Street was focus-group-tested within an inch of its life, some games have been refined over years to be surprisingly appealing.

But it all comes down to this: who do I want to be, a Pokemon Master or an author? I want the heightened feelings of flow more than I want the short-term stimulation of games, so even if my thoughts are getting pulled every which way, I’m going to keep dragging them back. In the long run, I’m going to get more satisfaction from that kind of focus than from any game.

In the meantime… Boingboingboingbzzz….